MINOR RESEARCH PROJECT:

“COMPARITIVE STUDY ON PREFERENCES OF YOUTH AMONG

VIRAL MARKETING AND TRADITIONAL MARKETING”

APPENDIX:

1) CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

2) REVIEW OF LITERATURE

3) RATIONALE OF THE STUDY

4) OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

5) METHODOLOGY

6) REFERENCES

7) QUESTIONNAIRE
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK:-
Earliest uses of the current term viral marketing is attributed to the Harvard Business
School graduate Tim Draper and faculty member Jeffrey Rayport.

The term was later popularized by Rayport in a 1996 Fast Company article The Virus
of Marketing, and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper
Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's e-mail practice of appending
advertising to outgoing mail from their users.

“Viral marketing and viral advertising are buzzwords referring to marketing

techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increase in brand
awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through
self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses or computer
viruses.”
 It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the
Internet. Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games,
adver games, e-books, brand able software, images, or text messages.

The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user
becomes "infected" (i.e., accepts the idea) and shares the idea with others "infecting
them," in the viral analogy's terms. As long as each infected user shares the idea with
more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater
than one—the standard in epidemiology for qualifying something as an epidemic), the
number of infected users grows according to an exponential curve.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE:-
Viral marketing can be thought of as a diffusion of information about the product and
its adoption over the network. Primarily in social sciences there is a long history of the
research on the influence of social networks on innovation and product diffusion.
However, such studies have been typically limited to small networks and typically
a single product or service. For example, Brown and Reingen [BR87] interviewed the
families of students being instructed by three piano teachers, in order to find out the
network of referrals. They found that strong ties, those between family or friends,
were more likely to be activated for information flow and were also more influential
than weak ties between acquaintances.
Similar observations were also made by DeBruyn and Lilien in [DL04] in the context
of electronic referrals. They found that characteristics of the social tie influenced
recipients behavior but had different effects at different stages of decision making
process: tie strength facilitates awareness, perceptual affinity triggers recipients
interest, and demographic similarity had a negative influence on each stage of the
decision-making process.
The study by Villanueva, Yoo & Hanssens looks at The Impact of Marketing-Induced
vs Word of Mouth Customer Acquisition on Customer Equity Growth. Villanueva et
al looked at how customer value grew for a web hosting company depending upon
whether they were acquired by traditional marketing or word of mouth marketing. Not
surprisingly, they found that although customers were quicker to acquire through
traditional marketing, word of mouth marketing acquired customers who were twice
as valuable over the longer-term.
Social networks can be composed by using various information, i.e. geographic
Similarity, age, similar interests and so on. Yang and Allenby showed that the
geographically defined network of consumers is more useful than the demographic
network for explaining consumer behavior in purchasing Japanese cars. A recent study
by Hill et al found that adding network information, specifically whether a potential
customer was already “talking to” an existing customer, was predictive of the chances
of adoption of a new phone service option.
For the customers linked to a prior customer the adoption rate of was 3–5 times
greater than the baseline.
Factors that influence customers’ willingness to actively share the information with
others via word of mouth have also been studied. Frenzen and Nakamoto surveyed
a group of people and found that the stronger the moral hazard presented by the
information, the stronger the ties must be to foster information propagation.
Also, the network structure and information characteristics interact when individuals
form decisions about transmitting information. Bowman and Narayandas found that
self-reported loyal customers were more likely to talk to others about the products
when they were dissatisfied, but interestingly not more likely when they were
satisfied.

RATIONALE OF THE STUDY:-

Comparative study on the preferences of viral marketing and traditional

marketing.
Studies have found that 45% of online young shoppers choose ecommerce sites based
on word of mouth recommendations. People tell friends about positive experiences
they have with companies every day. Referrals are three times more likely to buy from
you than those exposed to direct advertising.
Word-of-mouth is often viewed as the most cost efficient and effective. Viral
marketing has a large growth potential, enabling a company website to be well
recognized throughout the World Wide Web. That is why viral marketing is an
important tool: it works, and it works effectively.

With increasing use of internet among the youth the buying pattern of the young
customers is changing rapidly. Internet has revolutionized the transaction process.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY:-

 Growing popularity of viral marketing.
 Changes in the customer preferences from traditional modes of advertising
towards viral marketing.
 Use of social network sites in marketing and promotion of product.
 Learn how to make money online.
 To study the effectiveness of viral marketing.

METHODOLOGY
Type of study -120 people was given questionnaires asking them various questions
which helped us in calculating the preferences of customers towards viral marketing
and traditional marketing.

The study is exploratory in nature as the major emphasis of the study is exploration of
ideas and insight. The experience survey technique is used.

Sample Size-120

Tools of data collection- Questionnaire

Tools of data analysis- Anova test.

