Abstract:

Viral marketing refers to the marketing approach through which marketers generate online contents on social networks and attract consumers to share them and make them viral. The paper develops a literature review on the factors that make online contents viral, including content characteristics, psychological motives, emotional responses, situational factors and individual traits. The framework can provide theoretical guidance for brands and We Media to increase sharing rate of their online contents. Future studies should focus on exploring the influential mechanism of specific emotions on sharing intention, identifying more situational factors in the context of Chinese culture, measuring the performance of viral marketing, investigating psychological and behavioral consequences of viral marketing and adopting multiple methods.

Key words: online contents, viral marketing, sharing intention, forwarding