THE POWER OF WORD OF MOUTH
How local companies can attract customers
through word of mouth
SURICH MATHILDA AND MONIQUE EMELINA-PIETER
Word of mouth marketing is giving people reason to talk about a company’s
products (Sernovitz, 2015). Word of mouth has been proven to be more powerful than other marketing tools, such as advertising, as people are more
likely to try or buy products that are endorsed by their friends and family
members. The reason is that people trust their friends’ experiences with the
product (Hajli, Lin, Featherman, & Wang, 2013).
WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING IS GIVING PEOPLE REASON TO TALK
ABOUT A COMPANY’S PRODUCTS
There are two causes for the origin of word of mouth. These are organic and
amplified word of mouth marketing (Sernovitz, 2015). The former entails
that word of mouth results from any positive thing from a company, while
the latter entails a designed campaign to encourage people to talk about a
business and its products.
Word of mouth flows through three different channels. There is offline (Sernovitz, 2015) electronic or
online (Thorbj0rnsen, Ketelaar, Dahlen , & Van T Riet,
2015) and social word of mouth (Hajli, Lin, Featherman, & Wang, 2013). Offline word of mouth is when
customers exchange information about a product or
business through personal conversations or phone
calls. One example of electronic via word of mouth
is the sharing of information on a product or business that occurs online, such as via e-mails. Word
of mouth that occurs on social media is referred to
as social word of mouth (Trusov, Bucklin, & Pauwel,
2009).
However, advertisements can still cause word of
mouth. Future-oriented advertisement can cause
word of mouth as it increases the curiosity of customers due to its uncertainty (Keller & Fay, 2009). Amusing
and shocking advertisements also have a strong
impact for starting conversations (Berger & Milkman, 2011). Moreover, it has been proven that online
marketing is more traceable and will reach people faster than
traditional marketing, while marketing on social media reaches
a large group of people more rapidly (Thorbj0rnsen, Ketelaar,
Dahlen , & Van T Riet, 2015). According to the Word of Mouth
Marketing Association (Word of Mouth Marketing Association,
2007) there are different marketing tools that can be implemented to stimulate word of mouth. These include but are not limited
to referral programs, buzz marketing, viral marketing, product
seeding, and influencer marketing (Armstrong & Kotler, 2011).
According to Servnonitz (2015), in order for a company to successfully stimulate word of mouth, it must be interesting, make
people happy, earn the trust and respect of its customers, and
make it easy by providing tools that would make the sharing
of information easier (Sernovitz, 2015). Previous research has
shown that women are indeed very lucrative customers for
businesses. Research has shown that women have a high buying
power (Silverstein & Sayre, 2009) since they account for a growth
market larger than that of China and India combined. The
female market is also attractive for car maintenance and repair
shops as 60% of car owners are women (Ibisworld, 2015)
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