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ord-of-mouth (WOM) marketing has recently regarding the relative effectiveness of WOM marketing in
Indirect Effects
Effect of WOM on Comparison with of WOM and/or
WOM Inference Customer Acquisition Traditional Marketing Traditional Marketing
Initial (Katz and Self-report from Inferred from self- WOM two times more Not analyzed
Lazarsfeld 1955) and surveys reports on relative effective than radio
most studies influence advertisements, four
times more than
personal selling,
seven times more
than print
advertisements
Customer lifetime value Inferred from new Not analyzed Customers acquired Customers acquired
(Villanueva, Yoo, and customers self-report through WOM add through WOM spread
Hanssens 2008) two times the lifetime more WOM and bring
value of customers in twice as many new
acquired through customers
traditional marketing
Social contagion Inferred from adoption Difficult to attribute Contagion effects Not analyzed
(Coleman, Katz, and observed contagion disappear when
Menzel 1966; Van to WOM versus traditional marketing
den Bulte and Lilien traditional marketing effects are included in
2001) the model
Valence of online WOM Inferred from Web Higher number of None Not analyzed
(Chevalier and site posts and reviews leads to
Mayzlin 2006; Liu reviews higher relative sales
2006)
Impact of social ties on Directly: though Social tie effects None Not analyzed
WOM effect (De e-mails sent depend on stage of
Bruyn and Lilien decision making
2008)
This article Directly: through Quantify direct and Compare immediate Demonstrate indirect
referrals sent indirect effects of and carryover effects effects and quantify
WOM and marketing of WOM and total monetary value of
traditional marketing WOM activity
thus increase the sites potential to recruit sign-ups in the sites each have more than one million registered users, and
future.1 Network externalities can also imply that sign-up several dozen smaller, though significant, sites also exist
gains today may translate into higher sign-up gains tomor- (e.g., Wikipedia 2008). Compete.com (2008), a Web traffic
row, even in the absence of marketing actions. analysis company, reported that the largest online social
networking site (as of November 2008) was MySpace, with
56 million unique visitors per month, closely followed by
Internet Social Networking Sites Facebook, with 49 million unique visitors.
In the past few years, social networking sites have become Typical social networking sites allow a user to build and
extremely popular on the Internet. According to comScore maintain a network of friends for social or professional
Media Metrix (2006), every second Internet user in the interaction. The core of a social networking site consists of
United States has visited at least one of the top 15 social personalized user profiles. Individual profiles are usually a
networking sites. Approximately 50 social networking Web combination of users images (or avatars); lists of interests
and music, book, and movie preferences; and links to affili-
ated profiles (friends). Different sites impose different
1We thank an anonymous reviewer for this insight. levels of privacy in terms of what information is revealed
FIGURE 2
Modeling Framework
Traditional
Marketing
WOM New
Referrals Sign-Ups
TABLE 3 10.00
Results of the Granger Causality Tests (Minimum
8.00
p-Values Across 20 Lags)
6.00
Dependent
4.00
Variable Is
Granger- Sign- WOM 2.00
Caused by Ups Referrals Media Events
.00
Sign-ups .02a .00 .00
3/ 05
3/ 005
28 5
26 5
23 5
21 5
18 5
15 5
05
4/ 00
5/ 00
6/ 00
7/ 00
8/ 00
9/ 00
10 200
20
20
/2
/2
/2
/2
/2
/2
3/
3/
3/
31
/1
A second set of theoretical implications comes from the ticipation: group norms and social identity. Kozinets (2002)
dynamic performance of WOM marketing. Note that the has developed a new approach to collecting and interpreting
strong carryover effects of WOM are the key factor driving data obtained from consumers discussions in online
its high long-term elasticity in our data. Notably, when esti- forums. Trusov, Bodapati, and Bucklin (2008) propose a
mated from standard regression models (the AR and ARDL model that enables managers to determine which users are
models in the Appendix), the direct WOM elasticity is close likely to be influential and, therefore, important to the busi-
to the average advertising elasticity of .10 to .20 (e.g., ness for their role in attracting others to the site. Our
Hanssens, Parsons, and Schultz 2001). Accounting for research contributes to this emerging area of study by eluci-
carryover by the VAR system model produces a long-term dating the role of WOM in the recruiting of new members
elasticity that is several times higher. Our results provide and the growth of these social networks.
