Apple-to-Apple Comparisons for WOM White Paper

John Moore recently provided a follow-up post to his comments on my collaborative research project with BzzAgent and the results reported in the white paper entitled "The Value of Managed WOM". In his post he concluded that "the two samples appear too dissimilar to draw any empirical conclusions" regarding frequency data for the number of interactions, WOM episodes, and episode-to-interaction ratio (the percentage of a person's total interactions that include a WOM episode). Below is my comment that justifies why I think it is an apple-to-apple comparison.

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Hi John,

I enjoyed reading your follow-up post about my WOM research project with BzzAgent. However I want to clear up a misunderstanding in your post. I did provide the additional demographic information on the BzzAgent sample, which was as you reported (though see next paragraph). However, in order to be able to make apple-to-apple comparisons I matched the BzzAgent sample to the "everyday people" convenience sample by age and education level. That is, from the total BzzAgent sample I created a sub-set of those agents with "Some College" and aged 18-29. This is reported in the white paper on Footnote #1 on page 3.

You are right in pointing out that there is a higher representation of females in the BzzAgent sub-set that I used to compare with the convenience sample (it's actually 88% [BzzAgent sub-set] to 74% [convenience sample] for the variables under consideration; let me know if you want more details about how these perecentages were determined). However, among both the BzzAgent sub-set and the everyday people convenience sample there were no statistically significant differences for the number of interactions, number of WOM episodes, and the episode-to-interaction ratio (the percentage of total interactions that included a WOM episode) based on sex of the respondent.

Therefore, I think one can safely conclude that the BzzAgent sub-set and the everyday people convenience sample is an apple-to-apple comparison based on education level, age, and sex.

Thanks again for your interest in this research!

Walter Carl
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I would also note to John, and other interested readers, that a larger sample of "everyday people" (that is, those not affiliated with a word-of-mouth marketing agency) is warranted and anyone interested in helping to fund that study should contact me... everything is ready to go :-)

Response to John Moore's (BrandAutopsy) Comments

Hi John,

Thank you for your comment and questions regarding my "What's All The Buzz About?" article! I thought I'd reply as a new post so that I can provide a more detailed response. I'll intersperse my comments within yours...

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Your report says managed word-of-mouth (WOM) programs, like those from BzzAgent, generate more WOM than happens from everyday people. Interesting, but not a surprising finding especially considering BzzAgents are most likely more skillful at recognizing and reporting WOM activity than their peers in your convenience sample. What are your thoughts about BzzAgents potentially being more skillful at knowing when and where WOM happens and thus being able to report such activity for your study?

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This is an interesting point. First, I agree with you, it shouldn't be a surprising finding that BzzAgents report more WOM episodes than non-Agents. The amount of the difference was what surprised me (for example, Agents having twice as many of their total interactions include a WOM episode). Second, I don't have any direct measurement of whether or not BzzAgents are more or less skillful at recognizing WOM opportunities. My sense is, however, and like yours, that they probably are better able to recognize WOM opportunities. The point I think you're getting at, though, is were they this way "naturally" or does it have something to do with BzzAgent. I don't know, but here are my thoughts:

First, at the very least, I think Agents are more conscious of, and attuned to, the WOM process. I think the more a person's awareness of WOM is raised, and the more a person is encouraged to spread WOM, then the greater likelihood that person will see opportunities to do so (it's kind of like the social-psychological process of buying a certain kind of car and then "suddenly" noticing how many other cars like yours are on the road).

But more importantly, another reason why BzzAgents might develop better acuity in seeing WOM opportunities is that there is a social system in place that a) provides positive feedback about the WOM activity and b) creates a community where this activity is supported. As Dave Balter and Matt McGlinn have talked about at WOMMA conferences, when BzzAgents submit reports, they receive personalized responses from company representatives about their WOM activity. This interaction between the Agent in the field, and the person at the "Central Hive", makes their Agents' own WOM activity part of a larger social process of participation in a community, which creates more identification with the values of that community, and one of those values is to share your feelings about ideas, brands, products, and services with other people (that is, engaging in WOM).

So, whether the BzzAgent system helps people to be better at recognizing opportunities for WOM, or the Agents were like that already (which may have attracted them to BzzAgent) is an open question. Either way, I would wager that any WOM program that makes engaging WOM part of a larger social and relational process, whether it's BzzAgent or some other model, will lead to increased levels of WOM activity. The non-Agents in the study don't have that added sense of being part of a larger community of passionate people spreading WOM.

And of course, BzzAgents have more opportunity for participating in WOM when they do so as part of a buzz marketing campaign. But very interestingly, and I think this is one of the more fascinating results, the majority of the BzzAgents' reported WOM episodes were not related to buzz marketing campaigns. But instead they were "everyday" WOM unrelated to specific products with BzzAgent. I have a whole section on the implications of this finding in my paper and why clients of word-of-mouth marketing agencies shouldn't want Agents to buzz about their product 24-7 (see my last comment at the end of the post for more details).

