Networked Narratives: UnderstandingWord-of-Mouth Marketing in Online Communities

Word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing—firms ’ intentional influencing of consumer-to-consumer communications—is an increasingly important technique. Reviewing and synthesizing extantWOM theory, this article shows how marketers employing social media marketing methods face a situation of networked coproduction of narratives. It then presents a study of a marketing campaign in which mobile phones were seeded with prominent bloggers. Eighty-three blogs were followed for six months.The findings indicate that this network of communications offers four social media communication strategies—evaluation, embracing, endorsement, and explanation. Each is influenced by character narrative, communications forum, communal norms,…