A Review of the Paper
"Word-of-mouth Communication: Breath of life or kiss of death"
Reviewed by
Michael E. Cafferky PhD
Copyright 1997




Croft, Dean and Kitchen in 1996 (http://www.strath.ac.uk/Departments/Marketing/Research/Word.html), survey the literature regarding the current status of word-of- mouth communication. They then call for a complete re-appraisal of word-of-mouth and its proper role in marketing communication. I applaud Croft, Dean and Kitchen for their contribution to current awareness of the importance of word-of-mouth in marketing theory and practice. And while I have several suggestions for how their paper may be improved, my response should not be construed by readers to be a slap at Croft, Dean and Kitchen since so much of what they present is helpful and accurate.


CURRENT STATE OF MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS


Croft, Dean and Kitchen are correct in their evaluation of the decline in dependence upon mass media advertising to signal value to consumers. However, such a decline should be characterized as no more than slight to moderate in scale. Further, this evaluation should be placed in the context of western nations who have had many years experience of dependence upon electronic media and who have market economies where entrepreneurism has been encouraged. Advertising remains a strong force in free market economies continuing to demonstrate success. And it is growing in importance in developing free market economies.

I applaud Croft, Dean and Kitchen for re-emphasizing the shift in consumer attitudes toward advertising in particular and marketing in general. I share Kitchen's concern for the ecological impact of advertising and I expect that responses such as his will grow in intensity over the next few years. Consumers are getting frustrated and angry over the sheer volume of advertising messages they are subject to every day. Consumers want more control over the amount of information they receive. They also desire more quality control over the kind of information pushed to them from product and service producers.


REAPPRAISAL OF THE POTENTIAL OF WORD-OF-MOUTH


Croft, Dean and Kitchen cite a few references that seem to support the trend of consumers moving to more social isolationism. More attention needs to be given to this in a review of the literature before the claims of Waldrup and Popcorn can be taken at face value. One can hypothesize that word-of- mouth has always been an important part of free market consumer behavior preceding the rise of advertising, during the hay-day of mass media, and now. Unfortunately, little to no research that I am aware of exists to demonstrate trend in the consumer use of word-of-mouth as it relates to such a consumer movement toward smaller and smaller social units.

Croft, Dean and Kitchen turn to the ever-growing pressure of shrinking profit margins as one of the elements moving companies toward employing word-of-mouth strategies. While lower margins do play a role, it is only indirectly in that the incentive is to find more and more effective methods to build business rather than merely to cut advertising costs.

Henley Centre's cited commentary about the supposed difficulty in persuading celebrity stars to endorse a product is weaker than it could be. Because of liberal economic incentives to endorse products, I contend that more than enough celebrities exist to absorb endorsement's financial benefits. In spite of this critique, Henley is correct in assessing the difficulty of persuading real people to endorse products. But perhaps the central problem is in seeing the word-of-mouth process as a problem of persuasion. Based on the last fifteen year's experience, it seems to me that the challenge is more in the arena of inspiring customers to brag about products rather than trying to persuade them to brag. As Croft, Dean and Kitchen point out in their review, consumers are wary of being the objects of persuasion. To this I add my own comments that consumers are just plain tired of the hype. They want to make up their own minds on the issue. They will say what they want in spite of or even contrary to persuasive tactics.


LIMITATIONS OF WORD-OF-MOUTH


Croft, Dean and Kitchen make an attempt at comparing Dichter's and Wilson's projections of the amount of negative word of mouth flying through the market place. In my view, neither Dichter's research nor Wilson's report of other's research is intended to evaluate a trend. These statistics offer more shock value to marketers than any predictive value. Hence, Croft, Dean and Kitchen appear to make more use of these statistics than is warranted. While this point cannot be proven, I argue that through out the history of marketing many examples of intense negative word of mouth can be found. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that because of the cumulative effects of consumer learning in the market place, consumers are more discriminating in their choices. But this fact does not in itself suggest a higher degree of prevalence of word of mouth.

Croft, Dean and Kitchen fail in their paper to recognize the full role that negative word-of-mouth plays in the market place. In stead of seeing it as a bad thing, even though companies desire to avoid it, negative word-of-mouth is a good thing for consumers. Negative word-of-mouth assists consumers in preventing or at least lowering the risk of having a negative purchase/use experience with a product or service. Negative word-of-mouth also serves a social purpose of trying to understand reality around us. We want to make sense out of things that happen to ourselves. Further, sharing stories about negative purchase experiences provides an opportunity for social support and community bonding.

I'm uncertain what Croft, Dean and Kitchen mean when they say that word-of-mouth's "full potential is generally strongest when limited to a few, comparatively simple messages". In deed, one of the uses of word of mouth is in communicating complex information about intangible products that can be communicated in no other way than an extended conversation among consumers. Wilson's exhortation to "keep it simple" sounds like the thing to say. However, consumers may be observed talking with one another about the most complicated issues surrounding a product and its use. And, Wilson's point is that marketers should keep things simple not that they should attempt to keep consumer's to a simplistic method of communication. I concede, however, that consumers do try to reduce the complex information they transmit/receive into easily described formulae when talking with others. This does not mean that the messages themselves are simple.

