Title: How should marketers deal with growth pattern changes in viral marketing campaigns?

Authors: Kyongsei Sohn; Mustafa S. Canbolat; John T. Gardner

Addresses: The College at Brockport, The School of Business Administration and Economics, State University of New York, Brockport, NY 14420, USA ' The College at Brockport, The School of Business Administration and Economics, State University of New York, Brockport, NY 14420, USA ' The College at Brockport, The School of Business Administration and Economics, State University of New York, Brockport, NY 14420, USA

Abstract: The impact of environmental shifts to growth trajectory of viral marketing is critical. Advertisers should recognise the growth pattern changes, termed regime change, in order to efficiently and effectively execute viral marketing campaigns. A surprising variety of growth patterns are evident. There are multiple models of viral growth and all of them assume a single growth model with changes in parameters. A better approach that supports decision making should allow for the incorporation of sequential functional forms. The model presented incorporates regime change and therefore allows for multiple functional forms. There are multiple competing approaches to identifying change points, a line of separation between functional forms. The paper focuses on regime change and change point analysis in the viral marketing context. A simple two-form model is proposed as a starting point to capture many likely viral growth situations. A five step process is presented to facilitate this model.

Keywords: viral marketing; social media marketing; marketing analytics; regime change.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIMA.2017.084081

International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising, 2017 Vol.11 No.2, pp.137 - 157

Received: 10 Nov 2016
Accepted: 21 Dec 2016
Published online: 09 May 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article