There is a tremendous amount of interest in all things word of mouth these days. But many people who are new to this topic and interested in learning more are not aware that research on word-of-mouth marketing and related concepts -- like loyalty, advocacy, consumer behavior, social networks, etc. -- have been studied for decades and decades in the academic world and by some companies.
In light of this I have conducted my own review of the literature on the topic of word-of-mouth marketing communication and, along with others who have done the same -- notably Greg Nyilasy and Martin Williams -- we have combined our bibliographies and are making them available at my download page as a common resource.
We make no claims that this bibliography is complete in any way. Further, what exactly counts as "word of mouth" is somewhat ambiguous and so there are a lot of articles in the list that are tangentially related. We have also included, albeit unsystematically, industry white papers and news articles on the topic.
The current list is both in PDF format and as an Endnote bibliography file (as it stands now, the list is at 32 pages). The PDF format is not as useful as the Endnote bibliography, but most everyone has access to PDF. You can request a copy of the Endnote file (other academics and researchers would be most interested in this, I would assume) but we would just ask that you agree to make a meaningful contribution to the bibliography project (for example, contribute new resources to it, spot-check it, add in abstracts or summaries of the articles, etc.).
We would love for people to fill in gaps where the current list is incomplete! Simply e-mail me (w DOT carl AT neu DOT edu) with "WOMBP" in the subject line. I aim to update the file every month and post a new version. When there are significant revisions or additions I will create a new blog post.
There's surely a much better way to maintain an active bibliography, such as through the use of a wiki, and we'll probably move to that at some point. There are also other WOM-related resources to check out, such as:
- The WOMNIBUS and WOM Library hosted by the Word of Mouth Marketing AssociationHappy researching!
- Google Scholar (keyword search "word of mouth")
- SPIDER (Social Psychology of Information Diffusion -- Educational Resources)
- The New PR Wiki (managed by Constantin Basturea)
- Michael Cafferky's WOM Resource page
- Kerimcan Ozcan's website
Link to download page for WOM Bibliography Project
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Tags: WOM word of mouth Word-of-Mouth Marketing buzz marketing viral marketing marketing communication marketing communication word of mouth bibliography project
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