Responding to the Contributions of Citizen Marketers

In my class on Word of Mouth, Buzz, and Viral Marketing Communication I was fortunate to have Jackie Huba visit. Jackie and Ben McConnell, her co-author, are on tour discussing their new book Citizen Marketers: When People Are the Message. A fascinating part of our discussion during her visit was about the role of social media and how companies should respond to citizen marketers (those who generate their own content and advocacy for and about companies).

Jackie believes the true power in social media lies in its ability to foster long-term loyalty and advocacy between companies and customers. While shorter-term campaigns that accomplish strategically important goals have their place in the mix, she feels that ultimately social media and the contributions of citizen marketers is a long-term process of engagement and dialogue. This is what lies behind, at least in part, the following statement in their book: "Social media is the antidote to campaign-based thinking" (p. 172).

Another fascinating part of our discussion was how companies should respond to the contributions of citizen marketers. I set the context for the question by giving the example of how McDonald's has responded to the contributions of McChronicles (a blog that was discussed in the Citizen Marketers book). I then asked Jackie if there were any guidelines she could offer companies about if and how to respond. She said that each case comes with its own set of opportunities and constraints but that there were at least two principles that could be generalized.

First, find out if you have citizen marketers and what they are saying and doing (most companies are surprised to learn of their advocates and detractors actively working for or against their brands).

Second, if you do (and most companies do!), consider reaching out to them, say that you saw their contributions (for example, it may be a blog or podcast), thank them for their contributions, and ask them if there's anything the company can do to help them with their efforts (or, to address concerns if there are detracting comments). Sometimes the company may not be able to help the citizen marketers in the way they might want (for example, certain legal matters might restrict them), but some times they can. And sometimes the citizen marketer expects nothing.

For example, according to my brief e-mail interview with the author of the McChronicles blog at the end of January 2007, the author responds to my question of what type of response he is looking for from McDonald's, if any. He writes:

I expect nothing. I hope only that the voice of the faceless, average fast-food consumer is heard. I feel that what we want is simple - delivery on the promise. We don't go to McDonald's for tire balancing or for exceptional table service. They have never promised either. What we want is Quality (in the realm of fast-food), Service (in the realm of fast-food), Cleanliness (in the realm of known and standard sanitary practices), and Value (when compared to all the competition). Why? Becasue QSCV is McDonald's mantra - they taught us to expect this.

I think this is precisely Jackie's point about social media. Any social media efforts have to be part of a broader effort of long-term loyalty and advocacy which is fundamentally about a social contract between companies and consumers (and other stakeholders I might add, such as community members affected by what the company does).

The two points Jackie raises about different ways of engaging in customer conversations fit very nicely into an informal model I've been developing, with the help of others, about different levels of engagement and involvement with social media. I invited those interested to read and comment on that post as well.

This post is derived from a post on my teaching blog.

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication citizen marketers engagement

WOM Program Planner: A Tool for Organizations to Align WOM Initiatives with Objectives

In addition to my academic research and teaching I really enjoy working with organizations of various kinds in a consultative role. In one particular engagement where I was presenting about the WOM and social media industry I learned that someone wanted to develop a guide or check-list that could be distributed throughout the company to aid the planning of word of mouth initiatives (kind of like a "if you want to accomplish x, then do y" guide).

My first thought, though I didn't mention this to the person at the time, was that anything like that would ultimately be too much like a recipe and "cookie-cutter," resulting in uninspired use of the various WOM techniques available to companies. I still think this is a danger, but I also liked what this person was saying: that people, especially those trying to get a handle on WOM (and especially in a large, global company), could use a helpful framework to get people up-to-speed quickly. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (disclosure: advisory board member) has done a good job with their WOM101 guide, but I'd like to take up the challenge of providing a quick primer that could be used as a planning tool that matches objectives with techniques to accomplish those objectives.

(By the way, another reason I did this was because a common myth about WOM marketing is that it's only used for promotion or for the launch of a new product; I wanted to provide a range of objectives for which WOM techniques can be used).

I offer the following as a work in progress. I'm sure there will be some disagreement about what I've done here, and I've probably erred on the side of making this too simplistic, but it's a start and I would appreciate people's feedback. Here's what I did:

Download WOM Program Planner (PDF)

I placed the more common objectives of WOM programs across the top row, and listed some of the more common techniques down the left column, resulting in a grid. These aren't exhaustive, but I could only fit so many on a PowerPoint slide!

