Reflections on the Word-of-mouth Communication Research

Word-of-mouth communication, one of the major elements that affect consumers' attitudes and (behaviors), plays an important role in enhancing organizations' information transmittability and effectiveness. Much attention has been drawn to the researches in this field, which is always a complex of communication, psychology and marketing. However, researchers used to focus primarily on the products instead of services. Enough attention is paid to the effects of word-of-mouth in the service industry. Besides, WOM is studied in the aspects of senders as well as receivers rather than by involving WOM's impacts on the receivers' appraisal of products. Since WOM should be considered as a marketing tool, the study on WOM senders becomes more indispensable and important. Firstly, an applicable model of WOM is built with a great variety of components that is studied one by one. The four aspects of the model are WOM antecedents, WOM contents and effects, WOM forces and WOM outcomes. The WOM action that happens in the service marketing is driven by service quality, customer commitments and high sacrifice commitments. A WOM can be identified by its activity, (positive) effect or negative one. The major forces of WOM are receiver's active seeking WOM, tie strength, (receiver's) perceived risk, sender's expertise and receiver's expertise. WOM will influence the pre-buy (decision) of the consumers by encouraging them to buy the service. Furthermore, a WOM receiver is likely to make the same after-buy evaluation as the WOM sender does. The study on WOM in the context of (organizations) should focus on both WOM antecedents and WOM forces. Therefore, WOM receivers as well as WOM senders should be considered as the main objects of the study. Besides the positive (praise) effect, the negative one is involved in the model. Secondly, theories are put into practice by putting forward such (proposals) as active creation of positive WOM, effective control of negative WOM and innovation on the quality of products and services keeping pace with the customers' expectations. Thirdly, the Prospect Theory will arouse a new study on WOM. The future study should try to discover under what circumstances WOM receivers are willing to receive risky or otherwise information and at what degree they do. It is greatly significant both in theory and in practice to thoroughly comprehend the theoretical hypotheses and connotations of word-of-mouth communication in the age of integrated marketing communication.