Reconciling the Customer Satisfaction - Word of Mouth Relationship

Abstract

“Satisfied customers talk to five others, while dissatisfied customers talk to 15 others.” This is a much propagated piece of marketing folklore. But is it true? WOM is informal communication between consumers about a product or a service (Anderson 1998; Dichter 1966; Westbrook 1987) that can occur between two or more consumers (Ryu and Han 2009). WOM has been investigated for more than 60 years (Bauer and Gleicher 1953; Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels 2009) and interest from academics and practitioners in WOM continues to increase. Despite this strong interest, important research gaps in this area remain. This paper focuses on an important gap regarding the relationship between WOM and satisfaction.