Common Objectives for WOM Programs:

- Customer insight and innovation
- Generating awareness and pass-along
- Crafting favorable brand perceptions
- Engendering purchase intentions and driving sales
- Diminishing impact of negative WOM

Common Techniques or Initiatives for WOM Programs (see WOM101 for more details):

- Conversation Tracking (monitoring and tracking brand-related conversations in online and offline venues)

- Community Creation and Management (providing people with like-minded interests a platform for dialogue and belonging with one another and the company)

- Brand Advocacy or Evangelist Programs (mobilizing loyal, passionate customers to advocate on behalf of the brand)

- Managing Service Experience (providing superior customer service and service recovery)

- Blog Marketing (managing a company or product/service-related blog and/or engaging others in the blogosphere or other online venues)

- Influencer Marketing (identifying people who are especially influential within social networks and engaging them)

- Viral Marketing (making it easy for people to spread the word on behalf of a brand, especially in an online environment, and especially using content this humorous, provocative, or otherwise entertaining)

Then, I can match and rank the relative value of each technique for each objective. I used "Low" (not particularly useful or not commonly used to achieve that objective), "Medium" (a pretty good fit), and "High" (optimal fit).

So, let's run through a couple of easy examples (view WOM Program Planner):

- Viral marketing tends to be really useful for creating awareness and stimulating pass-along, but there is a danger of the resulting communication to be about the campaign itself and not about the brand (see WOM creationist for further details). While there may be instances where viral marketing drives sales, this is less frequently the case and often times not the primary goal. Whereas, for example, advocacy programs and influencer programs may be especially well-suited for generating intentions to purchase or use the brand.

- Private, branded communities are especially useful in generating customer insight and innovation. Tracking WOM episodes in online and offline venues can be especially helpful for this, in addition to identify trends and identifying who is particularly influential on a topic.

- Managing the customer service experience and service recovery is an excellent way to manage negative WOM. It's not necessarily designed to stimulate pass-along across many generations of people (even if we're really satisfied with the customer service experience I may tell a friend about it, but what's the impetus for that person to pass that message along as well?).

- Blog marketing and engagement can be especially robust in accomplishing a number of objectives (see Naked Conversations for a helpful overview).

- Identifying and reaching out to influencers (one of the classic WOM techniques for many decades is especially helpful in stimulating pass-along and generating purchase intentions. I ranked it "low" on diminishing negative WOM not because it can't be used for these purposes but because it often isn't (it tends to be more of a promotional activity to stimulate positive WOM and/or as part of a seeding initiative). However, a way that it could be used to diminish negative WOM is in a crisis containment and recovery scenario. For example, when Kryptonite was trying to to damage control after the whole "Bic pen" crisis, a representative from the company's PR department, Donna Tucci, identified a number of influential bloggers and online community members to engage them and explain the company's response (see this interview, for example). This was helpful in curtailing at least some of the negative WOM that was spreading about Kryptonite's response.

A less helpful way to use the WOM Program Planner is as a set of "answers"; a more useful way is to facilitate discussion about possible avenues. For example, what are the pros and cons of using technique X? Or how can technique Y be used to accomplish our objective Z?

As I mentioned above, I'd be interested in constructive criticism from those experienced in the ways of WOM and those trying to get a handle on it, so that this tool can become more useful to individuals and organizations.

Download WOM Program Planner (PDF)

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication WOM Program Planner

Predicting the Future of Connected Marketing

Along with a number of other folks, I've been contacted by Justin Kirby, co-editor with Dr. Paul Marsden of Connected Marketing: The Viral, Buzz, and Word of Mouth Revolution, to comment on whether or not the predictions for the future of connected marketing he made at the end of that book were right or wrong or have come true or not. He made the following 10 predictions in 2005 (my thoughts on each below):

1. Connected marketing will become more strategic, with the focus shifting from promotion (creating remarkable campaigns) to innovation (creating remarkable products).

I believe that CM will become more strategic. Some early companies seemed to experiment with WOM initiatives, especially more on the promotion end, because they may have had some extra money around from a media buy that wasn't spent. Other companies had a very intuitive sense of the role of WOM and factored this in to their strategic decision-making but weren't necessarily very formal or explicit about it. Now, however, I see much more thought going into how WOM initiatives are part of an integrated program. I would say that since companies may have experimented with promotional strategies early on that more money will be shifting into the insight and innovation aspects, but I think that smart companies will figure out that insight, innovation, and promotional goals are all important, at various times and to various degrees. Of course, my empirical base of information on this is anecdotal because there isn't yet continuously-tracked industry data about this. I'd love to see the Word of Mouth Marketing Association track the resource allocation of this, perhaps in concert with other industry associations.

