Global Viral Advertisement: Modeling the Determinants and Impact of Viral Content

- A Cross Cultural Study

Authors’ Details First Author

Author’s Name& Designation: Dr. Rishi Raj Sharma, Assistant Professor

Official Address: Department of Business Management,

Guru Nanak Dev University Regional Campus,

Gurdaspur -143521, Punjab - India

Phone Numbers: (R) 91-01874 -244797; (M) 91-9814298314

E-mail: rrishisharma@yahoo.com

Second Author

Author’s Name& Designation: Ms. Balpreet Kaur, Research Scholar,

Department of Commerce and Business Management,

Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India

Corresponding Address: Village Johal, Post office Bolina Doaba

District Jalandhar-144101, Punjab, India

Phone Numbers: (R) 91-0181-2705644; (M) 91-9814584554

E-mail: balpreetbanu@yahoo.co.in

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Global Viral Advertisement: Modeling the Determinants and Impact of Viral Content

- A Cross Cultural Study

Abstract:

Advancements in communication technology have brought significant change in the

techniques followed by the marketers to promote their products across the globe. Viral

Marketing, an internet based marketing technique, motivates the consumers to spread the

marketing message in form of viral advertising or other written content. The present study

deals with content analysis of 25 global viral advertisements which was conducted to

empirically explore the common content related factors that lead the advertisements to

become viral at global level. Further, an online survey was conducted among consumers of

Indian and American origin, to measure the effectiveness of these content related factors on

brand attitude and intentions of the consumers to purchase this advertised brand. The

structural equation modeling technique was applied on two samples (taken from US and

Indian population) to know the causal relationships among the constructs across two

countries. The results of the analysis revealed that the positive emotions and borrowed

interest devices are found as significant factors in case of US and Indian respondents

respectively. These factors explain maximum variations in the brand attitude of the

respondents and this attitude further positively affects their brand purchase intentions.

However, in order to increase the transmission rate of advertisements, the advertisers need to

have into account all the content related factors along with special emphases on “positive

emotional appeal” and “borrowed interest devices”.

Keywords: Viral Marketing, viral advertising, borrowed interest devices, creative message strategies, SEM

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Global Viral Advertisement: Modeling the Determinants and Impact of Viral Content

- A Cross Cultural Study

Introduction

Information technology has brought paradigm shift in the ways the products are being

marketed across the globe. Companies doing international business are involved in the

activities of promoting their products or services across different countries through various

technological innovations. With high speed communication infrastructure in the homes of

consumers, the advertisers are now able to disseminate high-resolution advertisements via

world-wide-web (Golan and Zaidner, 2008). Viral Marketing, an internet based marketing

technique, provides significant advantage to the marketers by spreading out the marketing

message anywhere in the world with a single click of “mouse”. Viral marketing, a relatively

new concept, is the web-enabled Word-of-Mouth (WOM) publicity which leverages internet

technology to significantly enhance marketer’s advantage at the same time being customer

friendly (Dasari and Anandkrishnan, 2010). It is one of the marketing techniques that uses

pre-existing social networks to pass along company developed products and services or

audio, video or written information to others online (www.reference.com; Kotler et al. 2009).

Passing an online advertising video from one consumer to another, known as viral

advertising, is a prominent form of marketing promotion (Hsieh et al, 2012). Porter and

Golan (2006) 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”. Actually what motivates the consumers to pass

on the message to others requires more attention of the advertisers. While moving on the

same direction, Rune and Vinberg (2009) found content as “King” of the viral message that

affects the brand attitude and intentions of the consumers to purchase product and forward the

advertising video to others.

Viral marketing is a web based marketing technique and hence provides an online

environment that is conducive to a new form of marketing communication cutting across all

global boundaries. So in the present study, an attempt has been made to explore and

empirically verify those factors that make viral advertisement internationally acceptable. In

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addition to this, the analysis has been made to measure the effect of these factors on brand

attitude and intentions of the consumers (across two countries) to purchase the brand.

