BOCA A BOCA ELETRÔNICO (eWOM): UM INSTRUMENTO DE MARKETING DE RELACIONAMENTO

Abstract

With the evolution of the Internet, the current consumers can express their opinions and wishes to others quickly and spontaneously, using social media platforms. The use of these social media as a marketing strategy in organizations has become relevant, especially in customer relationships areas. In Relationship Marketing, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is one of the factors that most influence consumer behavior. eWOM is defined as positive or negative statements made and shared through the Internet by potential, actual, or former customers about a product or company. It is in this environment that is the focus of the study, eWOM on Facebook The objective was to categorize the contents of word-of-mouth communication, from “liked” and “shared” records in the IFGCRV and IFGOIANO_CRV Fan Page, in order to assist the educational institution with the academic community relationship. In order to reach the objective, an exploratory study was accomplished, the netnography, that consists of extracting information from blogs and discussion forums, in a virtual environment. Computer-mediated discourse analysis and inductive analysis were applied. The data collection was made during 8 months and in three stages, in a passive, active way and through a semi-structured interview with the Fan Page moderator in the IFGCRV. The posts were categorized as news, technologies, present news, and academic information, the last one received greater prominence among the participants of the pages. About the eWOM, the categories "Speak Well", "Recommends", “Defend”, "Badmouth", "Denigrate" and “Not Recommend” have been created. The most relevant category was "Speak Well", followed by "Recommends", demonstrating that the contents posted on the pages reflect positive word-of-mouth of the academic community in relation to IF. The results showed that the participation structure of the individuals in the pages does not allow anonymity and that the speed in the dissemination of information, interaction among participants and the versatility and ease of communication via Facebook enabled comments and content to be disseminated in a viral way. It was concluded that the participants of the pages are young, with professional or social connection with the academy, and are looking for professional development as the expansion of relationships, having a strong tendency to disseminate information about the IF. This study makes it possible to present word-of-mouth as a relevant factor when choosing an educational institution, because it influences the community to make decisions. The knowledge generated about the categories of field records in the IF pages and word-of-mouth on Facebook, adopted in this study, allows one to enlarge the Relationship Marketing of IE with the general community. As for the academic contribution, the results demonstrate the influence of social media in the formation of wordof- mouth, corroborating previous studies on the subject. About the limitations, we may quote the context, only one educational institution, and the qualitative method, which does not allow generalizations.