2. ROI metrics will be mandatory for viral, buzz and word of mouth campaigns. ‘Advocacy rates’ and ‘sales uplift’ will become important parts of ROI metrics, displacing traditional measures such as campaign reach.

Indeed, that's definitely a take-away message from the second volume of Measuring Word of Mouth (published by WOMMA; disclosure: I edited the volume). There is increasingly more demand for accountability and ROI metrics. I still think campaign reach will be a factor, though, because companies will want ways to compare their WOM initiatives (especially more of the "promotional" variety) with other media and marketing channels and initiatives (and old habits are well ingrained). I think what you'll see is a metric that provides a sense of the relative value of a conversation versus another kind of media impression. I do agree with you that sales uplift will definitely be important and I think increasingly we'll see agent-based models used to help assess the role of WOM relative to other media and marketing channels to assess that. Further, we'll see greater refinement of advocacy metrics, especially those related to intention to recommend and actual recommendation behaviors.

3. Word of mouth tracking will become a key metric in brand tracking market research.

Yep, absolutely. And yep, we're seeing this as companies like Nielsen BuzzMetrics, Cymfony, BrandIntel, Keller Fay, etc. see their client lists grow. See Nathan Gilliat's blog for more details.

4. Buzz, viral and word of mouth marketing will be merged into the wider marketing mix, with online viral marketing adopted and integrated within advertising, word of mouth within promotions and buzz within PR.

Yes and no. I think buzz, viral, and WOM will be merged into the ongoing operations of the firm, across many different areas. Yes, online viral marekting will be integrated within advertising, but I think even more traditional advertising messages will need to take into account the pass-along effects of WOM in order to calculate their true value (there's a great article by Hogan, Lemon, and Libai on quantifying the ripple effect of advertisements and tying it to a customer lifetime value approach). But I wouldn't limit "word of mouth" to just promotions (I guess it depends on definitions here as you use "connected marketing" as the umbrella term and I use "WOM" as an umbrella term). For example, I consider WOM to also be a source of innovation and customer insight. I think PR will take up buzz strategies but equally important is figuring out ways to engage their stakeholders in a variety of environments, such as discussion groups, blogs, online and offline communities, etc.

5. Managing and avoiding negative word of mouth, online and offline, will be an increasingly important area in connected marketing.

Yep, absolutely. And not enough attention has been paid to managing NWOM. A good bit of this can be done in managing the service recovery process but also in tracking and learning from existing WOM, especially regarding innovation.

6. Online branded entertainment (advertainment, advergaming, alternate reality games) will be used more as key brand touch-points for entertainment brands.

I think so, but we're seeing it used beyond entertainment brands as well. Check out some of the case studies on the websites of PodDesign and M80 for example.

7. Techniques developed in connected marketing initiatives will be adopted for change management and internal communication.

Yes, indeed. Internal blogs can be a great knowledge management tool. Enabling and empowering employees (principles of WOM) is important so that they have the tools and skills to create effective relationships with customers and other stakeholders (though see Chapter 6 of the book Loyalty Myths [pp. 153-168] for some important cautions about the relationship between employee performance and customer loyalty and profitability).

8. Techniques developed in viral, buzz and word of mouth will be increasingly adopted in CRM programs as both retention and acquisition (turning buyers into advocates) tools.

It would be great to use CRM programs in this way. It's especially important to think about segmenting customers appropriately and designing CM initiatives that are tailored for them.

9. Cell phones will develop rapidly as an important medium for spreading connected marketing promotions, such as mobile invitations, SMS barcode discounts, etc.

Yes, I think we are starting to see this. I think it will be important to distinguish. though, how much of cell phones, as a medium, are being used in "push" versus "pull" programs.

10. Marketers will eventually be able to locate influencers by zip/post code, by which point they will be all chasing the same chosen few… Prepare for another paradigm shift in marketing?

Of course, influencers differ by product category, not just by zip/post code, but I think your point is that as methods to identify influencers become more "efficient" (from the firm's perspective) they may be overloaded with programs. I think what continues to remain important is providing programs that are strategically in line with the company's goals, relevant to the participants involved, and that leverage motivations for why people spread positive WOM (for example, altruism, status, personal and social expression after a delightful experience, reducing risk and uncertainty, etc.).

