Title: Educing the referral power to tap potential customer segments - a study in Indian perspective

Authors: Mukul Arora; Kritika Nagdev; Raman Preet Singh; Anupama Rajesh

Addresses: Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, AU Block, Pitam Pura, New Delhi, India ' Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, AU Block, Pitam Pura, New Delhi, India ' Vivekananda Institute of Professional Studies, AU Block, Pitam Pura, New Delhi, India ' Amity Business School, Amity University, Sector-125 Noida, New Delhi, India

Abstract: The online service providers are endeavouring to harness the power of word of mouth technique by giving customers incentives to refer their friends and family by way of their referrals programs. The present paper seeks to explore the antecedents influencing consumer behaviour towards referrals. It further studies the attitude and perception of the clusters found: pragmatic, learned referrers, calculative and exhibitionist. Factor analysis using principle component analysis was employed on 133 respondents from Delhi-NCR region and further customer's behaviour was examined on the basis of difference in perceptions of the referral marketing dimensions by using cluster analysis. Seven dimensions were identified and six out of them were found influencing the characteristic of these customers' clusters. The paper suggests awareness, building partners through WOM, connect like family and devote attention (ABCD) are the four prudent strategies that can be adopted for the four clusters respectively, by the marketers to tap the customers proficiently.

Keywords: referral marketing; word of mouth; WOM; consumer behaviour; customer segmentation; online service provider.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPSPM.2018.090731

International Journal of Public Sector Performance Management, 2018 Vol.4 No.2, pp.133 - 145

Received: 23 May 2017
Accepted: 21 Jun 2017
Published online: 27 Mar 2018 *

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