Viral Marketing

Viral Marketing 1.1 Viral Marketing These years, the competitions among companies become more and more furious. Song(2004)pointed out that many companies in order to survive even to develop, they try to make good use any way that can help them to enlarge their market share and build a strong brand. The traditional Medias such as television, newspaper, radio and printed Ads were over used in the last decade. This view was supported by Mogg (2006) who believed that using these traditional ways to promote a product or service not longer can stimulate audiences’ passion and urge effectively. Because in some extent, audiences were get used to receive information of these ways, they need something new, need a new “flavor” of the information they receive (Sally, 2006). The era that customers rely on marketers’ suggestions or advertising to make a purchase decision was gone. Czinkota (2007) argued that only supply the information that you think customers would need is not working, not enough to persuade customers, and can not fulfill their needs and satisfy them. Customers already become smart enough; they do not like to be persuaded by marketers or advertisings in many situations. They prefer to be active in the buying process and use their own knowledge and standards to decide what they need, and what they happy to buy (Grewal, 2008). A strong brand can make customers have faith in a company and its products. This view seems acceptable for Fill (2005) who agreed that building close relationship with customers is vital; companies try their best to pursue the best marketing strategies with the purpose to be strong and profitable. Word of mouth is one of the effective ways for a company to promote its products (Anderson, 1999). Word-of-Mouth (WOM) was described as oral, person-to-person communication between a receiver and a communicator which the receiver perceives as a noncommercial message, regarding a brand, product or service (Haywood, 1989, pp53-66). It can help a company use less money to do the mass promotion. This view was supported by Buttle(1998), he believed that customers are easier to be persuaded through this way as they think it is a noncommercial way. They consider that they are on the active position to receive information and make a buying decision, not be persuaded to do that. With the evolution of technology, and the growth of the internet, the arena of many companies have move from realistic world to a new world—the internet (Castells, 1997). Word of mouth has upgrade through internet, and gets a new name “viral marketing” these years (Modzelewski, 2000). Base on Dicher’s (2001, pp47) research, “viral marketing is a strategy that companies use to stimulate their customer to pass on something about their products to their network of colleagues and friends”. For the company, viral marketing can help a company use a little budget to promote itself sharply, since the information you send out, customers would pass them on by themselves. In the customers’ side, viral marketing help customers feel better as they think that they make the purchase decision by themselves, and they get information from their friends who seem more reliable than marketers or advertisings. (Wangenheim, 2007, pp131-146) Base on the advantages of internet, using viral marketing relate to internet can make the promotion effect like a nuclear bomb. Internet can make the information deliver very fast, even exceed your expectation. Sudaraman and Rajagopalan(2003) found that since you use viral marketing to send out your information, it may reach every corner of world that has internet connections only need a few days. Internet seems something bring information deliver from the “Stone Age” to “21st century”, it acting like a pair of wings of information delivery, make information deliver reach to an incredible speed. Considering the effective of viral marketing strategy, this report decides to examine the effects of viral marketing that can make to a company. The author is very interested in the effects of viral marketing, as it is a trend for future business; it is so useful to company’s promotion and information delivery. To know clear about the viral marketing can help author to enrich his marketing knowledge, and will be very helpful in his future job or business, even can help readers of this report to know more about viral marketing. In order to make the research more reliable and get accurate analysis, this report would choose MySpace, an online company which seems to be success on using viral marketing strategy to assist the analysis. 1.2 MySpace Tom Anderson (born November 8, 1970) is the President of the social networking website, MySpace. He is one of the people identified as a founder of the site, along with CEO Chris DeWolfe (Boyd, 2006). At the beginning, it was a website with a small number of users, which used to make friends. Then they invite some famous people to join in, these famous people bring many fans in. since more and more bands build up their website on this station, MySpace becoming bigger and get huge number of users. It develop from a music wed station to a core of young people’s live in America, then explore all over the world(Diving into the Myspace Pool, 2006). It chooses to give users enough freedom to build what they like in this wed station, and this freedom and right make it explore so quickly. People can use their email address to sign up as the user of it. (Source from Dwyer, 2007) Every user can upload the things they like, such as video and sound clips, pictures and many other things. MySpace listen to their users and improve the wed station, like increase blogs, message board, discuss rooms, and online communications. Users can talk to their friends there, play games together, even use wed camera to meet each other when they talking.(source from Boyd, 2006) This wed station can make users feel so free in it; they can talk what they like with their friends here. So users invite their friends to join in MySpace (Diving into the MySpace Pool, 2006). In such a way, MySpace reach to a great success. Until 2006, MySpace only set up three years, but its development speed was faster than any wed station in history, it is a myth of the internet development history. It already beyond Yahoo and Google to be the biggest wed station in USA. It was set up with a very small cost, but in 2005, Rupert Murdoch, the CEO of The News Corporation Limited, use 580 million dollar to buy it. One year after it was purchased, it earn 900 million dollar from Google for advertising fee. (Source from Hempel and Lehman, 2005) It seems that MySpace really a success example to make good use of viral marketing strategy, that why this report choose UK MySpace as the case study to assist the research and analysis. 1.3 Research Objectives a. Examine the effects that viral marketing can make to a company, associate with case study-----UK MySpace b. Access to customers attitude and reactions to viral marketing through primary and secondary data analysis c. Find out the effects of viral marketing for a company’s success at last. Chapter 2 Literature Review 2.1 The Background and Development of Viral Marketing Marketing is a social process which satisfies consumers' needs. The term includes advertising, distribution and selling of a product or service. