M PRA

Munich Personal RePEc Archive

Success Factors in Mobile Viral

Marketing: A Multi-Case Study
Approach
Key Pousttchi and Dietmar Georg Wiedemann
University of Augsburg

2007

Online at http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/5736/
MPRA Paper No. 5736, posted 14. November 2007 06:00 UTC

Pousttchi, K.; Wiedemann, D. G.: Success Factors in Mobile Viral Marketing: A Multi-Case Study Approach. Proceedings of
the 6th International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB 2007). IEEE Computer Society Press. Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2007.

Success Factors in Mobile Viral Marketing: A Multi-Case Study Approach

Key Pousttchi, Dietmar G. Wiedemann
Mobile Commerce Working Group, Chair of Business Informatics and
Systems Engineering, University of Augsburg, 86135 Augsburg, Germany
{key.pousttchi, dietmar.wiedemann}@wi-mobile.de

Abstract
A prior study showed that mobile viral marketing is
an important issue of mobile marketing. Using a multicase study research approach, we introduce a typology
of four standard types of mobile viral marketing and
extract eight success factors for this new form of
marketing. As a final step, we structure the
relationship between both, showing success factors
significance in different standard types and deriving a
success factor framework. We conclude with a
consideration of research implications.

1. Introduction
In a prior study almost 70 per cent of 44 mobile
marketing experts stated that mobile viral marketing is
an important issue of mobile marketing. The
respondents confirmed that personal messages sent by
friends gain more credibility than those coming
directly from the self-interested advertiser. In addition,
people who get the initial message from a familiar
recommender participate more frequently in a
campaign as initial contacts. [28] Hence, viral elements
help to expand significantly the number of recipients
and increase the impact of the campaign at low
company expense. Like its counterpart on the
stationary Internet, termed in this paper as electronic
viral marketing, mobile viral marketing is based on
word-of-mouth (WOM) and can be understood as a
distribution and communication concept [10]. The term
viral marketing uses the exponential diffusion of an
epidemic as a metaphor for the exponential diffusion of
information about products or of the products
themselves by infected individuals [10] in this type
of mobile marketing. Since an epidemic may be local
and can be global the metaphor may be used regardless
of the scale of diffusion which is achieved with a
mobile viral marketing strategy.
Following these considerations we define mobile
viral marketing as a concept for distribution or
communication that relies on customers to transmit

content via mobile communication techniques and

mobile devices to other potential customers in their
social sphere and to animate these contacts to also
transmit the content. We define such content as mobile
viral content; it comprises mobile products, services,
or ads. Also Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)
Push and Uniform Resource Locator (URL) fall in this
category. Individuals transmitting mobile viral content
are termed communicators; individuals receiving
mobile viral content are termed recipients.
To better understand why and how mobile viral
marketing can be effective, practitioners must be aware
of the phenomenons characteristics and the factors
underlying success or failure. Only then they can
provide customers with content that enables viral
diffusion on the mobile channel. For scholars our goal
is to provide useful starting points and impetus for
further research. Thus, the outcome of the paper is a
typology of four standard types and a set of eight
success factors in mobile viral marketing. With clear
reflections of success factors significance in different
standard types we structure the relationship between
both and develop a success factor framework. The
results are based on an analysis of 34 case studies.
The paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, we
provide a literature review that focuses on mobile viral
marketing and typologies in electronic viral marketing.
Section 3 offers the details of the method used in this
paper. In Section 4, we present and discuss our results.
Finally, we conclude with a consideration of research
implications in Section 5.

2. Literature review
While scholars have provided a sizeable body of
research on mobile marketing and its success factors
[15], research explicitly focusing on mobile viral
marketing has received less attention [18]. The belowmentioned studies allude to the topic only marginally
(mainly by one or two survey questions) and focus
basically on other aspects of mobile marketing.
However, they provide some interesting findings.

Pousttchi, K.; Wiedemann, D. G.: Success Factors in Mobile Viral Marketing: A Multi-Case Study Approach. Proceedings of
the 6th International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB 2007). IEEE Computer Society Press. Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2007.

Barwise and Strong found out in a trial, that 17 per

cent forwarded especially entertaining or informative
mobile ads (n=500) [3]. According to a survey of
Skopos, 30 per cent said a friends recommendation
would convince them to download a mobile application
(n=2,500) [12]. A study published by Intuitive Media
and New Media Age stated, 29 per cent would share
and 45 per cent would intend to share music with
friends via Bluetooth (n=1,477) [11]. These results
illustrate the potential of mobile viral marketing for
distribution and communication purposes.
Analyzing mobile marketing from a theoretical
viewpoint, Pousttchi and Wiedemann defined six
mobile marketing objectives [21] one of these is
motivating mobile viral marketing. They also
developed a conceptual framework that provides an
insight into achieving these objectives with different
forms of campaigns.
In terms of academic research, the exploratory study
[27] represents a first step in filling the aforementioned
void in mobile marketing research by focusing
exclusively on mobile viral marketing. Based on a
literature review, relevant characteristics of mobile
viral marketing were identified and classified within a
morphological box [29]1 and four standard types were
proposed.
In the area of electronic viral marketing, some
authors provided typologies. A popular typology is
between high and low integration strategies varying in
the degree of requiring the customers activity in
passing on the virus (e.g., [10]). Subramani and
Rajagopalan added a second factor, the level of
network externalities [24]. This typology is suitable for
an extension on mobile viral marketing as will be
shown in Section 4.1.

