Measuring the Success of Word of Mouth
Paul MarsdenEnterprise LSE
How do you measure word of mouth? The answer to this question lies in a story involving extraordinarily long tea breaks, telephones, freak lighting and confused market researchers. The time is 1924, and the place is Cicero, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. In Cicero lies the manufacturing plant of Western Electric, the largest electrical manufacturer in the United States in the early 20th century, and the company that one day was to become Lucent Technologies.
Among other inventions, Western Electric brought the world the loudspeaker, sound to movies, the...