Word-of-mouth marketing, the oldest advertising strategy in the world, has proved an effective tool online, where companies compete to catch ¡°early reviewers¡± or vocal consumers who post their opinion on the web. Where marketers once focused on exposing netizens to products as much as possible, now they encourage them to post product reviews or evaluations online.
The reason is that peer product reviews have become the most influential factor guiding other netizens¡¯ purchasing decisions. A survey by women¡¯s issues website azoomma.com of 2,386 housewives last year found that 59 percent of them relied on the opinion of their friends or word of mouth when they decided what to buy. Some 37 percent chose online product reviews, and only 30 percent were swayed by TV commercials.
When LG Household & Health Care launched Isaknox Wrinkle Decline Double Effect in October, it selected some 200 ¡°promotional ambassadors.¡± The company gave each of them W80,000 (US$1=W950) worth of free samples, which they reviewed on their private mini homepages, blogs or portal bulletins. The product sold more than 140,000 in just eight months after the launch, apparently mainly thanks to harnessing word of mouth.
The Coleo Marketing Group, which was behind the campaign, says the success led to plenty of questions about word-of-mouth marketing from clients in various industries. The biggest blockbuster of early 2006, ¡°The King and The Clown¡±, also used the strategy. Previews held every day for two weeks before the release targeted active netizens, who would spread the word in their posts. Some 5,000 messages were posted on Naver¡¯s film evaluation section before the release, and the movie was the top search term at many portals. ¡°Customers take product reviews seriously when making purchasing decisions, and those that get favorable reviews become bestselling products,¡± says a PR staffer at online shopping mall G-Market.
But how far will and should companies go to turn word of mouth to their advantage? Some pay part-timers for writing fake reviews, and since word of mouth travels at lightening speeds online, the truth may in some clever cases come out only after many people have already bought the product because of such bad advice. It is also notoriously difficult to prevent the spread of false information on the web. The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) established in 2004 counts some 250 companies and organizations around the world as members. Its top priority, it says, is the ethics of word-of-mouth marketing. WOMMA has three guidelines: Honesty of relationship (you say who you¡¯re speaking for), honesty of opinion (you say what you believe) and honesty of identity (you say who you are). That way it hopes to protect a useful marketing tool from corruption, and therefore loss of credibility.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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