3. Method
This contribution completes and significantly
extends the results of [27]. For both papers we rely on
the case study approach (e.g., [8]). 34 accurately
described case studies2 were analyzed according to the
process described in [8] in order to derive standard
types of mobile viral marketing. Conducting withincase analysis detected two groups of case studies.
While case studies being mobile services with network
1

The characteristics of the morphological box were participant,

motivation of communicator, role of communicator in persuasion,
added value for recipient, content type, content generation, impact,
level of network externalities, cost of communicator or recipient,
recommendation type, mobile network type, and enabling
technology. For the respective instances, see [Wi07].
2
For a complete list of the case studies we refer to [Wi07]. The case
studies were found through a web content analysis. A list of typical
case studies used as examples in this paper is provided in Table 2.

externalities represent the distribution concept of

mobile viral marketing, in contrast, case studies being
mobile
marketing
campaigns
represent
the
communication concept. Further, conducting crosscase search revealed typical patterns composed of the
instances of two characteristics. This led to a further
distinction at a lower level that we term the standard
type level. Afterwards we derived the success factors
of mobile viral marketing and link them to the standard
types. Especially, we analyzed how the viral diffusion
in each case study resulted. Afterwards, we compared
the results with electronic viral marketing literature to
get more and deeper insight in our findings and achieve
stronger internal validity. Finally, we structured the
relationship between the success factors and standard
types using a matrix representing the Cartesian product
in order to develop a success factor framework.

4. Results and discussion

4.1. Mobile viral marketing standard types
As stated above, the analysis of case studies
exposed typical patterns consisting of the instances of
two characteristics. The first characteristic the role of
communicator in persuasion differs between the
attempt of communicators to influence is passive or
active persuasive [24]. Active viral marketing is
closely associated with traditional WOM because the
communicator is personally involved in the process of
acquiring new customers. In contrast, in passive viral
marketing, the request to forward the content is
integrated into the process, e.g., by an additional
message that is sent by the marketer. The second
characteristic the level of network externalities
differs between high and low. Network externalities
describe the fact that the value of a unit of the good
increases with the expected number of units to be sold
[6, p. 678] or used [13].
Together, these two characteristics highlight four
quadrants that are termed as mobile viral marketing
standard types and shown in Table 1. While comparing
the results with literature, we recognized similarities of
the emergent types to Subramani and Rajagopalan [24]
who provided four quadrants related to electronic viral
marketing3. Therefore, we use their naming: (1)
Motivated Evangelism; (2) Signaling Use, Group
Membership; (3) Targeted Recommendation; and (4)
Awareness Creation, Benefits Signaling. Whereas the
3

The authors showed that the types provide insights into the nature
of influence and the importance of characteristics of communicators
and recipients [SR03]. There is evidence to suggest that these issues
are important for mobile viral marketing as well. Thus we will
explore these issues in future papers.

Pousttchi, K.; Wiedemann, D. G.: Success Factors in Mobile Viral Marketing: A Multi-Case Study Approach. Proceedings of
the 6th International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB 2007). IEEE Computer Society Press. Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2007.

standard types represent different major concepts, they

are not totally disjoint: any of the current mobile viral
marketing strategies can be classified into (at least) one
standard type, but a single mobile viral marketing
strategy may use more than one standard type.