Interestingly I noticed that there were no predictions about any of the ethical concerns regarding disclosure, commercialization of chit-chat, and working with minors. These were hugely important issues for the industry, and will continue to be, so I'd add that in as well. I know you have a lot of thoughts on this so I'd encourage you to add it is as part of your assessment.

Good luck with your article. I'm anxious to see what others say and what your own reflections are!

UPDATE (2/13/2007): If readers of this blog would like to contribute their own thoughts on Justin's predictions then feel free to do so at the Connected Marketing site by contributing to this survey.

UPDATE (2/19/2007): My comment about the lack of predictions regarding ethics doesn't imply that Justin doesn't have a position on this important topic. Interested readers should read his final chapter in the Connected Marketing text where he addresses the topic of ethics and connected marketing programs. My comment was only pointing out that ethics wasn't mentioned specifically in the 10 predictions, not that Justin didn't cover the topic of ethics in his chapter.

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication connected marketing

How To Stay Out of the Limelight of a Marketing Controversy

I've been invited to speak to the Public Relations Student Society of America group at Emerson College tomorrow night to reflect on the Aqua Teen guerilla marketing program gone wrong and to speak about my work with the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

The latest development with the Aqua Teen Hunger Force guerilla campaign is that Turner Broadcasting and Interference Inc have accepted full responsibility for the panic caused by the campaign and agreed to pay $2,000,000 for damages (about $1 million) and future emergency preparedness programs (another $1 million). I have to think Turner is gonna cover all of this.

On NPR tonight I also heard that the charges against Peter Berdovsky and Sean Stevens, the two individuals who placed the LED devices in Boston, will be "resolved."

Interference Inc has also put its website back online (it had been offline for a couple days, and then at one point, only included an apology in black lettering on a white background).

One of the charts I'd like to show in our discussion is the graph above from the DIY BlogPulse trend tool. There's a huge spike and then a significant drop off. Based on volume, Aqua Teen Hunger Force has definitely benefited (which should help for the release of the upcoming movie). Turner Broadcasting had much more attention than usual, but interestingly Interference Inc. has still stayed relatively out of a lot of the public discussion on this.

There is a fascinating parallel here to another controversial campaign with which Interference was involved: the Sony Ericsson Fake Tourist campaign (go to Interference's website and click on "case studies" and then "Sony Ericsson"). According to Interference's website, they created the Fake Tourist campaign on behalf of Fathom Communications. However, when you see the CBS 60 Minutes "Undercover Marketing Uncovered" show (2003) where this campaign was brought to the attention of many in the mainstream, Interference (or Fathom Communications) was never mentioned, just Sony Ericsson. However, in the Wall Street Journal article from 2002, Fathom Communications was credited for the campaign.

Both of the campaigns raise concerns about disclosure of the fact that there is a marketing campaign involved. Interested readers may want to check out Sean Carton's ClickZ article on lessons that can be learned from the ill-conceived Aqua Teen campaign. He was kind of enough to mention my research on the role of disclosure in WOM marketing campaigns and I've had people downloading my "To Tell Or Not To Tell?" report all day today.

I look forward to talking with the faculty and students at Emerson tomorrow about these issues and more!

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication

Psst, Marketers, Don't Mess With Homeland Security!

As I'm sure you've heard by now, a series of suspicious devices were found around Boston leading to concerns about a terrorist plot and the shutdown of major travel arteries, including "T" lines (Boston's subway system, the first in the nation), portions of Interstate 93, Storrow Drive (in my opinion, the essential roadway to know to navigate Boston), and even a portion of Charles river. The first device was found at Sullivan Square in Charlestown (since both Northeastern and Sullivan Square are on the Orange T line this caused a bit of inconvenience for folks coming into campus).

Of course, we now know this was part of a guerilla marketing stunt to generate buzz around the animated television series "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" which airs on the Cartoon Network (UPDATE: The show appears on Adult Swim which shares channel space with the Cartoon Network; Cartoon Network by day, Adult Swim by night). The devices were actually LED devices depicting a character from the show (flashing the middle finger, which is how they greet others; see these photos on BoingBoing).