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers' future needs and expectations, often through market research (Frenzen and Nakamoto, 1993). This view was supported by Eugene (1998) who believed that marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational objectives. Pamela (2000) pointed out that traditional marketing is the marketing techniques that are used for many years, it mainly using mediums such as, television, newspaper, telephone and radio. Nowadays, there are many new technologies are used to replace the traditional mediums to do promotions: Internet, multimedia mobile phone, blogs and so on. These new mediums can help marketers to reach more customers and cut cost. This view was supported by Wegert (2004) who believed that the traditional mediums do not work effective as before, they make many audiences feel boring and many offers what they dislike. Customers want to see something new and soothing, really make them interesting and happy, so the new mediums may work effective and can catch their eyeballs (Anderson, 1998, pp104-141). These years, more and more people like to surfing on internet (Wangenheim, 2007). This situation leads to many marketers focus on internet to promote their products and services. Especially, young people prefer using internet to traditional mediums. For a company’s future development, holding the young people now can make them get a big market share in the future (Bayus, 1985). So to make good use of the internet to do promotion is vital for many companies, especially the company which rely on internet to do business. There are many advantages to use internet as an advertising medium: message can change quickly and easily; create own page cheaply; low cost; direct sales possible and so on (McWilliams, 2000). Base on its advantages, more and more companies choose to use internet to do advertisings. Several main online promotion techniques are recognized by marketing researchers, viral marketing will be the focus of this research as it can reach mass consumers in a short time with a low cost. 2.2 From WOM to Viral Marketing During the last decade, customer satisfaction and perceived service quality have been important topics in the marketing literature. This is due to the empirically verified belief that increases in satisfaction and quality will finally result in higher profitability (Wangenheim, 2007). Over the past 10 years however the focus of research on satisfaction and quality has slowly shifted from understanding how “service quality perceptions and satisfaction judgments” are formed to a more “outcome-oriented view” of assessing the returns on service quality and satisfaction based on a thorough understanding of the associated costs and benefits (Buttle, 1998, pp76-89). A strategy called “viral marketing” was used by many companies to pursue the profit. Before the “viral marketing” appears, a marketing strategy called “word of mouth” was used in that way. Haywood (1989) believed that Word-of-Mouth (WOM) refers to oral, person-to-person communication between a receiver and a communicator which the receiver perceives as a noncommercial message, regarding a brand, product or service. Even though WOM strategy can bring huge benefits to a company, the development of technology usage has upgraded the word of mouth strategy to a new one call “viral marketing” (Richins, 1999). These years, stationary Internet consumers’ communication environment has been changed and enriched. As a result WOM has gained new significance and WOM on the stationary Internet was termed “viral marketing”. This view was supported by Godes and Mayzlin (2004), that Viral or word-of-mouth marketing has become very popular because it has a new medium—the Internet. According to one venture capital firm, 76 percent of new business plans have the words "viral marketing" in them (File, Cermak and Prince, 2000). Using e-mail makes it incredibly easy to pass information on to a friend or colleague, especially if it involves something fun or free. With millions using the Internet all over the world, the potential for exponential growth is quite huge. 2.3 What is Viral Marketing Since the term viral marketing was introduced in 1997, many disagreements exist about its definition. Subramani and Rajagopalan (2003) view it as word-of-mouth advertising in which consumers tell other consumers about the product or service. Yang and Allenby (2003) argued that true viral marketing differs from word-of-mouth in that the value of the virus to the original consumer is directly related to the number of other users it attracts. Shirky (2000) suggests that, in generally, viral marketing would be word-of-mouth advertising to most people. More importantly, however, he adds that the concept describes viral marketing as a way of getting new customers by encouraging honest communication among consumers. The originator of each branch of the virus has a unique and vested interest in recruiting people to the network. (Modzelewski, 2000, p.30). According to Senecal and Acques (2004) suggestion, purchasing is part of a social process, it involves a one-to-one interaction between the company and the customer and many exchanges of information and influence among the people who surround the customers. They also suggest that many effective networks comprise hubs, clusters, and connections among clusters. In these networks, people will notice a constant flow of green sparks between certain nodes. Wilson (2000) said that viral marketing is sort of this explosion that you start with one customer and he/she will tell people and pass it on continuously. In Dichter’s (2001, p47) opinion, “viral marketing is the idea that you incite your customers or referral sources to pass on something about your business to their network of colleagues and friends”. There is a similar saying that viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages customers to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence (Hogon, Lemon and Libai, 2004). Nalor (2002) claimed that viral marketing is a marketing tactic relying on some aspects of the system to promote itself as initial targets pass the promotion on to others. Depend mostly on Hogon, Lemon and Libai’s perspectives, the current article views viral marketing as the process of encouraging honest communication among consumer networks, and it focuses on email as the main channel. One example of viral marketing is encouraging current and potential customers to tell others about a company's products and services, and then encouraging those others to tell even more consumers, make the information go forward continuously (Subramani and Rajagopalan, 2003 ). These strategies like viruses, can take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands even to millions customers in a short time. “The term viral marketing is also used to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—the use of varied kinds of astroturfing both online and offline to create the impression of spontaneous word of mouth enthusiasm”(Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh and Gremler,2004, pp 95). Out of the internet, viral marketing has been described as “word of mouth”, “creating a buzz”, “leveraging the media”, “network marketing”. However, on the internet, whatever, it was called “viral marketing” (Helm, 2000, pp 57-71). Datta, Chowdhury and Chakraborty (2005) used the term as “network-enhanced word of mouth” to describe the then high innovative marketing strategy of the free email service Hotmail. For other words, such terms as propagation, aggregation or organic marketing are used. Successful viral marketing is characterized as “strategies that allow an easier, accelerated, and cost reduced transmission of messages by creating environments for a self-replicating, exponentially increasing diffusion, spiritualization, and impact of the message”. (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2001) 2.4. Forms and Categories of Viral Marketing 2.4.1 Forms There are many forms of viral marketing; these include images, jokes, reality TV show transcripts, digital video clips, e-cards, interactive microsites, advergames, and alternative reality games (Modzelewski, 2000). The list is continuously growing as the development of viral marketing. 2.4.2 Categories There are several ways to categorize viral marketing. First, difference between “intentional and unintentional message” delivery and used a “motivational classification”. Secondary, difference is between “service-based and incentive-based”. In the first situation, viral effect was decided by the quality of offer, another one means that company uses monetary incentive to stimulate customers so that they would pass on an advertiser’s message. Base on the differences between private and public recommendation, the categorization between “high (active) and low (passive) integration strategies are varying in the degree of requiring the consumer’s activity in passing on the ‘virus’ ”. (Source from Goldenberg, Libai and Muller, 2001, pp 209-257) 2.5 Viral Marketing in B2B Beside the explanation of viral marketing base on B2C, many authors get another similar definition for it on B2B side. In B2B, viral marketing means the rapid spread of a message about a new product or service, in a similar way to the spread of a virus (Yang and Allenby, 2003). Viral marketing can be word of mouth; however, it is particularly common being use on the Internet, where messages can be spread easily and quickly to reach people all over the world. Products can become very famous in this way with very little advertising cost. Carrabis (2006) has proved that viral marketing rely on social networks in order to function. Linking is also an effective viral marketing tool, as is the provision of free products or services. The Hotmail free e-mail service, for example, grew quickly with little marketing investment (Tafe, 2007). In B2B area, viral marketing works well in the following circumstances: (a) when a product is genuinely new and different, and it is something that opinion leaders want to associate with;(b) when the benefits of the product are real; (c) when the product is relevant to a large number of people, and the benefits are easy to communicate (Bansal and Voyer, 2000, p26-63). 