Journal of Advertising Research - Paul Ketelaar

Journal of Advertising Research

Why do people pass on viral advertising on social network sites? Investigating theeffects of social and attitudinal factors

--Manuscript Draft--

Manuscript Number:

Full Title: Why do people pass on viral advertising on social network sites? Investigating theeffects of social and attitudinal factors

Article Type: Article

Corresponding Author: paul edwin ketelaar, Ph.D.Radboud UniversityNijmegen, Gelderland NETHERLANDS

Corresponding Author SecondaryInformation:

Corresponding Author's Institution: Radboud University

Corresponding Author's SecondaryInstitution:

First Author: paul edwin ketelaar, Ph.D.

First Author Secondary Information:

Order of Authors: paul edwin ketelaar, Ph.D.

Jonathan van ’t Riet, Ph.D.

Maurice Vergeer, Ph.D.

Eva A. van Reijmersdal, Ph.D.

Rik Crutzen, Ph.D.

Order of Authors Secondary Information:

Manuscript Region of Origin: NETHERLANDS

Abstract: An online survey was held among members of the Dutch SNS Hyves who wereexposed to viral advertising (N = 8510). Their pass-on behavior was tracked by meansof server registrations. Social factors (whether participants' received the advertisementfrom a friend or from a commercial source, the tie strength with the sender, and SNSactivity) and attitudinal factors concerning the advertisement (attitude towards thebrand, the ad, and willingness to engage in viral advertising) were investigated aspredictors of pass-on behaviour. The results showed that attitudinal factors were themost important predictors of pass-on behaviour. Social factors showed smaller effects.

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Why do people pass-on viral advertising

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Why do people pass on viral advertising on social network sites? Investigating the effects of

social and attitudinal factors

Introduction

Advertisers often create online viral advertising to reach their target groups (Berger & Milkman,

2012). Following Porter and Golan (2006), we define viral advertising as “unpaid peer-to-peer

communication of provocative content originating from an identified sponsor using the internet

to persuade or influence an audience to pass along the content to others”. (p. 29) In viral

advertising, receivers of an advertising message volunteer to spread the message to their

peers/friends, thereby functioning as active and controlling participants in the campaign. Using

such peer-to-peer communication, successful viral advertising can result in large exposure at

limited costs (Wilson, 2000). Equally important, by forwarding the message, the sender

implicitly or explicitly endorses the message, resulting in increased credibility in the eyes of the

receiver (Chiu, Hsieh, Kao, & Lee; 2007; Van Noort, Antheunis & Van Reijmersdal, 2012).

Compared with traditional advertising, viral advertising enjoys not only the benefits of lower

cost, higher credibility, and faster diffusion, but also better targeting of consumers (Bampo,

Ewing, Mather, Stewart, & Wallace, 2008; Dobele, Toleman, & Beverland, 2005).

Viral advertising can take several forms, ranging from viral text emails, in which

consumers forward emails with advertising content to viral video advertising, in which

consumers forward video ads (Bruyn & Lilien, 2008). A relatively new form of viral advertising

is viral advertising on social network sites (SNSs). SNSs are mainly used for social connection

purposes (e.g., keeping in touch with friends, finding out what others are doing, communicating

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experiences to others) (Dwyer, Hiltz, & Passerini, 2007; Joinson, 2008), and the perceived

barriers for sharing information are low (Huang, Basu, & Hsu, 2010; Vitak & Ellison, 2012). It

has been argued that this makes them perfectly suited for viral advertising (Subramani &

Rajagopalan, 2003). However, research on viral advertising mainly focused on viral text emails

(e.g., De Bruyn & Lilien, 2008; Dobele, Lindgreen, Beverland, Vanhamme, & van Wijk, 2007;

Huang, Lin, & Lin, 2009; Phelps, Lewis, Mobilio, Perry, & Raman, 2004). In contrast, few

studies have investigated viral advertising in the context of SNSs which are supposed to be even

more persuasive because of its strong social nature (Van Noort et al., 2012).

In the present article, we argue that SNSs offer great potential for viral advertising.

However, a defining feature of viral advertising is that marketers have limited control on who

sends the message to whom. If marketers are to accomplish their viral marketing goals on SNSs,

they need to understand why consumers would be willing to pass on these communications. If

research can identify reliable predictors of forwarding behaviour, marketers can take these into

account when creating viral advertisements and deciding on a strategy for distribution. Moreover,

these insights can contribute to our theoretical understanding of why people forward viral

marketing via SNSs. The purpose of this study is therefore to establish the factors that lead

members of SNSs to pass on these viral advertising communications. In contrast to previous

studies that investigated the predictors of self-reported intentions to pass on viral advertising

communications on SNSs (Van Noort et al., 2012; Chu & Kim, 2011; Chu, 2011), we assessed

actual pass-on behaviour as the outcome which is a more reliable measure, because it registers

actual behavior. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the predictors of actual

pass-on behaviour of viral advertising communications in the context of social network sites.

Therefore, this study contributes significantly to the existing literature on viral advertising.


