Word of mouse An assessment of electronic word-of-mouth research

Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication has received a great deal of attention from marketing academics and practitioners alike. Widespread use of the internet for shopping, information gathering and entertainment purposes has changed not only the ways that WOM can be studied and manipulated but also the very nature of the phenomenon. Published research into electronic WOM (eWOM) first appeared in the top-level marketing journals only about ten years ago. Since that time, there has been a great deal of research but no synthesis of the knowledge that would allow one to draw conclusions regarding the evolving nature of WOM and to extend the theory applied to this topic. This paper will address that gap, applying the paradigm funnel technique suggested by Nairn et al. (IJMR, 49, 2), and will suggest some future research directions.