2.6 Why Viral Marketing These years, online social networks are increasingly being considered as an important source of information to affect the adoption and use of products and services (Mac, 2006). Viral marketing as the tactic of creating a process where interested people can market to each other, is therefore emerging as an important marketing strategy to spread-the-word and stimulate the trial, adoption, and use of products and services. (Herr, Kardes and Kim, 1999) What is new about viral marketing is not word of mouth, but the way people are spreading it (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2004). Web users have the ears and eyes of hundreds, even thousands of people. They are in contact with an International crowd they would never have met otherwise. Most significantly, they can reach people they do not really know. That is why several weeks after a people sent the first Hotmail message into India; thousands of Indian users had Hotmail accounts (Kuruvilla, 2007). It is believed that a satisfied customer tells an average of three people about a product or service he likes, and nine people about a product or service which he dislikes (Sudaraman, Mitra and Webster, 1999). Viral marketing is based on this natural human behavior to conduct its campaigns. Domingos (2006) believed that the purpose of marketers interested in making a successful viral marketing campaign is to identify customers who with high social networking potentials, and then created viral messages that can attract this segment of the customers and have a high likely to keep the message spreading. Viral marketing has received extensive attention from both academics and practitioners these years (Jurvetson, 2000). Base on the analysis before, many authors form their standpoints about the effect that viral marketing strategy can bring to a company. They argue with other authors’ opinions base on their own standpoints. 2.6.1 Positive Effects of Viral Marketing Viral marketing facilitates spreading commercial information and content within the desired target group (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2001)). Another advantage of it is that advertisers can expand the promotion reach significantly at a very low company expense (Baker, 2005). According a survey of Duhan, Johnson, Wilcox and Harrell (1997), 35% of the 3000 respondents said a friend’s recommendation would convince them to visit a website they do not know before. These results illustrated the huge potential of viral marketing for communication and distribution purposes. What is great about viral marketing is that it is low cost and works virtually by itself. Once you make an offer and provide the facility, for referrals, viral marketing spreads by itself very faster, just like a virus (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2004). Just like Tafe (2007) said that, Hotmail only cost 18 months to get 12 million users by using viral marketing that let users to referral users, it cost nothing to do Ads, only use free email account. Viral marketing has been studied both as an input into consumer decision-making, and as an outcome of the purchase process (Holmes and Lett, 1997). In the pre-purchase stage, as a risk reducing strategy, consumers seek product information by participating in the viral marketing process. Positive and negative messages are examples of exit behaviors exhibited by consumers at the conclusion of a service encounter ((Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2004) or usage of a product (Naylor and Kleiser, 2000). Anderson (1998) pointed out that viral marketing could “influence consumers’ choices and purchase decisions, and shape consumers’ expectations, pre-usage attitudes, even post-usage perceptions of a product or service”. It is believed that the influence of viral marketing is much greater than that of classic advertising media (Gremler, Gwinner and Brown, 2001).BMW is a good example, it supply 5 video clips to watch and download for free, and then get over 11 million visitor in 4 months. The sales of BMW car are increase 12.5% in the next year (Hespos, 2002). It seems that video clips and internet can make viral marketing working effectively. Viral marketing has been referred to as product-related conversation, personal recommendations, informal communication, and interpersonal communication (Jacob, Barak and Muller, 2001). There are one big distinction between viral marketing activities and commercial mass communication. As viral marketing is a consumer-dominated channel of information, the communicator is thought to be independent of the marketer (Lau and NG, 2001). As a result, it is recognized by customers as a more reliable, credible, and trustworthy source of information. It provides information concerning product performance and the social and psychological consequences of a purchase decision (Naylor and Kleiser, 2000). For example, Myspace use viral marketing to make the users to referral itself and make a big success (Dwyer, 2007). Viral marketing can convert lower order cognition and affect to higher order cognition and affect, which in turn can lead to committed behaviors of receivers (Baker, 2005). The credibility of viral marketing, coupled with the probability that a receiver will be more highly involved in a viral marketing message than an advertisement, lends itself to the formation of such higher order beliefs and cognition. Through multiple dyads and retransmission, one message can reach and potentially influence many receivers (Henning-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh and Gremler, 2004). Make good use of the customers’ internet social networks, like using free email referrals and internet chat rooms, the information can spread sharply (Domingos, 2006). The effectiveness of viral marketing can also be explained by the accessibility-diagnosticity model (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2004). Some findings suggest that vividly (face-to-face) presented information is more memorable to customers and is weighed more heavily in their judgments (Henning-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh and Gremler, 2004).such as Myspace, it use the chat rooms that users can talk to each other, even face-to-face through PC camera, and then its information become more reliable and memorable for users (Boyd, 2006). Because of internet, information accessibility increases, it is high likely that this information is used by customers as an input for their judgments and choices also increases (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2004). 2.6.2 Negative Effects of Viral Marketing For all its advantages, viral marketing also has many unexpected pitfalls. Most important, companies have almost no control over the viral spread since it was send out, and therefore they can do little if the viral turns to against them and their products (Jurvetson, 2000). “The action most frequently reported by consumers who are dissatisfied with a purchase or who have rejected or discontinued using a product is telling friends about the experience and urging them to avoid it” (Weinberger and Lepkowska-White, 2000 ). Many researchers have suggested that negative information tends to cause many attention to and weighting of that information (Bristor, 1990). For example, Naylor and Kleiser (2000) found that negative messages destroy the image of a brand are more than twice as strongly as positive WOM promoted sales of that product. Negative message has also led to the failure of many companies’ promotion. Wilson (2000) argues that negative messages would be communicated to more people than positive messages. According to much previous evidence about the spread of marketing information, it is suggested that a negative message may travel farther than a positive message through retransmission. In previous research; the influencer was often considering to be an opinion leader. However, a dissatisfied customer who initiates negative message need not