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Viral Advertising

As mentioned above, viral advertising in SNSs may manifest itself in a number of ways,

such as viral text messages and viral videos. Whereas some researchers use the terms ‘viral

marketing’ and ‘viral advertising’ interchangeably (Kaikati & Kaikati, 2004), it is also common

to see viral marketing as a broad framework that encompasses a whole spectrum of electronic

word-of-mouth strategies, one of which can be viral advertising (Golan & Zaidner, 2008; Porter

& Golan, 2006). Viral advertising can thus be conceived as a subset of viral marketing, much

like the position of traditional advertising in the marketing mix (Eckler & Rodgers, 2010).

According to Ha and Perks (2005), viral advertising in SNSs and other media focuses either on

brand experience or on brand activation. When the focus is brand experience, the aim is to

involve consumers with the brand emotionally. An example of successful viral advertising that

focused on brand experience is the Dove campaign for Absolute Beauty, the early part of which

was mainly driven by TV ads, but which really took off with the success of its online videos that

were distributed through peer-to-peer communication

(http://www.rohitbhargava.com/2006/10/doves_evolution.html). Viral advertising focusing on

brand activation, on the other hand, aims to activate consumers, for instance to try the advertised

brand. An example of viral advertising that focused on activation is Hotmail’s campaign in 1996

to gain new members. The general public was offered a viral text email sent by hotmail

subscribers with a simple tag at the bottom of the message saying: “Get your private, free email

at: www.hotmail.com”. The success of this campaign showed the potential for passing on

commercial messages by email. Both viral advertisements were in the end driven by consumers


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instead of by marketers, which may have reduced psychological reactance and increased

openness to the message on the part of receiver (cf., Van Noort et al., 2012).

Going Viral on Social Network Sites

Like viral text messages and viral videos sent by e-mail, viral advertising on SNSs

encourage consumers to pass on the message to their social network, and rely on them to create

an exponential increase in consumer exposure and impact (Wilson, 2000). However, the unique

characteristics of SNSs, which are defined by Boyd and Ellison (2007, p.211) as ‘web-based

services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded

system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and

traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system’, make for

substantial differences between viral emails and viral advertising communications on SNSs.

One notable difference between viral advertising on SNSs and other viral advertising, is

that SNSs offer the possibility to integrate the viral advertising more fully in consumers’ social

world. For example, as observed in the campaigns we studied, members were asked to search for

their friends in a virtual forest, doing magic tricks with their friends’ profile pictures, or to

perform a memory game with their friends’ personality characteristics. Because of this

adaptation to the consumers’ social world and particularly their social network, viral advertising

on SNSs can be made to appear less obtrusive than other kinds of viral advertising. That is, if the

viral advertising allows receivers to interact with members in their social network in a fun and

relaxing way, without being confronted with traditional obtrusive persuasive arguments or an

obvious sales intent, people may be especially willing to share it on their SNS (Knowles & Riner,


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2007). In this respect, viral advertisements on SNSs could make effective use of the dynamics

and opportunities offered by social media.

Predictors of Passing on Viral Advertising

Even though viral advertising shows promise, it is unclear to what extent it is effective.

One popular parameter that practitioners employ to measure the effectiveness of viral advertising

on SNSs is reach (Kalynanam, McIntyre, & Masonis, 2007).

To be sure, a low reach impairs effectiveness while a high reach maximizes the chance of

positive effects among many members. However, the current practice of counting the number of

hits does little more than define the level of activity; it cannot explain why people forward viral

advertisements. In addition to measuring reach, research should focus on understanding the

predictors of pass-on behaviour among members of a SNS.

Previous research has investigated the determinants for passing on viral messages and

commercials by email (Bruyn & Lilien, 2008; Dobele et al., 2007; Huang, Lin, & Lin, 2009;

Lindgreen & Vanhamme, 2005; Phelps et al., 2004; Porter & Golan, 2006; Thevenot & Watier,

2001; Woerndl, Papagiannidis, Bourlakis, & Li, 2008). These studies identified several primary

factors that motivate people to pass on text messages and viral commercials via e-mail, including

social advantages, self-enrichment, amusement, and the bond with a friend. Very little research,

however, has investigated viral advertising on SNSs (Van Noort et al., 2012). Therefore, we

conducted a survey among SNS members who had been exposed to viral advertising. We

identified and investigated six possible predictors of viral advertising pass-on behaviour. The

first three of these were selected based on the notion that the social context plays an important

role in explaining the effects of viral advertisements on SNSs (Van Noort et al., 2012). We


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therefore investigated whether (1) receiving the advertising from a friend rather than from a

commercial source, (2) the perceived strength of the tie with the sender and (3) an individual’s

frequency of SNS use could influence forwarding behaviour. The other three predictors were

selected based on the idea that attitudinal factors are of pivotal importance when consumers are

to forward viral advertisements. We therefore examined (4) whether attitude towards the viral

advertisement, (5) attitude towards the brand and (6) an individual’s willingness to attend to viral

advertising him or herself would influence forwarding behaviour.

