Internet Word of Mouth Proven to Have Impact on Auto Sales in China
With the Internet starting to have an increasingly powerful effect on the relationship between brands and their consumers, marketers are now starting to track and effectively measure what is being said about their brand online and where possible to leverage the power of Internet Word of Mouth (IWOM) to their advantage. Those who master the art are said to boost their return on investment (ROI). This is especially true for China, where marketers need a special weapon to fight against intense competition and a cultural climate of great skepticism and distrust that advertisers face.
But to what extent does online buzz actually help marketers’ achieve their bottom line? Studying 12 months data of 42 auto brands in China, R3 and CIC measured the performance of IWOM in terms of its impact on sales.
The Art of Measuring WOM
WOM, whether online or face to face, allows consumers to communicate with each other, hopefully referring a positive product experience. It also allows brands to connect with consumers, directly or through sharing of other consumer generated content, to highlight product strength and brand value.
They are many different sources of IWOM, including BBS and forums, social networks (i.e. KaiXin001, RenRen), Instant Messenger (i.e. MSN, QQ), blogs & micro-blogs, and Q&A and review sites.
In addition to measuring quantity of IWOM on these sources, marketers can also look at the quality or the sentiment of IWOM, with new advanced text-mining technology such as those developed by CIC, now being able to help brands identify whether a piece is positive, negative or neutral.
What’s more interesting about advanced IWOM text mining technology is its capability to help marketers identify in great detail what is being said about brands by their customers on the Internet, and to then even visualize online interactions and help identify who are the influencers (pictured above). Meaning that if marketers now have an in-depth understanding as to what consumers are talking about their brands and where/by who all that talking is going on, marketers can leverage the company’s communication service and R&D resources to address these issues, ensure the target consumers are addressed, and in the process improve marketing ROI.
One limitation of WOM measurement is that technology cannot differentiate consumer generated content from advertisers’ commercial messages, however by taking this into consideration it’s still important that marketers realize what consumers encounter when researching about brands or products online.
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