The review of literature also indicates that MNCs use international or global strategies to

design the advertising message (Kotler et al. 2009; Nelson and Paek, 2007). Companies

follow international (localize) or global (standardize) advertising strategies depending upon

the nature of product or targeted customers (Nelson and Paek, 2007).They opined that

companies dealing in beauty products (cosmetics, fashion) are more likely to use

standardized advertising strategies (by using English language and showing Western models)

than the companies dealing in other products (like food, household goods, cars).Further,

International advertising strategies are tailored to reflect regional, national and local market

cultural differences and preferences whereas in global advertising, standardized strategies are

followed in which advertising content is same worldwide (www.smallbusiness.chron.com).

Thus it has been perceived from the literature that companies while designing international

advertising message always keep in mind certain content related features that increase the

speed of transmission of video online. There are number of studies that worked upon the

content related factors that make an advertisement viral.

Kotler et al. (2009) opined that effectiveness of communication mainly depends upon the

informational (product/service attributes or benefits) and transformational (non-product

related benefits, image, positive or negative emotional appeal) appeals used in the message

content. Porter and Golan (2006) conducted content analysis of 266 viral advertisements and

found that the content having appeals of sexuality, nudity and violence along with building

the image of the brand are more likely to be forwarded. Further a content analysis of 360 viral

advertisements revealed that advertisers predominately based their message strategies on an

individual ego oriented (transformational) appeals which were based on themes such as

humour and sexuality (Golan and Zaidner, 2008).

Rune and Vinberg (2009) stressed upon various content related factors such as perceived

level of creativity (novelty, meaningfulness, humour, positiveness and well-craftiness),

authenticity, provocation and engagement which in turn encourage the intentions of the

receivers to purchase the product and spread the content of the video online. On similar

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grounds, Izawa M (2010) also claimed that people like to forward those marketing messages

to others which they found to be more enjoyable, informative, intense and less provocative.

Lin et al. (2006) opined that the messages which trigger positive emotional responses (such

as happy, glad, cheerful etc.) in receivers are more likely to be forwarded. Therefore, the

message developers have to design the viral message in such a way that stirs up strong

emotions such as humour, fear, sadness or inspiration (Phelps et al., 2004). Dobele et al.

(2007) further worked upon six primary emotions (surprise, joy, sadness, anger, fear and

disgust) that effect the intentions of the receivers to forward viral message to others and

found “surprise” as important element that must be included in viral message to make it

effective. Entertaining, funny or provocative content are also the strongest factors that induce

intentions of the receivers to spread it to others (Fairbank Victoria, 2008; Xavier and

Summer, 2009).

Besides the appeals used in the message content, there are number of studies that stressed

upon certain motivational or ‘borrowed interest” devices such as cute babies, popular music,

animals and animations which are used in the advertisements to make them effective (Kotler

et al., 2009; Porter and Golan, 2006; Golan and Zaidner, 2008, West, 2011). Furthermore,

Hsieh et al. (2012) opined that content with strong multimedia effects and emotions

especially humour have positive influence on the video to become viral.

This was also found from the studies that length of the viral advertisement video is also the

dominant factor that influences the intention of the receivers to watch and further forward it

to others. Lin et al., (2006) and West (2011) opined that length of the message and

advertisement video (in terms of number of words used and ad run time in seconds) play

significant role in making the message viral.

Based on intense review of literature it can be well hypothesized that it is content of the

message that make an advertising video viral. Although there are number of studies that

conducted content analysis of the viral advertisements to explore content related factors that

make it viral but there is a dearth of research in the area that deals with the analysis of content

of viral advertisements along with the measurement of the effectiveness of these content

related factors in terms of brand attitude and brand purchase intentions of the consumers.

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Thus, the purpose of present research is to empirically investigate the factors that contribute

to the successful acceptance and spread of the viral advertisements at global level. In addition

to this, the effectiveness of these content related factors on brand attitude and intentions of

the consumers, across two countries i.e. US and India, to purchase the brand has also been

measured.

Database and Research Methodology

The study is carried out in two parts. First part contained the content analysis of the global

viral advertisements and in the second part, online survey was conducted in two countries US

and India (which were reported in ‘The Hindu’(August 24,2013) as worlds’ 1st and 3rd largest

users of internet) to measure the impact of the content related factors on brand attitude and

consumers’ brand purchase intentions. For this purpose, a total of 600 questionnaires were

sent to the prospective respondents of both the countries via email of which 489

questionnaires were received back. Thus the sample size for the study is 489 which included

240 respondents from US and 249 respondents from India.