Social influences on forwarding behaviour. As mentioned above, one of the promising

features of viral advertising from an advertiser’s point of view is that the sender implicitly or

explicitly endorses the message, resulting in increased credibility in the eyes of the receiver and

reduced resistance (Knowles & Lynn, 2004; Knowles & Riner, 2007). While this may enhance

the effectiveness of the advertisement and is therefore of great relevance to advertisers, it is also

notable that receiving viral advertising from a friend instead of from a commercial source may

increase the chance that the receiver forwards the advertisement to even more consumers. Indeed,

Chiu and colleagues (2007) found that consumers were more willing to forward viral email

messages when they received the message from close interpersonal sources than when they

received the messages from commercial sources. In the present study, we investigated this effect

in the context of viral advertising on SNS, investigating whether SNS members are more likely

to forward a message when they receive it from a friend rather than from a commercial source. In

addition, we investigated whether type of friend (close or distant) predicts forwarding behaviour.

A social network is defined as a set of actors whom the individual has relationships or

ties with, and who may or may not have ties with each other (Carrasco & Miller, 2006). The


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strength of the tie is defined as the degree of closeness between the individual and each actor.

According to Carrasco and Miller (2006), people have strong ties with others who they discuss

important matters with, or regularly keep in touch with, or are there for them if they need help.

People have weak ties with others that are more than just casual acquaintances, but not very

close friends. This rationale also holds for social networks on the Internet; a member of a social

network site may have weak as well as strong ties with others in their social network (see also De

Bruyn & Lilien, 2008; Norman & Russell, 2006).

According to Carrasco and Miller (2006), individuals have more trust in, and are more

influenced by others with whom they have strong ties rather than weak ties. Accordingly,

research shows that people are more likely to open and read e-mails from close friends rather

than distant friends, because they perceive them as more trustworthy and sharing more similar

interests (Ellison, Steinfeld, & Lampe, 2007; Vilpponen, Winter, & Sundqvist 2006; Dobele et al.

2005; Lindgreen & Vanhamme, 2005; Phelps et al., 2004; Thevenot & Watier, 2001; Woerndl et

al., 2008; Huang et al., 2009). Chu and Kim (2011) have found similar results for the pass along

behavior of online word–of-mouth on SNSs. The results of their study showed that perceived tie

strength is positively related to consumers’ intention to pass product-focused information in

online social media (see also Van Noort et al., 2012).

To our knowledge, however, no studies have investigated this issue with actual pass-on

behaviour as the outcome measure. In the present study, therefore, we investigated whether the

manner of receiving viral advertising predicts pass-on behaviour. Hypotheses 1 and 2 are:

H1: People that receive a viral ad from a friend (rather than a commercial company), are

more likely to pass on a viral ad to others in their social network.


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H2: The higher the perceived strength of the tie with the sender, the more likely people

will pass-on viral ads.

SNS members who actively and frequently share information with other members should be

good targets for viral advertising, since their activity might facilitate the dissemination of viral

content. Research indeed shows that the amount of time spent online is related to forwarding of

information (Sun, Youn, Wu, & Kuntaraporn, 2006; Ho & Dempsey, 2010). Chu (2011)

investigated differences between members of Facebook members who subscribed to specific

Facebook ‘groups’ (communities centred on a common interest) and non-group members. She

found that group members had more positive attitudes towards advertising, but, contrary to what

might have been expected, were not more likely to pass on viral advertising communications.

Importantly, however, Chu’s (2011) outcome measure was intention to forward viral advertising

communications. To our knowledge, no studies have investigated the effect of frequency of SNS

use on actual pass-on behaviour and it is therefore unclear, at present, whether frequency of SNS

use influences forwarding behaviour. In the present study, we therefore investigated the

hypothesis that frequency of SNS use predicts forwarding behaviour.

H3: The higher the frequency of SNS use, the more likely viral ads are passed on to

others.

Attitudinal influences on forwarding behaviour. In whatever form, through logos, or

verbal or pictorial content, ads usually refer to the advertised brand. Research shows that

consumers who have a positive attitude towards a brand are more likely to notice and like

advertisements for that brand than consumers with a negative attitude towards that brand.


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Consumers even enjoy advertisements for brands they like and may actively search for them and

expose themselves to them voluntarily (Dahlén & Lange, 2005). In addition, it has been argued

that self-enhancement is an important reason for people to engage in positive electronic word-of-

mouth (Angelis, Bonezzi, Peluso, Rucker, & Costabile, 2012; Berger, 2012). One way people

can achieve this is by strategically associating themselves with things that are positively viewed

by other people and groups, a phenomenon which has been called “Basking in Reflected Glory”

(Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman, & Sloan, 1976; Cialdini & Richardson, 1980).

Research shows that people are most likely to share things that they deem interesting and

enjoyable because they feel this will reflect positively on themselves (Squicciarini & Griffin,

2012). By the same reasoning, people may strategically distance themselves from things that are

negatively viewed by other people and groups, (Snyder, Lassegard, & Ford, 1986). This could

lead people to forward viral advertising for brands towards which they have a positive attitude:

they would rather associate themselves with brands they like than with brands they do not like.

At present, however, there has been no empirical research investigating the relationship between

attitude towards the brand and viral advertising pass-on behaviour. We therefore set out to

investigate this relationship.

