Investigating the Effectiveness of Received Offline Word of Mouth: Role of Acquired and Ascribed Homophily

Abstract

This research examines how similarities in educational and ethnic backgrounds (status homophily), between word of mouth (WOM) participants, influences the effectiveness of received offline WOM on the recipient’s behavioural intentions. The educational similarity between individuals is conceptualized as acquired homophily, whereas ethnic similarity is defined as ascribed homophily. This study employs scenario-based experiments, and the results suggest that positive and negative WOM received from homophilous sources is more effective in influencing the recipient’s purchase and WOM re-transmission intentions than recommendations received from heterophilous sources. This research expands the literature about offline WOM and the multidimensional status-homophily construct by providing insights on the differential influence of positive and negative recommendations received from WOM sources similar or dissimilar to the WOM recipients in terms of their educational and ethnic backgrounds. This is important from both the theoretical and practitioner perspective as the recent focus of scholarly research is on understanding the relationship between online homophily and e-WOM at the expense of offline WOM-homophily relationship.