Online Social Media as a Driver of Buzz Marketing: Who's Riding?

Abstract

‘Buzz Marketing’ has been a considered as an alternative strategy of creating preference and demand among prospective customers by the theoreticians and practitioners for times past. Though given caution, this geometrically progressive marketing strategy offers significant opportunities for the firms. The immense popularity of the online social media among the people has given the opportunity to add a new dimension of buzz marketing, as these social networking sites are accommodating a massive exchange of views among the users. Companies planning to use these online social media as a driver of their buzz marketing efforts inevitably would face the challenge of acquiring favorable response from a versatile and almost uncontrollable mass of users. Hence, profiling the users of these media who would ride on the buzz is of utmost value for all concerned ones. This study focuses on the users of the online social media and aims to create profiles of these buzz riders. Qualitative in nature, this study also proposes some strategic implications for the different categories of online social media users to elicit positive responses of the buzz marketing efforts of the companies.

Keywords: Buzz Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Online Social Media (OSM), OSM Users, Profiling