The exploratory study represents the first empirical attempt to analyse the content of viral

advertisements in order to find the common elements of the viral advertising videos. This

information would further help the advertisement creating agencies in designing of the viral

advertisement videos. For this purpose, 25 global viral advertisements of MNCs (also having

business in US and India) were selected as sample of the study which were widely viewed

and shared on YouTube, Facebook, twitter and Blog in year 2013 and 2014.These top videos

were chosen as sample for research from the database of viral video chart website-

www.viralvideochart.unrulymedia.com.

In order to empirically investigate the advertisements, the content analysis of the viral

advertisements was conducted by two coders by taking each advertisement as separate unit of

analysis. Each of the 25 global viral advertisements was coded on the basis of variables such

as creative message strategy (informational and transformational appeal), advertising appeal

(positive emotions and negative emotions), advertising functions (branding, provide product

information, call for action), use of motivational or borrowed interest devices and length of

viral advertisement. These dichotomous variables were coded with a score of one and zero to

indicate the presence and absence of that variable in the advertisement. The coding of the

advertisements was done by research scholar herself and her supervisor who is expert and has

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doctorate degree in the field of advertising. The main purpose of selecting two coders is to

ensure the reliability of the conclusions by running separate analysis of the advertisements by

each coder. In content analysis reliability is interpreted as intercoder reliability or the extent

of agreement (Wang, 2011).

Intercoder Reliability: Thus in order to ensure intercoder reliability, second coder ran a

separate analysis of all the advertisements by filling the coding sheet. Here in the present

study reliability scores are calculated by using Holsti (1969) method and scores are found as

0.88 which indicates a satisfactory level of intercoder reliability.

Further in the second part of the study, a model has been proposed based on the factors

explored by analysing the content of viral advertisements that make them acceptable at global

level. For this purpose, the questionnaire was designed to measure the effectiveness of these

factors. The constructs used in questionnaire are informational appeal (5 statements),

transformational appeal (6 statements), positive emotional appeal (3 statements), negative

emotional appeal (4 statements), branding (4 statements), provide product information (4

statements), call for action (4 statements), motivational or “borrowed interest devices” (6

statements), length of the viral advertisement (3 statements), brand attitude (2 statements),

brand purchase intentions (2 statements). All of these 43 items were measured on 5 point

likert scale (1=strongly agree and 5=strongly disagree).

With a view to empirically measure the causal relationship among the independent and

dependent variables, the SEM technique was applied first to validate the measurement model

through confirmatory factor analysis and then to do the path analysis of the structural model.

AMOS 18 software was used for applying SEM.

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Hypotheses of the Study

A model has been proposed based upon the factors explored by doing content analysis of

global viral advertisements that make these advertisements viral.

Creative Message Strategy

Informational Appeal

Transformational Appeal H1 (+)

H2 (+)

Advertising Appeal

Positive Emotions H3 (+)

H4 (+) Brand Attitude

Negative Emotions

H10 (+)

Advertising Function Brand Purchase Intentions

Branding H5 (+)

H6 (+)

H7 (+)

Borrowed Interest devices H8(+)

Length of viral advertisement H9(+)

Figure1: Proposed Conceptual Model

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Provide Product Information

Call for action

Information

Based on this proposed model, following hypotheses were formulated for their empirical

verification in two countries i.e. US and India.

H1: Informational appeal of the global viral advertisement has positive impact on the

respondents’ attitude for the brand.

H2: Transformational appeal of the global viral advertisement has positive impact on the

respondents’ attitude for the brand.

H3: Positive Emotional appeal used in global viral advertisement have positive impact on the

respondents’ attitude for the brand.

H4: Negative Emotional appeal used in global viral advertisement have positive impact on

the respondents’ attitude for the brand.

H5: “Branding” function of the global viral advertisement has positive impact on the

respondents’ attitude for the brand.

H6: “Provide product information” function of the global viral advertisement has positive

impact on the respondents’ attitude for the brand.

H7: “Call for action” function of the global viral advertisement has positive impact on the

respondents’ attitude for the brand.

