Analysis of citations and co-citations of the term ‘word of mouth’ based on publications in the field of social sciences

Word of mouth' (WOM) as a communication tool has evolved quite significantly over the last few decades. Originally, word-of-mouth communication was limited to local coverage, i.e. it was restricted only to the closest people in the circle of the sender of the message. Technological developments over the past 30 years, particularly in computer and mobile technologies, have brought about significant changes in this form of communication. The information provided has become global; the consumer can communicate directly with the entrepreneur. Examples of bibliographic analyses of only electronic word of mouth (eWOM) without consideration of traditional WOM can be found in the literature. It therefore seems important to try to analyse the literature collection on both WOM and eWOM. The article aims to identify and present the most frequently cited works (along with their authors), as well as the publications most frequently referred to by authors publishing works related to WOM. Citation analysis and co-citation analysis were used to realise the stated aim. The basis for the analyses is a collection of publications from the WoS database. The results obtained made it possible to identify and create a list of the most frequently cited and co-cited publications.