Customers Or Sellers? the Role of Persuasion Knowledge in Customer Referral

EXTENDED ABSTRACT - Word of mouth and customer referral have become veritable buzzwords in the world of business, as illustrated by popular management books on these topics (e.g., Godin 2000, Rosen 2000, Silverman 2001). AWord of mouth promotion has become an increasingly potent force, capable of catapulting products from obscurity into runaway commercial success@ (Dye, 2000, p.139). Increasingly, marketers attempt to stimulate and accelerate word of mouth, a practice known as buzz marketing (Rosen, 2000). Academics have long recognized the importance of word of mouth (e.g., Katz and Lazersfeld, 1955, Dichter, 1966, Herr, Kardes & Kim, 1991, Duhan et al., 1997, Gilly et al, 1998), and several recent papers address the issue of referral management (Buttle 1998, Biyalogorsky, Gerstner and Libai 2001). There is, however, little research into the effectiveness of referral management strategies at the consumer level (see Verlegh, Peters and Pruyn, 2003 for an exception).

Citation:

Peeter W. J. Verlegh, Celine Verkerk, Mirjam A. Tuk, and Ale Smidts (2004) ,"Customers Or Sellers? the Role of Persuasion Knowledge in Customer Referral", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 31, eds. Barbara E. Kahn and Mary Frances Luce, Valdosta, GA : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 304-305.