H8: Motivational or borrowed interest devices used in global viral advertisement have

positive impact on the respondents’ attitude for the brand.

H9: Length of the global viral advertisement has positive impact on the respondents’ attitude

for the brand.

H10: Brand attitude has positive impact on the respondents’ brand purchase intentions.

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Data Analysis and Results

Through a content analysis of Global viral advertisements, this study has made an attempt to

highlight the viral components in the advertisements. Further it was revealed from (table 1)

that the most of viral advertisements based their creative message strategies on

transformational appeals (68%) rather than informational appeal (32%).

Table 1: Creative Message Strategies Used in Viral Advertising

(n=25)

Message Strategies Global Viral Ads Percentage

Informational 08 32%

Transformational 17 68%

Communicators use transformational appeals in the advertisements to arouse positive or

negative emotions in the minds of the consumers which ultimately affect the intentions of the

receivers to forward the video to others.

Further Table 2 indicates that happiness was most commonly utilized positive emotional

appeal in the viral advertisements and it was incorporated in 52% of the ads. Further it was

followed by humour that is found in 28% of the ads.

Table2: Appeal used in Viral Advertisements

(n=25)

Advertising appeals Global Viral Ads PercentagePositive Emotional Appeals Humour

Happiness Surprise

071304

28%52%16%

Negative Emotional Appeals Fear 01 4%

Table 3 indicates that “branding” is most commonly used advertising function in global viral

ads (84%) which is followed by provide product information and call for action.

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Table 3: Advertising Function in Viral Advertising

(n=25)

Advertising Function Global Viral Ads Percentage

Branding 21 84%

Provide Product information 05 20%

Call for action 04 16%

In addition to above discussed factors advertisers also use motivational devices to catch

attention of the consumers in the advertisements. It has been found from the analysis (table 4)

that in most of the advertisements advertisers use quality music in form of background music

or song to generate interest in the message.

Table 4: Motivational or Borrowed Interest Devices

Used in Viral Advertising

(n=25)

Motivational Devices Global Viral Ads Percentage

Cute Babies 04 17%

Background song 07 28%

Background Music 14 56%

Talented Activities 04 17%

Celebrity Endorsement 01 4%

The table 5 indicates that most of the viral advertisements are of length 60 seconds to 90

seconds which is followed by 30-60 seconds advertisements. It indicates that most of the viral

advertisements are of short length or short run time.

Table 5: Length of Global Viral Advertisement (n=25)

Length in seconds Global Viral Ads Percentage

30-60 06 24%

60-90 11 44%

90-120 03 12%

120-150 1 4%

11

150-180 02 8%

More than 180 02 8%

After empirical investigation of content related factors further an attempt has been made to

measure the perceptions of the respondents towards these factors and the effectiveness of

these factors in terms of brand attitude and respondents’ brand purchase intentions. So in

order to measure the causal relationship among the constructs (factors), analysis was

performed in two stages. The first stage deals with validating the measurement model and

second stage includes fitting the structural model. But before pursuing further, content

validity of the constructs has been ensured.

Measures Validation:

Content Validity: The scale was developed on the basis of intense review of literature

relating to viral advertising and the factors that contribute to make an advertisement viral.

The items were initially taken from the existing review of literature (such as Kotler et al,

2009; wells and Puto, 1984; Lin et al, 2006; West, 2011; Lethagen and Modig 2008) and then

modified in order to achieve the objectives of the study. According to Casalo et al., (2008),

“Content validity is the degree to which items correctly represent the theoretical content of

the construct and it is guaranteed by the in-depth review of literature”.

Assessment of the Measurement Models: Confirmatory Factor Analysis

A confirmatory factor analysis was performed in order to ensure the internal consistency of

the scales by assessment of composite reliability, convergent validity & discriminant validity.

For the assessment of the models, multiple fit indexes are reported.

