مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

Customer referrals (or recommendations), that is as a form of favorable word-of-mouth (WOM) whereby a customer advises others to purchase a product or service (Helm, 2003; Verhoef et al., 2002; Wheiler, 1987), represent one of the most widespread and influential types of information sharing. Referrals may occur both offline, typically in the form of conversations among family members, friends or work colleagues, and online, often in the form of online reviews written by and for other consumers (e.g., Chevalier and Mayzlin, 2006; Lee and Bradlow, 2011; Moore, 2015). In today’s interconnected world, where seven billion devices are connected to the Internet (Babic et al., 2015), 35% of people consult blogs and forums before making purchase decisions (The Boston Consulting Group, 2015). In light of this finding, understanding the conditions in which online referrals become more or less persuasive may be relevant for both companies and consumers.

While customer referrals offer important support in product decision-making, their role is particularly prominent in service settings. Indeed, service experiences entail, on average, higher risk and uncertainty when compared with product experiences (Eiglier and Langeard, 1977; Guseman, 1981; Zeithaml, 1981), due to specific features such as intangibility, pre-purchase evaluation difficulty and no standardization (e.g., Flipo, 1988; Harrison-Walker, 2001; Murray, 1991; Ostrom and Iacobucci, 1995; Young, 1981). As a consequence, when making their purchase decisions about a service, customers tend to rely on unbiased, non-commercial information that other customers who have prior experience with that service pass on (Bansal and Voyer, 2000; Engel et al., 1995; Lovelock, 1981; Mizerski, 1982; Voyer and Ranaweera, 2015). Indeed, past research suggests that referrals are the most important tool for attracting new customers to services (Murray, 1991; Tax and Chandrashekaran, 1992). For instance, 67% of US Internet users find a new physician based on recommendations by their friends, family and co-workers (Voyer and Ranaweera, 2015). Notably, service recommendations strongly impact purchase decisions even when individuals provide them as anonymous online reviews. For instance, in a 2014 survey, ProCusWright, a leading travel market research company, reveals that 75% of travelers today book a hotel after checking TripAdvisor and 53% would avoid booking a hotel that has no reviews.

The service literature contains a number of empirical studies that generally substantiate the importance of customer referrals. Indeed, the bulk of past work focuses on the drivers of service customer referral behavior, such as satisfaction, quality perceptions, trust and loyalty (e.g., De Matos and Rossi, 2008; Garbarino and Johnson, 1999; Verhoef et al., 2002; Zeithaml et al., 1996), as well as on the monetary and economic implications of referral behavior for the service provider (Helm, 2003; Schmitt et al., 2011). However, missing in the extant literature is the study of the effect of referrals on recipients’ attitudinal and behavioral responses, with the exception of some studies that consider a few factors behind the influence of service referrals on recipients’ responses, such as the tie strength between the referral sender and recipient (Bansal and Voyer, 2000; Sweeney et al., 2014; Voyer and Ranaweera, 2015).