Packard & Berger (2017)

Question 1

Word of mouth

Answer 1

A consumer-to-consumer transmission of product information. Hearing that someone else likes something drives people to purchase it. It has an important impact on consumer behaviour. Others’ opinions shape everything from the evryday products people buy to important medical and financial matters

Question 2

Implicit endorsement

Answer 2

In line with ‘I liked that hotel’, which is the assertion of your own personal positive opinion. Not likely to be persuasive, because they simply summarise the source’s personal product evaluation which recipients can often infer from the evaluative content of word-of-mouth without the addition of summarising assertion. Thus, adding it to positive word of mouth may have little effect on persuasion

Question 3

Explicit endorsement

Answer 3

A speaker’s declaration that the object is appropriate for others, e.g. ‘I recommend that hotel.’ This should make the endorser seem more knowledgeable, which should make their statement more persuasive. May be more persuasive because they suggest that the endorser liked the product more

Question 4

Preference heterogeneity

Answer 4

Describes the diversity of consumer needs and wants. Awareness of this should decrease customers’ tendency to explictly endorse. Less knowledgeable consumers are more likely to use explicit endorsements because their lower awareness of preference heterogeneity may lead them to assume that if they like something, others will as well

Question 5

Study 1

Answer 5

Investigates the link between customer knowledge and explicit endorsements. Result: less knowledge consumers were more likely to use explicit endorsements. It revealed no relationship between category experience and implicit endorsements

Question 6

Study 2

Answer 6

Result: A main effect of preference heterogeneity prime was qualified by the predicted category knowledge x preference hetereogeneity interaction. Consistent with Study 1, novices were more likely to recommend the hotel than experts. Reminding participants of preference heterogeneity eliminated this difference, decreasing novices’ likelihood of using explicit endorsements. No support was found for the alternative explanations

Question 7

Study 3

Answer 7

Seeks to address how endorsement styles affect persuasion. Compared with implicit endorsements, the authors predict that explicit endorsements will be more persuasive, leading word-of-mouth recipients to believe they will like the product more and increasing likelihood of choosing it. Also, they predict that this will be driven by the way endorsement styles influence the recipient’s perceptions of the source’s expertise and the source’s attitude toward the product

Question 8

Study 3 result

Answer 8

Explicit endorsement leads people to believe that they would enjoy the restaurant more and increases the chance they would eat there. People thought the friend had greater domain expertise and liked it more when they provided explicit endorsement. These perceptions mediated the relationship between endorsement style and persuasion. The friend was seen as more expert, which increased persuasion

Question 9

Study 4

Answer 9

Participants chose between superior and inferior wine and decided what to say to others about the wine they chose. Result: Fewer people picked the inferior wine. Category knowledge was negatively related to choice. Novices were more likely to pick the wine. Also, a negative relationship between category knowledge and explicit endorsement

Question 10

Study 5

Answer 10

Examines how the relationship between the sender’s category knowledge, product chocie, and endorsement style influences the choice of word-of-mouth recipients. Participants in the word-of-mouth condition were shown the aggregate distribution of endorsement choices. Result: Word-of-mouth information led participants to make inferior choices compared to the attributes-only condition