Table 6 Goodness of fit test results of the models

Variable CMIN/DF CFI TLI IFI RMR RMSEA

Value 2.535 0.912 0.90 0.912 0.010 0.087

(sample1,US)

(sample2,India) 2.952 0.901 0.89 0.901 0.012 0.089

Accepted Value 5.00 > 0.9 > 0.9 > 0.9 < 0.05 <0.1

The measures which ensure the goodness of fit of the models included chi

square/degree of freedom which is below the recommended cut off of 5.00 (Hoyle,

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1995). Further the values of indices measuring goodness of fit included Comparative

Fit Index (CFI), Tucker- Lewis Index (TLI) and Incremental Fit Index (IFI) which are

found to be very close and greater than the minimum acceptable value of 0.9

(Fadlelmula, 2011). Thus both the models are fit to data.

The indices which measure badness of fit are in acceptable range. The value of Root

Mean Square Residual (RMR) of both the models is below 0.05 (Fadlelmula, 2011).

The value of Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) in both the cases

is less than 0.10 as suggested by (Fadlelmula, 2011).

The factor loadings of five items belonging to constructs such as Informational

appeal, transformational appeal, provide product information, call for action were

found to below the minimum acceptable limit of 0.7 (Malhotra and Dash, 2010) so

these observed variables were deleted form the scale to improve model fitness of the

model 1.

Seven items belonging to constructs such as Informational appeal, transformational

appeal, provide product information, call for action, borrowed interest devices were

also subject to deletion in model 2 because of low factor loadings.

Reliability and Validity Analysis of Measurement Scale

After measuring the fitness of the models, the composite reliability of the each construct was

calculated. In addition to this, to ensure the validity of the scale developed, convergent and

discriminant validity of the constructs was assessed.

Table 7: Reliability and Validity Analysis

Model 1 (US) Model 2 (India)

Latent Variable Composite

Reliability

AVE MSV ASV Composit

e

Reliability

AVE MSV ASV

Informational

appeal 0.928 0.810 0.336 0.152 0.938 0.791 0.367 0.172Transformational

appeal 0.932 0.795 0.221 0.117 0.921 0.745 0.262 0.127Positive emotional

appeals 0.983 0.942 0.296 0.125 0.981 0.944 0.306 0.145

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Negative

emotional appeals 0.911 0.689 0.525 0.059 0.915 0.729 0.723 0.089Branding 0.916 0.795 0.675 0.075 0.946 0.815 0.723 0.085Provide product

information 0.976 0.936 0.153 0.067 0.956 0.879 0.506 0.057Call for action 0.893 0.712 0.132 0.062 0.925 0.860 0.506 0.054Motivational or

“borrowed interest

devices 0.942 0.756 0.301 0.158 0.935 0.743 0.440 0.185Length of the

global

advertisement 0.967 0.843 0.245 0.078 0.956 0.878 0.265 0.099Brand attitude 0.871 0.751 0.521 0.128 0.883 0.791 0.607 0.198Brand purchase

intentions 0.931 0.732 0.487 0.162 0.872 0.774 0.607 0.217NOTE: (AVE: Average variance extracted; MSV: Maximum-shared variance; ASV: Average shared variance)

It is revealed from table 7 that the value of composite reliability (CR) for each construct is

greater than 0.7 (Malhotra and Dash, 2010). Furthermore to assess the convergent validity we

used AVE and CR. Convergent validity shows that the items which compose a determined

scale converge only on one construct (Casalo, Flavian and Guinaliu, 2008). Malhotra and

Dash (2010) have suggested that AVE should be 0.5 or above, as it indicates that the

adequate convergent validity measures should contain less than 50% error variance. In

addition to this, the composite reliability of each construct should be more than its AVE.

Both of these results (model 1 and model 2) are satisfactory as shown in table 7.

On the other hand, discriminant validity of each construct was assessed to ensure that a

determined construct is significantly distinct from other constructs that are not theoretically

related to it (Casalo, Flavian and Guinaliu, 2008). In order to assess the discriminant validity,

the two conditions are required to be fulfilled i.e. MSV<AVE and ASV<AVE. Both of these

conditions are found to be satisfactory as shown in table 7 which indicates that each construct

is significantly distinct from the other constructs.

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Assessment of the Structural Models: Path Analysis

After assessing the reliability and validity of the constructs, the proposed hypotheses were

examined by path analysis of the model. The conceptual model (refer to fig.1) was tested

separately for each sample and for this purpose AMOS, maximum likelihood estimation

method was used.

