Consumers tell friends and family what they think of a product that they purchased in the past.

But there is something called internet these days and consumers are constantly connected and can share

whatever they think, whenever they want. Regardless of time zones.

All ratings/opinions/posts about

a product are electronic word-of-mouth messages. It’s becoming more and more important in

the online market strategy of any decent company. But exactly how big is the impact of this

electronic word-of-mouth on the sales of your product? And what factors determine the size

of this impact that electronic word-of-mouth messages have on your sales?

Researchers looked at the impact of 2 factors from eWOM messages. The first one volume.

This means how many ratings and opinions are online about a product. The second one is

valence. That means whether the ratings have a positive or negative tone, usually measured on a

scale for example from 1 to 5 stars. So let's take a look at the first factor, volume. On average of the volume of eWOM messages

increases by 1% and the product gets more awareness , sales will go up by 0.236%. Let’s

get that clear. A computer now has 1000 ratings and opinions online and the company sells

on average 10.000 computers. When the volume of electronic word-of-mouth messages increase

with 1% (+10),you will almost sell 24 computers more!!

This is a good result, because when you increase

traditional advertising trough ads with 1%, the sales go up with 0.22% on the long term.

Keeping this in mind, the impact from the valence of online opinions and ratings is

even more impressive. When the valence of the electronic word-of-mouth messages increases

by 1%, on average sales go up with 0.417% . Let's retake the previous example. This means that if 10 of 1000 reviews online

go from a negative tone to a positive tone, your will sell on average 42 computers more!

That's huge!

Obviously… This means that the power of persuasion is

far more important than the power of information and awareness. So people care more about

what others have to say. Rather than how many people have things to say.

Volume and valence of eWOM messages have more impact on sales

on specialized review websites rather than on the product page of a retailer

So use this knowledge to increase your sales and get as much as possible

positive electronic word-of-mouth messages out there.

And your sales will increase way more than most people think.