 Merely asking the customer to recommend has an impact on word-of-mouth activitySöderlund, Magnus and Jan Mattsson Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2015, vol. 27, issue C, 80-89 Abstract: This paper examines if a mere request to a customer – within the frame of a service encounter – to engage in word-of-mouth (WOM) would have an impact on the customer's subsequent WOM activity. Although previous studies have not examined this issue, theoretical arguments do exist. And they point in different directions; some suggest a positive impact, while others suggest a negative impact. To explore the issue empirically, we carried out two studies (one survey-based study and one experiment). Both generated the same result: they indicate that merely asking customers to engage in WOM has a positive impact on customers' WOM activity. In addition, we found that receiving the request was not negatively associated with the customers' overall evaluations, such as customer satisfaction, which indicates that the potential for negative consequences of making the request seems to be low. Keywords: Word-of-mouth; Mere requests; Customer satisfaction; Service encounters; Service employee behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:27:y:2015:i:c:p:80-89 DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2015.07.009 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier |
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