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Introduction
In a world that offers a plethora of product information from a wealth of sources ([60] Plummer, 2007), modern consumers have become less attentive to traditional advertising ([52] McDonnell, 2005; [58] Nielsen, 2007). Accordingly, many organisations have reduced expenditures on traditional advertising and re-visited WOM as a powerful marketing tool ([35] Brand Science Institute, 2005; [48] Kilby, 2007). Marketers, naturally, realise the importance of WOM, especially with regard to its implications for trust and associated outcomes (e.g. [24] DeCarlo et al. , 2007). Researchers, in turn, have investigated the factors that motivate WOM because of its known credibility (e.g. [15] Brown et al. , 2005; [43] Harrison-Walker, 2001).
Word-of-mouth (WOM) has been defined as "informal communication between private parties concerning evaluations of goods and services" ([2] Anderson, 1998, p. 6). This definition prompted many researchers to measure WOM in terms of its frequency and the number of people who receive it (e.g. [13] Bowman and Naryandas, 2001; [32] Eliashberg et al. , 2000; [39] Godes and Mayzlin, 2004; [51] Liu, 2006; [75] Westbrook, 1987). However, this approach fails to address WOM's power and scope. In particular, cumulative measures of WOM based on frequency counts often produce mixed results, as can be seen in contrasting research findings by [51] Liu (2006), [31] Eliashberg and Shugan (1997), and [8] Basuroy et al. (2003) which examined the impact the volume and valence of reviews have on film box office revenue. Understanding the power of individual messages is a core goal of this study.
There is also an increasing recognition of the importance of message characteristics, including their rational and emotional dimensions ([1] Allsop et al. , 2007; [53] Mason and Davis, 2007) and of the importance of words, content, body language, and expressiveness in WOM messages ([26] Dichter, 1966; [37] Gabbott and Hogg, 2000; [40] Gremler, 1994). The details of the WOM message content and delivery seem to offer an alternative WOM conceptualisation. This communications approach to WOM is unique, given the previous focus on volume and valence. Thus, the two main goals of the present study were to focus on message content and delivery in order to enrich WOM conceptualisations, and to develop a parsimonious scale for measuring incident-specific WOM based on these message characteristics,...