A positive attitude towards the viral advertisement itself may also be an important

predictor of forwarding behaviour. Many studies have indicated that a positive attitude towards a

specific viral text message or viral commercial influences the likelihood that a consumer will

pass them on via email (Dobele, Toleman, & Beverland, 2005; Phelps et al., 2004; Thevenot &

Watier, 2001; Woerndl et al., 2008; Eckler & Bolls, 2011). We therefore investigated whether

this relationship is also present in a SNS context. Hypotheses 4 and 5 therefore are:


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H4: The more positive the attitude toward the brand, the more likely the receiver of the

viral ad is to pass it on to others.

H5: The more likeable the viral ads are to people, the more likely they will pass on the

viral ad to others.

In addition, we investigated whether a willingness to attend to viral advertising could predict

forwarding behaviour. People’s own experiences with viral advertising, in how they normally

react to advertisements that they receive from friends may be an important factor in explaining

pass-on behaviour. A study by Chu (2011), for instance, showed that attitudes towards

advertising on SNS in general, significantly predicted viral advertising pass-on intention (for

similar results see Yang & Zhou, 2011). However, besides having different attitudes towards

viral advertising in general, it is likely that consumers differ in the degree to which they enjoy

receiving and attending to viral advertising. Also, it is possible that SNS members who usually

attend to viral advertising received from others are more likely to forward viral advertising than

SNS members who usually do not attend to viral advertising which they receive from friends. In

the present study, we investigated this possibility. Hypothesis 6 is:

H6: The more people are willing to attend to viral advertising, the more likely they are to

forward viral advertising in general.

Method

Procedure


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This study focuses on the pass-on behavior of members of the popular Dutch SNS Hyves.

With approximately 9 million registered users in 2009, more than half of the Dutch population

(16.6 million in total) are members of Hyves. Three campaigns for international companies went

live on this SNS. All members who matched the target group profile of the campaigns, men and

women aged from 20 to 50, were able to view the viral advertising communication in principle.

Only those who actually visited the website of the viral advertisement by clicking on a banner or

accepting an invitation from a friend (166,755 people in total) were eligible for participation in

the study. No later than one week after the launch of the three advertisements, all members who

had actually clicked at least on the first page of one of the three viral advertisements received an

email asking them to participate in our study. Of these 166,755 people, 17,850 (10,7%) agreed to

participate. However, of these, 9,340 (52,3%) indicated that they did not recognize the viral

advertisement. A possible explanation for this high number of people who did not remember the

viral advertisement may be that they clicked on the invitation, but then immediately left the viral

advertising’s website and therefore could not remember it afterwards. Because of their

potentially minimal exposure to the viral advertisement, these people were excluded from the

study, resulting in 8510 participants. This means an effective response rate of 5.1% which seems

reasonable considering the fact that only a small incentive was given.

To not burden respondents, they only had to answer questions for one ad, even if they had

seen the other ads in our study. If they had viewed more than one advertisement, they were asked

which advertisement they saw first and were only asked to fill out the survey for the first

advertisement they had seen. This procedure also increases the chance of remembering the ad

they had first seen because of a primacy effect. Each member was assigned a unique Hyves-

identity number. For these three campaigns, all identity numbers of those members who passed


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along the viral advertising were temporarily registered to make it possible to identify forwarders

and non-forwarders. Participants indicated if they received the viral advertisement from a friend,

came across it by clicking on a banner or other advertisement, or did not remember how they

came across the advertisement. If they received the viral advertisement from a friend, they

indicated the perceived strength of their tie with the sender. Furthermore, they indicated the

frequency of Hyves use, the extent to which they themselves would be willing to look at viral

advertisements sent by friends, their attitude towards the brand that featured in the viral

advertising and their attitude towards the viral advertising communication. Finally, they

answered questions about gender, age and education. Since respondents had to respond to all

questions in the survey, there were no missing values. To increase the response rate, participants

joined in a lottery to win one of ten Hyves- packages consisting of a pen, a usb-stick or a

keychain.

Participants

A total of 8510 people participated in our study. The sample differed slightly from the

Hyves population. The Hyves population is 56% female, while our sample was 70% female. The

average age of the Hyves population is 27 years, and the average age in our sample was 26.4

years (SD = 12.72).

Viral Advertising Communications

People were exposed to real life campaigns for Lay’s, Telfort and Sony Ericsson which

were launched within the same three weeks. We used three campaigns instead of just one to

control for the confounding effects of unknown variables. As in real life respondents could


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expose themselves to just one, two or all three campaigns. The advertisers subsequently allowed

us to determine the real life effects of these campaigns.

The three viral advertisements were similar in several respects. The banners that lead to

the advertisements were shown to members at random, provided that they belonged to the target

group. Thus, anyone belonging to the target group had an equal chance of being exposed to one

of the three banners. Also, all three brands are well-known in the Netherlands. All three

advertisements were furthermore interactive and involved playing a game. This game was

structured in the same way, and members followed a comparable route through the game. Each

game used the database of names and pictures of friends from the personal network of the

members who played the game. The brand appeared on each page of the viral advertising

communication. Finally, all three advertisements can be considered as focusing on ‘brand

experience’ (Ha & Perks, 2005), aiming to involve consumers with the brand emotionally. At the

end of each game, members could choose to play the game again, to go to the brand’s website, to

forward the ad to friends, and/or place the gadget of the ad on their personal Hyves page. A total

of 4499 (52.9%) answered questions about the Sony advertisement, 1601 (18.8%) answered

questions about the Lay’s advertisement and 2410 (28.3%) answered questions about the Telfort

advertisement.