be an opinion leader, and yet his opinions can have adverse effects on the marketer (Richins, 1999). For example, Sony try to use Youtube to promote its Playstation consoles, it created an imaginary character called Peter and tried to make the character as a hip -hop shark. However, some clever users soon discovered the wile, and tell many others. Many people then angary with what SONY done, and refuse to buy the playstation consoles. In the end, Sony had to make a public apology to delighted and hold the customers. (Source from Kuruvilla, 2007) 2.6.3 Viral Marketing Effects in B2B For business-to-business companies, it makes sense to begin with a product or service offer that has real, free value to prospects. Examples: an e-mailed newsletter that can easily be forwarded to colleagues, or a product that comes with an incentive, such as gift certificates or coupons, sent via e-mail, which can be passed along to more than one person. Viral marketing can work effective for B2B providers, since the following is true. One very significant effort of viral marketing is to allow others to post articles that you have authored on their Web sites (Lau and NG, 2001). Another way to encourage visitors to spread the word about your product or service is to provide a link or button on each Web page that they can click on to forward your wed site (Goldenberg, Libai and Muller, 2001). While some people may use "viral marketing" only as buzzwords, there is another significance for B2B marketers. Companies can encourage satisfied customers and referral sources in a credible way and persuade them to spread the positive words for their products. Keep the reward combined with your business and appropriate for the size and type of referral. Ensure that your offer adds value or reward for the referrer and for those people that are referred to you, and then you will have a cost-effective marketing tool to grow your business (Herr, Kardes and Kim, 1999). 2.6.4 Factors Motivating Viral Marketing According to Chen, Iyer and Padmanabhan (2002), viral marketing involves two parties: the communicator and the receiver. Viral marketing will only start when the communicator is motivated to speak and the receiver is motivated to listen. Therefore, in order to understand how the process works, it is very important that understand the inherent motives. In the case of the receiver, motivation to listen may be affected by: (a) source reliability (Blodgett, Granbois and Walters, 1998); (b) interpersonal ties between the sender and receiver (Goldenberg, Libai and Muller, 2001); (c)product and purchasing situation characteristics such as high perceived risk (Bristor, 1990), newness, .and intangibility associated with services (Weinberger and Lepkowska-White, 2000); and (d) situational factors such as conditions where product information may be hard or impossible to get from the marketer, or where there is a shortage of time. In the case of the communicator, motivation to speak may be influenced by: (a) the personality of the communicator, for example, self-confidence (Bristor, 1990) and sociability (Richins, 1999); (b) the attitudes of the communicator, for example, a desire to help others (Lau and NG, 2001) and attitude towards complaining (Singh, 1990); (c) involvement with the product and with the purchase decision (Henning-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh and Gremler, 2004); and (d) situational factors like “proximity of others during dissatisfaction” (Lau and NG, 2001). Viral marketing has quickly been recognized by many companies because of many successful examples: Marketers proved that a little budget they could motivate millions customers. They did so by encourage customer-to-customer communication to increase sales, brand awareness, and market share. Seth Godi uploads his ebook on the internet and the people can download for free and has the right to send to their friends. If they like, they can buy a print copy. Only three months, nearly one million people download the e-book. (Source from Tafe, 2007) Receivers getting a marketing message from familiar communicators participate more frequently in a campaign as initial contacts. Because the personal message which come from friends or people you know would be more credible than that coming directly from the self-interest advertiser (Goldenberg, Libai and Muller, 2001). Taking advantage of the inherent nature of internet as communication vehicles viral marketing enables consumers to share information and content within their social network easier and faster, there are without time and location limitation for internet communications (Naylor and Kleiser, 2000). Money incentive can works very effective when a viral marketing not clever and attractive enough for customers. Give referrers a reward can encourage fast spread of the marketing information. Those people who pass on your information can get something in return can encourage their passion to pass on the information. That something may be a gift or service related to your business or simply the knowledge that they have added value for others. 2.7 Measuring Success and Effective Many authors argue that what is a successful campaign? Can it based on the amount of number of people who positively interact with the campaign’s content or the sales created by the campaign? Although no a single measurement system has build up for viral marketing, measurement tools do exist, allow the markers use to tracking the process and effects of viral marketing. It is hard to know whether audiences care about the contents behind the campaigns, what ensure about the marketers maybe how many people see the campaign (Goldenberg, Libai and Muller, 2001). Shirky (2000) believed that viral marketing not always effective as it also have many disadvantages, and many situations would make it fail. The difference between a successful and unsuccessful viral marketing campaign is the campaign’s ability to connect with audiences and persuade them to pass on the message and ultimately the product or service (Kirby, 2006, p.92). Kirby (2006) recognizes that in order to increase the chances of a successful viral campaign many companies are starting to invest more into the planning and implementation of it. Freedman(2006) also believed that although many authors think that viral marketing can use a little budget to make a huge effect for a small company, the majority of the successful viral campaigns are rely on multimillion-dollar budgets. 2.8 Viral Marketing Launching Base on the positive and negative effects of viral marketing, how to make good use of it has become vital. A company can not make good use of a strategy unless it knows well that how the strategy works. The following area will focus on the operation of viral marketing and what a company should take care of when using it. 2.8.1 Dangers after Launch 1. Control Once viral marketing is released, it can not control by marketers, unlike television or print advertising. There is no guarantee viral marketing work or not when it starts, companies should be prepared to lost control of the message half way down the track (Ellison, 2006, p.32). It is believed that consumers are the controller of the marketing communications as millions of consumers talking about products on internet or via emails (Allard, 2006. p.204). This view was support by Freedman (2006, p. 82) who suggested that the era that marketers control marketing message expand was gone. It also found that the cost of last market coverage is a near total loss of control over the company's marketing message and brand because of eager consumers indiscriminately spam (Naylor and Kleiser, 2000). Viral marketing to be consider as an art by marketers because it does not allow for a high level of control, it need enough freedom and right to do the things by itself. 2. Viral Hijacking Although viral marketing can make good use of consumers to expand a company’s brand and products, there still have many people who are “antibrand” on the internet, and they would catch the possible chances to turn viral marketing campaign against companies (Viral Challenge, 2005). Sandoval (2006) believed that if the campaigns were hijacked, spreading messages would have negative effects to a company’s brand and products. 