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And ... help me to understand how similar, in demographics and psychographics, your two sample sets are/were. The white paper only outlines the everyday, non-BzzAgent sample as being college educated adults ranging in age from 18 to 29. Since the paper empirically states the BzzAgent sample set is more socially active, I’d like to know if BzzAgents are potentially more socially inclined than are the people in the everyday, convenience sample.

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Another interesting question. I didn't have access to specific psychographic data on the BzzAgents, or the non-Agents, so I can't provide that detail for you. Additional demographic data was available for the Agent sample, and it's reported in my article. Here's an excerpt from the methods section:

"The participant sample was representative of the larger Agent population on all available demographic variables: sex, age, ethnicity, education level and income levels. 83% of the sample was female; ages ranged from 13-72 with 45% being 18-29; approximately 90% self-identified as white or European-American; 54% had some college or a 4-year college degree; and approximately 65% reported incomes within the range of $20,000 - $80,000 per year (26% reporting over $80K and 9% reporting under $20K)" (from Carl, in press).

For the convenience sample, the only demographic information collected was sex, age, and education level. 67% of the sample was female and the average age was right around 20. All were pursuing a 4-year college degree.

Now, the bit about if they are more socially inclined. Do you mean are they more introverted or extroverted, to use trait-based psychological terms? I don't have measurements of that, but Agents certainly reported engaging in more interactions on average. Specifically, about 140 interactions over a 7-day period for Agents versus 108 for non-Agents. (An interaction was defined as any conversation that a person considered meaningful and that was more than just a "hi and bye" made in passing). Thus, the white paper reports engaging in more interactions as an indication of being more "socially active," but we don't have data on whether or not they are more socially "inclined." I wouldn't want to speculate much more beyond that., though I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that point.

I'll have new data coming in shortly for non-Agents about frequency of interactions, WOM episodes, and the E/I ratio (that is, the percentage of one's total interactions that include a WOM episode). I'll report those statistics when I get the data cleaned and analyzed.

I'd also like to respond to "Paughnee" who posted this comment to your blog:

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Most BzzAgents are probably in the habit of making a mental note of WOM in a conversation whether they are reporting it or not.

***

Perhaps, but both Agents and non-Agents had similar instructions and a similar log sheet about what to record and what not to record. So I don't think this would be a big factor in how they reported it on the "Total Interactions and Word-of-Mouth Episode Worksheet" (the original log sheet I designed for this study; e-mail me and I can send you a copy if you're interested).

***

Thanks in advance for helping this WOM evangelist become more enlightened.
johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) Homepage 08.04.05 - 12:28 pm #

***

My pleasure! Thank you for your interest in my research. I'd love to continue this conversation further! :-) I can send you a pre-press version of the full article if you're interested (just e-mail me). I would just ask that it not be posted or distributed as there are copyright issues based on the contract with the publisher for the academic journal.

Cheers :-)

Walter

--- Relevant Links ---

- BzzAgent Blog Post: "The Value of Managed Word-of-Mouth"
- BzzAgent White Paper: "The Value of Managed Word-of-Mouth" (PDF)
- Brand Autopsy's Blog Post: "Thoughts on a WOM White Paper"
- Church of the Customer Blog Post: "The Science of Word-of-Mouth"

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"What's All The Buzz About?"

I recently learned that my manuscript entitled "What's All The Buzz About? Everyday Communication and the Relational Basis of Word-of-Mouth and Buzz Marketing Practices" was accepted for publication in Management Communication Quarterly (to appear in Volume 19, 2006, Sage Publications). Here's the abstract for the article:

Although the influential role of word-of-mouth communication has been known for decades, a more recent phenomenon is the emergence of explicit organizational efforts to stimulate “buzz” (contagious talk about a brand, service, product, or idea). Buzz marketing organizations either pay people, or seek volunteers, to try new brands and then have agents “talk them up” among their social networks. This manuscript contends that the practice of buzz marketing is usefully framed within the study of everyday communication, which has shown considerable growth in the field of communication studies over the past decade. This framework provides a reliable scientific source and basis upon which to found further claims about the effectiveness and ethics of buzz marketing.

The study sought answers to questions of frequency of word-of-mouth (for example, what percentage of the total number of interactions includes word-of-mouth about an organization, brand, product, or service), what medium (such as face-to-face, phone, or online) was most commonly used, how common recommendations or referrals were, the conversational context surrounding a word-of-mouth episode, and what percentage of buzz marketing agents’ word-of-mouth communication is part of a buzz marketing campaign. I also compared the buzz marketing agent data to a "convenience sample" of non-Agents (college-educated 18-29 year olds).

The company with whom I collaborated on the project, BzzAgent, Inc., recently released on their blog a white paper entitled "The Value of Managed WOM Programs" based on some of the findings reported in the article.

