WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING FROM MANAGERIAL PERSPECTIVE.

Abstract

Undermining the effectiveness of traditional marketing communication tools leads companies to seek alternative ways to reach customers. Consumers appear increasingly to lack confidence in advertising content, therefore the reliability of the advertising message decreases. So far, literature on the subject of word of mouth (WOM) has been largely devoted to the process of WOM communication from the consumer’s point of view. But since companies are able to stimulate, as well as employ word of mouth as one of the instruments of marketing communication, they may be perceived as both senders and receivers in this process. Therefore, the question is – can companies manage the process of word of mouth marketing within the framework of marketing communication structures, and if so – how can they do that? The aim of this article will be to identify various ways of taking advantage of word of mouth by companies on the basis of source literature and own studies. Own research will be conducted using the CATI method on a nationwide sample of 500 representatives of the polish companies. For the classifications of enterprises due to their activity in the WOM management k-means cluster analysis (quick cluster) will be used, assuming 4 clusters. The project was funded by the National Science Centre on the basis of the decision DEC- 2012/07/D/HS4/01761.