3. Spam Spam is “unsolicited email usually bulk mailed and untargeted” (Chaffey, Mayer, Johnston and Ellis-Chadwick, 2003). If the spam comes from companies, generally, receivers would delete it before open. Customers do not like to bother and waste time to see these emails. However, if the marketing emails send by friends or people who receivers know, it seems no longer spam. An email come from your friends seems to be reliable. Viral marketing use friends to “spam” friends were considered working base on this reason. This view was supported by Chaffey et al. (2003), they argued that “spam does not mean that e-mail can not be used as a marketing tool”. It seems that when a promotion starts to viral and use friends to spam friends, the emails being seen as spam are very low. 4. Privacy People do not like to receive the emails that without their permission. Some companies buy many email address in order to expand marketing information. People would feel very unhappy that the junk mails keep going into their email box. Thomas (2004) states that these actions violating the receivers’ privacy. No one likes junk mails to offend their privacy. If use friends to friends emails, can avoid this problem. At the beginning of usage, viral marketing should take care of this. 5. Fake Viral Adverts Fake viral adverts are quite similar to viral hijacking. They are creating fake viral adverts when individuals un-associated with the targeted brand. This problem cause by the companies use the fake content, which they had no part in, it has the potential to destroy their brand (Graft, 2006). Sony’s promotion about its playstation is a good example of fake viral adverts. Base on these dangers after viral marketing launch, the viral marketing operation should be very careful. The things that a company need to do and avoid when they using viral marketing will be illustrated in the following parts. 2.8.2 Things should do 1. Supply customers with the right information to serve as your advocate. They cannot just be satisfied, they need to be informed about your value proposition—how you stack up against the competition—so they can tell others about you(Weinberger and Lepkowska-White, 2000). 2. Segment your customers and do small viral campaign tests on a targeted audience to find a scientific basis for what works best. Test your customers to see what they feel compelling; what promotion drives them to click-through or to pass along the message (Lau and NG, 2001). 3. Make good use of contests and promotions, especially in the B2C area. This will give consumers an incentive to pass along information about your Web site or products (Lau and NG, 2001). 4. Make your approach to be systematic. A viral campaign is a marketing strategy that should be integrated into your company's overall approach to marketing, not a one-time thing (Kirby, 2006). 5. Know well about your target audience. Take the time to learn what they like, do not like, and how they communicate (Bansal and Voyer, 2000). Such as the chat rooms of Myspace, it collect the users’ suggestions and supply what they want (Diving into the MySpace Pool, 2006). 6. Set up exit barriers. Collect all your customers’ information and make them easy to buy from you. Make it painful for your customers to leave. Maybe they have developed friends in a chat room on the site, or maybe they have loyalty to products or services (Modzelewski, 2000). For example, Myspace makes the users feel that they are belong to here, their friends also belong here, if they leave, they will no easy to contact with their friends. ( Hempel & Lehman, 2005) 7. Must being a Process Because more and more people get their own e-mail box and allow sending e-mail, viral marketing will become more important and useful. This is because online consumers will, over time, expand their social network and become to rely more on their peers to learn about and recommend new products or services (Goldenberg, Libai and Muller, 2001). Therefore, viral marketing would need to become a process and cycle rather than an episodic. 2.8.3 Things need to Avoid 1. Rely on incentivizing in the long-term. In the B2B area, no company wants to be paying your users to recommend it. Better to build customer loyalty through good value, excellent service, entertainment, or an emotional attachment (Goldenberg, Libai and Muller, 2004). 2. Fail to measure your rates of customer advocacy. Assure that you have some systems in place to measure how often customers are communicating your business' value proposition, focus on your customers and how they interact with other potential customers (Shirky, 2000). 3. Spam. Viral campaigns that offer a prize to whoever sends the most e-mails wind up looking like spam. But friends don't spam friends. People do not like to receive spam; these actions would make them angry (Naylor and Kleiser, 2000). 4. Two Common Mistakes Chen, Iyer and Padmanabhan (2002) suggested that there are two most common mistakes viral marketers like to make: (1) focusing on “formalizing the message” rather than the process” and (2) adopting a “campaign-level”, rather than an “enterprise-level”, perspective”. Formalizing the message can easy to accepted by receivers and expand it fast. While formalizing the process can hold existing customers, make them more rely on their peers to learn about a product, and then the viral marketing can keep going to expand information. A campaign-level perspective would focus on relatively unpredictable qualities, such as the customers’ perception of a service/product, or marketing message as attractive. In contrast, an enterprise-level perspective on viral marketing is informed by quantifiable and then predictable aspects of the sales cycle (Subramani and Rajagopalan, 2003). 2.8.4 Money Incentives Depending on many studies and researches on the impact of viral marketing, it is believed that the viral marketing strategy is hazily defined for most marketers but entails manipulating customer-to-customer interaction with marketing gimmickry in an attempt to achieve an exponentially growing user base (Weinberger and Lepkowska-White, 2000). Many marketers also argued that if consumers do not respond to clever marketing tactics, the cash and prize offerings will provide enough passion for consumers to spread the marketing message. Monetary incentives are considered to be necessary because they offer what seems to be the quickest and most understandable way for marketers to gain that control in the customer-to-customer communication chain (Subramani and Rajagopalan, 2003). However, monetary incentives of viral marketing can be a dangerous solution. Because monetary incentives only lead to predictable increases in market coverage and an equally predictable loss of control, but no the control that company desired. 2.9 Do Viral Marketing and Make It Success 2.9.1 Encourage C2C Advocacy Nowadays, however, marketers have had difficulty reproducing the success of a handful of viral campaigns. Even though most e-businesses are planning to launch, or have already attempted launching the viral marketing campaigns, there are still having obstacles to integrating viral marketing with the overall sales and marketing mix (Kirby, 2006). For example, viral marketing is perceived as an art rather than a science. Marketers have a hard time identifying triggers that motivate customers to pass along marketing messages to friends or colleagues. Most of marketers are planning to launch a viral marketing campaign in order to make the huge profits base on a little budget. In order to do it successfully, they must scientifically identify the elements which encourage customer-to-customer advocacy and segment their customers who are receptive to viral marketing and understand the structure of incentive packages (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2001). All viral marketing purpose is to turn customers into a sales and marketing channel. The purpose of using the customer as a new channel is to generate a fundamental tradeoff between growing market coverage and maintaining control over the marketing message. The marketer who hope to be a winner, hope to hold the success in hand finally, must encourage customers to communicate with each other with the intent of advocating products and services(Subramani and Rajagopalan, 2003). Hempel and Lehman (2005) have done a research about Myspace, they found that Myspace do a good job at C2C Advocacy. It sends emails to users which containing something interesting to them, and builds many blogs and chat rooms that people can communicate freely. Many funny video clips catch more users’ eyeballs and drive them to recommend these to their social network. However, base on Tafe’s (2007) research, even though Burger King built a wedsite where visitors can type commands into a text box, then watch a person in a chicken costume obey these commands, and this funny thing attract 224 million visit in 17 months, but this silly viral campaign hard to translate into actual sales. It seems that encourage C2C Advocacy can make a company like Myspace to be success but no the Burger King, as its viral campaign hard to translate into actual sales. 