Abstract
In today’s business environment characterized by ever-increasing interconnectedness between customers,
effective management of both incentivized and organic word-of-mouth (WOM) is essential for business
success. The objectives of this thesis are twofold: (1) to examine how different WOM motives can be
cultivated using different types of WOM content to generate greater referrals in social media, and (2) to
examine the behavioral and psychological processes that underlie the effect of prosocial motivation on
WOM in highly interactive service contexts. Building upon WOM theory, I shed light on how marketers
can cultivate customers’ commercial- and communal-WOM motives to increase referrals in the context of
growing consumer networks. In essay one, I show that marketers can utilize WOM content design to
capitalize on customers’ different WOM motives to drive greater incentivized WOM in social media. In
essay two, I show how marketers can foster interactive environments to cultivate customers’ prosocial
motivation to drive greater organic WOM. Together, this thesis attempts to advance the literature on
WOM to assist marketers to assert greater influence on nurturing WOM within fast evolving consumer
networks.