FEATURE22 December 2016

A question of trust

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Bronwen Morgan

Features Impact Travel Trends

Word of mouth recommendations can be very persuasive, but brands looking to use this type of advocacy should be vigilant about who’s doing it, and how similar they are to their target market. By Bronwen Morgan.

Multi-girl

In an age where social media and online review sites have made potential critics of everybody, the power of positive word of mouth is well known. In fact, research from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) has suggested that one offline word of mouth impression can drive sales five times more than one paid media impression (up to 100 times more for higher consideration categories), and that it drives as much as 13% of consumer sales.

Linked to this, a recent study from a group of academics in the US and Canada, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, has looked into the effect of ‘self enhancement’, or boasting, on both persuasion and social perceptions. 

This, said the academics Grant Packard, Andrew Gershoff and David Wooten, is of significant importance as boasting is often a key motive for people sharing word-of-mouth recommendations. In fact, previous research suggests that as many as one in four reviews contain boasting ...