The Unintended Consequences of Attitudinal Word-of-Mouth Drivers

Many companies focus considerable resources on managing and enhancing positive word of mouth (WOM). WOM management, however, has become increasingly complex given the rise of online channels and the corresponding increasing breadth of connections giving and receiving WOM. Given the generally believed importance of WOM to business outcomes, managers seek to leverage key drivers that they believe will enhance positive and minimize negative WOM.Implicit in these actions is the belief that leveraging key drivers to enhance positive (or minimize negative) WOM results in generally positive outcomes across channels and connections. This research investigates whether this belief is correct. We examined WOM behaviors from over 15,000 consumers from 10 different countries in eight industry categories, as well as consumer attitudes toward the various brands investigated. Our findings indicate that efforts to enhance positive WOM typically have mixed effects – enhancing positive WOM in some channels while decreasing it (or even enhancing negative WOM) in other channels. Therefore, managers need to have a greater understanding of the complexity of leveraging attitudinal key drivers when seeking to enhance WOM to minimize potential negative outcomes.