Walk your talk: An experimental investigation of the relationship between word of mouth and communicators’ loyalty

Research provides ample evidence regarding the impact of word-of-mouth (WOM) communication on recipients. Service pro-viders increasingly attempt to harness this power of WOM by introducing referral reward programs and other marketing instru-ments that aim to stimulate positive WOM. However, scholars have neglected to research the possibility that providing WOM also has consequences for the sender. Building on self-perception theory, this article argues that recommending a service provider improves the current customers ’ loyalty to the provider and that positive WOM is not only effective for gaining but also for keep-ing customers. By conducting experiments in two different service settings, it is demonstrated that providing a recommendation influences the senders ’ attitudinal and behavioral loyalty. The effect is found to be stronger for customers with low expertise in the service category and little experience with the provider. This means that encouraging customers in the early stages of their customer life cycle to give recommendations is specifically effective in increasing loyalty to the provider. Managers should consider using positive WOM as a loyalty-enhancing instrument and take the additional value from increased loyalty of their customer base into account for return-on-marketing calculations regarding WOM marketing campaigns, as well as customer equity calculations. Keywords word of mouth, customer loyalty, customer expertise, customer experience, experimental study Word of mouth (WOM) has become a watchword in recent years. Academics (Haywood 1989; Wangenheim and Bayón 2007b), textbooks (Blackwell, Miniard, and Engel 2005; Kotler and Keller 2008), and managerial contributions (Rosen 2000; Silverman 2001) highlight the effectiveness and efficiency of WOM as a means of customer acquisition, generally attributing its effectiveness to its high credibility. Because customers com-municate among themselves at no or low cost for the firm, WOM also can be a highly efficient means for gaining new cus