Peer-reviewed article analysis of communication, finance, economics, or marketing research

¶ … Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels (2009) examines the growing trend of marketing via social networking platforms. Social networking is increasing the efficiency and productivity of word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing strategies, making them a much more productive choice than other traditional marketing avenues. WOM marketing relies on already established social connections and networks as a way to spread effective news about particular products and initiatives. This is being augmented with the growth of social networking in an increasing popular viral world. Yet, the researchers define the concept of WOM as "one of the world's most effective, yet least understood marketing strategy" (Trusov, Bucklin, & Pauwels 2009 p 2). Thus, this current research aims to explore its effectiveness as a viable marketing strategy in the current context. Essentially, the authors hypothesized that WOM marketing facilitated through the use of social media and networking prove more effective than traditional marketing strategies because of their decreased costs and increased productivity levels.

This is essentially a very abstract phenomenon that the researchers aimed to study. Thus, they needed to implement an effective methodology to be able to categorize and quantify the abstract data into more meaningful data sets which could then be statistically analyzed and compared to other strategies of marketing used today and in the past. The research used vector autoregression modeling approach to explore the viral environment. The researchers define this model as a method which "accounts for endogeneity and the dynamic response and interactions between marketing variables and outcomes," (Trusov, Bucklin, & Pauwels 2009 p 6). This method calculated the monetary value of WOM marketing via social networking platforms in order to compare them to similar models of more traditional marketing strategies.

Overall, the hypothesis was accepted after conducting the data analysis model. After conducting the data analysis, researchers concluded that WOM marketing was working in synergy with growing social media trends. The style of marketing was easy and affordable to facilitate, providing much more cost effective than other traditional styles of marketing. Here, the researchers posited that "WOM referrals have substantially longer carryover effects than traditional marketing actions and produce substantially higher response elasticities" (Trusov, Bucklin, & Pauwels 2009 p 1). WOM of mouth marketing proves to be incredibly successful implemented over the various social networking platforms.