Tool used for data analysis : multiple regression analysis because when there are two
or more than two independent variables, the analysis concerning relationship known
as multiple correlation and the equation describing such relationship as the multiple
regression equation. Multiple regression equation describes the form:
Y=a+b1x1+b2x2

Where x1&x2 are two independent variable:

Y being the dependent variable.

REFERENCES
 Research on viral market manuscript by Colin Klinkert.
 Dynamics of viral marketing by Jure Leskovec (machine learning dpt, Carnegie
university USA)
 The impact of Social networking sites to facilitate the effectiveness of viral
marketing by Lada A. Adamic.
 The review of the theory of viral stealth marketing by C. Swanepoel.
 Word of mouth advertising, credibility of learning in networks by Kalyan
Chatterjee and Bhaskar Dutta.
Questionnaire on “Preferences Of Youth Among Viral Marketing And
Traditional Marketing”

SR. NO. ______

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are the Students of Prestige Institute of Management and

Research Indore and we are conducting a survey for doing research regarding the
preference of people over using plastic money or paper money in their day to day
transaction. Your valuable opinion and co-operation will help us a lot in our research.

N.B. We assure you to that the data given by you will be only used for academic and
research purpose and will be kept confidential.
1) Name: ________________

2) Address: _____________

3) Contact No: _______________

4) Email ID: _______________

5) Web-Site (If Any): ___________________

6) how often you make use of Internet?

A) Regularly

B) As and when need arises

C) May be once in a week

7) what extent of knowledge you have about Social Networking?

A) Basic, B) Average, C) Expert

8) Do you write blogs? If yes, how often you write the blogs?

9) To what extent you make use of social networking web-sites for promotional
purposes?

10) Did the information you get about a product on various social-networking sites
persuade you to buy the product? Yes/no/maybe

11) would you like a company making the use of Blogs to mention in details about the
various features associated with the product?

Yes/no

\12) To what extent you make use of social-media tools in your daily work

(a)I don’t need it in my work

(b)Regularly

(c) As and when need arises

13) To what extent do you share the videos shared by your friends on social
networking site?

14) what are the other sources which made you aware about the product?

(a)Television, (b) Banner, (c) Newspapers, (d) Magazines, (e) Others

15)How frequently do you check your email?

(a)Once a month

(b) Once a week

(c) More than once a week

(d) Once everyday

(e) More than once everyday

16). Please rank in order of importance which kinds of emails you are more likely to
open. Place a“1” next to the option that is the most likely, a “2” to the option
that is the next most likely, and so on.
Funny

Important

Entertaining

Helpful

Relaxing

Exciting

17) Is any other kind of email you particularly you like to receive?
………………………………….
Is any other kind of email you particularly you like to receive?

18) Please rate how frequently you forward this kind of email on a 1-6 scale where 1
means “Never” and 6 means “Always”
1 Never 2 3 4 5 6 Always
Jokes (work,
gender issues, .
computer, etc.)
Chain letters
(luck, advice,
etc.)
Funny/interesting
videos

Funny/interesting
adverts

Games

Corporate
messages

19) Have you seen these videos before?

McDonald– “I am Pepsi –“ Changes Surf Excel –“ Daag
love in it” the game” achche hain”

Yes

No

Maybe, I can
remember
20) In which media have you seen it?

In which media have you seen it? Email

I received the link by email but I watched it on Youtube or other broadcast site

Youtube or any other broadcast site

TV adverts

TV programs

Other (please specify )

21) Do you remember the brand before seeing these videos?

Yes No

McDonald– “ I am love in it”

Pepsi –“ Changes the game”

Surf Excel –“ Daag achche hain”

22) Please rate the degree of liking of these videos according to you on a 1-6 scale
where 1 means "I dislike" and 6 means "I like very much"
1 I 6 I like
2 3 4 5
dislike very much
McDonald–“ I
am love in it”
Pepsi–“ Changes
the game”
Surf Excel –“
Daag achche hain”
23) After watching these videos how much likely are people to buy these brands?
Please rate these videos on a 1-6 scale where 1 means “very likely” and 6 means
“very unlikely”.
1
6 Very
Very 2 3 4 5
unlikely
likely
McDonald– “ I
am love in it”
Pepsi –“ Changes
the game”
Surf Excel –“
Daag achche hain”

24) Do you prefer more interactive adverts?

•Yes

• No

25)Are you paying more attention to advertisements on TV (traditional marketing) or

through direct marketing methods (internet/mobile etc)?

• Traditional methods

• Direct Methods

• Both

26) Do you feel the internet is replacing traditional marketing such as TV and in
newspapers etc. ?

• Yes
 • No

• Don’t Know

27) Are you a member of a social networking site?

• Yes

• No

28) Which social networking site are you a member of?

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Myspace

• Bebo

• Other (please specify)

………………………………………………..

29) Are the promotions of advertisements on social networking sites of any

importance to you?

• Yes

• No

• Don’t Know

30)How many times do you buy a product through internet?

• 0-5 times a year

• 5-10 times a year

• More than 10 times.

………………………………………………………………..