2.9.2 Initiatives of Viral Marketing Viral marketing initiatives are different depend on the purpose that companies choose to use it. However, in the degree of discipline involved in strategic planning and in the triggers they use to motivate consumers to function as a sales- and lead-generation channel: (a) Disciplined analysis and planning ensures that viral marketing is an iterative science rather than a haphazard creative art; (b) Reliance on triggers that are developed through market research and advanced analytics, rather than reliance on cash incentives, ensures that customers function as advocates rather than as "delegated spammers." (Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh and Gremler, 2004). 2.9.3 Online Marketing Engine Furthermore, the online marketing environment must hardwire viral capabilities into its engine. Web sites must be equipped with tools that allow users who have just read an article or purchased a product to either post their opinions of the experience or forward related information to their network of friends and colleagues (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2004). There are many other tools that can build viral marketing capabilities into an online marketing engine, such as gift registries, gift certificates, community bulletin boards, community chat rooms, and Amazon.com-type affiliate marketing programs (Sudaraman, Mitra and Webster, 1999). Online self-service channels can also be equipped with resources such as product comparison tools to support the customer-as-sales-channel undertaking (Goldenberg, Libai and Muller, 2001). 2.9.4 Six Principles and Six Succeed Rules According to the previous analysis, in order to solve the problems would face when using viral marketing and make a viral campaign success, there are six principles and six success rules of viral marketing need to focus on: 2.9.4.1 Six Principles (Source from Wilson, 2000) 1. Gives away valuable products or services "Free" is the most powerful word in marketers’ dictionary. Most of viral marketing programs are give away valuable products or services to attract customers’ attentions. They choose to use free programs like free e-mail or free software download to catch the customers’ eyeballs. This can generate a groundswell of interest from customers. Catch the eyeballs can bring huge profits in the future. So they choose to give away something now and sell something in other time (Lau and NG, 2001). 2. Provides for effortless transfer to others Public health nurses offer an advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and do not touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit (Weinberger and Lepkowska-White, 2000). In order to be successful, the medium that carries marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. It can be transmitted easily and without degradation. 3. Scales easily from small to very large The transmission method which can spread like wildfire must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2004). So long as companies which use viral marketing strategy have planned ahead of time how they can make the messages pass from one customer to another faster. They must build in scalability to their viral model. 4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors Take advantage of common human motivations is what a smart viral marketing plan wants to be. Desire and greed drives people to pass and get messages. This leading to communicate produces millions of websites and e-mail messages. To be a winner, a company should design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission. 5. Utilizes existing communication networks Most people are social, except the nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students. Social scientists show that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2001). The broader network may consist of hundreds, or thousands of people, depending on his position in society. Network marketers have known well about the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks and the weaker networked relationships. Place messages into existing communications between people, then you rapidly multiply its dispersion (Modzelewski, 2000). 6. Takes advantage of others' resources The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out (Lau and NG, 2001). Such as a news release can be picked up to form the basis of articles seen by thousands of readers. You can relaying your marketing message through make good use of others’ newsprint or wed pages. Other’s resources are depleted rather than yours. 2.9.4.2 Six Succeed Rules of Viral Marketing. (Source from Rayport, 1996/1997) Rule 1: Stealth is the essence of market entry Rule 2: What's up-front is free; payment comes later Rule 3: Let the behaviors of the target community carry the message Rule 4: Look like a host, not a virus Rule 5: Exploit the strength of weak ties Rule 6: Invest to reach the tipping point 2.10 Conclusion In Iyer and Padmanabhan's opinion, the success of viral marketing is tied to three things: the nature of the industry that the company is in, the online tenure of the audience, and the topic. Some industries—entertainment, music, Internet, and software—clearly have a higher propensity for pass-along information, not to mention a target audience that tends to be Web savvy. Without a motivator, viral marketing would be a super sport car without the wheels. Viral marketing must be treated as an unstructured phenomenon. Try to control it, and you will fail. "It's an organic beast," he says. "The more you structure it and try to control it to work, the more it breaks down."(Naylor and Kleiser, 2000) Unless it smacks customers, unless it shocks them, they are not going to pass it on. If you can entertain people, they will do your marketing for you. An online marketing strategy, sales and marketing executives must consider viral marketing as an integral element of their overall strategy. While the potential of viral marketing to efficiently reach out to a broad set of potential users is attracting considerable attention, the value of this approach is also being questioned. The company needs to understand well the contexts in which this strategy works and the characteristics of products and services for which it is most effective and match wit the viral marketing strategy. This is vital because the inappropriate use of viral marketing can be counterproductive by creating unfavorable attitudes towards products or service; even make the company get loss in some situations. Viral marketing is a powerful strategy for both marketers and recipients to benefit from the helpfulness of individuals in social networks. However, success viral marketing strategy depending on the recognition of the strong need for influencers to be viewed as knowledgeable helpers in the social network rather than as agents of the marketer (Hogan, Lemon and Libai, 2004). Firms should do well to reflect on this very carefully in planning their viral marketing efforts. Even though viral marketing can cost a little money to get the huge reward, but it also would cause big problems to a company in some situations. So, it is hard to confirm that viral marketing is good or bad for a company to use. There are many examples on both sides. Done it right is vital, viral marketing is a critical element to many campaigns (Goldenberg, Libai and Muller, 2001). Whatever form you chose, remember to ask the person for the referral, rather than just hoping that they will do it on their own. So if you are attempting a viral marketing campaign, measure the efforts: Set targets for it, and take solid baseline reports before starting. And make sure the campaign is integrated with other marketing efforts. Just like a tiger, it can be tame to be a good actor to entertain people, but it also would kill people in some situation by the nature of animal. The key point is managing viral marketing strategy well and makes it match the situation of your company and products; catch your existing and potential customers’ eyeball and then stimulate their passion to purchase and advocacy your products. Base on the research of this part, it is clearly that viral marketing drive many companies to be success, like Myspace, BMW. But it also has many unsure things need to exam, such as how Burger King’s viral campaign can translate to the actual sale? How to avoid the mistake like Sony’s fake viral campaign? Does Myspace really use the viral campaign successful? only base on the second data is no enough to make the point stand, so the author decide to choose some methods to collect primary data to get more strong evidence to exam the viral marketing’s effects. These methods will list in the next part—chapter 3 methodology. 