Mmmmmmh…

The European Football Championship, the hot weather, an upcoming movie shooting and several works for award shows paralyse both writing the blog as also doing something for the thesis. Although I read some further articles, wrote a second outline for my professor, started to write and found a more general name for the thesis which is now “Electronic Word of Mouth – Chances and Challenges”.

It’s a little bit more open than “the other names” I had before. On the one hand, this is giving me the opportunity to be less obligatory. On the other hand I have to pay attention that I don’t get lost in the endless spheres of WOM.

We’ll see – in the end I have still to wait for the feedback from my professor who should have gotten my outline a week ago. I hope it didn’t get stuck in his spam-filter. Tomorrow I’ll send him a reminder which I forgot today.

Let’s see.

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Literature #003

A book that gve me a very good overview about WOM is Connected Marketing, edited by Justin Kirby and Paul Marsden.

Connected marketing (which I haven’t heard ever before) is an umbrella term for viral, buzz and word of mouth marketing. I just read single chapters, but I think it’s going to help me in the ongoing process.

Book:

Connected Marketing

Justin Kirby, Paul Marsden

Butterworth-Heinemann, ISBN 0-7506-6634-X

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1st thesis outline

Just a second ago I sent my first outline for my master-thesis to my professor. It was comparatively easy to outline the theoretical part explaining WOM in general, but going into detail with the practical part didn’t get me much further. I think I’ve still got to do some research in this direction.

If my feeling is right, I think I’ll find the “storyboard” for the practical part in the book Groundswell by Chalene Li and Josh Bernoff. But to be sure, I first have to go through it and read it. That will take some time.

On Monday I’ll give my professor a call to see what he thinks on my outline. I’m eager to hear his opinion.

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Literature #002

Yesterday I read an article about word of mouth on the web. It is hard to summarize because it is about an evaluation of a study about internet usage, on- and offline sources influencing purchase decisions. This means a lot of numbers and figures. In the end I suppose one could say “yes, user generated content (UGC) has an influence on purchase decisions”, dependent on the age and the kind of product category.

Article:

Word of Mouth on the Web: The Impact of Web 2.0 on Consumer Purchase Decisions

Cate Riegner

Journal of Advertising Research, December 2007, pp. 436-447

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Grab the thread

Last friday I met my professor whom I chose as supervising tutor for my master thesis. I presented a few mindmaps to him and outlined my research field.

We both agreed that it is absolutely necessary to concentrate on a more special question because illustrating the world of word of mouth would be too much. Because I’d like to include the online perspective of the topic, we thought about a title like “How to Create Word of Mouth Using Online Tools”.

That sounds still quite strange and I think I need to sharpen it.

Tonight I leave for Munich. That will be eight hours (for the return trip) to read more about the topic.

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Nice.

I’ve just been doing some research and had a quick peek on wikipedia (I know, it’s not scientific and so on). Here I found a nice word: sockpuppeting. This verb describes someone trying to manipulate a forum or whatever by a. entering a question under one pseudonym

Jimbo66: What is the best detergent for a car?

and b. answering the question with another pseudonym:

Johnny22: Hi Jimbo, I rely on detergent X. It works just perfect.

That’s sockpuppeting.

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Cool #001: brand tags

I just found a very interesting project via connectedmarketing. It is called brand tags and everyone who enters the website can write down his first idea about a brand. All these “ideas” are then displayed in some sort of tag cloud. It’s really amazing what others (despite it’s mostly an American way of view) think about a brand.

have fun:

LINK http://www.brandtags.net/

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Literature #001

I read two interesting articles. While one deals with marketing manager’s misperception of WOM, the other one proofed the importance of customer loyalty (and resulting recommendations) for company growth.

Article 1:
The Buzz on Buzz
Renée Dye
Harvard Business Review November/December 2000, pp.139-146

Article 2:
The One Number You Need To Grow
Frederick F. Reicheld
Harvard Business Review December 2003, pp.46-54

taken from the buzz on buzz, HBR

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Von deutsch to English in just three words

This is my contribution to the blogosphere – the worldwide one. I got the clue that a blog requires a language that most people understand. Because of this, I decided to do everything in English from now on.

Oh yes, the master-thesis:

Yesterday we had a general holiday. All I did was my tax return for 2007.
I hate this time-eating bureaucracy.

More in the next article.

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IMPRESSUM

Weil wir in Deutschland sind und weil es Not tut – hier das obligatorische Impressum:

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Falls Sie ein rechtliches oder andersartiges Problem mit Blog-Inhalten haben, stehe ich Ihnen gerne unter purzel74 [at] web.de zur Verfügung.

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