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The term `Viral Marketing', was coined by venture capitalist, Steve Jurvetson
of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) in their Netscape newsletter published in
1997, to describe Hotmail's practice of appending advertisements to outgoing
e-mails from their users. An extension
of the traditional WOM marketing, viral marketing, gets its name from the
word `virus'—which denotes `infectious spread'. It is the act of spreading
WOM information about a brand online. It is the most time and
cost-efficient mode of communication for a
marketer.
According to Wilson (2005), editor of Web Marketing Today, "Viral marketing
describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to
others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure
and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication
to explode the message to thousands, to
millions".
Survey methodology was used and two separate
surveys were carried out in the city of Bangalore. The objective of the
first survey, the sample size of which was 50, was to ascertain the general
awareness about viral marketing among the
potential users, their behavior patterns and willingness to using a retail
chain's viral marketing portal. The second survey
was carried out among 82 respondents to find out the important attributes that the
users would expect from a retail chain's viral marketing portal and incentives they
look for before registering themselves. Both the samples were chosen on a
judgmental basis from students, unemployed and employed youth in the age group of
18-25 years based at Bangalore. The information collected from the first
group of respondents was tabulated based on their awareness, preferences
and willingness to be connectors in the viral marketing channel and presented as
several easy-to-read pie-charts. The data
collected from the second group of respondents, which was larger in number, was
subjected to factor analysis to identify the major factors which have a bearing on
their decision whether to register with the
portals of retail chains or not. Factor analysis
was chosen in preference to other statistical tools as it was necessary to examine
the whole array of interdependent relationships among the variables and identify
few underlying factors that have a significant bearing on the
preferences and choices of the respondents. Adequacy of the sample
and appropriateness of data for factor analysis was validated by subjecting the data
to Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test of sampling adequacy and Bartlett's test of sphericity.
The findings of the factor analysis and their implications for marketers have
been reported in an action-oriented manner, from the perspective of leading retail chains
in India, who could be major beneficiaries of this study. Areas for future research also
have been suggested, considering the currency and relevance of this topic for the Indian
retail sector. |
