Viral marketing

Abstract

Brands are constantly getting on the viral trend bandwagon on various traditional and social media to impact consumer behaviors. This would include but not be limited to moment marketing, meme marketing, viral YouTube celebrities, micro-influencers, and the use of low attention span content platforms like Instagram, Reels. Viral marketing is getting a lot of popularity in the internet world because of the multiplier effect on reach at a considerably low cost. A nudge given at the right moment of time engages the potential consumers and even the non-consumers. The people engaged do the rest of the significant part of the work for the brand to boost traffic and digital presence. It also has the potential of a great reach and helps in building the brand due to personal involvement. However, it is complicated to predict what goes viral and what does not. Brands are becoming increasingly active in terms of their presence and relevance on social media. However, the increasing activity might lead to higher cognitive load in the mind of prospect consumers. Therefore, it is important to realize the importance of what kind of marketing communication content would produce the highest social media engagement and also drive purchase intent. Given all these dynamics, understanding what works best for particular brand categories will help the brands to market itself successfully. Through this research, we are trying to understand the social media behaviour of a group of respondents towards marketing content posted by brands. Their response to stimuli in the form of different genre of content would be helpful to gauge the influence of content on them. This study is also important as the latent preferences of the respondents might considerably differ with their actual response to the content they are subject to.