病毒式营销 1.1病毒式营销 这些年来，企业之间的竞争变得更加更加激烈。宋（2004）指出，许多企业为了生存甚至发展，他们试图好好利用任何方式可以帮助他们扩大自己的市场份额，并建立一个强大的品牌。在过去十年中，传统媒体，如电视，报纸，电台和印刷广告的过度使用。莫格（2006）认为，使用这些传统的方式来宣传产品或服务不再能刺激观众的热情，有效地督促支持这一观点。因为在一定程度上，观众习惯于接受这些方面的信息，他们需要新的东西，需要一个新的“味道”，他们收到的信息（莎莉，2006年）。 客户依靠营销的建议或广告作出购买决定的时代过去了。钦科陶（2007）认为，只有提供的信息，你认为客户需要的是没有工作，没有足够的说服客户，并不能满足他们的需求，并满足他们的。客户已经变得足够聪明，他们不喜欢被说服在很多情况下，营销或宣传广告。他们更喜欢在购买过程中，要积极利用自己的知识和标准，以决定他们需要什么，他们乐意购买（格雷瓦尔，2008）。一个强大的品牌可以使客户有信心在一个公司和它的产品。这种观点似乎是可以接受的，为Fill（2005）同意建立密切与客户的关系是至关重要的;公司尽力追求最好的营销策略的目的是强大而盈利的。 口碑是公司推广其产品（安德森，1999年）的有效途径之一。 Word中的口碑（WOM）被形容为口服，一个接收器和一个接收器感知作为一个非商业性的消息传播者的人对人之间的沟通，关于品牌，产品或服务（海伍德，1989，pp53-66） 。它可以帮助企业用更少的钱做大规模的推广。巴特尔（1998）支持这一观点，他认为，客户是通过这样的方式更容易被说服，因为他们认为这是一个非商业的方式。他们认为，他们都在积极的姿态，接受信息和做出购买决定，而不是被说服，要做到这一点。 随着技术的演进，以及互联网的增长，舞台上的许多公司已经从现实世界中移动到一个新的世界互联网（卡斯特，1997）。口碑通过互联网升级，并得到一个新的名字“病毒式营销”，这些年来（莫泽莱夫斯基，2000年）。 （Dicher 2001年，PP47）研究的基础上，“病毒营销是公司的策略来刺激他们的客户通过他们的同事和朋友的网络对他们的产品的东西”。病毒式营销的公司，可以帮助公司用一个小预算大幅宣传自己，因为你发送的信息，客户将通过他们自己。在客户的身边，病毒式营销，帮助客户，因为他们认为他们做出购买决定自己感觉更好，他们得到的信息从他们的朋友，他们似乎更可靠的比营销或宣传广告。 （旺根海姆，2007年，PP131-146） 网络优势，使用病毒式营销与互联网基础上的促进作用可以使像核炸弹。互联网可以使信息传递速度非常快，甚至超过您的期望。 Sudaraman拉贾戈帕兰（2003）发现，因为你使用病毒式营销来发送你的信息，才可能达到世界的每一个角落，互联网连接，只需要几天。互联网似乎东西带来的信息传递从“石器时代”，“二十一世纪”，它像一对翅膀信息传递，信息传递，达到令人难以置信的速度。 有效的病毒式营销策略的考虑，决定研究病毒式营销的效果，可以使公司本报告。作者是病毒式营销的效果很感兴趣，因为它是一个为未来业务的趋势;公司的推广和信息传递是非常有用的。要知道明确的病毒式营销，可以帮助作者以丰富自己的营销知识，在未来的工作或生意会有很大的帮助，甚至可以帮助这份报告的读者了解更多关于病毒式营销。为了使研究更加可靠，并得到准确的分析，这份报告将选择MySpace上，一个在线公司，这似乎是成功使用病毒式营销策略，以协助分析。 1.2 MySpace的 汤姆·安德森（1970年11月8日出生）是社交网站，MySpace的总统。他是人确定作为网站的创始人之一，随着CEO克里斯·德沃夫（博伊德，2006年）。在开始的时候，它是一个网站，一个小数目的用户，用来交朋友。然后，他们邀请一些著名的人加入进来，这些著名的人带来了很多球迷英寸，因为越来越多的乐队建立这个站上他们的网站，MySpace的越来越大，并获得巨大的用户数量。它从音乐结婚站开发年轻人的生活在美国的核心，然后探索世界各地（潜水到Myspace的游泳池，2006年）。它选择给用户足够的自由来建立他们喜欢什么在此结婚电台，这种自由和权利让它如此迅速地探索。人们可以使用他们的电子邮件地址注册成为它的用户。 （来源从德怀尔，2007） 每个用户都可以上传自己喜欢的事情，比如视频和声音片段，图片和很多其他的事情。 MySpace的听他们的用户和提高结婚电台，想增加博客，留言板，讨论室和在线通讯。用户可以谈他们的朋友，一起玩游戏，甚至可以用结婚的摄像头，以满足对方，当他们谈论。（源博伊德，2006）这三站可以让用户在它觉得如此自由，他们可以谈论他们喜欢什么他们的朋友在这里。因此，用户在MySpace上邀请他们的朋友加入到2006年MySpace的游泳池，跳水。 以这样的方式，MySpace上达到了巨大的成功。直到2006年，MySpace的只设置了三年，但其发展速度快于任何结婚站的历史，它是互联网发展史上的一个神话。它已经超越雅虎和谷歌是在美国最大的结婚站。它成立一个非常小的成本，但在2005年，鲁珀特·默多克，新闻集团的CEO，用580万美元来买它。一年后购买，它从谷歌获得900万美元的广告费。 （Hempel和雷曼来源，2005年） 它似乎，MySpace的真的是一个成功的例子，很好地利用病毒式营销策略，，本报告为什么选择英国MySpace的案例研究，以协助研究和分析。 1.3研究目标 了。检查病毒式营销的效果，可以使一个公司，联营公司与英国MySpace的案例研究----- 二。访问客户的态度和反应，病毒式营销，通过一级和二级数据分析 三。找出最后一个公司的成功的病毒式营销的效果。 第2章文献综述 2.1病毒式营销的背景和发展 营销是一个社会过程，满足消费者的需求。该术语包括产品或服务的广告，分销及销售。委员会还关切地预测客户未来的需求和期望，往往是通过市场的研究（Frenzen和中元，1993）。支持这一观点的尤金（1998）认为，营销是概念规划和执行的过程中，定价，推广及分销思想，商品和服务，以创建满足个人和组织目标的交换。 帕梅拉（2000）指出，传统的营销是营销技巧，使用多年，它主要是利用媒介，如电视，报纸，电话和收音机。如今，有许多新的技术，用来取代传统媒体做促销：互联网，多媒体手机，博客和等。这些新的媒介，可以帮助营销达到更多的客户，降低成本。 支持这一观点Wegert（2004）认为，传统媒体不工作之前，他们让许多观众感到枯燥和许多优惠，他们不喜欢什么。客户希望看到的东西，新的和舒缓，​​真正使它们变得有趣和快乐，所以，新的媒介，可能有效的工作，并能抓住他们的眼球（安德森，1998，pp104-141）。 这些年来，越来越多的人喜欢在互联网上冲浪（旺根海姆，2007年）。这种情况导致许多营销重点在互联网上推广自己的产品和服务。特别是，年轻人更喜欢使用互联网对传统媒体。对于公司未来的发展，现在的年轻人，可以让他们得到一个大的市场份额在未来（Bayus，1985）。因此，要好好利用互联网做推广是至关重要的许多公司，尤其是公司依靠互联网做生意。 使用互联网作为广告媒介有许多优点：消息可以改变快速，轻松地创建自己的页面便宜;成本低;直销可能等（麦克威廉斯，2000）。它的优点的基础上，越来越多的企业选择使用互联网做宣传广告。几个主要的网上推广技术是公认的营销研究者，病毒营销将是本研究的重点，因为它可以在很短的时间内以较低的成本达到大众消费者。 2.2从口碑病毒式营销 在过去的十年中，客户满意度和感知服务质量一直在营销文献的重要课题。这是因为经验证实信念，提高满意度和质量最终会导致更高的盈利能力（旺根海姆，2007年）。然而在过去的10年中满意度和质量研究的重点已经慢慢转向如何从理解“服务质量感知和满意度的判断”形成更多的“成果为导向”的服务质量和满意度的基础上评估的回报透彻理解相关的成本和收益（巴特尔，1998年，PP76-89）。 被称为“病毒式营销”的策略被许多公司所采用，以追求利润。 “病毒式营销”出现之前，以这种方式称为“口碑”的营销策略。海伍德（1989）认为，字的口碑（WOM）是指口服，一个接收器和一个接收器感知作为一个非商业性的消息传播者的人对人之间的沟通，对于品牌，产品或服务。 即使口碑战略可以带来巨大的利益，一个公司，使用技术的发展已经升级到一个新的呼叫“病毒式营销”（Richins，1999）字嘴战略。这些年来，固定互联网消费者的沟通环境已经改变和充实。作为一个结果口碑已经获得了新的意义和固定互联网上的口碑被称为“病毒式营销”。 由戈德斯Mayzlin的（2004）支持这一观点，病毒或字的口碑营销已经变得非常流行，因为它有一种新的媒介 - 互联网。根据一个创投公司，76％的新业务计划的话（文件，Čermak和王子，2000年）“病毒式营销”。使用电子邮件，使得它非常容易将信息传递给朋友或同事，尤其是当它涉及到一些有趣的东西或免费。利用互联网在世界各地数以百万计，指数增长的潜力是相当巨大的。 2.3什么是病毒式营销 由于长期的病毒式营销在1997年推出，存在许多分歧，关于它的定义。 SUBRAMANI拉贾戈帕兰（2003）查看它告诉其他消费者对产品或服务的消费者的口碑广告词。杨和艾伦比（2003）认为，真正的病毒式营销从字口的价值的病毒到原来的消费者有直接关系的其他用户的数量，它吸引不同。舍基（2000）认为，一般来说，病毒式营销，将字的口碑广告对大多数人来说。然而更重要的是，他补充说，这个概念所描述的病毒式营销，为鼓励消费者之间真诚的沟通，获得新客户的一种方式。每一个分支的病毒的鼻祖到网络招聘的人有一个独特的和既得利益。 （莫泽莱夫斯基，2000年，第30页）。 据到Senecal Acques（2004年）的建议，采购是一个社会过程的一部分，它涉及到一公司和客户之间的互动，许多人谁环绕的客户信息和影响力之间的交流。他们还认为，许多有效的网络包括集线器，集群和集群之间的连接。在这些网络中，人们会注意到某些节点之间的绿色火花不断流动的。 威尔逊（2000）表示，病毒营销是这次爆炸您从一个顾客，他/她会告诉人们，并通过连续的排序。迪希特（2001，P47）认为，“病毒式营销的想法，你煽动你的客户或转介来源的同事和朋友到他们的网络传递一些关于您的业务”。有一个类似的说，病毒性营销描述的任何策略，鼓励客户营销信息传递给别人，创建消息的曝光和的影响（Hogon，柠檬和李白，2004年）的指数级增长的潜力。 Nalor（2002）声称，病毒式营销是一种营销策略，依靠某些方面的制度，以促进自身作为初始目标通过推广给别人。 大多依赖，在Hogon，柠檬和李白的观点，当前文章认为，病毒营销的过程中鼓励消费者网络之间真诚的沟通，它侧重于电子邮件的主渠道作用。 病毒式营销的一个例子是鼓励现有的​​和潜在的客户告诉别人公司的产品和服务，然后鼓励那些别人告诉更多的消费者，使信息不断前进（SUBRAMANI拉贾戈帕兰，2003年）。这些战略像病毒一样，可以利用爆炸的消息，数千甚至数以百万计的客户在很短的时间内快速繁殖。 “病毒式营销的术语也被用来指隐形营销活动使用在线和离线astroturfing自发字口的热情”（图劳的Hennig，格温纳，沃尔什和Gremler，2004年创建的印象多样， 95页）。在互联网上，病毒营销已描述为“口口相传”，“创造一个时髦”，“利用媒体”，“网络营销”。然而，在互联网上，无论它被称为“病毒式营销”（头盔，2000年，页57-71）。 达塔·乔杜里和查克拉博蒂（2005）使用的术语“增强网络口碑”来形容当时的免费电子邮件服务Hotmail的创新营销策略。换句话说，这样的条款被用来作为传播，聚集或有机的营销。成功的病毒式营销“策略允许通过创建一个自我复制，成倍增加的扩散，精神文明，影响的消息”的环境更容易，加速，成本降低的消息传输。 （霍根，柠檬和李白，2001年） 2.4。病毒式营销的形式和分类 2.4.1表格 病毒式营销的形式有很多，其中包括图片，笑话，电视真人秀的成绩单，数字视频剪辑，电子贺卡，互动微型网站，广告游戏，替代现实游戏（莫泽莱夫斯基，2000年）。这份名单是不断增长的病毒式营销的发展。 2.4.2分类 有几种方法进行分类，病毒式营销。首先，“有意和无意的消息”的交付和使用一个“动机分类”之间的差异。高中，区别在于“基于服务和激励”。在第一种情况，病毒的作用决定由要约的质量，另一个是指该公司使用货币刺激顾客的激励，使他们对广告的消息传递。建议私人和公共之间的差异的基础上，“高（主动）和低（被动）整合策略之间的分类是不同需要消费者的活动，通过”病毒“”的程度。 （来源从登堡，李白和穆勒，2001年，第209-257页） 2.5病毒式营销在B2B 旁边说明B2C的病毒式营销的基础上，许多学者得到另一个类似的定义B2B侧。 在B2B，病毒营销是指一个新的产品或服务有关的消息迅速蔓延，以类似的方式传播的病毒（杨和艾伦比，2003年）。病毒性营销的口碑，但是，它是特别常见的是在互联网上使用，其中的消息可以轻松，快速地传播到世界各地达人。产品可以成为非常著名的以这种方式，用很少的广告费用。 Carrabis（2006）已经证明，依靠社交网络上的病毒式营销，以功能。链接也是一种有效的病毒营销工具，是提供免费的产品或服务。 Hotmail的免费电子邮件服务，例如，快速增长与营销投入小（TAFE，2007）。 在B2B领域中，在下列情况下病毒式营销工作：（一）当一个产品是真正的新的和不同的，它是意见领袖要与（b）在产品的优点是真实的（ c）如果该产品相关的大量的人，带来的好处是容易沟通（Bansal和Voyer的类，2000，P26-63）。 2.6为什么病毒式营销 这些年来，在线社交网络越来越多地被视为一个重要的信息来源，影响采纳和使用的产品和服务（MAC，2006年）。病毒式营销作为创建过程中，有兴趣的人可以推销给对方的战术，因此，新兴的传播字的一个重要的营销策略，以刺激试验，采用和使用的产品和服务。 （杜林，K​​ardes和Kim，1999） 什么是新的病毒式营销是不是口口相传，但人们正在将其传播“（霍根，柠檬和李白，2004）。网络用户有数百，甚至数千人的耳朵和眼睛。他们在国际人群的接触，否则他们绝不会满足。最重要的是，他们可以达到人，他们真的不知道。这就是为什么几个星期后，一个人发出的第一Hotmail邮件到印度，成千上万的印度用户有Hotmail帐户（的Kuruvilla，2007年）。 据认为，一个满意的顾客讲述了一个有关产品或服务，他喜欢的人，九人关于产品或服务的平均，这是他的好恶（Sudaraman，米特拉和韦伯斯特，1999年）。病毒式营销是基于这种自然的人类行为进行的活动。 多明戈斯（2006）认为，有兴趣做一个成功的病毒营销活动的营销的目的是要找出谁与高社交网络的潜力，然后创造了病毒信息，可以吸引这部分客户，并有可能保持高的客户消息传播。 病毒性营销学者和从业者已受到广泛关注，从这些年（Jurvetson公司，2000年）。之前分析的基础上，许多作家形成自己的观点，病毒营销策略，可以为公司带来的影响。他们认为与其他作者的意见基础上自己的立场。 2.6.1病毒式营销的积极作用 病毒式营销有利于传播商业信息和内容所需的目标组内（霍根，柠檬和李白，2001））。它的另一个优点是，广告主可以在一个非常低的费用由公司负责（贝克，2005年）显着扩大推广达到。据杜瀚，约翰逊，威尔考克斯和哈勒尔（1997）的调查，在3000名受访者中的35％表示，朋友的推荐下，说服他们访问一个网站之前，他们不知道。这些结果说明了病毒式营销的巨大潜力，沟通及分销的目的。 病毒式营销是伟大的，它成本低，本身几乎。一旦你做出的报价，并提供设备，转介，病毒营销本身传播非常快，就像一个病毒（霍根，柠檬和李白，2004年）。就像TAFE（2007）表示，Hotmail的，只花了18个月获得1200万用户，通过使用病毒式营销，让用户转诊使用者，它的成本做的广告无关，只使用免费电子邮件帐户。 病毒式营销已经研究作为输入进入消费决策，购买过程的结果（福尔摩斯和字母，1997）。在购买前的阶段，作为降低风险的策略，消费者寻求的产品信息病毒式营销过程中通过参与。正面和负面的消息是消费者在服务遭遇的结论（（霍根，柠檬和李白，2004年）或使用一个产品（奈勒和克莱泽，2000）展出的出口行为的例子。 安德森（1998年）指出，病毒式营销“影响消费者选择和购买决策，和形状消费者的期望，使用前态度，甚至后期使用的产品或服务的看法”。据认为，病毒式营销的影响远远大于经典广告媒体（Gremler，格温纳和布朗，2001年）。宝马是一个很好的例子，它提供5个视频短片免费观看和下载，然后克服在4个月内11万人次。宝马车的销售增加12.5％，在明年（Hespos，2002）。它似乎视频剪辑和互联网可以有效地使病毒营销工作。 被称为病毒式营销的产品相关的谈话，个人建议，非正式的沟通和人际沟通（雅各，巴拉克和穆勒，2001年）。病毒式营销活动和商业的大众传播之间有一个很大的区别。病毒营销是一种以消费者为主导的信息渠道，沟通被认为是独立的营销（刘和NG，2001）。因此，它被客户所认可，作为一个更可靠的，可信的，值得信赖的信息来源。它提供的信息，对产品的性能和奈勒和克莱泽购买决定（2000）的社会和心理后果。例如，MySpace的使用病毒式营销，使用户转介本身，并做出了很大的成功（德威尔，2007年）。 病毒式营销可以将低阶认知，并影响到高阶认知和影响，这反过来又可以导致承诺行为接收机，（贝克，2005年）。病毒式营销的信誉，加上一个接收器将更加高度参与一个比一个广告病毒式营销信息的概率，本身的高阶信念和认知的形成。通过多个连杆和重传，一个消息可以达到和潜在的影响，许多接收机（亨宁·图劳，格温纳，沃尔什和Gremler，2004）。善用客户的互联网社交网络，就像使用免费的电子邮件转介和互联网聊天室，信息可以大幅蔓延（多明戈斯，2006年）。 病毒性营销的效果也可以解释的辅助诊断性模型（霍根，柠檬和李白，2004年）。一些研究结果表明，生动地（脸对脸）介绍更令人难忘的是给客户和称重更依赖自己的判断（亨宁·图劳，格温纳，沃尔什和Gremler，2004）。如MySpace，它使用的聊天室通过电脑摄像头，用户可以到对方，甚至面临到面对面交谈，那么它的信息变得更加可靠和令人难忘的用户（博伊德，2006年）。由于互联网，信息的无障碍设施的增加，它是高可能使用此信息由客户输入自己的判断和选择也随之增加（霍根，柠檬和李白，2004年）。 2.6.2病毒式营销的负面影响 病毒式营销对于所有的优点，也有许多意想不到的陷阱。最重要的是，公司有病毒的传播几乎没有控制权，因为它被发送出去，因此，他们可以做什么，如果病毒轮流对他们和他们的产品（Jurvetson公司，2000年）。 “通过消费者不满意购买或拒绝或终止使用某产品的报道最频繁的动作告诉朋友的经验，并敦促他们避免它”（Weinberger和白Lepkowska，2000）。