research@hec - Issue #27 - (Page 4)

marketing research hec Word of mouth on the Internet Being aware of message distortion Kristine De Valck and her co-authors analyze an electronic marketing campaign designed to promote a specific cell phone model among bloggers. They show that, unlike conventional marketing campaigns, on blogs the message can be distorted depending on who is selected to talk about the product and the kinds of communities to which they belong. Kristine De Valck B IOGRAPHY Kristine De Valck joined HEC Paris in 2004. She earned a PhD in marketing management from the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (Netherlands) and participated in the International Teachers Program at IMD (Lausanne). Her work focuses on virtual communities of consumption, consumer tribes, the role of Web 2.0 in cocreation, marketing, and market research. “Marketers and sociologists have recognized the importance of word of mouth as a naturally occurring phenomenon for more than half a century, suggesting, for example, that word of mouth affects the majority of all purchase decisions,” says Kristine De Valck. “However, these theories and observations about informal, unsolicited word of mouth were constructed in a marketing world untouched by the Internet.” The Internet’s accessibility, reach, and transparency have enabled marketers to influence and monitor word of mouth as never before. Kristine De Valck lists the ways marketers can achieve their goals online: “listening in” to online conversations, moderating word of mouth, engaging in dialogue on social media forums, giving products to people of influence, and so on. Notably, such tactics change word of mouth from a natural, spontaneous phenomenon, whose power, notes Kristine De Valck, rests primarily in the fact that participants are not commercially motivated, to a more artificial, calculated, and commercialized force in which bloggers are co-opted by marketers to become product advocates. the United States that the Federal Trade Commission has begun to regulate it. Bloggers are now obligated to say if they have a link to a brand or a company. “This has no legal consequence in Europe, but it sets the tone in regards to ethics, since many large firms are members of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) which, although based in the United States, has members worldwide. The practice is becoming more established and is beginning to resemble what we are already familiar with in other areas, such as journalists receiving free products.” However, little research has been conducted on digital word of mouth, even after Robert Kozinets, Andrea Wojnicki, and Sarah Wilner’s article on the subject was published in 2010. “There have been quantitative studies on how digital word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) affects sales. But before ours, there had been no qualitative article attempting to understand about what exactly or how people are talking and the ways in which consumers react to e-marketing campaigns.” AN UNKNOWN BUT GROWING PHENOMENON This phenomenon has become so widespread in VIRAL MARKETING IS NOT A VIRUS By giving bloggers cellphones and then analyzing the blogs, De Valck and her co-authors show that digital word of mouth does not simply increase or amplify marketing messages but instead system- 4 • june-july 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of research@hec - Issue #27

Cover & Contents
Why shoppers choose products from the center of displays
Word of mouth on the Internet: Being aware of message distortion
Avoiding the dangers of online product recommenders

research@hec - Issue #27