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Word‐of‐mouth communication (WOM) is a dominant force in the marketplace for services. However, the current body of research provides little insight into the nature of WOM in the service marketplace. Reports the results of a content‐analytic study that provides insight into WOM’s content and the catalysts by which it is stimulated. The goal was to capture a series of “grounded events” from which broader patterns could be discerned. These grounded events were actual incidents of WOM as described by the recipients of a communication. Three content categories and ten catalyst categories are identified. Implications for managers are addressed.

This study explored the antecedents and mediators of word-of-mouth (WOM) behavior in the life insurance industry and investigated how to increase policyholders' positive WOM communication.

A sample of life insurance policyholders in Taiwan is surveyed. These respondents were chosen using purposive sampling. The author sent out 650 questionnaires to customers of the top six life insurance firms in Taiwan in proportion to each firm's market share as follows: Cathay (200), Fubon (150), Nan Shan (120), Shin Kong (80), China (60), and Taiwan (40). A total of 338 usable questionnaires were returned. Structural equation modeling was performed to estimate the influence of the identified antecedents of WOM communication.

The results support the proposed model and hypotheses, indicating that customers' positive evaluations of functional quality and technical quality help drive positive WOM communication. Corporate image and trust also play partial mediating roles.

Decision-makers should note that functional quality, technical quality, corporate image, and trust are antecedents of WOM communication. Functional quality and technical quality are the main factors influencing policyholders' perceptions. Therefore, life insurance firms must understand policyholders' quality expectations. Managers should also pay increased attention to promoting favorable WOM communication through strengthening corporate image and trust.

This was the first study to examine WOM communication in Taiwan's life insurance industry. Few studies have investigated the mediating effects of corporate image and trust in the relationships of functional and technical quality with WOM. The findings reveal the importance of WOM to the marketing of life insurance, providing new information for life insurance practice and theory.

Political marketing is unable to reach out or influence voters as it once did. This study aims to identify means for political marketers to effectively reach to voters. Specifically, this study examines the role of different WOM/e-WOM political messages (shallow vs deep) delivered through various communication channels on voters’ message evaluation, believability, attitude towards the message and communication, message involvement, voting intentions and WOM/e-WOM intentions.

Two experimental design studies were conducted to test the research hypotheses. Data were collected from age-based voting cohorts through snowball sampling and online consumer panels.

The results suggest that political WOM/e-WOM messages received via different communication modes are perceived differently by age-based voting cohorts in terms of message evaluation, believability and attitudinal dispositions. The perceived credibility of the communication source makes a difference in such evaluations and dispositions. Also, the complexity of message impacts behavioral intentions of age-based voting cohorts differently. Older (younger) voter cohorts are more receptive to complex and detailed (short and brief) messages. Political message involvement mediates the relationship between message believability and voting intentions, as well as WOM/e-WOM intentions.

The results are limited in terms of generalizability due to the experimental nature of the studies. Future research may seek to use actual candidates and examine the effects of moderators such as the cognition-based needs of respondents to engage in central or peripheral processing.

Political marketers can achieve greater credibility and effectiveness and partially restore political marketing’s reputation by honoring three guidelines: construct shallower (or deeper) political marketing messages when targeting younger (or older) voting cohorts through internet-connected (or traditional) delivery modes.

This paper explores an important but under-researched area in political marketing (i.e. the use of WOM/e-WOM messages in political marketing) and identifies important differences in attitudinal and behavioral dispositions of age-based voting cohorts impacted by the choice of communication mode and message complexity. Moreover, the perceived credibility of the communication source (sender) can sway communication mode preferences for age-based voting cohorts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of gender on the neural substrates of theories on consumer behavior (i.e. the original compared with the revised versions of consumer learning [CL] theory) and to examine whether gender influences brain activation associated with word-of-mouth (WOM) communications (i.e. information specificity, source expertise and tie strength) after a product harm crisis. This article also discusses the WOM effects of product quality perception, negative emotion and purchase intentions by precise localizing brain activity.

