The web of word of mouth

Abstract

In a study of air-conditioner owner hip in a Philadelphia neighborhood Whyte found that, while the neighbor ood as a whole might average ten con tioners a block, one block might show hree, and the next block eighteen.1 urthermore, he found clusters within ocks. To Whyte, these clusters of conditioners, in a homogeneous neighbor- hood of identical houses, were the "sym bols" of a powerful communications network. In this study, the interpersonal influence seemed to flow up and down the block and across the alley, rather than across the street, thus following the friendship patterns of the children and wives. In reporting on his study of air-condi. tioner ownership, Whyte emphasized the significance of this point for the market- ing activity of a firm by pointing out that group pressure to consider an appliance as a "necessity" does not develop until a significant proportion of the group has purchased one.6 Early purchasers are vic- tims of the "raised eyebrow," but once the proportion of ownership has grown sufficiently, the group begins to act as a force for further purchases and to "pun- ish" those who lag behind. This indi- cates the need for the application of ag- gressive selling effort at the initial stage, since it is at this time that it is most ef- fective, both in regard to its direct ef- fect on sales, and also as a prerequisite for valuable assistance from "word of mouth" later on.