A future manuscript (currently being submitted for review to another journal) will report findings from the same study about the quality of the interactions, levels of conversational control, value to people's lives, impact of the word-of-mouth episodes to people's thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and behaviors, as well as any changes in people's relationships and levels of attraction. Each of these factors (quality, control, value, impact, and relational change) were analyzed according to sex of the agent and their conversational partners, the relationship between the two (stranger, acquaintance, friend, best friend, relative, etc.), and also whether the episode was institutional word-of-mouth (that is, part of a buzz marketing campaign) or everyday WOM (unrelated to a campaign).

Addendum (September 2005): A pre-press version of this manuscript can be accessed from my Northeastern download page (you will be greeted with a simple form to fill out that asks for your name, institution, and e-mail address). The official version of the manuscript will be published in Management Communication Quarterly (2006). Feel free to comment on the piece should you desire to do so but please provide the link to my download page (http://www.atsweb.neu.edu/w.carl/downloads/) rather than uploading or mirroring the PDF file.

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International Conference on Word-of-Mouth Marketing

The website for the first international conference devoted exclusively to word-of-mouth marketing was just released. The English version of the site is http://www.b-s-i.org/wom/en/

The conference is being sponsored by the Brand Sciences Institute and will feature speakers from a number of leading advertising and marketing agencies, market research firms, multinational companies, and academic researchers. I'll be presenting my latest research findings on WOM communication and buzz marketing.

A neat feature of the conference is that it's not-for-profit; any proceeds will be put in a fund to support additional WOM research.

The conference is 6-7 October 2005 in Hamburg, Germany and is limited to the first 200 participants.

Follow Up from the WOMMA Metrics Conference

On Wednesday I had the opportunity to participate on an excellent panel at the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association’s conference on measuring WOM. The panel was “Optimizing WOM: Which Words Work?” In a nutshell I argued that the sub-title of the panel was slightly misleading. It seemed to suggest that there’s this magic combination of words that will lead to a viral explosion in WOM if you just get the right words down. Perhaps, but not likely. My point was that the magic is not to be found in the words of marketers, but rather in the creation and sharing of everyday consumer conversations. And one way to gain insight into these everyday conversations is to study the following four factors: the relationship of the participants talking, the locations where the WOM episodes take place, the topics of talk surrounding the specific brand-related talk, and the activities done before, during, and after. Taken together, these make up some of the components of what I called the “conversational geography of WOM”.

For each element I referenced findings from a collaborative research project with BzzAgent, Inc.. For example the most frequent topics of talk surrounding WOM episodes included topics related to everyday life, such as family, special events (birthdays, weddings, etc.), “casual” talk, reviewing the day’s events, relationships, and gossip. After sharing some practical ways for organizations to take advantage of this information, I concluded with the following two take-home points: 1) marketers should pay attention to the relational and conversational context of WOM, and 2) understand how consumers make sense of their world in order to weave brand-related talk into the everyday conversations that are already going on. A copy of the slides should be available soon on the WOMMA website.

Following my presentation the other two panelists – Greg Wester of VoodooVox, Inc. and Dave Cadoff from FutureNow – spoke about the importance of the individual people involved in WOM. Greg had a fun, clever, and unique presentation in which he showed three concrete ways that marketers could facilitate consumer conversations by creating personalized, interactive online WOM campaigns. Greg created three fun superheroes to illustrate each of the communication processes he discussed: Tuning, Transmitting, and Magnetism. Be sure to check out the WOMMA website for slides to his presentation.

A podcast put together by Ben McConnell where he interviewed some of the presenters at the conference should appear early next week on the Customer Evangelist blog (Ben was gracious enough to invite me to be interviewed as part of the podcast). And an article about the conference appears on AdRants’ website.

Other presentations I enjoyed and would encourage people to check out include:

- Matt McGlinn's (Director of Research, BzzAgent, Inc.) ideas on what motivates WOM;

- Pete Blackshaw's (CMO, Intelliseek) talk about conversational text-mining and the release of BlogPulse, a free tool to analyze trends in the blogosphere;

- Karen Kraft's (Decision Analyst) presentation on using online focus group participants to track offline, organic WOM;

- Terry Pittman's (Executive Director, Digital Services Research, AOL) thoughts on what makes products worth talking about.

All the speakers contributed articles to the first volume on measuring WOM so you can also find more information about their ideas there.

***
Links to blogs, podcasts, and articles referencing my presentation:

- AdRants’ Article

- Customer Evangelist Podcast on "Measuring WOM" (release date July 22, 2005)

- Gary Stein's Blog (Jupiter Research analyst)

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Should Bloggers Disclose Financial Compensation?