This study applied functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity (i.e. the blood oxygen level-dependent signal) during WOM communication after a product harm crisis.

The male participants treat the product quality as a constant and tend to support the original CL theory. The female participants, however, showed differentiable brain activation across three factors, suggesting a dynamic representation for product quality (i.e. not a constant), and they appear to be more sensitive to the revised CL theory.

This paper concluded that the original CL theory applies to males and the revised version applies to females. Therefore, gender determines whether the original or the revised version of the CL theory works in consumers’ decision-making, and the extant of research has not focused on the information after a product harm crisis in terms of whether the information being communicated is specific or tensile through WOM communication.

This paper seeks to explore factors that can help generate a bigger ripple for diffusive Word‐of‐Mouth (WOM) in an online environment. Specifically, the paper aims to demonstrate how the characteristics of WOM information influence the ripple effect.

The paper used a survey based on real posts in online discussion forums to collect the data. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was utilized for analysis.

WOM as diffusive communication could generate a ripple effect. All of the WOM characteristics, which were investigated (quality, authority, authenticity and interestingness), have a positive effect on resenders' acceptance toward WOM, which, in turn, have a significant positive impact on resenders' resending intention. Furthermore, the positive impacts of WOM characteristics on resenders' acceptance exist, regardless of whether the valence of WOM information is positive or negative.

This study provides insights into the role of WOM information in facilitating the WOM ripple effect. However, the specific characteristics of WOM information that influence consumers' perceptions of WOM are not explored in the present research.

The results of the study may help practitioners manipulate and use online WOM information in order to make marketing communications more efficient and influential.

Financial service providers have long placed considerable faith in positive word of mouth communication as a means of attracting new customers and a variety of studies of customer choice of bank highlight the significance of personal recommendation. Given that financial services tend to be characterised by a predominance of experience and credence qualities, word of mouth communication is particularly valuable, providing the potential consumer with vicarious experience of the service under consideration. The impact of word of mouth is probably at its strongest when it originates from social contacts because of their greater perceived reliability. By its very nature, this form of communication is outside the formal control of an organisation and yet its impact is such that the ability to influence or encourage word of mouth could be a powerful marketing tool. This paper provides an exploratory analysis of the importance of word of mouth and the factors which influence its role within an organisation’s marketing strategy, with particular reference to customer referral campaigns. Empirical evidence is collected from the (rapidly changing and liberalising) financial services sector in India.

Recent research on word-of-mouth (WOM) has presented consistent evidence on the importance of secondary WOM (sWOM) on online user-generated content (UGC) and on diffusion of positive and negative commercial information. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what motivates consumers to spread, via electronic WOM communication, negative information about commercial entities adversity using malicious verbal narratives. Based on concepts related to the joy of pain (schadenfreude) and gloating behavior the authors propose a set of hypotheses designed to test two key moderators (perceived deservingness and entity’s status) as well as the process of spiteful dissemination like content assimilation, dissemination time and duration.

The research consists on a series of four studies using different research methods (surveys and experiments) and a mix of quantitative and qualitative analyses.

Results show that actively communicating about others’ adversity (i.e. gloating behavior) provides an outlet to the passive observation of others’ adversity (i.e. schadenfreude feelings). Results indicate that schadenfreude and gloating are linked to the perceived deservingness of a commercial entity and entity status (the tall poppy syndrome). Results also show that malicious feelings and gloating behavior cause consumers to disseminate information more widely, more rapidly, for a longer period and frequently distort its content.

The findings contribute to literature on WOM by introducing an approach that highlights the potential negative effects of WOM on the dissemination of commercial information that might harm the relevant commercial entity’s reputation and goodwill.

This study illuminates the prevalence of negative rhetoric in WOM and supports the theory schadenfreude motives as a trigger for gloating behavior in the form of disseminating negative, malicious and intense WOM regarding commercial setbacks. This research is the first to examine and demonstrates that when it comes to WOM communication, schadenfreude feelings and gloating behavior might play a central role in the dissemination of negative information and the two constructs’ role in understanding infostorms, the sudden flow of large quantities of negative WOM using strong gleeful exultation. This study is the first to examine these phenomena in the business setting.

