Investigating the Effectiveness of Received Offline Word of Mouth: Role of Acquired and Ascribed Homophily

Abstract

This research examines how similarities in educational and ethnic backgrounds (status homophily), between word of mouth (WOM) participants, influences the effectiveness of received offline WOM on the recipient’s behavioural intentions. The educational similarity between individuals is conceptualized as acquired homophily, whereas ethnic similarity is defined as ascribed homophily. This study employs scenario-based experiments, and the results suggest that positive and negative WOM received from homophilous sources is more effective in influencing the recipient’s purchase and WOM re-transmission intentions than recommendations received from heterophilous sources. This research expands the literature about offline WOM and the multidimensional status-homophily construct by providing insights on the differential influence of positive and negative recommendations received from WOM sources similar or dissimilar to the WOM recipients in terms of their educational and ethnic backgrounds. This is important from both the theoretical and practitioner perspective as the recent focus of scholarly research is on understanding the relationship between online homophily and e-WOM at the expense of offline WOM-homophily relationship.

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“…Depending on the specified link, proximity or intimacy between a sender and a receiver, the recipient can rely on the recommendations made by WOM sources regarding specific services. This is supported by Chawdhary and Weber (2021) who revealed that recommendations from WOM sources with similar values to the WOM receiver are more effective in influencing the WOM receiver's decision-making process than recommendations from sources with dissimilar values. This perceived similarity between homophily and dissimilar individuals stems from the logic of homophily, or the love of people who are identical in some ways.…”

“…Currently, literature has associated homophily with the effectiveness of WOM (Amani, 2022a). This link suggests that a strong connection between sender and recipient may have a beneficial effect on WMMD (Amani, 2022a; Chawdhary and Weber, 2021). Depending on the specified link, proximity or intimacy between a sender and a receiver, the recipient can rely on the recommendations made by WOM sources regarding specific services.…”

Effects of Sociodemographic Variables on Electronic Word of Mouth: Evidence from Emerging Economies

“…and tend to behave similarly and promote similar behaviours (Chawdhary & Dall'Olmo Riley, 2015). It is assumed that homophily influences the strength of social ties and trust between communicators (Chawdhary & Weber, 2021;Leonhardt, Pezzuti & Namkoong, 2020). Therefore, eWOM on SNSs is more likely to take place between individuals where the information flow is frequent and impactful (Leonhardt, Pezzuti & Namkoong, 2020).…”