further impetus for models of advertising to go beyond
investigating the direct effects of advertising to incorporate Managerial Implications
a variety of potential indirect benefits, such as increasing Managers should be able to make use of our research in
retailer support (e.g., Reibstein and Farris 1995) and several ways. These include obtaining improved metrics for
investor awareness (e.g., Joshi and Hanssens 2006). both WOM and traditional marketing, testing changes in
Third, our findings highlight the importance of account- online WOM referral content, and evaluating the extent to
ing for the indirect effects among WOM, traditional market- which financial incentives can be used to stimulate WOM.
ing actions, and performance. Conceptually, we illustrate A practical benefit from applying the proposed model is
this in Figure 2. Empirically, the Granger-causality tests likely to come from better measures of the effects of both
indicated the presence of significant indirect and feedback WOM and traditional marketing. As we noted previously,
effects in our data. Taken together with the superior fit pro- the VAR model incorporates the potential endogeneity
vided by the VAR model compared with other approaches, likely to be present with WOM, incorporates indirect effects
the findings demonstrate the importance of handling the among marketing variables and WOM, and allows each
endogeneity that is likely to be present with WOM. Our variable (WOM and traditional marketing) to have differ-
framework and model also enable traditional marketing entand potentially long-lastingcarryover effects. The
actions to be credited for their WOM-generating abilities. To general result is a potentially different estimate of the return
the extent that modeling WOM alters estimated effect sizes on the firms investments in traditional marketing.
for traditional marketing activities, the productivity of those To examine this, we compared the elasticity estimates
activities could change, with potentially important impli- for events and media obtained from the VAR model (Table
cations for budgeting and resource allocation decisions.4 4) with those from the best-fitting standard regression (the
Though still a relatively new phenomenon, online social ARDL model). The results from the standard regression
networking sites have begun to attract the attention of mar- model show neither events nor media registering significant
keting scholars. For example, Ansari, Koenigsberg, and short-term or long-term effects. Specifically, to three deci-
Stahl (2008) have developed an approach for modeling mul- mal places, we estimate the elasticities for events and media
tiple relationships of different types among users of a social at .002 and .000, respectively. In the VAR model, however,
networking site. Dholakia, Bagozzi, and Pearo (2004) study these effects, though still relatively small, are larger and sig-
two key group-level determinants of virtual community par- nificant (see Table 4).
Managers can also use our approach to test changes to
4Van den Bulte and Lilien (2001) raise the question whether referral content. When an existing member wants to refer a
WOM effects are significant after marketing actions are accounted friend to join the site (the outbound referrals we study), the
for in a contagion model. To investigate this further, we estimated member completes a preformatted message, which is then
two additional VAR models. In the first, we dropped the traditional sent out by e-mail. At many social networking sites (includ-
marketing variables, media and events, leaving all else unchanged. ing the major ones, such as Facebook and MySpace), mem-
In the second, we dropped WOM. In both cases, we found no bers have relatively little control over the content and
material change in the estimated elasticity values for WOM or format of this invitation. Although there is room for a short
media and events. Although the Granger-causality tests indicated
that indirect effects were present, at least for our data, the ultimate text message, many of these are left blank. The upshot is
elasticities we obtained did not substantially differ. Part of this that the firm is largely responsible for the appearance and
may also be due to a greater robustness of VAR model estimates to content of the referral message. This provides the opportu-
omitted variables. nity to test and refine the message. The firm could also