Glossary of Marketing Studies and Research
Oral and spontaneous method of transfer between people, often regarding
opinions or rumors. Word of mouth can concern a product a service or a company, and it can be
positive or negative.
By extension, the term designates recommendation phenomena whether they are oral or not, for
example when they use other communication tools such as social media, blogs, forums, review
websites.
Word of mouth leads to a movement of promotion or denigration with huge consequences : this is
referred as buzz or viral marketing.
A customer experience strategy that aim to optimize word of mouth reduces costs of acquisition
of new customers.