Psychology of Word of Mouth Marketing

Given the importance of online word of mouth (WOM), there has been an increasing need to understand the psychological mechanisms that underlie WOM transmission (i.e., sharing of opinions) and reception (i.e., processing of received messages). The goal of the current paper is to review some of the most recent research in online WOM (focusing on the past two to four years) as well as make suggestions regarding future research. [For earlier syntheses on WOM senders and social media marketing, see Berger 2014, King, Racherla, & Bush 2014, and Stephen 2016] [ 6 , 7 , 8 ].