In today's Sunday Boston Globe (pp. A1, A22), Jenn Abelson wrote an article citing concerns about bloggers who receive compensation to mention certain companies on their blogs. According to the article, a marketing firm -- USWeb -- enlisted 2,000 bloggers to mention USWeb's clients' products and services on their blogs, sometimes regardless of whether the blogger had direct experience with the company. (When more blogs mention, and link to, particular websites, those websites are rated higher in search engines like Google; this has led some in the advertising industry to interpret blog to mean "better listing on Google." Currently, there is no government regulation regarding such disclosure of compensation in the blogosphere.)

It seems like failure to disclose financial compensation on blogs represents yet another form of "undercover," "stealth," or "shill" marketing. Further, non-disclosure seems to violate the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Code of Ethics, which supports honest disclosure of identity and relationship with a marketing company.

The situation is complicated by the following example: a software marketing company mentioned in Abelson's article -- Marqui of Portland, Oregon -- discloses that they pay bloggers to have their clients' names mentioned on blogs. However, the blogger mentioned in the article didn't consistently disclose that she received compensation. Thus, Marqui would seem to be abiding by the WOMMA* Code because they disclose they pay bloggers. But should the blogger receiving compensation also abide by such a code? How much can, and/or should, a marketing company control the actions of the people they compensate for their participation in marketing campaigns?

To me, this issue of the most effective and ethical way to manage institutional identity and affiliation is of paramount importance to longevity of word-of-mouth, buzz, viral, and blog marketing. I am especially interested in this identity management in more interactive settings, especially interpersonal contexts. Stay tuned for upcoming reports from research projects on this and related topics.

* Disclosure: As mentioned in previous posts and in my bio, I am an Advisory Board member of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association which has developed a code of ethics surrounding the online and offline word-of-mouth marketing industry.


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Wall Street Journal Article: "Marketers Scan Blogs for Brand Insights"

In today's Wall Street Journal Bill Bulkeley wrote an article about how companies are increasingly tracking brand-related conversations. In the article I was quoted as highlighting the lack of direct research on the similarities between online and offline WOM conversations. I've written about this in an earlier post (see second and third paragraphs) and think it's crucial for researchers to do a comparative study that investigates how similar (or different) the online discussions in blogs, chat rooms, etc. are to what takes place in face-to-face venues. One consequence, among many, is that if the online and offline conversations are similar then organizations can rely on the increasingly sophisticated tracking tools that are available and that Bulkeley describes in his article. If the conversations are different, however, then additional research into the world of offline conversations is necessary. I'm going to speak on this issue at the upcoming Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association conference on measuring word-of-mouth (e-mail me to receive a special discount for blog readers; in the interest of full disclosure, readers should be aware that I sit on the WOMMA Advisory Board).

Final thought: I know of many studies that look at online conversations, but none that directly compares the offline and online. A related study that needs to be done is on how offline conversations influence online ones and vice versa. If you know of research on these topics please post a comment or contact me via e-mail. And if you are interested in collaborating on a project let me know as I have some ideas in mind for a research design.

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Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Word-of-Mouth and Gender

Some colleagues and I were recently talking about WOM and effects of gender. In this post I provide a few published academic journal articles that address this topic and then also provide some findings from my own research on WOM communication practices of buzz marketing Agents and everyday people.

Quick note: Many people use “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, but we should distinguish between the two: sex refers to biological characteristics of males and females, while gender refers to the social and cultural meanings we attach to the biological characteristics. So, as a quick illustration, when a baby is born as a boy or girl, that’s sex; when a boy baby is given a blue blanket and a girl baby is given a pink blanket, that’s gender. Communication behaviors commonly associated with masculine styles include using talk instrumentally to "fix" a situation, using talk to assert one’s identity, and competing to hold the conversational floor, while feminine behaviors typically include cooperatively including others in the conversation, emotional expressiveness, and using talk to maintain social relationships and connectedness. Gender can be measured with certain scales (for example to assess the extent to which a person identifies with certain behaviors typically associated with males and females), but often researchers don’t make the effort to do so; thus, when research reports on gender differences based simply on whether people identify themselves as male or female, that research is really talking about sex differences rather than gender differences. Interestingly, when college students are assessed for gender styles they most commonly enact an androgynous style, meaning both masculine and feminine; however, generally people are more comfortable with one or another style, and also find one style more appropriate to use depending on the social circumstances. (1)

Another quick note: For whatever reason people like to focus on sex or gender differences rather than the overwhelming similarities (Wood, 2005). And even when there are sex differences be sure to check how large or small the differences are.

Market Mavens

One line of research that has taken up the issue of gender (or really, sex) and WOM concerns market mavens (Feick & Price, 1987; Higie, Feick, & Price, 1987). Market mavens tend to have information about a lot of different products, shopping venues, and general information about the marketplace. They also tend to start discussions about shopping or market-related information with other consumers and are also highly responsive to requests for this information. Market mavens have been distinguished from opinion leaders (who often have product-specific knowledge and experience) and early adopters. Market mavens are identified by their agreement or disagreement to six questions (for example, whether people ask them for information, whether they like introducing new products to friends, whether they are perceived as a good source of information for new products or sales, etc.). Based on their responses, people are classified into low, medium, or high market maven status. People who score in the “high” group are referred to as market mavens. Multiple studies have found that market mavens are more likely to be female but are not differentiated based on other demographic variables like age, education, income, race, household size, marital status, or number of children under 18. Market mavens do, however, have higher media consumption.

