Word of Mouth- Most effective Marketing tool
Word of Mouth is one of the most vital Promotion tool & plays very key role for Branding as well. Whether we will talk about the organization or at the individual level WOM has its own pertinent position.
If we will look to the
ancient times it was one of the most influential medium for recognition &
popularity in the absence of Electronic media. King from one state had their
followers & accolades in other states as well & it’s because of WOM.
I believe even now a days
corporate should Emphasize more & more for WOM rather than spending too
much for electronics media & endorsement by the highly paid celebrities.
But the question arising
here is that how WOM advertisement can be done, Primarily it is done from one
person to other in terms of appreciation & recommendations, but that will
go in flow only when the Company will give Customer delight to the users. There is steep
difference between customer delight & customer satisfied i.e. if the
perceived value in terms of product & services is equal to the expected
product & services it will give customer satisfaction but not customer
delight. For customer delight there is need that the perceived values should be
greater than the expected values & for that there is need that company
should emphasize more & more on augmented product & looking forward for
more R&D, for the future product.
In most of the Indian companies
customer delight is missing to some extent & that’s the reason the Indian
companies are lagging behind their international counterparts & because of
that globally Indian companies are not the best around the world. So in terms
of Brand Equity we are lagging much behind the foreign companies.
Brand recognition of Google,
Microsoft & Apple is highly appreciated whereas I can’t see any Indian
companies falling into the aura of such kind of Brand recognition & the most
vital reason for this ‘the perceived values are not higher than the expected
values’ that doesn’t lead the kind of WOM required for the most vital Brand
Equity.
As we are talking business over
here, we certainly have to do cost-benefit analysis for WOM as companies have
to bear the cost for augmented & future product. What I believe is that at
the introduction level companies can go for heavy advertisement in terms of
Print & Electronic media & other tools of promotion to some extent as
per their own budget, but afterwards when the company has its recognition in
the customer’s eyes there is need for branding, & brand equity can mainly
be done through WOM. Cost incurred for WOM is in the form of availing better
services for the customers & investing more for R&D for the innovative
product that may come as your future product. On the other hand in terms of
benefit, investment in your brand equity will give the long term benefits in
terms of sales volume, recognition, brand loyalty etc.& the company can
capitalize its brand equity in terms of brand extension as well. Comparative
cost benefit analysis also shows better ROI for WOM with compare to other
promotional tools in long term.
In India we have almost 46
million social networking site users & it has become one of the fastest
growing medium for WOM advertisement which is almost like viral marketing where
the informational flows very fast to the maximum number of people, so your
reputation can be build as well as ruptured just by WOM through social media.
So it is
imperative that company should focus for WOM which is one of the most important
elements of brand building totally impeccable & Flawless that results into
not only profit maximization but also wealth maximization.
Warm Regards;
Hem Jha
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