Well, it worked to generate buzz (see the BlogPulse chart above), but perhaps not the kind that the marketing firm Interference, Inc., or its client Turner Broadcasting, were hoping for (NOTE: I believe I heard Interference was the marketing company involved on an NPR show this morning or in a newspaper article; could someone please confirm this?). According to the Metro, Thomas Menino, the mayor of Boston, called the stunt an "act of corporate greed" and promised to hold the executives accountable for the actions, including the $500,000 in public safety expenses it cost the City of Boston (from the Metro article it seems that the executives of Turner are on the hook and not necessarily the marketing firm). Two people have already been arrested, Peter Berdvosky and Sean Stevens, who are the two allegedly responsible for placing the devices in Boston. The penalty for placing such hoax devices is two to five years for every device found.

As a student in my class on WOM, Buzz, and Viral Marketing Communication stated, you'd think they would have notified the cities involved -- Boston, New York, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, Seattle, Portland, Austin, San Franscisco, and Philadelphia -- that they were doing this (though I wondered what the City's response would have been). Turner Broadcasting has apologized for the stunt.

The Boston Globe wrote an interesting story where they reported a generation gap in the perception of the suspicious devices. According to the article, a 22-year old design student clearly knew that it was part of an advertising campaign, but a subway worker at the Sullivan Square T station didn't know what it was and called the police.

I did a little searching and came across an interview from 2001 with the CEO of Interference, Sam Ewen. Here's an excerpt:

Q: Guerilla marketing has that obtrusive element that can hurt a campaign too. What's the trick to make sure it's appealing and not annoying?

If you put the effort into the campaign, it isn't obtrusive at all. Of course, there is good and bad marketing. The goal is not just to be there but to be there at the right time and in the right place.

If you're on your way to work in the morning and someone hands you a free cup of coffee with a promotional message, that's something can catch your eye. But, we're not going to give you free tickets to a comedy club at 7:30 in the morning. Good guerilla marketers target you for who you are and what you like to do.

The interview was July 25, 2001, which is pre the 9/11 concerns and it looks like guerilla marketers need to take this into consideration as well.

This generational issue is pretty interesting to me. When I discuss various kinds of marketing tactics in class that many people (often 30+) seem to question (for example, some guerilla tactics or some stealth marketing tactics), many of my students (generally 18-24) are less concerned and suggest that "this is how things are" nowadays and "it's what you have to do to get noticed". This is clearly not a universal opinion among the students I've talked with but it's certainly not a minority opinion either.

This will certainly be a topic of discussion in my WOM, Buzz, and Viral Marketing Communication class tomorrow morning. It will be a great opportunity to distinguish "generating buzz" (a campaign designed to elicit talk about the topic of the campaign, but often the talk is about the campaign itself) from "word of mouth advocacy" (based on having a quality brand experience) which has been a topic of discussion in class and our readings. As I mentioned above, one of my students has already posted about this on our class blog. Keep an eye on it as students post their comments and other thoughts.

A couple other thoughts: if these devices were planted in nine other cities why didn't this cause the same concern in other cities? And according to the Metro, these devices may have been planted 2-3 weeks ago -- if this really was a homeland security concern, how come it took folks this long to find them?

UPDATE: Artists stage a protest in support of the two men charged thus far: Peter Berdvosky and Sean Stevens. Many suggest it's Turner, not the two individuals who were hired to place the devices, that are culpable.

UPDATE: Boston Globe reports that Interference Marketing Inc. told Peter Berdvosky to stay quite about his role in placing the devices because the campaign was inciting panic in Boston.

UPDATE: Read about how much faster individual citizens were in reporting the events relative to when mainstream media picked up the stories.

UPDATE: BBC News in the UK has picked up the story (hat tip to Justin Kirby).

UPDATE: Look at how much buzz Aqua Teen is getting compared to Turner and how little the marketing company is getting (Interference Marketing).

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication

WOMBP: February 2007 Update

The latest version of the WOM Marketing Communication Bibliography Project (WOMBP) is now uploaded. You can access it at my download page.

Here's the background of the project and details of the contributors.

Below are new entries in this version (these aren't necessarily new studies, they just weren't included in the last update):

Akande, A. and F. Odewale (1994). "One More Time: How to Stop Company Rumours." Leadership & Organization Development Journal 15(4): 27-30.

Archer, N. P. and G. O. Wesolowsky (1994). "A dynamic service quality cost model with word-of-mouth advertising." European Journal of Operational Research 78(3): 355-366.

Arnould, E. J. and C. J. Thompson (2005). "Consumer Culture Theory (CCT): Twenty Years of Research." Journal of Consumer Research 31: 868-882.

Athanassopoulos, A., S. Gounaris, et al. (2001). "Behavioural responses to customer satisfaction: an empirical study." European Journal of Marketing 35(5/6): 687-707.