Lay’s “Join the Picnic” ad. In the Lay’s “Join the Picnic” ad, members have to find ten Hyves

friends, who appear randomly in a park (see Figure 1). When members spot them they click on their

picture. The intention is that all friends are found within 60 seconds; when they have been found, the

member enters the next page where they can leave their address behind to win a Lay’s picnic cloth or

VIP-cards for the concert “Picnic in the Park.”


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Figure 1: Lay’s viral advertising

Telfort “Simsalabim” ad. The Telfort “Simsalabim” ad features a game with a magic trick (see

Figure 2). Preceding the game, participants view some of their friends on Hyves, and are asked to pick

one to remember. Hands on the screen shuffle the pictures of friends and divide them in three lines.

Participants have to select the row their friend is in. This scenario is repeated three times. Then the magic

hands show which friend the participant had in mind, which ends the trick.


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Figure 2: Telfort viral advertising

Sony Ericsson “Who, what, where am I?” ad. A Sony Ericsson mobile phone shows a message

that a Hyves friend wants to socialize with the participant of the game and shows the location of this

activity (see Figure 3). For instance: “Let’s get a drink at Cheers?” Participants have to guess which

friend has sent the message. They can ask for hints that also show up on the screen of the mobile phone,

like the friend’s place of residence, or age. When the participant guesses who sent the message, the game

is over.


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Figure 3: Sony Ericsson viral advertising

Measures

Forwarding the ad. Our study sought to determine what motivated members to forward

the viral advertising communications. Our dependent measure was whether or not respondents

had forwarded the ad to others as tracked by means of server registrations. Of all participants,

2192 (25.8%) sent the ad on to others.

Manner of receiving the viral advertisement.. Participants indicated if they received the

viral advertisement from a friend (n = 2298; 27.0%), came across it by clicking on a company

banner (n = 5074; 59.6%), or did not remember how they came across the advertisement (n =

1138; 13.4%). Table 1 shows percentages for mode of receiving the advertisement, pass-on

behaviour and demographic variables for all three advertisements and for the entire sample.


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Tie strength with sender. Participants that received the viral advertisement from a friend,

had to indicate the strength of their tie with that person by answering two questions on a 5-point

scale. Following Norman and Russell (2006), participants were asked to indicate the perceived

strength of the tie with the person that had sent them the advertisement (1 = very weak; 5 = very

strong) and the frequency of contact with that person (1 = very infrequent contact; 5 = very

frequent contact). These two items were averaged to arrive at a composite tie strength measure (r

= .724; M = 3.45; SD = 1.00).

Frequency of SNS use. Following Phelps et al. (2004), we measured frequency of SNS use

with the question, “How often are you active on Hyves?” Possible answers ranged from “less

than once a month” to “daily” (eight categories). Because 69.9% of participants indicated that

they used Hyves on a daily basis, resulting in a non-normal distribution (the mean [SD] of this

variable was 7.36 [1.10]), we did not use this construct as a linear variable in our analyses, but

instead created a dichotomous variable indicating daily use or less than daily use.

Willingness to engage in advertisements that were sent by friends. Participants were

asked how they would normally react to advertisements that they received from friends. Based

on the answer, we constructed three categories: (1) would certainly engage in the advertisement;

(2) would engage in the advertisement conditionally or (3) would not engage at all. In the logistic

regression analysis, these categories were represented by two dummy variables. In total, 24.0%

of participants indicated that they would certainly engage in the advertisement.

Attitude towards the brand. Attitude towards the brand was measured by using four 5-

point semantic differential items. Following MacKenzie, Lutz, and Belch (1986), participants

were asked to indicate whether they had a positive attitude toward the brand (5) vs. a negative

attitude toward the brand (1), and whether they were interested in the brand (5) vs. not interested


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in the brand (1). We added two items to measure level of knowledge about the brand: whether

they knew a lot about the brand (5) vs. very little about the brand (1) and whether they knew a lot

about the brand compared to other brands (5) vs. very little about the brand compared to other

brands (1). These items were combined to arrive at an average brand attitude scale (Cronbach’s

alpha = .80; M = 3.20; SD = 0.78).

Attitude towards the ad. We measured attitude towards the viral advertisement by means

of six 5-point semantic differential items, asking participants to indicate whether they liked the

viral advertising communication (1 = did not like it at all; 5 = liked it very much), whether it

appealed to them (1 = did not appeal at all; 5 = appealed very much), whether they thought it

fitted the brand (1 = did not fit at all; 5 = fitted very well), and whether they thought it was pretty,

(1 = very ugly; 5 = very pretty), good (1 = very bad; 5 = very good), and original (1 = not

original at all; 5 = very original) (Mackenzie & Lutz 1989). These items were combined to form

an average ad attitude scale (Cronbach’s alpha = .86; M = 3.39; SD = 0.79).

