Intensive WOM-behavior in the healthcare sector – the case of an Austrian hospital’s Facebook site

Sebastian Martin () and Birgit Grüb
Additional contact information
Sebastian Martin: University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria
Birgit Grüb: Johannes Kepler University

International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, No 0, 22 pages

Abstract: Abstract Patients frequently use Facebook for health-related reasons, like seeking of information or the recommendation of practitioners or hospitals. In this way, Facebook provides a powerful communication platform for electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). Hospitals increasingly use Facebook to positively influence the perception of their brand reputation and performance. The present explorative study provides detailed information regarding eWOM behavior of persons on the Facebook page of an Upper Austrian hospital. Data of the hospital’s Facebook page was gathered and analyzed with NodeXL. By using a text analysis, we categorized the hospitals’ posts. Reactions towards the different types of postings were analyzed by counting emojis, the number of shares and comments. Within the study, there was an in-depth evaluation of communication data (313 posts of the hospital, more than 14,000 eWom actions by 3327 women, men and organizations). The study shows how heterogeneous users are in their eWOM behavior and that a variety of topics on the Facebook page stimulates electronic recommendations. One major finding of the study is that a significant part of the eWOM is done by only a few users. According to this, a so-called Intensive WOM Behavior (IWB) can be identified. Users of the IWB-group behave heterogeneously. Most react either with an emoji, a comment or a share. Only a few IWB-users respond with a combination of these eWOM-reactions. By providing first insights into the existence of IWB-users as well as their eWOM-behavior, this study offers new insights to eWOM in Facebook.

Keywords: Word-of-mouth; eWOM; Recommendation; Healthcare; Hospital; Social media; Facebook (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12208-020-00250-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:irpnmk:v::y::i::d:10.1007_s12208-020-00250-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/business/journal/12208

DOI: 10.1007/s12208-020-00250-7

Access Statistics for this article

International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing is currently edited by Helena Maria Alves

More articles in International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing from Springer, International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().