Mannmavens

In part because early research found that market mavens are more likely to be female, a lot of attention has been paid to females. This has prompted researchers in Germany to search for male market mavens, which they dubbed “Mannmavens” (“Mann” being German for male; Wiedmann, Walsh, and Mitchell; 2001). They replicated the use of the Market Maven Scale and found it to be valid for German consumers. When they compared male and female market mavens based on other demographic variables the researchers found them to be very similar. Thus, they concluded that market maven trait is equally relevant to both men and women. They did, however, find differences between male and female market mavens in terms of their decision-making styles (see pp. 203-207 of their article for a discussion of these differences and practical implications for marketers to apply this knowledge).

Gender and Sports Marketing

Another study investigated gender differences for WOM behaviors surrounding sporting events (Swanson, Gwinner, Larson, and Janda, 2003). These researchers looked at different psychological motivations for attending sporting events and also their verbal recommendations made to others. The four motivations they considered were team identification (perception of connectedness to a team), eustress (the positive anxiety and emotional stimulation that leads people to invest in being a spectator), group affiliation (the desire to be included in a reference group and share the experience with others), and self-esteem enhancement (the desire to maintain or boost one’s self concept). The researchers found that the relationship between group affiliation and WOM behavior was stronger for women than for men, meaning that women were more likely to make a recommendation for others to attend the sporting event due to the group affiliation motivation. Men were more likely to engage in WOM behavior based on self-esteem enhancement; however, the researchers cautioned that this could be unique to the sports context (their explanation was that discussing sporting events might enhance men’s self-esteem more so than maintaining women’s self-esteem).

My Own Research on WOM and Buzz Marketing Communication

In my own research on WOM and buzz marketing communication practices, I found some interesting findings regarding sex differences and similarities (2). First, the majority of buzz marketing agents affiliated with the particular Agency I worked with were female, just over 80%. Most of my students are not surprised by this finding.

A second point concerns frequency of interactions Agents have over the course of a week, and the number of those interactions that include talk about an organization, brand, product, or service (aka, a WOM episode). The percentage of total interactions that include a WOM episode is called the E/I Ratio. Interestingly male Agents report slightly more interactions than females and more WOM episodes. My students are surprised by this. However these differences were so small that they were not statistically significant. Their E/I Ratios were very similar as well, both right around 26% of their total interactions including talk about an organization, brand, product, or service. Agents could not be differentiated based on all other available demographic variables, such as age, education, income, and race.

When presenting this information in class one astute student said that women may have had fewer conversations because their conversations tend to be longer than male’s conversations. Among Agents, though, the average length of interactions only differed by about a minute.

Thus, in terms of frequency issues, male and female buzz marketing Agents were very similar. But does this same pattern hold for non-Agents, or “everyday people”? To help compare non-Agents to Agents I have had university students complete the same surveys (see Carl, under review for details). With non-Agents, females report more interactions, more WOM episodes, but have about the same percentage of those interactions include talk about an organization, brand, product, or service. These differences are larger than for the Agents but still not statistically significant. One difference that is quite large for non-Agents is that females reported significantly longer conversations, in fact, twice as long as what the males reported.

When comparing Agents and non-Agents, Agents had about 30% more interactions, nearly twice as many WOM episodes, and more than double the E/I Ratio. These differences were all statistically significant.

What can we conclude from this? Among non-Agents the sex differences, although not statistically significant, are more in line with what is commonly assumed about communication differences between men and women in the U.S.: women talk more frequently, have longer interactions, and also have more WOM episodes. However, among buzz marketing Agents, the differences are less pronounced, and at times, counter to what many typically assume. This suggests that gender (again, more accurately, sex) may be less important than the fact people volunteer to be buzz marketing Agents. Thus, whether or not someone is a buzz marketing agent is more likely than sex to explain differences in the number of interactions, WOM episodes, and E/I Ratio.

In Closing

To sum up this posting, social constructions surrounding males and females shape our lives in powerful ways and deserve our attention. However, these constructions may not always be relevant in every situation and change over time, so it’s important to continually interrogate whether, how, and in what contexts gender differences and similarities are relevant.

By no means is this a comprehensive discussion of all the extant findings regarding gender and WOM practices so I invite people to add to the discussion here by including other research findings and insights from personal experience. More findings based on Sex of Respondent and Sex of Conversational Partners is forthcoming (Carl & Noland, in preparation).

