【正文】 more likely to trigger a purchase than is a lowimpact remendation To assess the impact of these different kinds of remendations we developed a way to calculate what we call wordofmouth equity It represents the average sales impact of a brand message multiplied by the number of wordofmouth messages By looking at the impactas well as the volumeof these messages this metric lets a marketer accurately test their effect on sales and market share for brands individual campaigns and panies as a whole That impactin other words the ability of any one word ofmouth remendation or dissuasion to change behaviorreflects what is said who says it and where it is said It also varies by product category Whats said is the primary driver of wordofmouth impact Across most product categories we found that the content of a message must address important product or service features if it is to influence consumer decisions In the mobilephone category for example design is more important than battery life In skin care packaging and ingredients create more powerful word of mouth than do emotional messages about how a product makes people feel Marketers tend to build campaigns around emotional positioning yet we found that consumers actually tend to talkand generate buzzabout functional messages The second critical driver is the identity of the person who sends a message the wordof mouth receiver must trust the sender and believe that he or she really knows the product or service in question Our research does not identify a homogenous group of consumers who are influential across categories consumers who know cars might influence car buyers but not consumers shopping for beauty products About 8 to 10 percent of consumers are what we call influentials whose mon factor is trust and petence Influentials typically generate three times more wordofmouth messages than noninfluentials do and each message has four times more impact on a recipients purchasing decision About 1 percent of these people are digital influentialsmost notably bloggerswith disproportionate power Finally the environment where word of mouth circulates is crucial to the power of messages Typically messages passed within tight trusted works have less reach but greater impact than those circulated through dispersed munitiesin part because theres usually a high correlation between people whose opinions we trust and the members of works we most value Thats why oldfashioned kitchen table remendations and their online equivalents remain so important After all a person with 300 friends on Facebook may happily ignore the advice of 290 of them Its the small closeknit work of trusted friends that has the real influence Wordofmouth equity empowers panies by allowing them to understand word of mouths relative impact on brand and product performance While marketers have always known that the impact can be significant they may be surprised to learn just how powerful it really is When Apples iPhone was launched in Germany for example its share of wordofmouth volume in the mobilephone categoryor how many consumers were talking about itwas about 10 percent or a third less than that of the market leader Yet the iPhone had launched in other countries and the buzz acpanying those messages in Germany was about five times more powerful than average This meant the iPhones word of mouth equity score was 30 percent higher than that of the market leader with three times more influentials remending the iPhone over leading handsets As a result sales directly attributable to the positive word of mouth surrounding the iPhone outstripped those attributable to Apples paid marketing sixfoldWithin 24 months of launch the iPhone was selling almost one million units a year in Germany The flexibility of wordofmouth equity allows us to gauge the wordofmouth impact of panies products and brands regardless of the category or industry And because it measures performance rather than the sheer volume of messages it can be used to identify whats drivingand hurtingwordofmouth impact Both insights are critical if marketers are to convert knowledge into power Harnessing word of mouth The rewards of pursuing excellence in wordofmouth marketing are huge and it can deliver a sustainable and significant petitive edge few other marketing approaches can match Yet many marketers avoid it Some worry that it remains immature as a marketing discipline pared with the highly sophisticated management of marketing in media such as television and newspapers Others are concerned that they cant draw on extensive data or elaborate marketing tools finetuned over decades For those unsure about actively managing word of mouth consider this the incremental gain from outperforming petitors with superior television ads for example is relatively small Thats because all panies actively manage their traditional marketing activities and all have similar knowledge With so few panies actively managing word of mouththe most powerful form of marketingthe potential upside is exponentially greater The starting point for managing word of mouth is understanding which dimensions of wordofmouth equity are most important to a product category the who the what or the where In skincare for example its the what in retail banks the who Wordofmouth equity analysis can detail the precise nature of a categorys influentials and pinpoint the highestimpact messages contexts and works Equipped with these insights pan