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Publications in Scientific Journals:

F. El Ouardighi, G. Feichtinger, D. Grass, R.F. Hartl, P. Kort:
"Advertising and Quality-Dependent Word-of-Mouth in a Contagion Sales Model";
Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, 170 (2016), 1; 323 - 342.



English abstract:
In the literature on marketing models, the assumption of mixed word-of-mouth has been limited to the Bass diffusion model. Yet explicit leveraging of the originating factors of such assumption is lacking. Apart from that example, mixed word-of-mouth has been disregarded in contagion sales models. This paper bridges the gap by suggesting a sales model, where both positive and negative word-of-mouth affect the attraction rate of new customers, along with advertising. The difference between positive and negative word-of-mouth is based on the distinction between satisfied and dissatisfied current customers, which is supposed to depend on conformance quality. A primary issue in this paper is to determine how a firm should determine the optimal intertemporal trade-off between investing in advertising-dependent word-of-mouth and quality-dependent word-of-mouth. To address this issue, a contagion sales model is suggested where mixed autonomous word-of-mouth alone can lead to either commercial success or failure of a given brand.

Keywords:
Sales, Word-of-mouth, Advertising effort, Conformance quality


"Official" electronic version of the publication (accessed through its Digital Object Identifier - DOI)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10957-015-0855-0


Created from the Publication Database of the Vienna University of Technology.