Analyses

The dependent variable was binary; therefore, multiple logistic regression analysis was

used. All independent variables were entered in one block. Nagelkere’s R2 was used to assess the

variance explained by the model. Separate analyses were performed for the entire sample and for

the three viral advertisements separately. In the main analysis, perceived strength with the sender

was not included, because this would limit the analysis to those participants who received the

viral advertisement from a friend (n = 2298). For those participants, separate logistic regression

analyses were performed which included tie-strength with the sender as an independent variable.

These analyses were done separately for the three different advertisements. Effect sizes were


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determined following recommendations by Chinn (2000), who proposed that Odds Ratios can be

converted to Cohen’s d following the formula d = ln(OR) / 1.81. Combining this formula with

Cohen’s (1988) classification of an effect size of d = .20 as small, of d = .50 of medium and of d

= .80 as large, it follows that a small effect size of d = .20 is equivalent to an Odds ratio of OR =

1.44, a medium effect size of d = .50 is equivalent to an Odds ratio of OR = 2.47 and a large

effect size of d = .80 is equivalent to an Odds ratio of OR = 4.25.

Results

Participants

Of our 8,510 participants, 4,499 (52.9%) answered questions about the Sony

advertisement, 1,601 (18.8%) answered questions about the Lay’s advertisement and 2,410

(28.3%) answered questions about the Telfort advertisement. Participants indicated if they

received the viral advertisement from a friend (n = 2298; 27.0%), came across it by clicking on a

banner or other advertisement (n = 5074; 59.6%), or did not remember how they came across the

advertisement (n = 1138; 13.4%). Of all participants, 2192 (25.8%) sent the campaign on to

others. The sample differed slightly from the Hyves population. The Hyves population is 56%

female, while our sample was 70% female. The average age of the Hyves population is 27 years,

and the average age in our sample was 26.4 years (SD = 12.72). Table 1 shows percentages for

mode of receiving the advertisement, pass-on behaviour and demographic variables for all three

advertisements and for the entire sample.

Table 1 about here

Testing the hypotheses


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The results for the social factors in the logistic regression analyses (see Table 2) showed

that the source of the viral advertisement did not significantly affect pass-on behaviour (H1).

However, the analyses also revealed that there were different effects for the three different

advertisements. Whereas participants were more likely to forward the Lay’s and Telfort

advertisements when they received the advertisement from a friend rather than coming across it

by clicking on a banner or ad, the analysis for the Sony advertisement showed that participants

who received the advertisement from a friend were actually less likely to forward it. The

analyses also revealed that frequency of SNS use did not predict pass-on behaviour (H3).

With regards to the attitudinal factors, the analyses showed that willingness to attend to

viral advertisements, brand attitude and ad attitude all significantly predicted pass-on behaviour

in the expected direction (cf. H4, H5, H6). Gender and education did not have significant effects

on pass-on behaviour. The results also showed that the effect of age was significant, i.e. older

people are somewhat more likely to forward the viral ad. However, this effect is quite small as to

render it irrelevant. Participants were significantly more likely to forward the Sony

advertisement than the Telfort advertisement. With regard to the size of the effects, the effect of

brand attitude was in the small range (OR = 1.19), while the only factors that produced effects in

or approaching the medium range were willingness to engage (OR = 3.45 and OR = 1.97) and ad

attitude (OR = 2.32). The model fit, based on Nagelkerke’s R2 was R

2 = .16.

Table 2 about here

Additional analyses were performed for those participants who received the viral

advertisement from a friend to investigate whether perceived strength of the tie with the sender


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significantly contributed to the prediction of pass-on behaviour (H2). The results of these

analyses revealed that, overall, participants who perceived a stronger tie with the person who

send them the viral advertisement were significantly more likely to pass it on (B = .12, OR =

1.13, Wald = 5.23, p = .022). However, separate analyses showed that this was only the case for

the Sony advertisement (B = .15, OR = 1.16, Wald = 4.26, p = .039). For the Telfort

advertisement, a similar effect in terms of effect size was found, but due to the smaller sample

size (nTelfort = 551), this effect did not reach levels of statistical significance despite the effect size

being in the same range (B = .14, OR = 1.15, Wald = 1.29, p = .256). The effect for the Lay’s

advertisement was smaller and not significant (B = .06, OR = 1.06, Wald = 0.32, p = .570).

Discussion

This study investigated which factors predict whether members of SNSs will pass on viral

advertising communications. The results showed that social factors had relatively small effects,

with only tie strength with the sender as a significant predictor of forwarding behaviour.

Attitudinal factors were more important, with brand attitude, ad attitude and willingness to

engage with viral advertisement significantly affecting forwarding behaviour, the sizes of the

latter two effects in or approaching the medium range.

The large effect of attitudinal factors is consistent with other studies. Research on the

predictors of forwarding viral text and viral commercials by e-mail (e.g. Thevenot & Watier,

2001; & Woerndl et al., 2008) has found that the most important predictor for passing on viral

advertisements on SNSs is the degree of liking for the ad. Similarly, a recent study investigating

the predictors of forwarding viral video advertisements showed that attitude towards the

advertisement is the major factor affecting video sharing (Huanga, Zhouc, & Xi, 2013). However,


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the present study extends previous research by focusing specifically on viral advertising in a SNS

context. In addition, the present study assessed the actual pass-on behaviour in the context of

three real-world marketing campaigns of international companies, instead of self-reported

forwarding intentions.

