On Braggarts and Gossips: A Self-Enhancement Account of Word-of-Mouth Generation and Transmission

Past research on word-of-mouth has presented inconsistent evidence as to whether consumers are more inclined to share positive or negative information about products and services. Some findings suggest that consumers are more inclined to engage in positive word-of-mouth, whereas others suggest that consumers are more inclined to engage in negative word-of-mouth. The present research offers a theoretical perspective that provides one means to resolve these seemingly contradictory findings. Specifically, the present work compares the generation of word-of-mouth (i.e., consumers sharing information about their own experiences) to the transmission of word-mouth (i.e., consumers passing-on information about experiences they heard occurred to others). The authors suggest that a basic human motive to self-enhance leads consumers to generate positive word-of-mouth (i.e., share information about their own positive consumption experiences), but transmit negative word-of-mouth (i.e., pass-on information they heard about other’s negative consumption experiences). The authors present evidence for self-enhancement motives playing out in opposite ways at word-of-mouth generation compared to word-of-mouth transmission across four experiments.