Bond, J. and R. Kirshenbaum (1998). "Under the Radar: Talking to Today's Cynical Consumer."

Cooil, B., T. L. Keiningham, et al. (2007). "A Longitudinal Analysis of Customer Satisfaction and Share of Wallet: Investigating the Moderating Effect of Customer Characteristics." Journal of Marketing 71: 67-83.

Coulter, R. A., L. L. Price, et al. (2003). "Rethinking the Origins of Involvement and Brand Commitment: Insights from Postsocialist Central Europe." Journal of Consumer Research 30.

Creelman, J. (1992). "Word of mouth." Managing Service Quality 2(5).

Delgadillo, Y. and J. Edson (2004). "Narrative Word-of-Mouth Communication: Exploring Memory and Attitude Effects of Consumer Storytelling." Advances in Consumer Research 31: 186-192.

DeVany, A. and C. Lee (2000). "Quality signals in information cascades and the dynamics of the distribution of motion picture box office revenues." Journal of Economic Dynamics & Control 25: 593-614.

Dodson, J. A. and E. Muller (1978). "Models of New Product Diffusion through Advertising and Word-of-Mouth." Management Science 24(15): 1568-1578.

Donavan, D. T., J. C. Mowen, et al. (1999). "Urban Legends: The Word-of-Mouth Communication of Morality Through Negative Story Content." Marketing Letters 10(1): 23-34.

Feldman, S. (1994). "The Talk of the Town." Management Review April: 36-41.

Fisk, G. (1969). "Word of Mouth Advertising Review." Journal of Marketing Research February: 112.

Gelb, B. D. and S. Sundaram (2002). "Adapting to "word of mouse"." Business Horizons July-August: 21-25.

Hausman, A. V. (2003). "Professional service relationships: a multi-context study of factors impacting satisfaction, re-patronization, and recommendations." Journal of Services Marketing 17(3): 226-242.

Jain, D., V. Mahajan, et al. (1995). "An Approach for Determining Optimal Product Sampling for the Diffusion of a New Product." Journal of Product Innovations Management 12: 124-135.

Kleinfeld, J. (2001). "Six Degrees of Separation: An Urban Myth?" Forthcoming.

Kleinfeld, J. (2002). "Could It Be a Big World?" Forthcoming.

Kover, A. J. (1976). "Careers and Noncommunication: THe Case of Academic and Applied Marketing Research." Journal of Marketing Research 13: 339-344.

Kumar, V. and T. V. Krishnan (2002). "Research Note Multinational Diffusion Models: An Alternative Framework." Marketing Science 21(3): 318-330.

Langer, J. (1997). "What Consumers Wish Brand Managers Knew." Jounral of Advertising Research November - December: 60-65.

Lau, G. T. (Sophia Ng). "Individual and Situational Factors Influencing Negative Word-of-Mouth Behavior." Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences 18(3): 163-178.

Mahajan, V., E. Muller, et al. "New Product Diffusion Models in Marketing: A Review and Directions for Research." Journal of Marketing 54: 1-26.

Morone, P. and R. Taylor (2005). "Knowledge diffusion dynamics and network properties of face-to-face interactions." Journal of Evolutionary Economics 14: 327-351.

Preston, I. L. (1985). "The Developing Detachment of Advertising Research from the Study of Advertisers' Goals." Current Issues & Research in Advertising: 1-15.

Rao, A. G. and M. Yamada (1988). "Forecasting with a Repeat Purchase Diffusion Model." Management Science 34(6): 734-752.

Rosen, D. E., J. E. Schroeder, et al. (1998). "Marketing High Tech Products: Lessons in Customer Focus from the Marketplace." Academy of Marketing Science Review 6: 1-19.

Ryu, G. and L. Feick (2007). "A Penny for Your Thoughts: Referral Reward Programs and Referral Liklihood." Jounral of Marketing 71: 84-94.

Sultan, F., J. U. Farley, et al. (1990). "A Meta-Analysis of Applications of Diffusion Models." Jounral of Marketing Research 27: 70-77.

Taylor, S. A. and G. L. Hunter (2002). "The impact of loyalty with e-CRM software and e-services." International Journal of Service Industry Management 13(5): 452-474.

Warrington, T. (2001). "Book Review: The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing: How to Trigger Exponential Sales through Runaway Word of Mouth." Journal of Consumer Marketing 19(4): 364-366.

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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication