Knowledge Dissemination of Word-of-Mouth Research: Citation Analysis and Social Network Analysis

摘要

In the past 40 years, there have been many studies related toword of mouth; however, no reviews of the word-of-mouthliteratures have been found. This study integrates the meth-ods of citation analysis and social network analysis to explorethe citation of word-of-mouth papers and further validatesthe knowledge dissemination of word-of-mouth studies. Theresults of the research reveal that the three papers — Richins(1983), Brown and Reingen (1987) and Herr, Kardes and Kim (1991) — were in more centralized positions in the citation net-work. As core papers in the word-of-mouth field, they playcritical roles in knowledge. These research findings allow re-searchers to access studies related to the word-of-mouth fieldfrom the past 40 years, and dissemination of word-of-mouthknowledge helps researchers' control over future researchdirections and the overall knowledge contribution of theword-of-mouth field.