Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations
(2015) MIO920Production Management
- Abstract
- Word of mouth can be a key growth driver and there is a need for more research on what
marketers can do to generate more word of mouth. In particular, nonprofit organizations, that do
not have the funds to advertise and rely on traditional media to get attention, could benefit from
a better understanding of word-of-mouth marketing.
The purpose of this thesis is to identify which factors nonprofit organizations should consider
when designing word-of-mouth marketing campaigns, and to evaluate whether consideration of
these factors leads to an increase in campaign effectiveness.
Based on a review of extant research on word of mouth, a theoretical framework for which factors
should be considered was formed. The... (More) - Word of mouth can be a key growth driver and there is a need for more research on what
marketers can do to generate more word of mouth. In particular, nonprofit organizations, that do
not have the funds to advertise and rely on traditional media to get attention, could benefit from
a better understanding of word-of-mouth marketing.
The purpose of this thesis is to identify which factors nonprofit organizations should consider
when designing word-of-mouth marketing campaigns, and to evaluate whether consideration of
these factors leads to an increase in campaign effectiveness.
Based on a review of extant research on word of mouth, a theoretical framework for which factors
should be considered was formed. The identified factors concern who the target communicators
are, how they should be reached, how they should be motivated to generate word of mouth, what
they should share word of mouth about and how they can be influenced to share word of mouth
over time.
The theoretical framework was applied in two field quasi-experiments, where the author designed
and implemented two word-of-mouth campaigns, in collaboration with the nonprofit Kiva. The
results of these campaigns were analyzed to assess if an increase in effectiveness could be noticed.
The conclusion is that while the experiments did not provide evidence for an increase in
campaign effectiveness through deliberate consideration of the identified factors, the theory on
word of mouth seems mature enough to be worth studying for marketers at nonprofit
organizations. More research is needed, however, to provide a conclusive answer on how
organizations can effectively work with word-of-mouth marketing. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/7869270
- author
- Olovsson, Fredrik
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MIO920
- year
- 2015
- type
- M1 - University Diploma
- subject
- other publication id
- 15/5534
- language
- English
- id
- 7869270
- date added to LUP
- 2015-09-18 09:56:55
- date last changed
- 2015-09-18 09:56:55
@misc{7869270,
abstract = {{Word of mouth can be a key growth driver and there is a need for more research on what
marketers can do to generate more word of mouth. In particular, nonprofit organizations, that do
not have the funds to advertise and rely on traditional media to get attention, could benefit from
a better understanding of word-of-mouth marketing.
The purpose of this thesis is to identify which factors nonprofit organizations should consider
when designing word-of-mouth marketing campaigns, and to evaluate whether consideration of
these factors leads to an increase in campaign effectiveness.
Based on a review of extant research on word of mouth, a theoretical framework for which factors
should be considered was formed. The identified factors concern who the target communicators
are, how they should be reached, how they should be motivated to generate word of mouth, what
they should share word of mouth about and how they can be influenced to share word of mouth
over time.
The theoretical framework was applied in two field quasi-experiments, where the author designed
and implemented two word-of-mouth campaigns, in collaboration with the nonprofit Kiva. The
results of these campaigns were analyzed to assess if an increase in effectiveness could be noticed.
The conclusion is that while the experiments did not provide evidence for an increase in
campaign effectiveness through deliberate consideration of the identified factors, the theory on
word of mouth seems mature enough to be worth studying for marketers at nonprofit
organizations. More research is needed, however, to provide a conclusive answer on how
organizations can effectively work with word-of-mouth marketing.}},
author = {{Olovsson, Fredrik}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations}},
year = {{2015}},
}