许多研究人员认为，负面信息往往引起诸多关注和加权，的信息（Bristor，1990）。例如，奈勒克莱泽（2000）发现，负面信息摧毁一个品牌的形象是积极的口碑促进销售该产品的两倍以上强烈。负面消息也导致了许多公司的推广失败。威尔逊（2000）认为，负面消息比正面讯息传达给更多的人。据有关市场营销信息传播的多以前的证据，建议，负面的消息可能比一个积极的信息通过重发更远。在以前的研究中，影响者经常考虑到的意见领袖。然而，一个不满意的客户谁发起的负面消息不必是一个意见领袖，但他的意见（Richins，1999）营销可以产生不利影响。例如，索尼尝试使用YouTube，以促进其PlayStation游戏机，它创造了一个虚构的人物叫彼得，并试图使字符作为嘻哈鲨鱼。然而，一些聪明的用户很快就发现诡计，并告诉其他许多。然后angary SONY做什么，很多人拒绝购买PlayStation游戏机。最终，索尼不得不做出公开道歉高兴和保持客户。 （来源的Kuruvilla，2007） 2.6.3病毒式营销在B2B的影响 对于企业对企业的公司，它是有道理的，开始的产品或提供的服务，有真实的，自由的价值前景。例如：发送一封电子邮件通讯，可以方便地转发给同事，或产品自带的诱因，如礼品券或优惠券，通过e-mail，可以传递给不止一个人。 病毒性营销可以有效的B2B供应商，因为下面是真实的。病毒式营销是一个非常显着的努力让别人发表在其网站上（刘NG，2001）撰写的文章，您。另一种方式来鼓励游客流传着一句话对你的产品或服务是提供每个网页上的链接或按钮，他们可以按一下转发结婚网站（登堡，李白和穆勒，2001）。 虽然有些人可能会使用“病毒式营销”，仅作为流行语，是另一种意义的B2B营销。公司可以以可信的方式鼓励顾客满意和转介来源，并说服他们传播积极的言辞为自己的产品。保持与您的业务和适合的大小和类型的转介相结合的奖励。确保你的出价增加值或奖励引荐，称你为那些人，那么你将有一个成本有效的营销工具，拓展您的业务（杜林，K​​ardes和Kim，1999）。 2.6.4病毒式营销的激励因素 据陈，艾耶和帕德马纳班（2002年），病毒营销涉及两方：传播者和接收者。病毒性营销传播者，积极发言时，才开始听的动机和接收器。因此，为了理解这个过程是如何工作的，它是非常重要的，了解的内在动机。 在接收器的情况下，听的动机可能受到影响：（一）（二）来源的可靠性（布洛杰特，Granbois旅游和沃尔特斯，1998年）;人际关系之间的发送者和接收者（登堡，李白和穆勒，2001年）; （三）产品和采购形势的特点，如高知觉的风险（Bristor，1990），新奇，和无形服务（Weinberger和Lepkowska白，2000年）;及（d）条件下的产品信息，如情境因素很难或不可能得到的营销，或哪里有时间短缺。 在传播者的情况下，可能会影响说话的动机：（一）个性的沟通，例如，自信（Bristor，1990）和社交（Richins，1999年）;（B）的态度，传播者，例如，渴望帮助他人（刘和NG，2001年）和抱怨的态度（辛格，1990），（三）参与与产品购买决策（亨宁图劳，格温纳，沃尔什和Gremler 2004）及（d）接近他人“不满”（刘和NG，2001）等情境因素。 病毒式营销已经迅速被许多企业的认可，因为很多成功的例子证明：营销，一点点预算，他们可以激励数百万客户。他们这样做是鼓励客户到客户的沟通，以增加销售，品牌知名度和市场占有率。赛斯戈林上传自己的电子书在互联网上，人们可以免费下载，并有权发送给他们的朋友。如果他们愿意，他们可以购买一个打印副本。仅3个月，近百万人次下载的电子书。 （从2007年TAFE，来源） 营销信息的接收器从熟悉的传播者更频繁地参与竞选初步接触。因为来自朋友或你认识的人的个人信息将直接来自自身利益的广告（登堡，李白和穆勒，2001年）更可信。趁着互联网的内在本质，通讯工具的病毒式营销，使消费者能够在他们的社交网络分享信息和内容更容易和更快，有奈勒和克莱泽，互联网通讯（2000）没有时间和地点的限制。 金钱激励可以非常有效的病毒营销时，不聪明，有足够的吸引力，为客户。给引荐奖励可以鼓励的营销信息的快速传播。这些人谁对您的信息传递，可以得到一些回报，鼓励他们在信息传递上的激情。这东西可能是您的业务或简单的知识，他们已增值为别人的礼物或服务有关。 2.7测量成功和有效 许多学者认为，什么是一次成功的竞选？它的基础上良性互动活动的内容或销售运动创建人数量？ 病毒式营销虽然没有一个单一的测量系统已经建立，测量工具确实存在，允许标记使用的过程跟踪和病毒式营销的效果。这是很难知道观众是否在意活动背后的内容，确保营销也许多少人看到活动（登堡，李白和穆勒，2001年）。 舍基（2000）认为，病毒式营销并不总是有效的，因为它也有很多缺点，很多情况下会使其失败。一个成功的和不成功的病毒营销活动之间的区别是运动的能力，与观众连接，并说服他们传递消息，最终的产品或服务（柯比，2006年，第92页）。 柯比（2006年）认识到，为了增加成功的机会，一个成功的病毒活动，许多企业都开始投入更多的规划和实施。弗里德曼（2006）也认为，虽然许多学者认为成功的病毒式营销，病毒式营销可以使用一个小的预算，做出了巨大的影响，一家小公司，大多数是依赖于数百万美元的预算。 2.8病毒式营销启动 病毒式营销，如何好好利用它已成为重要的正面和负面影响的基础上。一个公司可以不好好利用的战略，除非它知道如何的战略工程。下列区域将集中在病毒式营销的操作，哪一家公司应该照顾的时候使用它。 2.8.1危险后启动 1。控制 一旦被释放的病毒式营销，它无法控制营销，不像电视或印刷广告。是无担保病毒营销工作或当它启动时，企业应准备走下赛场的消息半路上失去了控制（埃里森，2006年，第32页）。 据认为，消费者的营销通信控制器，数以百万计消费者谈论产品在互联网上或通过电子邮件（阿拉德，2006年，第204页）。这种观点是支持建议的时代，营销控制营销信息扩大不见了弗里德曼（2006年，第82页）。 研究还发现，该公司的营销信息和品牌，因为跃跃欲试的消费者不分青红皂白地垃圾（勒和克莱泽，2000）的控制权，最后的市场覆盖面的成本是一个近乎完全丧失。病毒性营销要考虑营销作为一种艺术，因为它不允许高水平的控制，它需要足够的自由和权利本身做的事情。 2。病毒劫持 虽然病毒式营销可以让消费者良好的使用，以扩大公司的品牌和产品，仍然有许多人是互联网上“antibrand”谁，以及他们会赶上可能的机会来打开病毒营销活动对企业（病毒攻击，2005 ）。 桑多瓦尔（2006）认为，如果被劫持的运动，传播消息将公司的品牌和产品产生负面影响。 3。垃圾 垃圾是“不请自来的电子邮件通常批量邮寄和不相关的”（查费，迈耶，约翰斯顿和埃利斯，查德维克，2003年）。如果垃圾邮件来自公司，一般，接收器会删除之前开放。客户不喜欢麻烦和浪费时间看这些邮件。 然而，如果朋友或接收者预先知道谁的人发送电子邮件营销，它似乎不再是垃圾邮件。来自你的朋友的电子邮件似乎是可靠的。使用病毒式营销“垃圾邮件”朋友的朋友被认为是这个原因的工作基础上。查菲等人支持这一观点。 （2003年），他们认为，“垃圾邮件并不意味着不能使用电子邮件作为一种营销手段”。 这似乎促销活动时，开始使用病毒和垃圾邮件的朋友的朋友，被看作是垃圾邮件的电子邮件是非常低的。 4。隐私 人们不喜欢接收电子邮件，在未经其许可。有些公司买很多的电子邮件地址，以扩大营销信息。人们会觉得很不爽，垃圾邮件继续进入自己的电子邮箱。托马斯（2004）指出，这些行为违反了接收器的隐私。没有人喜欢垃圾邮件得罪了他们的隐私。 如果使用的朋友的朋友的邮件，可避免这个问题。在使用开始，病毒营销应该照顾这个。 5。假病毒广告 假病毒广告颇为相似，病毒劫持。他们正在创造假病毒广告相关的个人与有针对性的品牌。公司使用假的内容，这是他们没有参与这个问题的原因，它有可能破坏自己的品牌（接枝，2006年）。索尼的推广关于其PlayStation假病毒广告是一个很好的例子。 这些危险的病毒式营销推出后，病毒式营销的操作应该非常小心。一家公司的事情，需要做的，并避免使用病毒式营销时，他们将在以下部分说明。 2.8.2事情应该做的 1。供应客户提供正确的信息作为你的倡导者。他们不能只是满足，他们需要了解你的价值主张，你怎么堆起来反对的竞争，这样他们就可以告诉别人你（Weinberger和白Lepkowska，2000）。 2。分类您的客户和有针对性的观众找到了科学依据什么效果最好做小病毒活动测试。测试你的客户，看看他们感到引人注目;什么推广驱使他们点击或传递消息（刘和NG，2001）。 3。善用竞赛和促销活动，特别是在B2C领域。这会给消费者一种激励你的网站或产品（刘和NG，2001）来传递信息。 4。使你的方法是系统性的。病毒活动是一种营销策略，应纳入公司的整体营销方式，而不是一次性的事情（柯比，2006年）。 5。熟悉了解你的目标受众。花时间了解他们喜欢什么，不喜欢，他们是如何沟通（Bansal和Voyer 2000）。比如MySpace的聊天室，它收集用户的建议，并提供他们想要的东西（到2006年MySpace的游泳池，跳水）。 6。设置退出壁垒。收集所有客户的信息，使他们很容易从你买的。让它为您的客户留下痛苦。也许他们已经开发出了一个聊天室的朋友在网站上，或者也许他们的产品或服务的忠诚度（莫泽莱夫斯基，2000年）。例如，MySpace的让用户觉得自己是属于这里，他们的朋友也属于这里，如果他们离开，他们会不容易的，与他们的朋友联系。 （Hempel集团与雷曼兄弟，2005年） 7。必须是一个过程 因为越来越多的人得到自己的电子信箱，并允许发送电子邮件，病毒营销将变得更加重要和有益的。这是因为网上消费者将随着时间的推移，扩大自己的社交网络，并成为更多地依靠他们的同龄人了解和推荐新的产品或服务（登堡，李白和穆勒，2001年）。因此，病毒营销需要成为一个过程和周期，而不是​​一个偶发。 2.8.3事情需要避免 1。依靠长期激励。在B2B领域，没有一家公司愿意支付您的用户推荐。更好的建立客户忠诚度，通过良好的价值，优良的服务，娱乐，或感情（登堡，李白和穆勒，2004年）。 2。失败来衡量你的客户宣传。保证你有一些系统来衡量多久客户通信业务的价值主张，专注于您的客户和它们如何相互作用与其他潜在客户（Shirky的，2000年）。 3。垃圾邮件。病毒活动，提供奖品的人看起来像垃圾邮件，发送电子邮件的风力可达。但是，朋友做的不是垃圾邮件的朋友。人们不喜欢收到垃圾邮件，这些行动使他们生气（奈勒和克莱泽，2000）。 4。两种常见的误区 陈艾耶和帕德马纳班（2002年）提出，有两个喜欢做病毒营销的最常见的错误：（1）围绕“正式消息”，而不是过程“和（2）采用”运动级“，而比“企业级”，透视“。 正式消息可以轻松接收器所接受，并快速扩大。虽然正式的过程，可以容纳现有的客户，使他们更依赖于他们的同龄人了解的产品，然后病毒营销可以继续将扩大信息。 一项运动水平的角度来看，将侧重于相对不可预测的特质，如客户感知的服务/产品，或有吸引力的营销信息。相反，病毒式营销的角度对企业级获悉量化，然后预测方面的销售周期（SUBRAMANI拉贾戈帕兰，2003年）。 2.8.4积分奖励 根据许多研究和病毒式营销的影响的研究，它被认为是霭霭定义对于大多数营销病毒式营销策略，但需要操纵客户到客户互动营销伎俩，企图实现成倍增长的用户群（ Weinberger和Lepkowska白，2000年）。许多营销人员也认为，如果消费者不回应巧妙的营销策略，现金及获奖产品将提供足够的热情，为消费者传播营销信息。 货币激励被认为是必要的，因为它们提供了什么似乎是最快和最容易理解的方式为营销客户到客户通信的链（SUBRAMANI拉贾戈帕兰，2003年）获得控制。然而，货币奖励可能是一个危险的病毒式营销的解决方案。因为金钱奖励只会导致的市场覆盖面，同样可预见的损失控制在可预见的增加，但无控制该公司所需。 2.9做病毒式营销，并使其成功 2.9.1鼓励C2C宣传 然而，如今的营销已经很难再现了一把成功的病毒式营销。尽管大多数电子商务企业都计划推出或已经尝试开展病毒式营销活动，也有仍然有障碍，把病毒式营销的整体销售和市场营销组合（柯比，2006年）。例如，病毒式营销被视为一门艺术，而不是一门科学。营销人员都很难识别触发器，激励客户营销信息传递给朋友或同事。 大多数营销正计划推出一个病毒营销活动中，为了使巨大的利润基础上一点点预算。为了成功地做到这一点，就必须科学地确定的元素，鼓励客户到客户的宣传和划分客户，谁是病毒式营销的接受和理解的结构激励计划（霍根，柠檬和李白，2001年）。 所有的病毒式营销的目的是将客户销售和营销渠道。使用客户作为一个新的渠道的目的是产生一个基本的权衡之间不断增长的市场覆盖面和维持营销信息的控制权。营销谁希望成为一个赢家，希望持有在手终于成功，必须鼓励客户相互沟通的意图倡导的产品和服务（SUBRAMANI拉贾戈帕兰，2003年）。 Hempel和雷曼（2005）有关的Myspace已经做了研究，他们发现的Myspace做好C2C宣传。它含有一些有趣的事情给他们的用户发送电子邮件，建立许多博客和聊天室，人们可以自由沟通。许多有趣的视频剪辑捕捉更多用户的眼球，并推动他们推荐到他们的社会网络。然而，基地TAFE学院（2007年）的研究上，即使汉堡王（Burger King）建成一个wedsite在那里游客可以输入命令到一个文本框，然后看一个人在鸡服装服从这些命令，和这个有趣的事情吸引了2.24亿访问17个月，但这个愚蠢的病毒活动很难转化为实际销售。它似乎鼓励C2C宣传，可以使一个公司像MySpace成功，但没有汉堡王（Burger King），因为它的病毒活动很难转化为实际销售。 2.9.2病毒式营销举措 病毒式营销举措是不同的，取决于企业选择使用它的目的。然而，他们使用的程度参与战略规划的纪律和触发器来激发消费者充当销售和代铅通道：（一）纪律的分析和规划，确保病毒营销是一个反复的，而不是科学杂乱无章的创意艺术（二）依靠开发的触发器，通过市场调研和先进的分析，而不是依赖现金奖励，确保客户的倡导者，而不是作为“委托垃圾邮件发送者的功能。” （图劳的Hennig，格温纳，沃尔什和Gremler，2004）。 2.9.3网络营销引擎 此外，网络营销环境必须硬线病毒的能力，它的发动机。网站必须配备的工具，允许用户谁刚刚读了一篇文章，或购买一个产品发布的经验或正向相关信息的朋友和同事到他们的网络（霍根，柠檬和李白，2004年），他们的意见。 还有许多其他工具，可以建立到在线营销引擎，如礼品登记，礼券，社区宣传栏，社区聊天室，和Amazon.com式联盟营销方案（Sudaraman，米特拉和韦伯斯特，1999年的病毒式营销能力）。也可以配备在线自助服务渠道资源，比如产品比较工具，以支持客户的销售渠道承诺（登堡，李白和穆勒，2001年）。 2.9.4六原则和六成功规则 根据前面的分析，为了解决问题，将面临使用病毒式营销和病毒活动成功时，有六条原则和六个成功的病毒式营销的规则需要把重点放在： 2.9.4.1六原则（来源：威尔逊，2000年） 1。赠送有价值的产品或服务 “免费”是最强大的营销字典字。大多数病毒式营销方案是放弃有价值的产品或服务，以吸引客户的关注。他们选择使用免费电子邮件或免费软件下载等免费节目，抓住客户的眼球。这可以产生客户的利益风潮。抓住眼球可以在未来带来丰厚的利润。所以他们选择放弃的东西现在卖的东西，在其他时间（刘和NG，2001）。 2。提供毫不费力转让给他人的 在流感季节公共卫生护士提供了一个建议：远离咳嗽，经常洗手的人，不要触摸眼睛，鼻子或嘴巴。病毒传播时，他们很容易传输（Weinberger和Lepkowska白，2000年）。为了成功进行营销信息的媒介必须易于传递和效仿。病毒性营销在​​互联网上著名的，因为即时通讯已经变得如此容易和便宜。它可以被容易地发送和无降解。 3。轻松扩展从小型到大型 必须迅速扩展从小型到大型的传输方法，可以不胫而走。如果病毒繁殖扩散之前只是杀死宿主，没有完成（霍根，柠檬和李白，2004年）。只要使用病毒式营销策略的公司，已经提前计划以及它们如何使消息从一个客户传递到另一个更快的时间。他们必须建立在可扩展性，以他们的病毒模型。 4。利用共同动机和行为 利用人类共同的动机是想成为一个聪明的病毒式营销计划。欲望和贪婪驱使人们传递和获取消息。这导致沟通产生数以百万计的网站和电子邮件消息。要成为一个赢家，该公司应该设计一个营销策略，其传输的基础上共同动机和行为。 5。利用现有的通信网络 大多数人是社会的，除了书呆子，居住在地下室的计算机科学研究生。社会科学家表明，每个人都有一个网络在他们的亲密朋友，家人，及联营公司（霍根网络，柠檬和李白，2001年）的8至12人。更广泛的网络可能包含数百人，数千人，取决于他的社会地位。网络营销已经知道这些人际网络的力量，无论是强大的，密切的网络和较弱的网络关系。将消息到现有的人与人之间的通信，然后你迅速繁殖其分散（莫泽莱夫斯基，2000年）。 6。利用别人的资源 最有创意的病毒性营销计划利用别人的资源得到了这个词（刘NG，2001）。如新闻发布会上可以拿起成千上万的读者看到文章的基础上形成。您可以通过很好地利用他人的新闻纸或结婚的网页转发你的营销信息。其他的资源被耗尽，而不是你的。 2.9.4.2六成功的病毒式营销的规则。 （来源Rayport，1996/1997） 规则1：隐形的本质是市场准入 规则2：什么是前是免费的，是后付款 规则3：让目标群体的行为进行消息 规则4：你看像一台主机，不是病毒 规则5：利用强度弱关系 规则6：投资达到了临界点 2.10结论 艾耶和帕德马纳班认为，成功的病毒式营销是联系在一起的三件事：该公司的行业性质，网上的观众任期，议题。一些行业娱乐，音乐，互联网和软件显然有较高的倾向沿通信息，不提目标受众，往往是精明的网络。 没有动力，病毒营销将是一个没有轮子的超级跑车。病毒性营销必须被视为一个非结构化的现象。试着控制它，你就会失败。 “它是一个有机的野兽，”他说。 “你越构建它，并尝试控制它的工作，它更打破了。”（奈勒克莱泽，2000年），除非客户之嫌，除非它他们震惊，他们不打算把它传递。如果你能娱人，他们会为你做你的营销。网络营销策略，销售和营销管理人员必须考虑病毒式营销作为企业整体战略的一个组成部分。 病毒式营销，有效地达到了一套广泛的潜在用户的潜力正在吸引大量关注的同时，也遭到质疑这种做法的价值。公司需要很好地理解这一战略的背景和特点的产品和服务，它是最有效和最匹配机智的病毒式营销策略。这是非常重要的，因为不恰当地使用病毒式营销产品或服务通过创建不利的态度可能会适得其反，甚至在某些情况下，使公司损失。 病毒性营销是受益于个人在社交网络中的乐于助人的营销和收件人双方的强有力策略。然而，成功的病毒式营销策略取决于强烈需要被看作是知识渊博的佣工在社交网络的影响力，而不是作为营销代理（霍根，柠檬和李白，2004年）的认可。企业应该做的很好地反映在此非常仔细地规划自己的病毒营销力度。 尽管病毒式营销可以花费很少的钱得到丰厚的奖励，但它也将公司在某些情况下，会导致大问题。因此，它是很难确认病毒式营销是好还是坏的公司使用。有很多例子两侧。完成它的权利是非常重要的，病毒营销是一个关键因素，许多运动（戈登，李白和穆勒，2001年）。 您选择何种形式，记得要问转介的人，而不是只是希望他们会做对自己。所以，如果你正在尝试病毒营销活动，测量开始之前的努力：设定目标，迈出坚实的基线报告。并确保活动集成与其他营销努力。就像一只老虎，它可以是一个很好的演员，招待人驯服，但它也将在某些情况下，杀了人，动物的性质。关键的一点是管理以及病毒式营销策略匹配您的公司和产品的情况;赶上你的现有和潜在客户的眼球，激发他们的热情，购买和宣传您的产品。 这部分研究的基础上，这显然是病毒式营销驱动成功的许多公司，像MySpace，宝马。但它也有很多不确定的东西，需要考试，如汉堡王（Burger King）的病毒活动可以转化为实际销售？如何避免错误像索尼的假的病毒活动？的Myspace是否真的使用病毒活动的成功呢？只有第二个数据的基础上，是没有足够的点的立场，所以笔者决定选择一些方法来收集原始数据，以考试的病毒式营销的效果得到更有力的证据。这些方法将列出在接下来的部分，第3章的方法。