Contributed by: Omkar Kelkar (2012-2014) , WeSchool
In today’s times, the entire world has
come very close due to Internet and various social Media. It is now possible to
connect with any individual quite easily irrespective of the geographical
boundaries. Due to these developments, the word of mouth is increasingly
becoming popular. Many times wesee Facebook posts such as “Which smartphone
should I buy” and “Which college should I apply”. All the expert friends are
very happy to answer the queries and they give their opinions which are very
crucial in making a choice.In fact, some of them insist so much that we feel
very convinced to accept their opinions without a second thought. Thus,
word-of-mouth has now become words-on-Facebook.
Word of Mouth is increasingly becoming
popular in products where we have little or no knowledge and in things where we
feel it is very difficult to make a choice. The most common situations where
word of mouth becomes important is especially when we buy electronic goods- we often
get confused due to the large number of brands at a competing price. One option
which we adopt is putting the question on social networking sites and getting
the answer without much trouble. The second situation is mainly when we want to
take important career decisions such as choosing a college or deciding when to
do MBA. The main advantage of taking decisions based on word of mouth in these
cases is that we have insufficient information and it makes sense to ask the
people who have “been there and done that”. Experiences of others can be
leveraged and shared to take appropriate decisions. Thus, the satisfaction
level of a person will decide not only whether the company retains him as a
customer but also determine how many people does he recommend. What is very important
is that due to the advancement of social network, a person can influence
decisions of large number of people unlike earlier days where word of mouth was
only face-to-face. But now, imagine the impact of giving product reviews which hundreds
of friends are reading and taking decisions based on that.
Other important applications which
make use of the word of mouth are the e-commerce websites which not only
describe the product, but lets users give reviews of them. Users can also give stars
1 to 5 for the product. This makes it very easy for new customers to make a
choice. Also, the number of reviews is mentioned which help in determining the
trend of how many people are buying the product. In fact many people have
become so dependent on reviews that they don’t even think on their own and
simply follow the reviews and make choices.Sites such as Goodreads.com help in
deciding which book to read, tripadvisor.com gives recommendations on
tours/trips, sites like imdb give movie reviews while some like glassdoorgive
company/job reviews. So, the word of mouth in this case is not just limited to
products but also has an impact on important decisions in life. Word of mouth has
now become a part of almost all phases of life right from decisions of school
admission up to investment of retirement corpus. And its influence has
multiplied several times due to social networks.
While there are lots of advantages of
word of mouth recommendations, there are some things which are negative. The
decision making power of an individual has reduced and “herd mentality” has
increased. People have become very lazy to try different things themselves and blindly
follow the so-called experts who may misguide them in some instances. Also innovation
is disappearing since people feel safer to follow the tried and tested path
rather that doing something new which does not have word of mouth reviews.Word
of mouth thus has to be certainly used for considering various opinions but
should not be followed blindly so that it kills our creativity and increases
dependence.
Image
Source: flickriver.com
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