Internet-induced marketing techniques: Critical factors in viral marketing campaigns

The rapid diffusion of the Internet and the emergence of various social constructs facilitated by Internet technologies are changing the drivers that define how marketing techniques are developed and refined. This paper identifies critical factors for viral marketing, an Internet-based ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing technique. Based on existing knowledge, five types of viral marketing factors that may critically influence the success of viral marketing campaigns are identified. These factors are the overall structure of the campaign, the characteristics of the product or service, the content of the message, the characteristics of the diffusion and, the peer-to-peer information conduit. The paper discusses three examples of viral marketing campaigns and identifies the specific factors in each case that influence its success. The paper concludes with a viral marketing typology differentiating between viral marketing communications, unintended viral marketing and commercial viral marketing. This is still a rapidly evolving area and further research is clearly needed to monitor new developments and make sense of the radical changes these developments bring to the market

Reinforcing attitudes in a gatewatching news era: individual-level antecedents to sharing fact-checks on social media

Despite the prevalence of fact-checking, little is known about who posts fact-checks online. Based upon a content analysis of Facebook and Twitter digital trace data and a linked online survey (N = 783), this study reveals that sharing fact-checks in political conversations on social media is linked to age, ideology, and political behaviors. Moreover, an individual’s need for orientation (NFO) is an even stronger predictor of sharing a fact-check than ideological intensity or relevance, alone, and also influences the type of fact-check format (with or without a rating scale) that is shared. Finally, participants generally shared fact-checks to reinforce their existing attitudes. Consequently, concerns over the effects of fact-checking should move beyond a limited-effects approach (e.g., changing attitudes) to also include reinforcing accurate beliefs.Accepted manuscrip

The Potential of Critical E-Applications for Engaging SMEs in E Business: A Provider Perspective

YesAgainst a background of the low engagement of SMEs in e-business this paper investigates the emergence of, and potential for, critical e-applications defined as `an e-business application, promoted by a trusted third party, which engages a significant number of SMEs by addressing an important shared business concern within an aggregation.¿ By a review of secondary data and empirical investigation with service providers and other intermediaries the research shows that such applications can facilitate the e-business engagement of SMEs. There are three key findings, namely: the emergence of aggregation specific e-business applications; the emergence of collaboratively based `one to many¿ business models; and the importance of trusted third parties in the adoption of higher complexity e-business applications by SMEs. Significantly this work takes a deliberately provider perspective and complements the already considerable literature on SME IT adoption from a user and network perspective. In terms of future research the importance of a better conceptual understanding of the impact of complexity on the adoption of IT by SMEs is highlighted

Challenges of digital innovations : a set-top box based approach

The chapter analyses the challenges of digital technology for television audience measurement systems. First, the current state of audience measurement in Belgium is described. In the Belgian case, the traditional television audience measurement system is contested by small broadcasters and challenged by the opportunities that the emergence of digital television and, more specifically, the widespread diffusion of set-top boxes provide. Second, three major challenges for traditional measurement techniques are analysed. This section deals with people’s changing viewing habits, for example on-demand and time-shifted viewing, the provision of more accurate data by set-top boxes, and the increasing interests of platform operators acting as gatekeepers to access to this data. In the final section, conclusions are made

Incentives for Quality over Time – The Case of Facebook Applications

We study the market for applications on Facebook, the dominant platform for social networking and make use of a rule change by Facebook by which high-quality applications were rewarded with further opportunities to engage users. We find that the change led to quality being a more important driver of usage while sheer network size became less important. Further, we find that update frequency helps applications maintain higher usage, while generally usage of Facebook applications declines less rapidly with age

Social network market: Storytelling on a web 2.0 original literature site

This article looks at a Chinese Web 2.0 original literature site, Qidian, in order to show the coevolution of market and non-market initiatives. The analytic framework of social network markets (Potts et al., 2008) is employed to analyse the motivations of publishing original literature works online and to understand the support mechanisms of the site, which encourage readers’ willingness to pay for user-generated content. The co-existence of socio-cultural and commercial economies and their impact on the successful business model of the site are illustrated in this case. This article extends the concept of social network markets by proposing the existence of a ripple effect of social network markets through convergence between PC and mobile internet, traditional and internet publishing, and between publishing and other cultural industries. It also examines the side effects of social network markets, and the role of market and non-market strategies in addressing the issues

Private Regulation by Platform Operators – Implications for Usage Intensity

Platforms operators act as private regulators to increase usage and maximize profits. Their goals depend on the development of the platform: overcoming the chicken-egg problem early on requires attracting platform participants while quality becomes more important later on. Private regulators influence third-party business models, entry barriers, and usage intensity. We analyze how drivers of usage intensity on Facebook’s application platform were affected by a policy change that increased quality incentives for applications. This change led to the number of installations of each application becoming less important, applications in more concentrated sub-markets achieving higher usage, and applications staying attractive for longer

An Automated Approach to Auditing Disclosure of Third-Party Data Collection in Website Privacy Policies

A dominant regulatory model for web privacy is "notice and choice". In this model, users are notified of data collection and provided with options to control it. To examine the efficacy of this approach, this study presents the first large-scale audit of disclosure of third-party data collection in website privacy policies. Data flows on one million websites are analyzed and over 200,000 websites' privacy policies are audited to determine if users are notified of the names of the companies which collect their data. Policies from 25 prominent third-party data collectors are also examined to provide deeper insights into the totality of the policy environment. Policies are additionally audited to determine if the choice expressed by the "Do Not Track" browser setting is respected. Third-party data collection is wide-spread, but fewer than 15% of attributed data flows are disclosed. The third-parties most likely to be disclosed are those with consumer services users may be aware of, those without consumer services are less likely to be mentioned. Policies are difficult to understand and the average time requirement to read both a given site{\guillemotright}s policy and the associated third-party policies exceeds 84 minutes. Only 7% of first-party site policies mention the Do Not Track signal, and the majority of such mentions are to specify that the signal is ignored. Among third-party policies examined, none offer unqualified support for the Do Not Track signal. Findings indicate that current implementations of "notice and choice" fail to provide notice or respect choice