Social Hubs: a Valuable Segmentation Construct in the Word-Of-Mouth Consumer Network

EXTENDED ABSTRACT - As marketers reflecting on word-of-mouth (WOM), we consider highly involved experts including opinion leaders and market mavens (Childers 1986; Feick and Price 1987) as key segmentation constructs in identifying those consumers who are responsible for the dissemination of marketplace information. But there is another class of consumers that is at least as influential in this domain that is not yet on marketers’ radar screens. These are the consumers who direct social trafficBwe will call these consumers Asocial hubs.@ Social hubs provide access to a large number and broad variety of consumers. The objective of this research is to introduce these social hubs.

Citation:

Andrea C. Wojnicki (2004) ,"Social Hubs: a Valuable Segmentation Construct in the Word-Of-Mouth Consumer Network", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 31, eds. Barbara E. Kahn and Mary Frances Luce, Valdosta, GA : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 521-522.