The Conversation Manager (extended presentation

Editor's Notes

• #24: “A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them…” (Steve Jobs)
• #86: Recent literature on WOM has largely emphasized these so called influencers. However, others have challenged this idea poning that “word-of-mouth from celebrities, mavens, connectors, alphas, hubs, transmitters, trendsetters, [...] is always good. But it’s no more powerful or influential than word-of-mouth from that guy [...] sitting next to you on the train” (Balter & Butman, 2005). It is therefore our belief that the first step towards a better measurement of WOMO is not looking at “who is doing something”, but at “what everybody is doing.” Therefore, action rather than persons and their characteristics are situated at the heart of our model.When evaluating a viral campaign it is important to map all different communication that consumers have started. The model distinguishes different levels of online actions in relation to the level of engagement they imply (see figure 1) (Womma, 2005).A first type of actions are receiver actions. These happen whenever people receive and absorb the content of a message about brands, products and services. Online surfers can come in contact with information about brands via two types of channels. They can use selective channels like e-mail where they receive information that is personally addressed. However, they can also find information on public sharing platforms like YouTube, online forums,... A second type of actions are sender actions. This encompasses all actions where people share the information about brands with other people. While forwarding as such is indicative for extended reach of an ad (by definition a key performance indicator) it can crystallize in different actions. “Selective forward” actions happen whenever consumers forward the communication to a focussed and/or limited set of people. In turn there are three formats of this kind of forwarding. In “plain forwarding” no comments or much thinking or acting is added from the part of the sender. “Commented forwarding ” means that the forwarder adds negative, positive, reinforcing or other comments. Finally, forwarders can specifically “target” certain people in their peer group (e.g. only send it to brand lovers or acquaintances they know are in a buying process). A second type of sender action are “sharing forward” actions. These consumers like or dislike the ad so much they post it on a open sharing platform such that anyone else interested can be exposed to the ad. The sender is not interested in reaching close acquaintances but reach as many people as possibleA final type of actions are creator actions. These actions basically imply people contributing content to the add (e.g. filling out there or others’ details to personalize the ad), participate in a contest or play an interactive game or even create a new add.In this research, we want to measure to what extent consumers undertake the different types and subtypes of actions: We believe that some WoMo actions will occur more frequently than others. Because receiver actions are passive actions that do not ask a lot of effort from the consumer, we expect this type of action will be the biggest group. Similarly we hypothesize that although sender actions demand more consumer involvement than receiver actions, they will still occur more frequently than creator actions that require a truly active and passionate consumer. Next, we expect that there will be a difference between selective (e-mail) and sharing online communication channels (online forums, blogs, websites specialized in online movies). We hypothesize that consumers will still have a preference for e-mail communication above other types of communication because they are more familiar with the channel (www.E-scape-reports.com)
• #103: Leading Chinese e-tailerDangDang.com gives back toits customers—and encourages their vigilant attention tothe site—by randomly assigning one hour a day as“Lucky Time” in which all purchases made within thathour are free of charge. (Tip of the hat to PSFK.com.)