An Overview on Traditional and Electronic Word of Mouth Communication (WOM)

WOM is an informal communication way occurring between consumers about a product, a service or an organization in order to pass their opinion, mostly their delight or dissatisfaction through other people. Customers of some special categories of products and especially services feel obligatory to apply WOM to be wised during pre-purchase period. As WOM importance has been increasing and it has been becoming a critical issue affecting performance of organizations, different studies took their place in the literature .Technological developments boosted the means of WOM communications and introduced online WOM, making it keep its actuality. Although the definition of WOM is quite simple, unfortunately its context does no. Roles of WOM parties such as sender and receiver, power and retention of the transmitted message, how it affects costumer purchasing process ,how a negative WOM could be transformed to a second chance to augment consumer satisfaction and to improve the quality of the product. The aim of this study is to overview different topics that have been already observed related to both traditional and online WOM communications and to consolidate the key, critical and actual belonging issues. Finally, subjects for the future WOM researches will be suggested