The Anatomy of Buzz

In this book Emanuel Rosen analyzes how Word-Of-Mouth Marketing (WOM) works. He makes a brilliant list of things people want to talk about with each other, which I cite in my own book. Besides he has a beautiful picture of an American suburb, taken from the air. In this picture you can clearly see the houses with air conditioning. It turns out the air conditioning owners are clustered together: sometimes you see four houses with air conditioning next to each other, and then ten houses without. Apparently people there visit each other and recommend the product to each other, or even purchase it together. This is interesting to see. When you read this book, you realize that consumers are not just passive buyers of a product, but they can also have other roles like actively helping selling it.