References for this Post

Carl, W. J. (manuscript under review). What’s All The Buzz About? Everyday Communication and the Relational Basis of Word-of-Mouth and Buzz Marketing Practices.

Feick, L. & Price, L. (1987). The market maven: A diffuser of marketplace information. Journal of Marketing, 51, 83-97.

Higie, R. A., Feick, L. F., & Price, L. L. (1987). Types and amount of word-of-mouth communications about retailers. Journal of Retailing, 63(3), 260-278.

Swanson, S., Gwinner, K. Larson, B. V., & Janda, S. (2003). Motivations of college student game attendance and word-of-mouth behavior: The impact of gender differences. Sport Marketing Quarterly, 12(3), 151-162.

Wiedmann, K., Walsh, G., Mitchell, V. (2001). The Mannmaven: An agent for diffusing market information. Journal of Marketing Communications, 7, 195-212.

Wood, J. T. (2005). Gendered lives: Communication, gender, and culture (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Notes for this Posting

(1) More critical approaches contend that even the distinction between “sex” and “gender” is a cultural construction. back

(2) In this particular buzz marketing Agency, all Agents voluntarily affiliate with the Agency are not employees of the Agency. back

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"Find an opinion leader and you find a conversation."

My university library sent me an e-mail today saying that one of the books I had checked out -- Gabriel Weimann's The Influentials: People Who Influence People -- needed to be returned. As I was on my way to the library I noticed a post-it note next to a sentence I had marked off. The sentence was written by Elihu Katz, a pioneer in researching the concepts of personal influence and opinion leaders. The quotation was:

"Find an opinion leader and you find a conversation."

I find this quotation most relevant given my last posting about the importance of understanding communication and relationship processes rather than just identifying types of individuals. However, Katz is not necessarily referring to everyday, routine forms of communication with friends, family, and coworkers in this sentence; rather, he is talking about conversation as a term for public and institutional dialogue. Katz's larger, optimistic argument is that conversations are valuable because they will lead to better and more informed discussion and actions, thus serving as a check on what many see to be powerful media forces (I write optimistic because the conversations could equally likely lead to reinforcing stale, unproductive views of the world). Here's more context for the excerpt (from the Foreword to Weimann's book, written by Katz in 1993):

"Opinion leadership research continues this argument [Paul Lazarsfeld's modest optimism for a 'participatory democracy'], even if its main stream remains (overly) occupied with the characteristics of opinion leaders. Opinion leaders are interesting, in my view, because they imply that media influence is being intercepted and examined in conversation. Find an opinion leader and you find a conversation. Find a conversation and you find more considered opinions and better informed actions, and thus a brake on media power. Lazarsfeld's legacy, like Tarde's of a century ago and Habermas's today, directs us to keep watch on the changing prevalence, forms, and functions of conversation in the various institutional contexts in which it takes place. Inevitably, one is led to wonder what will happen to conversation and to public space in the era of individuation now being thrust upon us by the new media technology."

While it's arguable whether or not new media technologies have made us more isolated or created new avenues for public discussion (it's probably both/and rather than either/or), or if the technologies have been "thrust upon us," we should not underestimate the power of conversation in its everyday, routine form. Indeed as I argued in my last post, and as increasing research in the field of Communication Studies is finding, it is in these mundane interactions where the basis for opinion leadership, or influenceability, is formed.

Word-of-Mouth and the "Magic" of Everyday Talk: Focusing on the Process Not the Individual

This is the first of a number of posts where I will write about findings or conclusions from recent research projects on word-of-mouth (WOM) communication and buzz marketing practices. A more comprehensive discussion of these issues can be found in a manuscript I recently submitted for publication in an academic journal (more details in the coming months). For the time being, though, the theme of this posting is about how existing research on WOM has a tendency to focus more on the individual rather than on the relationships and communication processes between people.

I should note at the start that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with focusing on any one level of analysis rather than another; it's just that we need to be aware of how each perspective we take reveals certain understandings while concealing others.

There are a number of research traditions that seek to identify and label certain individuals or groups of people who engage in more WOM communication than others. For instance, there is a line of research that looks at "market mavens" (1). These people can be distinguished from the rest of the population based on the general level of expertise they have about the marketplace (rather than specific product knowledge) and also based on how they share, or are sought out for, this information. There is another tradition that looks at "Influential Americans," or people who are especially active in their local communities (2). Research has shown that both groups of people are sought out more frequently for information, as well as provide more information, to their friends and family members than members of the general population. Such findings have led some commentators to dub these people as "magical" (3).

Both lines of research offer interesting insights and compelling evidence for their positions. However, if we only focus on the individual-level of analysis -- that is, certain individuals or groups of individuals who do X, Y or Z, more or less than other individuals -- then we can get distracted from more fundamental communication and relationship processes. That is, the processes that make these people seem "magical" get obscured. The magic does not come from the people as individuals, but rather from underlying mundane, routine communication with others in their network of relationships.

