What Kind of People Have Been Influenced by Virus Marketing (Term Paper Sample)

What kind of people have been influenced by virus marketing
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What kind of people have been influenced by virus marketing
Research Background
Marketing is dynamic, and it embraces different ways of winning customers to buy a given product or service. There are ways that are offline and others that are online. Online in this case meaning that they are ways that embrace the internet. The concept of using the internet for the marketers is not any new, it has been there for years, but, viral marketing is. Viral marketing embraces internet to pass messages to the target group (Achrol & Kotler, 1999). The word viral, from a virus is not a darling of many, even though it is the best term to use in the case of that kind of marketing. Just like Virus, viral marketing has been the tendency of passing on information from one potential customer to the other over the internet with the help of a platform such as the social media. The virus has the mode of replication without being noticed to the extend that they become many, and so is the viral marketing where an organization may decide to use it as a form of marketing.
It is fascinating to want to know more about the topic because of the concept of virus, and how it works in the case of marketing, and that is one of the major influences of choosing the topic of study. It is important to note that, in accordance with the concept, it is impossible for the message to become viral in the case that the initial person to see it does not like it (Arnott & Bridgewater, 2002). When they like it, they send it to other people so that they may have a look at it. That is family, friends, workmates, and other people who are within the platform of sharing. It is equated to word of mouth to mouth in offline.
The study of this given market has been inspired by the excessive practice and attention that it has had from most organizations. It is becoming that, it is like impossible to operate in the market place for an organization without embracing that form of marketing (Barak, et al., 2013). The researcher notices so after widely consulting with the available literature. That makes the researcher to have the desire to study the field more and get questions to a number of questions that formulate the objectives of the research. That way, most of the questions would be answered and formidable results on the topic would be released.
1.2 Research Aim and Questions
Research aim refers to the purpose for which the research is being conducted by the researcher. The important aim of them all is to give an answer to the question raised by the topic, “What kind of people have been influenced by virus marketing.” However, in order to answer the topic satisfactorily, it is of the essence that, the topic be broken down into questions that are the objectives for which the research is being carried out (Rajendar, 2008). They are as follows:
To determine what is viral marketing
To determine what medium, viral marketing uses
To determine the techniques used in viral marketing
To determine the principles of viral marketing
To determine the elements of viral marketing
To determine the importance of viral marketing
To determine the those who have been influenced by viral marketing
Research Focus and Scope
The research is specific to viral marketing as the previous sections of introduction elaborate. For purposes of the research data will be collected to a specific group or target group in order to ascertain the information available from the literature review is true (Wayne & Stuart, 2007).
Research Methodology
Research methodology, is the section which contains the research design of the project. The project will be quantitative to ensure that the results are easy to analyze with the help of IBM SPSS. That way, the statistics will be calculateable with any difficulties (Bhattacharyya, 2006). The research will embrace questionnaires which will be distributed to customers of any company to seek if they were influenced to buy from it because of viral marketing. What aspects do they have which made them to be influenced, if at all, it is the cause of what happened to them (Kothari, 2000). The questionnaires will also target employees of giving companies that use viral marketing to get their opinion, if for real it works for the company. A total of 100 people will fill in the questionnaires with the customers accounting for 50 and the employees accounting for the remaining 50.
The collection of data will be cross sectional, which means that it will only occur once within a given target group (Khan, 2008). The data which will be used in this project is both secondary and primary. The secondary will be meant to be gotten from the literature review and the primary will be meant to be gotten directly from the customers and employees.
Structure of the Study
The research is divided into several sections in order to meet the general guideline of a dissertation. The first section is the introduction which gives the general overview of the project, what lead to its inception and what are the objectives of carrying it out. The second chapter is the literature review, which has then content of study. The content is about viral marketing, and it will be tested to be true from the data which will be collected and analyzed at a chapter in this dissertation. Third chapter is about research methodology which refers to the method which has been used to come to collect data. It also elaborates how the data will be analysed so as to be understood by the users of the information. The fourth chapter is that of findings and data analysis. It happens after data has been collected from either secondary or primary source and then the graphs are the numbers are analyzed to make sense out of the topic. The last chapter is discussion and conclusions. It is the chapter that seeks to explain if there is relevance between the literature review and the analyzed data. Finally, it concludes the findings of the research. The following section is a literature review and it will give intensive information on the subject matter from existing literature.
Chapter 2 Literature Review
Introduction and Definitions
The term Viral marketing was introduced in 1996 by Jeffrey Rayport.that insinuates that it has been used in literature for analyzing market close to 15 years (Brown, et al., 2010). The initial definition as given from a peer reviewed journal indicates that viral marketing, is a word of mouth that is passed electronically via a social media platform and it has a message that befits what the company does, or what products it sales. The message is known to keep reaching many people through the platform on an exponential basis. Those who gave the definition, however, have conditionalities set; they are the ones that determine the intensity of the viral marketing depending on how well they are fulfilled. They indicate the conditionalities to be; right message to right messages at the right environment. In addition, they give four different groups of social media marketing campaigns. They include; nightmare, strokes-of-luck, home made issues, and triumphs.
Another academician points out that, viral marketing is the work that is done by the customers influencing others to buy of a particular product. It is quantified to be word of mouth from one customer to another which is necessitated by the relationship ties that they have among themselves. Most organizations are becoming fond of the marketing strategy as compared to the traditional because it is cost saving. This is where, the customers have more trust of the recommendation they get from friends and family members who have previously purchased the service or product for that particular case (Buttle, 1998). As the definitions indicate, it's all about creating a network of customers based on the current customers. However, this does not take place blindly, there are some factors that have to come into play. That is what is discussed in subtopics as shows below before giving a highlight as to who the viral marketing effects.
Essentials/Principles of viral marketing
Measurement is of great importance because it helps determine performance.It is equally important in marketing because it helps determine the efforts of viral marketing campaigns. To be able to measure the extent of viral marketing it is thus important to set targets (Chitturi, et al., 2008). Effective viral marketing has been attributed to six characteristics as will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
Firstly, it is to note that it gives products or services for free. Experts have it that, cheap may work out to attract the interest of many, although, free will attract the eyeballs of many (Christian, et al., 2014). That way, free helps accomplish the goal of making most to come across desirable products that are purchased by others. It may not be possible to benefit out of the free services at first, but, when a ground has been defined, it becomes easy to achieve desirable profits in the long run. Secondly, is that it provides effortless transfer of information from one person to another. The characteristic is explained that, in order for the information to flow seamlessly from one customer to another potential, it has to be made simple so that conveying it may be the most simplest.
Thirdly, it should be easily scalable from small to large. That implies that, the medium that is used should be having the ability to expand with time. In the case that it is not able to withstand the replication of viral message then nothing can be achieved. Thus, the marketers should check that the platform that is used has the ability of expanding from small to scalable (Eckler, et al., 2011). Fourthly, is tha...