To share or not to share: the role of content and emotion in viral marketing

Elsamari Botha; Mignon Reyneke

doi:10.1002/pa.1471

journal article May 01, 2013

To share or not to share: the role of content and emotion in viral marketing

Elsamari Botha Mignon Reyneke

Journal of Public Affairs Vol. 13 No. 2 pp. 160-171 · Wiley

View at Publisher Save 10.1002/pa.1471

Abstract

One of the most recent influential trends in the global environment has been the rise of social media. Stakeholders have found a strong voice in social media, and messages are spread among social media users at an astounding speed across a global landscape. As a result of this phenomenon and in an effort to use this viral spread of messages across social media, companies are increasingly making use of viral marketing. Viral messages are playing an increasingly important role in influencing and shifting public opinion on corporate reputations, brands, and products as well as political parties and public personalities to name but a few.Very little is known about the motivations, attitudes, and behavior of the people who forward viral messages to their online networks. Through in‐depth interviews with college‐going Generation Y consumers, we explore this relationship between viral media and emotions. We look at two very specific components of online videos that have gone viral: first, the relevance of the video's content and, second, participants' emotional reaction to these videos to try and better explain the viral spread of online video messages. The paper concludes by proposing a decision tree that interusers might subconsciously experience when deciding whether to share a video with their friends or not. The article concludes with a discussion about future research avenues in the area of emotions and viral marketing. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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References

Details

Published: May 01, 2013
Vol/Issue: 13(2)
Pages: 160-171
License: View

Authors

E

Elsamari Botha

Division for Industrial Marketing INDEK KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm Sweden

M

Mignon Reyneke

School of Management Studies University of Cape Town Cape Town South Africa

Cite This Article

Elsamari Botha, Mignon Reyneke (2013). To share or not to share: the role of content and emotion in viral marketing. Journal of Public Affairs, 13(2), 160-171. https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.1471

To share or not to share: the role of content and emotion in viral marketing

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