For example, research has shown how seemingly trivial kinds of communication -- such as chit-chat, small talk, gossip, "chopping the carrots" (4), etc. -- form the basis for what we often consider "bigger" issues. Take social support, or the process we engage in when seeking or providing support to others. Communication scholars have shown that we base our decision to go to certain people when we need emotional support for the "big" issues in our lives on the multiple interactions we have with people on conversations on "small" matters, often unrelated to social support (5). It is through these interactions about other matters that we build a foundation of trust and gain a sense of who might be good in a situation when we need help. Even more interestingly, though, the everyday talk itself has been shown to be a crucial form of support. Through these mundane interactions we get confirmation of ourselves and how we make sense of the world.

The same principle of everyday communication applies to brand-related WOM. What makes certain individuals influential in our lives is all the conversations with them that are not brand, product, or service-related. It is through the everyday, mundane talk that leads us to go to them for "marketing"-related information, to trust their judgments, to respect their opinions, etc. We can conclude from this, then, that it is not the indivudals themselves who are influential, but rather what is influential is the process of everyday communication in networks of relationships.

What does this mean for curious people who want to better understand WOM and buzz marketing? First, invest time in learning about how everyday talk and relationships work (here's a chapter I wrote with a colleague to provide a helpful overview; this link opens a 3MB PDF file, beware!). I will also be reporting on studies of actual WOM conversations and how people move into, around, and out of, WOM "episodes" (sequences of evaluative talk about organizations, brands, products, and services). Second, if you are a company or a buzz marketing agency, focus on ways to engage with your consumer audience in ways meaningful to them on non-marketing topics. It is these interactions that will build the basis for brand, product, or service-related topics and decisions.

In the end, what makes word-of-mouth marketing powerful is not really about the marketing of a specific brand, product, or service. Instead, the "magic" grows out of people engaging one another, and often about topics on other matters.

NOTE: There is a lot of interesting research that takes a social network perspective to explain WOM behavior. See Reference (6) below for an early academic study on the topic, and also Emmanuel Rosen's book, The Anatomy of Buzz for a provocative and accessible discussion. Although social network research offers tremendously useful insights into the WOM process, it has a tendency to focus on just the structural position of people in a network (such as a "hub" or "bridge") rather than the underlying everyday communication and relationship dynamics that I discuss in this post.

References for this Posting

(1) Higie, R. A., Feick, L. F., & Price, L. L. (1987). Types and amount of word-of-mouth communications about retailers. Journal of Retailing, 63(3), 260-278. back

(2) Keller, E., & Berry, J. (2003). The influentials. New York: The Free Press. back

(3) Walker, R. (2004, December 5, 2004). The hidden (in plain sight) persuaders. The New York Times Magazine, p. 69. back

(4) "Chopping the carrots" is a phrase used by Dr. Julia Wood, a communication and relationships scholar, to refer to reviewing the day's events when doing mundane activities, such as chopping carrots for the evening meal. The phrase is also a chapter in a recently published volume (Composing Relationships: Communication In Everyday Life), edited by Dr. Julia Wood and Dr. Steve Duck, on the importance of everyday communication in our lives. back

(5) Leatham, G. B. & Duck, S. W. (1990). Conversations with friends and the dynamics of social support. In S. W. Duck and W. R. C. Silver (Eds.), Personal Relationships and Social Support (pp. 1-29). London: Sage. back

(6) Brown, J. J., & Reingen, P. H. (1987). Social ties and word-of-mouth referral behavior. Journal of Consumer Research, 14, 350-362. back

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Providing More Context For WOM Statistics; Reply to George Nimeh's Comment

This post represents a reply to George's comment to my "inaugural post".

Thanks for your interest in my study and blog. You raise a number of interesting points and questions. To start a response I want to provide some more context for a few of the statistics that I believe you heard either at Dave Balter's presentation at the WOMMA Summit or read on BzzAgent's blog.

For Statistic 1 -- about 27% of all communication including discussion about a product or service -- this is a statistic that applies to buzz marketing agents, which may or may not be representative of the general public. For example, in a small "convenience" sample of university students aged 18-29, whose findings I used for comparative purposes, I learned that their WOM episode to interaction ratio (that is, of the total number of informal, interpersonal interactions a person has, what percentage of those include a WOM episode), the number was about 14%. Of course, this isn't a completely representative study either, but it does provide a useful context.

Second, the 80/20 statistic you reference is more accurately 90/10, at least for the buzz marketing agents in the study. 77% of the WOM episodes reported were face-to-face, 17% were on the telephone, and then the rest were online, which included instant messaging (3.5%), then e-mail (about 2%), and finally chat room (less than 1%). For the non-buzz agent college student sample, the statistics were very similar for F2F and telephone, but included more instant messaging (about 10%) and less e-mail (just over 1%). Again, there's no claim being made here that these results can be generalized to the larger population; these are just results from two related studies. I should add, though, that Ed Keller from NOP World reported a similar finding during his presentation at the WOMMA Summit about the percentage of WOM recommendations made F2F, and that finding was 80% (from a representative, national sample).

