The concept of Word of Mouse (WoM) or the Electronic Word of Mouth (EWoM) is a successful marketing strategy used over the Internet by many companies. It owes its origin to the `viral marketing' strategy initiated by Hotmail. In the current business scenario, the power of WoM cannot be ignored. This article discusses the concept of WoM in detail—its basic principles, strengths and weaknesses. It also throws some light on the concept of viral marketing.

In the modern business scenario, one has to continuously innovate and implement new ideas for being successful. Without innovation, business growth stagnates at a point and thus cannot reach the zenith of success. Advertising is a field of business, which shows a lot of innovation to capture the attention of audience. It is necessary to search for and apply new ideas. So, the challenges are also more in this field. Promotions and ads are now filling the vast number of television channels, magazines, newspapers and also the Internet web sites.

It is in this regard, various new methods like viral marketing, WoM and other marketing communication techniques are making their mark in the business. They are the latest methods to spread advertising message worldwide by breaking the conventional marketing myths and thus providing consumers with information in new ways. Internet has proliferated into the daily lives of many people. Thus, Internet marketing is one of the hottest topics of debate and discussion everywhere. And when we are talking of Internet marketing, the WoM or in other words EWoM is one of the most important techniques of online communication and marketing. WoM is basically computer-based communication through different channels like e-mail, chat rooms, etc. It can also be considered as an extension of the traditional WoM to the Internet.

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