The results also showed that the source of the viral advertisement predicted forwarding

behaviour, although the direction of this effect differed between the three advertisements.

Whereas for the Lay’s and Telfort advertisements participants were more likely to forward the

viral advertisement when they received it from a friend, the results for the Sony advertisement

showed that participants were more likely to forward the viral advertisement when they received

it from a commercial source. This rendered the overall effect of advertisement source non-

significant. It is possible that the source of the viral advertising has different effects depending

on the motives people have for forwarding viral advertising. Receiving a viral advertisement

from a friend can signal this friend’s approval and can thus be a reason for trusting that other

people will like the advertisement too. On the other hand, research shows that people like to

spread information that is novel and original (Moldovan, Goldenberg, and Chattopadhyay 2011)

and that they like to show others that they are ‘in the know’ (Berger, 2012). Receiving a viral

advertisement from a friend may suggest to some people that the advertisement is already known

in their social circles. Coming across a viral advertisement through a banner may make it more

likely that no one else has seen the advertisement yet. If this was the case with the Sony

advertisement, it is unclear why a similar effect was not present for participants who were

exposed to the Lay’s and Telfort advertisement. Future research is necessary to investigate why

receiving viral ads from a friend can result in less pass-on behaviour.


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For participants who received the viral advertisement from a friend rather than from a

commercial source, the strength of the tie with the sender significantly predicted forwarding

behaviour in the expected direction. In line with previous research, participants were more likely

to forward the advertising when they received the advertising from someone with whom they had

a strong rather than a weak tie (Dobele, et al, 2007; Woerndl et al., 2008; Chu & Kim, 2011; Van

Noort, et al, 2012). It should be noted, however, that the effect of perceived tie strength is

statistically significant but quite small; analyses for the three advertisements separately revealed

that the effect was only significant for the Sony advertisement and not for Lays and Telfort . It

thus seems that social factors are important (Van Noort et al., 2012), but that the magnitude of

their effect should not be overestimated. Additional research is necessary to determine the

relative importance of different social factors, such as ties between senders and receivers (Van

Noort et al., 2012), ties between senders and the brand and senders’ position in their social

network (Kempe Kleinberg, & Tardos, 2003).

In sum, the present study shows that attitudinal and social factors predict the forwarding

of viral advertisements on SNSs, with attitudinal factors showing especially important effects.,

However, different effects were found for the three advertisements, for example with regards to

the source of the viral advertisement, which could not be readily accounted for. In fact, while

additional analyses showed that the three advertisements showed significant differences with

regards to brand attitude (MSony = 3.24; MLays = 3.46; MTelfort = 2.94; F(2, 8507) = 244.78, p

= .000) and ad attitude, (MSony = 3.31; MLays = 3.72; MTelfort = 3.32; F(2, 8507) = 184.67, p

= .000), Table 2 shows that the Sony advertisement was more likely to be passed on than the

Telfort advertisement even when controlling for these variables. Clearly, future research should


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explore which other factors affect the pass-on behaviour of viral advertisement on SNSs and

should incorporate more ads for a broader range of products.

Implications

In addition to advancing our theoretical understanding of the importance of social and

attitudinal factors in predicting the pass-on of viral advertisements, this study adds to the

knowledge of marketers, indicating that the most important predictor of the effectiveness of viral

advertising on SNSs is at least partly under their control: the form, quality and content of the

viral ad itself. More specifically, it has been established that a positive emotional tone in viral

advertising evokes a positive attitude towards the ad (Eckler, & Bolls, 2011; Chu,2011).

Amusement seems to be an important component of viral advertising (Dobele, et al., 2005;

Eckler, & Bolls, 2011), important drivers for accepting and forwarding the message being

entertainment (Palka, Pousttchi, & Wiedemann, 2009), surprising content (Dobele, et al, 2007),

humor (Hsieh, Hsieh, & Tang, 2012), and memorable and interesting content (Kaplan &

Haenlein, 2011). Viral advertising on SNSs seems likely to be a useful marketing strategy for all

businesses, provided that advertising content is entertaining. Our findings corroborate the

conclusion of Petrescu and Korgaonkar (2011) that viral advertising is an unconvential pulling

marketing strategy that favors small businesses and lower budget campaigns, as long as

advertisers manage to create unique and compelling messages and content (p. 221).

Limitations and future research

Although the study used real campagins that respondents could see on a moment that suited

theme best, the present study was subject to limitations. First, although members were emailed


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within a week of the launch of the three ads, this might still have been too long after the event to

reflect on their initial reactions towards the ad. Possibly members might not have been able to

remember who the sender was (a company or a friend) and could not have answered the

questions about tie strength. Therefore we should have added the option "I do not remember

which of my friends shared the message with me.”

