Word of mouth and social media

Since the mid-1990s, the Internet and mobile devices have come to occupy a central role in the transmission of word of mouth (WOM) and the spread of marketing buzz, an impact that has shown phenomenal growth over the past decade with the emergence of blogs, Internet forums and discussion groups, text messaging, email, and the like. For example, Keller (2007) estimated that the average consumer in the USA was involved in over 120 brand-related WOM conversations each week, a number that has accelerated since then, even more so in countries such as China. In fact, the most powerful media form in online contexts is WOM, which thus is not limited to face-to­ face encounters. Moreover, WOM today can spread with lightning speed to reach countless number of consumers, not to mention other concerned constituencies, publics, and stakeholders. As marketers strive to adapt to these rapidly evolving technological and social developments and keep pace with their market places and spaces, researchers have followed suit, as evidenced by the growing body of scientific literature on various aspects of WOM communication (i.e., the act of a consumer creating and/or distributing marketing-relevant information to other consumers) and related personal influence phenomena (e.g., brand communities, brand ambassador programs, and product seeding campaigns) (Yang et al. 2012). Nevertheless, to date, relatively little academic research scrutiny has been devoted to WOM as it relates to social media and other web-driven consumer-generated phenomena, such as blogs and consumer Internet forums. Moreover, there is a paucity of academic research relating to the strength of consumer-to-consumer (C2C) communications as compared with business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to­ business (B2B) communications. There is evidence of resistance by marketers in staying with the time-worn, but tested and tried, traditional types of communications (Kimmel 2010). This special issue of the Journal of Marketing Communications is intended to bridge this knowledge gap by providing an outlet for several innovative and timely contributions pertaining to online WOM, as disseminated through the broad array of social media (a category of online media where people are talking, participating, sharing, networking, and bookmarking), including social sharing sites such as YouTube and Flickr; social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook; online forums such as YELP and TripAdvisor; and corporate and consumer-generated blogs. In the original call for papers, suggested topics included but were not limited to: