r other uses, see Word of mouth (disambiguation).
Word of mouth, or viva voce,[1] is the passing of information from person to person by oral communication, which could be as simple as telling someone the time of day. Storytelling is a common form of word-of-mouth communication where one person tells others a story about a real event or something made up. Oral tradition is cultural material and traditions transmitted by word of mouth through successive generations. Storytelling and oral tradition are forms of word of mouth that play important roles in folklore and mythology. Another example of oral communication is oral history—the recording, preservation and interpretation of historical information, based on the personal experiences and opinions of the speaker. Oral history preservation is the field that deals with the care and upkeep of oral history materials collected by word of mouth, whatever format they may be in.
In marketing, word-of-mouth communication (WOM) involves the passing of information between a non-commercial communicator (i.e. someone who is not rewarded) and a receiver concerning a brand, a product, or a service.[2] When WOM is mediated through electronic means, the resulting electronic word of mouth (eWoM) refers to any statement consumers share via the Internet (e.g., web sites, social networks, instant messages, news feeds) about a product, service, brand, or company.[3] If the sender of word-of-mouth communication is rewarded than this process is referred to as word-of-mouth marketing, which relies on the added credibility of person-to-person communication, a personal recommendation.[4] Using WOM as an opposing force to commercially motivated word-of-mouth marketing has been coined Proconsumer WOM.[5] Researchers have formulated a series of recommendations for how nonprofits and public sector organizations can utilize Proconsumer WOM effectively.
WOM has been researched for many years and as a result much is known about what drives WOM (e.g. customer satisfaction, trust and brand commitment) and its far-reaching consequences (e.g. affective/emotional, cognitive, and behavioral) for both consumers and organizations.[6] WOM's effectiveness as an information source for consumers can be broken down into two factors: WOM's reach and WOM's impact. These two factors are in turn explained by 13 other drivers.[5] Despite much research many research questions remain unanswered in the area of WOM.[7]