While Croft, Dean and Kitchen are correct in their comments about applicability, they fail to note the wide range of products and services where consumers are dependent upon word-of-mouth for:
  1. disseminating and gathering market place information;
  2. communicating throughout the marketing channel among channel players;

    and

  3. the use of word of mouth across a wide spectrum of products (industrial and consumer) and services (personal and professional).
Indeed, Croft, Dean and Kitchen later in their paper acknowledge that "word-of-mouth already impacts, and has the potential to impact, in a major way on numerous facets of marketing communications".

In addition, Croft, Dean and Kitchen's paper can be strengthened by noting word-of-mouth's other significant roles including but not limited to the following:
  1. Word-of-mouth assists a consumer in translating the hype of paid advertising. When consumers talk about a product, they confirm or deny advertising claims.
  2. Consumers assist one another by giving practical instructions about the purchase process or the product's use.
  3. These instructions help ground the consumer in reality based on experience so that their expectations are tempered.
  4. Word-of-mouth also helps the opinion leader in dealing with post-purchase anxiety - i.e., "did I do the right thing by purchasing this product?"
  5. Consumers transfer the meaning of the product to another through word-of-mouth. Perhaps this is the most significant of all its value to marketers.
  6. Consumers express their altruism through assisting one another with market place information.
  7. At its roots word-of-mouth is part of a complicated system of giving and receiving reciprocity.

Perhaps the greatest limitation of word-of-mouth is not inherent to this communication method but rather because of the apathy with which it continues to be received among advertising agencies. In my view, the main reason the advertising industry has not embraced word-of-mouth is because there are no commissions available. Yet, in this lies its greatest element of strength, i.e., word-of-mouth is so compelling because the one giving the information is perceived as having nothing to gain by bragging about the product.


UNCONTROLLABILITY


Croft, Dean and Kitchen are correct in stating that a key weakness of word-of-mouth is that it is controlled by the consumer rather than by the marketer. This point of view is not surprising. However, looking at this fact from the consumer's point of view we see that this is precisely why word-of-mouth is valued. Control, for the consumer, is one of the method's greatest strengths and one of the consumer's greatest desires.

Croft, Dean and Kitchen are correct in pointing out the importance of distortion. Message distortion is a corollary to uncontrollability. However, this also has it's positive and negative side (from the marketer's view point). Consumers routinely exaggerate a product's faults. They also exaggerate a product's benefits - something we never hear a complaint about in the marketing literature. But as marketers in a bilateral relationship with consumers, we can't have it one way and not the other.


STRATEGIC AND TACTICAL WORD-OF-MOUTH


Croft, Dean and Kitchen's use of Bolen is correct by suggesting that word-of-mouth is not advertising in its strictest use of the word. However, those who use the phrase "word-of-mouth advertising" are usually doing so uncritically. And I fail to see the import of this issue.


PRODUCT/SERVICE ENDORSEMENTS


While reports exist in the literature regarding some of the problems with celebrity endorsements, it is too early to claim that "the value of this type of promotion is in doubt". The use of celebrity endorsements appears to be vigorous. I concur with Croft, Dean and Kitchen that more research is needed in this area.


CONCLUSIONS


Croft, Dean and Kitchen provide valuable conclusions to their review of the literature. For example, they open an important door in their second conclusion by stating that "if we discover what people are saying we get close to finding the real benefits people think they are buying". What I hoped Croft, Dean and Kitchen would do with this is march through the door by offering some of the practical applications, i.e., establishing a system to discover the actual words and phrases that consumers use during word-of-mouth and then applying these formulae in paid advertising and in rewards to consumers who are identified as spreading a company's reputation.

Croft, Dean and Kitchen caution against over-stressing word-of- mouth's role. Perhaps this caution comes from the literature on multi-level marketing claims. However, it seems to me that the opposite caution should be leveled at marketers, i.e., avoid the traditional problem of under-valuing word-of-mouth's role. And, in truth, their paper does this implicitly.

Croft, Dean and Kitchen did not address other important issues related to word-of-mouth such as the following, each of which carries a corresponding need for further research:
  1. The application of chaos theory to word-of-mouth dynamics.
  2. The role of ethics in informing the marketer who wants to use word-of-mouth dynamics.
  3. The role of opinion leaders in disseminating market place information, e.g., market mavens, influentials, product experts, etc.
  4. The intersection of market segmentation and word-of-mouth peer groups.
  5. The identifying characteristics of opinion leaders.
  6. The role of word-of-mouth within marketing channels.
  7. Reputation management.
  8. The intersection of advertising and word-of-mouth, i.e., how advertisers influence word-of-mouth through advertising and visa versa.
  9. Cross cultural influences in word-of-mouth.
  10. Practical budgeting for word-of-mouth strategies.
  11. The role of visioning and mission statements when they incorporate word-of-mouth principles.

Finally, word-of-mouth is the only promotion method that is both the means and the end. All other marketing communication methods are viewed as means to an end. And, this is as it should be. On the one hand, word-of-mouth is an important method of communicating. On the other hand, it is the goal of most companies to have significant strength of reputation spread by word-of-mouth. In this way, word-of-mouth becomes a measure of entrepreneurial success.




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