Table 8 Goodness of fit test results of the models

Variable CMIN/DF CFI TLI IFI RMR RMSEA

Value 2.432 0.907 0.90 0.907 0.011 0.076

(sample1,US)

(sample2,India) 2.526 0.90 0.889 0.90 0.013 0.085

Accepted Value 5.00 > 0.9 > 0.9 > 0.9 < 0.05 <0.1

All the indices are in acceptable range which indicates the goodness of fit of both the models

to data. Further the evidence for all the hypothesized relationships was found which ensures

statistical significant relationship among all the constructs of the path. Further the table 9

depicts the path coefficients of the models.

Table 9 Path Coefficients of the Models

Hypothese

s

Casual Path Model 1

β value and

R2

Model 2

β value and

R2

H1

H2

H3

H4

H5

H6

H7

Informational appeal Brand attitude

Transformational appeal Brand attitude

Positive Emotions Brand attitude

Negative Emotions Brand attitude

Branding Brand attitude

Provide product information Brand attitude

Call for action Brand attitude

0.28 (0.07)

0.39 (0.15)

0.45 (0.20)

0.13 (0.01)

0.25 (0.06)

0.12 (0.01)

0.11 (0.012)

0.18 (0.03)

0.30 (0.09)

0.34 (0.12)

0.07 (0.0049)

0.14 (0.02)

0.13 (0.01)

0.14 (0.02)

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H8

H9

H10

Borrowed Interest devices Brand attitude

Length of advertisement Brand attitude

Brand attitude Brand purchase intentions

0.37 (0.14)

0.08 (0.006)

0.81 (0.6561)

0.40 (0.16)

0.13 (0.01)

0.78 (0.6084)

It has been revealed from the results of model 1 that independent construct “positive

emotional appeals” in the viral message explain 20% variance in the dependent variable i.e.

“brand attitude”. Further the construct “brand attitude” play significant role in changing

purchase intentions of the US respondents and it explains 65.61% variance in dependent

variable “brand purchase intentions”.

The results of the second model indicate that respondents consider “borrowed interest

devices” as most significant factor which explains 16% variance in the “brand attitude”. In

addition to it, “brand attitude” have significant impact on purchase intentions of the Indian

respondents and 60.84% variance in dependent variable “brand purchase intentions” is

explained by the independent construct i.e. “brand attitude.

Conclusion

With the penetration of high speed internet technology, the role of the consumers has

changed drastically. Now they are not the end users of online advertisements, but they play a

significant role as essential players in the distribution of the advertisements (Golan and

Zaidner, 2008).

Thus, an attempt was made to empirically explore the common content related factors in

global advertisements that have motivated the consumers to make them viral across the

countries. It is revealed from the content analysis of 25 global viral advertisements that most

of the advertisements are based on transformational appeals and use background music to

arouse positive emotions in the consumers in form of happiness. Moreover, most of the

global viral advertisements are of short length and the main motive is to build image of the

brands in the minds of the consumers.

Further a perceptual study was conducted across two countries to measure the impact of these

content related factors on brand attitude that further leads to change the intentions of the

respondents to purchase the same brand. These factors include informational and

transformational appeals (creative message strategy), positive and negative emotional appeals

(advertising appeals), branding, provide product information, call for action (advertising

functions), motivational or “borrowed interest devices” and length of global viral

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advertisement. The structural modeling technique was applied on two samples to measure the

causal relationships among these independent and dependent constructs. The analysis of data

reveals that all the factors play significant role in enhancing the effectiveness of global viral

advertisements but US respondents perceived Positive Emotional Appeal as dominating

factor which influenced their brand attitude which further leads to their purchase intentions.

On the other hand also in case of second sample (Indian respondents) all the factors have

significant relationship with brand attitude. But the respondents, in comparison to other

factors, perceived Borrowed Interest Devices as major factor that influenced their brand

attitude most which in turn affects their purchase intentions.

In nutshell, it can be said at the time of designing viral advertising videos at global level, the

companies need to inculcate all the elements which are most commonly found in the global

viral advertisements with special emphases on the factors i.e. positive emotional appeal and

motivational devices that help in building positive attitude for the brand in the minds of the

consumers.

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