Investigating antecedents and consequences of word of mouth from a WOM sender's perspective in the services context

This paper outlines a conceptual framework of the antecedents and consequences of offline word of mouth (WOM) from the WOM sender's perspective. Customer satisfaction (CS) and continuance commitment (CC) are examined as antecedents of WOM. Furthermore, this study posits that CS interacts with CC to influence WOM. Most research on WOM has focused on the effect of WOM on the WOM receiver; consequently the effect of WOM on the WOM sender remains under-researched. Therefore, WOM sender's loyalty & affective commitment are examined as consequences of articulating WOM. The tie strength between the WOM participants is proposed as a potential moderator of the WOM-service loyalty & WOM-affective commitment link. Scenario based experimental research design will be used to test the model. Results from pre-tests suggest that scenarios produce the intended effect. Results of hypotheses testing will be presented at the conference.