Determinants of Passing on Viral Messages Empirical Analysis of a Viral Marketing Campaign on Facebook

Bettina Lis ¹, Jonathan Schulz ¹

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Abstract

Internet has evolved into a dynamic network where people can easily and constantly interconnect. Social-media-platforms allow consumers to interact and inform each other, likewise on products and services. Under pressure of increasing customer-resistance toward traditional advertising-forms marketers have to find new, effective forms. Viral-marketing on social-media therefore plays an important role, evoking the question which factors really have an impact on the success of viral-marketing-strategies. Therefore, we undertake an empirical study to analyze and compare factors influencing the behavior of forwarders and non-forwarders of viral messages, examining the effect of brand-attitude, brand-experience and self-congruity on recipients’ forwarding behavior on the basis of a real viral-marketingcampaign on Facebook about Tiger Balm. Generally, the paper provides evidence that there are significant differences between people who pass-on a viral message and those who don’t. Accordingly, it is vitally important to select adequate consumers who should be first recipients of a viral marketing message.

Keywords

(electronic) Word-of-Mouth Communication Social Media Viral Marketing

License

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.