Stimulating Word-of-Mouth in Retail

Abstract: Word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations is one of the most influential and sought after marketing tools for companies. The purpose of this thesis is to test if it is possible for a salesperson to stimulate WOM through effort and recommendation requests, and if strategic requests have a greater impact. Two quantitative studies were conducted using survey-based experiments. The data for Study 1 was collected manually using a self-completion paper survey and the data for Study 2 was collected online through a research company. The total number of respondents was 552. Results from Study 1 revealed that salesperson effort has a positive impact on customer attitude towards the salesperson and the intention to engage in WOM- activity, but were not supported by Study 2. Neither study supported that salesperson effort has a positive impact on customer satisfaction. WOM-requests, neutral and polite, were not found to have a significant impact on customer evaluations or WOM-intention in either study. The study thus finds that salesperson effort has the potential to impact WOM-intention, however a request does not, regardless if a polite request strategy is applied or not. The findings are of interest in practice and academically. A store manager can apply the knowledge as it shapes strategies for its sales personnel. Academically, the merge of WOM, request strategies, and effort should spark interest for researchers to dig deeper into the subject.