Thinking about the service encounter enhances encounter-related word-of-mouth

This study examines the impact of thinking about a service encounter, after it has been completed, on telling others about it (i.e., word-of-mouth). The main finding was that encounter-related thinking boosted word-of-mouth. We also found that the think-talk association was mediated by (a) the memorability of the service encounter and (b) the extent to which what had happened had been subject to rehearsal with the purpose of telling others about it. These findings should be seen in relation to the literature’s view that customer satisfaction, not thinking, is a dominant predictor of word-of-mouth. Our results, however, indicate that satisfaction’s contribution to the variation in talking about the encounter was modest (and customer satisfaction played only a minor role in explaining why an encounter is thought about).