Outcomes of Articulating Word of Mouth: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature

This paper develops an organising framework to record and synthesize the empirical literature on the outcomes of articulating positive and negative WOM in the services context at both the individual and the firm level.... [ view full abstract ]

This paper develops an organising framework to record and synthesize the empirical literature on the outcomes of articulating positive and negative WOM in the services context at both the individual and the firm level. Additionally, this paper records both convergent and contrarian findings in the literature. Importantly, this review highlights key variables that can influence the effect of WOM on the WOM participants. Findings suggest that the extant WOM research has focused strongly on the impact of WOM on the recipient, whilst the effect of WOM on the communicator remains widely unexplored. Furthermore, the influence of negative WOM at the individual level is relatively under-researched with greater research attention being paid to understand how negative WOM impacts the firm. The contributions of this study are twofold. Primarily, this is a first systematic effort to assess the impact of offline WOM. Second, this review suggests avenues for future research by identifying the research gaps in the extant literature.