Word of Mouth: The Effects of Marketing Efforts and Customer Satisfaction

This study conducted a survey in mobile phone users, and tested relationships between these three constructs by running a structural equation model, indicating that marketing efforts have a positive impact on consumers’ WOM spread behavior and customer satisfaction plays an important mediating role among the relationship between marketing efforts and WOM spread Behavior.

Abstract

Consumerspsila word-of-mouth (WOM) is one of the important topic in consumer behavior research, also is a central issue in customer satisfaction theory. While it was extensively examined by existing research, two shortcomings remain: (1) there is no consistent conclusion on how marketing efforts impact consumerspsila WOM communication; (2) it remains questionable which roles customer satisfaction plays in the relationship between marketing efforts and WOM. This study conducted a survey in mobile phone users, and tested relationships between these three constructs by running a structural equation model. The main results indicate that (1) marketing efforts have a positive impact on consumerspsila WOM spread behavior; and (2) customer satisfaction plays an important mediating role among the relationship between marketing efforts and WOM spread behavior. In the end, this study also discusses the managerial implications.