I just got back from a short vacation and noticed that the Financial Times published an article on WOM entitled ‘How to work a rumour mill’.
The article features a sneak preview of a new article reporting WOM research by Prof Robert East at Kingston University.

The author of the FT article, Robert Matthews, writes that “marketing gurus have long claimed that consumers are more likely to bad-mouth unsatisfactory products and services than to recommend good ones.” East’s research dispels this myth, while also raising some other interesting questions. Let me list a few points brought up in the FT article and add a brief comment to each.

Point 1: In the Kingston University study, PWOM was more common than NWOM by a factor of 3 to 1.
My comment: This is similar to the results of the ‘Advocacy Drives Growth’ study I did at the LSE in 2005 with Paul Marsden. It further supports the hypothesis that first-hand comments about products and services are more likely to be positive than negative.

Point 2: Almost half of all NWOM comes from people who have abandoned a brand.
My comment: That’s very interesting – it would also be fascinating to find out more about the qualitative differences in NWOM between stayers and leavers. I suppose as far as the magnitude of NWOM is concerned it should be ‘stay and fray’ for the former and ‘churn and burn’ for the latter.

Point 3: Consumers who spread NWOM are also more like to say good things about a brand.
My comment: Indeed, that’s the idea behind opinion leadership research and marketing: for the most effective campaign, don’t ‘mass market’, target the right people with the right message.

Point 4: NWOM tends to “infect” even those who have never tried the brand, and, Robert East says, “when negative word of mouth escapes from the user base it really takes off.”
My comment: together with the first point, this nicely adds to ideas I expressed in an article on NWOM vs PWOM last year in the International Journal of Market Research: NWOM may be less frequent, but it probably has greater reach. It may not necessarily have a greater impact on individual purchase decisions, as I think Robert East maintains, but is likely to be more powerful across space and time. Perhaps this would partly explain the myth that people are more likely to comment on bad experiences with a brand? Another psychological factor may be people’s tendency to remember bad things—the so-called ‘negativity bias’…

I think this article is a good demonstration of key factors that allow us to understand WOM impact. Some basic variables are:
- frequency and content of WOM
- the types of people who spread WOM (e.g. influencers or opinion leaders vs others; customers vs non-customers, etc.)
- reach of WOM (how many people receive the WOM message)
The list could go on to include a characterization of WOM recipients (e.g. how easily are they influenced), the persuasiveness not only of the communicator (e.g. opinion leader) but also the message itself, etc. – I’ll leave these points to future blogs.

For now, let me ask the readers of my blog (are you out there somewhere?): what are your thoughts and experiences about NWOM vs PWOM? Do you think the myth has been dispelled?

Posted by Alain on July 3, 2007

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