Good morning,
I am a (young)resaercher in the field of Information Management and Mass Media Studies. I have discovered (few days ago)the field of WOM.
My question is: In what way this field could be invovolved in the comprehension of the organisation decision-making process ?
Thank you in advance for your answer.
Regards
Jeremy
Hi Jeremy,
This is an excellent question. I'll just start a response here and invite others to contribute. You ask about how WOM can help us better understand how organizations make decisions (if I captured what you are asking correctly).
I think one way to answer that question is to think of word-of-mouth as a process of consumer-to-consumer communication (or substitute any appropriate term other than consumer, such as user, stakeholder, citizen, constituent, etc.; I'll use stakeholders). Many stakeholders want to be more involved in the decision-making process of organizations, or at the very least, feel "heard" or "listened to" by the organization. Organizations of all flavors should sieze on the opportunity to be responsive to this desire and involve their stakeholders in decisions that affect the stakeholders (such as product design, policies, etc.) and figure out ways to become partners in these conversations among their stakeholders (blogging could be one example, being responsive to any feedback is another, creating educational resources that stakeholders will find relevant to their lives, etc.).
Thus, the organizational decision-making process would potentially become more open and clear to those outside of the organization (what many call transparency), or even to those internal stakeholders as well (such as employees). In this process I think many organizations are realizing the line between internal and external needs to be blurred to facilitate this communication. For example, employees of an organization can often be the organization's best ambassadors.
This is certainly not a comprehensive answer, but just a starting point.
Thanks for your question and I invite you and others to contribute their thoughts!
Walter
Walter,
3 questions for you.
(1) I wonder do you have any references on the NPS idea in reputable learned journals. I have had a good look through the net promoter website, and get the strong impression that Reicheld is a self-promoter!
(2) Is there any reason to suppose that NPS would predict PROFITS? Revenue or market share, sure.
(3) Based on the paper you link to, it seems that NWOM has twice the effect of PWOM. So shouldn't we redefine NPS to put more weight on D rather than P?
Hi Chris,
1) Yes, the NPS is evaluated against other customer feedback metrics for loyalty and satisfaction in an upcoming Marketing Science article (authors Morgan and Rego). Be sure to check it out! To my knowledge this will be the first published, academic, peer-reviewed manuscript to assess the value of a net promoter metric. I'll share more details in a future blog post.
2) Because profits depend on a number of other factors, like how a company handles its accounting practices, net operating cash flow is usually a more reliable indicator financial performance and shareholder value. The Marketing Science article I mentioned above will discuss net operating cash flow.
3) This is a fascinating question and I would love to hear how the NPS folks (Bain and Satmetrix) would respond to the idea of weighting the detractors more signifcantly than the proters. The Marketing Science paper will also talk about the role of NWOM.
So, in short, let's wait for the published version of the Marketing Science paper. Stay tuned to my blog for details 
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