Now, you ask a very interesting question about the role of the internet and offline conversations. Another part of our study looked at references to other forms of media (such as TV ads, print sources, internet, direct mail, etc.). I won't get into all the details for each different medium, but overall, 40% of the WOM interactions made reference to at least one other media form (for example, referencing a TV show or advertisement they saw). Of these references made, less than 10% were internet-related (for example, web banner ads, websites, online articles, e-mail, etc.).In this study we did not look at online conversations (such as blogs, discussion boards, etc.) and how these affect what happens in the offline world. There are researchers studying online conversations and I can refer you to a couple different studies by other researchers if you're interested. I am sure that people who have discussions online also discuss these with people in their social networks offline as well (or in other online conversations for that matter), but I don't know why the online conversations necessarily initiate offline conversations (I think the directionality of influence here could go both ways).

Another point/question you made was about the length of interaction and why this was important. You suggested that e-mail, chat, etc. are more efficient (i.e., faster) than F2F, so why would this be interesting to a marketer. My first thought would to be reflect on the assumption that efficiency is what marketers are, or should be, interested in (perhaps you're not making this assumption about marketers, but it seems reasonable that marketers might be concerned about efficiency; their reasoning perhaps being that the faster people can spread WOM the better). But research suggests that what makes WOM so powerful and effective are issues like trust, credibility, sincerity, honesty, and mutual engagement. Thus "effectiveness" rather than "efficiency" is where marketers should be focusing their attention. If they focus too much on efficiency, then WOM/buzz just becomes another way to bombard and overwhelm people. Part of the move to buzz and WOM campaigns is to get away from the overload of "traditional" forms of advertising and marketing, but if efficiency is the sole or even primary criterion, marketers' attempts will be sure to backfire.

By the way, the length of conversations that you mention were for the total length of a conversation, and not necessarily the WOM episode. That is, WOM episodes (which I define as any conversation, or portion of a conversation, where there is evaluative talk about an organization, brand, product, or service) are usually embedded within larger stretches of conversation. In our study we had buzz marketing agents and everyday people reporting interactions that lasted just a couple minutes to many hours (interestingly, the longest average interactions took place within best friend relationships).

Why would a marketer be interested in this finding? Well I'm not a professional marketer, but I think what a marketer should take away from the findings about length of interactions is that WOM occurs in everyday, routine conversations and relationships. To the conversational partners, word-of-mouth has nothing to do with marketing; it has everything to do with talking and relating with other people, solving problems, sharing gossip, etc. So, my view is that marketers should be paying attention to any research findings that allow them to better understand how WOM occurs in natural, everyday threads of human communication and relationships.

Thanks again for making the "inaugural" comment and I hope we can continue our discussion! :-)

Walter

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Inaugural Post

Welcome to my Word-of-Mouth Communication Study blog!

I decided to start a blog with the hope that it would stimulate discourse about my research and passion: understanding everyday conversations, relationships, and organizing practices. The fact that the subject of this blog is about my research project on word-of-mouth (WOM) is not insignificant. I view WOM as fundamentally an everyday, mundane relational activity. Whether the WOM takes place in traditional face-to-face settings or online, it is essentially about engagement with others. Another way of stating this is that WOM is communication based on mutual coordination, trust, and understanding. Thus, I see this blog as a way to engage with others about a basic human process.

I am equally interested in WOM that is consciously managed or "amplified" by organizations to promote their products, services, brands, and rhetorical visions of themselves. The emerging practice of buzz marketing and organizationally-facilitated WOM fascinates me. In fact, my decision to start this blog was influenced by BzzAgent's blog, where they open up the “inner” workings of their organization and invite others in, and attending the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association's Summit where the topics of buzz, WOM, and blogging were frequently discussed.

Although blogs are exercises in transparency and openness (selection) we must also recognize that they are equally practices of deflection (as the rhetorician Kenneth Burke reminds us). Of course, the deflections, absences, omissions, or silences need not necessarily be borne of ill intent, but certainly they represent alternative rhetorical versions and visions of how things are or could be. This tension between openness and closedness is one I hope to reflect on in this blog, especially as it relates to the construction of personal and institutional identities.

This blog also represents exploration of new ways to engage in academic research (for me, at least), which I define as rigorous, systematic, communal inquiry whose results are made accessible to a broader public. I'm sure there are plenty of others doing similarly (and long before me) and I'm interested in learning more about their initiatives as well.

To anyone who actually reads this (maybe there's one or two of you out there), I invite comments, criticisms (they don't even need to be constructive), shared musings, and above all a sense of curiosity into a better understanding of everyday talk, human relationships, and organizing practices.

Walter