A better option might have been to send the request to participate immediately after they

saw the viral advertisement. However, the involved marketers prohibited the launch of a survey

so soon after exposure because they thought the survey might interfere with the goals of the viral

advertisements to increase positive brand experience. Future research might find a way to

include the time lapse between the behaviour and the survey as a variable to explain passing-on

behaviour. Second, the representativeness of our sample was limited by self-selection processes.

Only those who both accepted the invitation for the viral advertisement and the invitation for our

research and remembered the viral advertisement one week later ended up in our sample. A

double selection bias therefore may have resulted in a sample that may have been exceptionally

willing to engage in online activities. Future research should try to limit such self-selection

processes, for instance by obtaining participants’ agreement to participate in the study before

they were exposed to the viral advertisement. Finally, although we found that people have

stronger ties with humans (friends) than with companies, future research should not only focus

on the context of human-human relationships, but also on human-company/organization

relationships. For example, consumers might have a stronger tie with a Coca-Cola because they

drink it everyday, but a weak tie with Flowers.com because they do not use it everyday.

In spite of these limitations, the present study contributes to our knowledge by

investigating the predictors of actual pass-on behaviour of viral advertising on SNSs.


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Table 1 Participant characteristics in terms of manner of receiving, pass-on behaviour,

gender and education

+ Total sample

Sony Lays Telfort

N % N % n % n % 8510 100 4499 52.9 1601 18.8% 2410 28.3%

Manner of receiving Friend 2298 27.0 1262 28.1 485 30.3 551 22.9 Company banner 5074 59.6 2551 56.7 664 41.5 1859 77.1 Don’t remember 1138 13.4 686 15.2 452 28.2 0 0.0 Pass-on behaviour Pass on 2192 25.8 1181 26.3 471 29.4 540 22.4 No pass on 6318 74.2 3318 73.7 1130 70.6 1870 77.6 Gender Male 2556 30.0 1416 31.5 261 16.3 879 36.5 Female 5954 70.0 3083 68.5 1340 83.7 1531 63.5 Education Higher education 929 10.9 451 10.0 299 18.7 179 7.4 Secondary education 5545 65.2 3066 68.1 1107 69.1 1372 56.9 Primary education 821 9.6 509 11.3 83 5.2 229 9.5 Other / no answer 1215 14.3 473 10.5 112 7.0 630 26.1


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Table 2 Results of the logistic regression with pass-on behaviour as the dependent variable in the overall

sample and for the three campaigns separately

Total sample Sony Lays Telfort B OR Wald p B OR Wald p B OR Wald p B OR Wald p

Manner of receiving Friend .11 1.11 3.01 .083 -.40* 0.67 21.53 .000 .53* 1.70 14.87 .000 .86* 2.36 45.38 .000 Don’t remember -.17 0.85 3.65 .056 -.34* 0.71 9.45 .002 .03 1.03 0.03 .861 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. Company banner REF SNS frequency Daily .02 1.02 0.10 .753 .02 1.02 0.06 .810 .13 1.14 1.13 .289 -.14 0.87 1.32 .251 Non-daily REF Willingness to engage Always 1.24* 3.45 91.77 .000 1.19* 3.28 54.49 .000 1.29* 3.64 15.33 .000 1.52* 4.59 23.79 .000 Conditionally .69* 1.97 30.35 .000 .52* 1.69 11.90 .001 .79* 2.20 6.37 .012 1.17* 3.22 14.92 .000 Never REF Brand attitude .17* 1.19 19.68 .000 .12* 1.13 6.08 .014 .08 1.08 0.48 .487 .34* 1.40 18.19 .000 Ad attitude .84* 2.32 380.77 .000 .73* 2.09 165.64 .000 .86* 2.37 67.20 .000 1.06* 2.87 144.1

3 .000

Age .02* 1.02 56.29 .000 .01* 1.01 11.96 .001 .01* 1.01 7.10 .008 .03* 1.03 3.94 .000 Gender Female -.07 0.93 1.28 .257 .02 1.02 0.05 .828 -.12 0.89 0.56 .454 -.23* 0.78 3.94 .047 Male REF Education Higher educ -.07 0.94 0.28 .598 .05 1.05 0.07 .786 .48 1.61 2.18 .140 -.50 0.61 2.99 .084 Secondary educ -.04 0.96 0.15 .964 .03 1.03 0.05 .821 .48 1.62 2.57 .109 -.39* 0.68 3.98 .048 Primary educ REF Other /no

answer .11 1.11 0.90 .342 .10 1.11 0.45 .503 .00 1.00 0.00 .998 .10 1.11 0.25 .619

Brand Sony .23* 1.26 11.53 .001 Lays .01 1.01 0.01 .93 Telfort REF Constant -5.08 0.01 661.34 .000 -4.45 0.01 273.83 .000 -5.24 0.01 82.10 .000 -6.16 .00 264.9

1 .000

Nagelkerke R2 .17 .15 .15 .29 -2 LL 8648.516 4680.028 1766.496 2066.182

Notes: No participants indicated to not remember how they received the Telfort advertisement.

Therefore, there was no data for this second dummy variable. Age had a small effect in the overall

sample (B = .001), but because of the small SE (SE = .000) this effect was statistically significant (95% CI:

1.000 – 1.002) despite a trivial effect size.

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