This study aims to examine how word of mouth (WOM) from the patients influences the building of trust in the physician.

Based on the review and synthesis of the previous relevant literature, 03 constructs of WOM and their 19 items were derived. The items were confirmed as well as their reliability and validity were measured through confirmatory factor analysis. The structural relationship between WOM factors and trust in physicians was analyzed with data from 330 personal interviews in Bangladesh. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was performed with the application of AMOS.

This study demonstrates that the trustworthiness of the source, information about medical care facilities and expertise and information about service experience have a significant direct effect on the level of trust in the physicians. This study delivers an understanding of how individualized social and informal communication, WOM, plays a role in the aspects of health-care-related decisions in developing countries.

Findings of this study shed light on the importance of health-care-related communication strategy development and management, which is yet to be emphasized in research and practice in the developing countries contexts. Based on the findings of this study health-care service providers and key touchpoints in health-care delivery and management can develop client's experience-focused service marketing strategies and practices.

The level of trust in physicians regulates the choice of physician decision and the magnitude of service satisfaction and patients' good feeling issues. In health-care service marketing, research is an under-explored area, while the gap is more when developing countries' contexts are concerned. As a customized model and primary data-based study, this paper contributes to addressing the gap mentioned in the previous statement. The sample size could not be extended as no institutional funding was available for this study.

The purpose of this study is to investigate motives for engaging in electronic word of mouth (eWOM) about organizations on social media sites. This study explores motives for posting positive eWOM and motives for posting negative eWOM. It also investigates whether existing WOM frameworks adequately capture consumers’ motives for spreading eWOM within the context of social media. This study seeks to confirm established motives in literature while also identifying new motives specific to social media.

A qualitative study was conducted using the critical incident technique. In all, 64 positive incidents and 60 negative incidents were analyzed.

This study provides a typology for understanding consumers’ motivations for engaging in positive and negative WOM within the context of social media. Four new motives for sharing eWOM are identified; eight established WOM motives are re-confirmed; and new subcategories for eWOM motives are proposed. The study also finds that further refinement of WOM motives and scales within a social media context is needed.

An integrated conceptual framework of both positive and negative motives is developed to illustrate a more comprehensive model of motives of eWOM within social media. Managerial implications for managing negative eWOM and amplifying positive eWOM are discussed. A limitation is that the study is exploratory in nature.

This study identifies new motives for sharing eWOM, re-labels existing WOM and eWOM motives with more descriptive and comprehensive titles and confirms established WOM and eWOM motives within the context of social media. This study is conducted across multiple firms and industries, leading to more generalizable results.

Based on the key dimensions of the Metaverse environment (immersiveness, fidelity and sociability), this paper aims to develop the concept of sensory word-of-mouth (WOM) in Metaverse – the metaWOM. It attempts to upgrade the Reviewchain model and suggests the utilization of non-transferable tokens (NTTs) in curbing the explosion of fake WOM.

Following Macinnis’ (2011) approach to conceptual contributions, the authors browsed the currently available literature on WOM, Metaverse and NTT to portray the emergence of metaWOM.

By relying on Metaverse’s three building blocks, the authors map out the persuasiveness of metaWOM in the Metaverse-like environment. By incorporating NTT in the Reviewchain model, the authors upgraded it to provide a transparent, safe and trusted review ecosystem. An array of emerging research directions and research questions is presented.

This paper comprehensively analyzes the implications of a Metaverse-like environment on WOM and debates on technologies that can enhance the metaWOM persuasiveness. The proposed model in this paper can assist various stakeholders in understanding the complex nature of virtual information-seeking and giving.

This is the original attempt to delineate the sensory aspect of WOM in the Metaverse based on three crucial aspects of the Metaverse environment: immersiveness, fidelity and sociability. This paper extends the discussion on the issue of fake reviews and offers viable suggestions to curb the ever-growing number of fraudulent WOM.