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Word of mouth

Shabby though it looks, the place is packed day and night - it has a good chef, obviously. You have to book a place in advance or face the less-than-savory prospect of watching other diners having a good time nimbly picking out fish bones and nibbling the meat, following each bite up with a series of oos and ahs (in acknowledgement of the chef and due more to the lip-burning chilies).

How could it ever achieve a capacity sellout but from a good word of mouth! Certainly it does no paid adverts and it doesn't have to. The clients will spread the word for it, either via excited let-me-tell-you-this-place mobile messages or during idle gossip. As the old Chinese saying goes, if a restaurant sniffs of a good wine, it fears not the deep end of an alley.

For a small stand-alone restaurant, word of mouth is enough. Not for big businesses. The McDonald's and the KFCs, for example, rely heavily on TV commercials and are situated in populated areas and easy-to-get-to spots. Instead of selling on food - they sell on the food too, I suppose, such as it is - they sell on convenience.

Hollywood blockbuster movies, on the other hand, spend millions of dollars on advertising. This is often worthwhile because overwhelming ads are able to lure folks to the cinema. And if the movie is half-way decent, studios can often get their money back in a matter of days or weeks. If word of mouth later on turns out unfavorable, so what, the money will have been made.