Social networking versus traditional word of mouth marketing effectiveness

Social Media

Social networking has transformed the ways individuals communicate with each other, acquire knowledge, and network with peers or like-minded others. The use of social networking in a commercial context has received considerable attention in the literature. However, few studies offer a direct and quantifiable comparison between social networking and traditional word of mouth methods. This research will contribute to an understanding of the efficacy of social networking on marketing, by directly comparing the effect of traditional word of mouth to the use of social networking to achieve a similar marketing goal. The results of this research would of tremendous help to institutions including universities; private and for-profit corporations; and also non-governmental organizations. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of social networking would help cut unnecessary costs in a marketing campaign and take maximum advantage of what social networking tools have to offer. For scholars, this research would yield a starting point for future research. The results would, for example, spark potential psychological and sociological studies. Possibilities for future research would include investigations into the perception of in-person/face-to-face/telephone communications vs. online communications; the role of anonymity in social networking; and the ethics of using social networking as a surreptitious means of gathering marketing data. In fact, the potential for future academic research building on this study is astoundingly rich.

When Trusov, Bucklin & Pauwels (2009) studied the effect of word of mouth advertising on driving traffic to social networking websites, their research reveals a clear and measurable monetary value to word of mouth. Building on this research, it is clear that word of mouth itself has potential to transform marketing methods and means. However, social networking is a form of word of mouth marketing, or at least a vehicle thereof. Therefore, it becomes imperative to study the particular effects of social networking on directing traffic to target Websites. Social networking presents several value-added benefits to traditional word of mouth. For example, as Barnes (2006) points out, users of social networking sites voluntarily surrender private demographic information that can be capitalized on freely by marketers. Aggregate marketing data can be bought, sold, and traded to provide the most robust data set in the history of humanity. Because of the power of social networking to create a vast marketing database, it becomes more and more important to study the particular effects of social networking on marketing results.