A Study of Development Path of Word of Mouth: Main Path Analysis of Academic Articles

• Main Authors: Hao-Jung Teng, 鄧皓容
• Other Authors: John Liu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/uymkf9

碩士 === 國立臺灣科技大學 === 科技管理所 === 100 === Due to the spreading researches of WOM (Word of Mouth), there were an increasing number of WOM papers in the passing years. Brooks (1957) was the first researcher noticing that communication networks have vital influence on marketing field and that was the first time WOM starting to combine with marketing. This research opened up the door of WOM marketing field; it has already been over half a century. Amount of researchers are willing to know the main path and the history of these papers. These days, there is coming out one citation analysis research of Word of Mouth. Lin and Liao (2008) chose 69 vital WOM papers and made a main path of these researches. To see all the fields of Word of Mouth, this research selects WOS (Web of Science) to collect a great quantity of WOM papers since 1957. This paper uses main path analysis and g-index to find out the influential articles and authors in the field of WOM. To continue on, this researches display the graphics of WOM main path to see the development of this research field. Through growth curve analysis with academic articles, we found there are three stages of WOM field. The first stage contains the academic articles from 1957-1983, this stage shows the research for nature of WOM. Second stage is from 1983-2004, the researchers use significant research methods to prove the variety natures of WOM. Finally, the last stage is from 2004 until now, it shows breakthrough of innovation of eWOM (electronic Word of Mouth) and online WOM in 2004. These findings allow researchers and managers to be able to gain more comprehensive knowledge related to Word of Mouth more easily and this paper forwards a set of direction for the future research.