Predicting Word of Mouth for New Product Innovations

This paper explores the relationship between a customer’s perceptions of a new product to their actual behavior regarding word of mouth. Multiple studies were starting in 2010 with the intention of creating a model that could predict a product’s ability to generate word-of-mouth sales. During this time product uniqueness was identified as a primary driver of word of mouth. In addition to uniqueness, using the respondents’ estimate of how many people think they would tell and discounting for their spontaneousness a model was developed. In 2011 a final study was done to validate the previous model with a larger sample. This paper is focused on this final study where respondents did both the pre and post-survey 3 weeks apart.