High

Motivated
Evangelism

Signaling Use,
Group
Membership

Distribution
concept

Low

Level of network
externalities

Table 1. Mobile viral marketing standard types

Targeted
Recommendation

Awareness
Creation, Benefits
Signaling

Communicat
ion concept

Active

Passive

Role of communicator in persuasion

Motivated Evangelism. This standard type is

characterized by an active role of communicators in
influencing recipients and by high network
externalities. Communication services like the iconbased mobile messaging application Zlango, locationbased friend finders like Mobiloco, or mobile
communities like Peperonity.com are examples. The
viral effect in this standard type occurs as
communicators as well as recipients need to use the
service to benefit from the usage. This benefit
motivates early adopters to actively persuade recipients
to also try the good so that they both can use it. Thus,
this type demands the proactive participation of
communicators in acquiring new users. Network
externalities are high as both and others users benefit
from a wider diffusion of the service. In the presented
examples, the application can be used to send messages
to a wider audience, to find more friends, or to
communicate with more people. Subramani and
Rajagopalan stated that it is conceivable that each
marketers dream comes true and each new recipient
turns into an evangelist for the good inside his or her
circle of friends, and the installed base grows
exponentially [24]. However, rates of growth like in
their Motivated Evangelism examples (i.e., ICQ with
100,000 new users every day) are even seldom on the
stationary Internet.
Signaling Use, Group Membership. This standard
type is characterized by a passive role of
communicators in influencing recipients and by high
network externalities. Examples include the use of
specific kinds of mobile network products and
services, e.g., mobile payment procedures like the
German Paybox solution used in the customer-tocustomer scenario. When a user (i.e., the
communicator) sent money to an unregistered user
(i.e., the recipient), the later was able to receive the
money only by signing up for the mobile payment

procedures. The communicators recommendation is

passive as the recipients are informed by text messages
(Short Message Services, SMS) from the mobile
payment service provider and has the effect of
signaling the users membership in a group with
desirable attributes [24, p. 304]. There are positive
network externalities associated with usage, as all users
would benefit from the broader installed base of the
mobile payment procedure enabled by wider adoption.
Since mobile devices will have more computing power
in the future the same process is likely to happen with
mobile file compression utilities or proprietary
document formats (like Winzip, PDF, or Real Media
known from the personal computer world) when WAP
Push is used to spread such content and the recipient is
informed of the need to download a software
component to deal with the content.
Targeted Recommendation. This standard type is
characterized by an active role of communicators in
influencing recipients and by low network
externalities. A send-to-a-friend-option is a typical
instance. This is a function of Java applications or
WAP sites enabling the communicators to send
directly an SMS, WAP Push, or email to recipients by
at least entering the recipients mobile telephone
number (Mobile Subscriber ISDN, MSISDN) or email
address. A less sophisticated solution includes added
requests to mobile ads like send this to a friend. Also
contests that require the active participation of other
people fall into this type. Further examples are mobile
short films (micro movies) that are downloaded from
special portals on the stationary Internet or from the
mobile Internet. Typically, Bluetooth is used to
transmit the content since data transmission cost are
high and multimedia messages (Multimedia Message
Service, MMS) are limited to a certain data volume by
most mobile operators. In this standard type, network
externalities are low as there is typically no change of
benefit for customers when communicators forward the
mobile viral content to other recipients. A crucial
principle of (electronic and mobile) viral marketing is
that people are linked with others who are similar to
themselves which is called by Rosen as homophily
[22]. Typically, the communicator can roughly predict
the recipients interests and preferences based on
private information. Thus, in particular, Targeted
Recommendation shows great promise for spreading
specific product information within a target group
which could be extremely difficult to reach otherwise.

4.2. Success factors of mobile viral marketing

Some critics of viral marketing argue that
successful viral marketing is rather the outcome of
fortunate circumstances and variables marketers cannot

Pousttchi, K.; Wiedemann, D. G.: Success Factors in Mobile Viral Marketing: A Multi-Case Study Approach. Proceedings of
the 6th International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB 2007). IEEE Computer Society Press. Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2007.

control than the outcome of a brilliant strategy [9].

However, case study research and literature review
indicate the existence of some clearly identifiable key
elements assuring the success of mobile viral
marketing. We list these success factors under eight
headings: (1) perceived usefulness by recipient; (2)
reward for communicator; (3) perceived ease of use;
(4) free mobile viral content; (5) initial contacts; (6)
first movers advantage; (7) critical mass; and (8)
scalability. No claim is made that the success factors
presented here are exhaustive. Further mobile
marketing researchers should add to or modify the
ideas presented here.
Perceived usefulness by recipient. Considering both
concepts of mobile viral marketing, customers will
only accept new services or mobile marketing, if they
obtain a relative advantage (e.g., [23]) or an added
value (e.g., [1]). Consequently, the content should
contain a real value [10] which is perceived as useful
by the recipient. Perceived usefulness by recipient
describes the benefit for recipients while getting the
mobile viral content. Whereas in Motivated
Evangelism and Signaling Use, Group Membership the
value is typically a service, in Target Recommendation
the value is typically a product or service information
(see for an example the Adidas campaign presented in
Table 2). Also corporate prizes in (viral) contests that
require the participation of other people can attach
value. The mobile viral marketing campaign for the
movie Mona Lisa Smile (Columbia Tristar Film) is a
good example. Four people could win a group cinema
ticket when the communicator persuaded three
recipients to answer an SMS that was sent from the
brand website by the communicator. Although we
found no such case study up to date, the value in
Targeted Recommendation could consist of a monetary
incentive as well. For instance, a mobile coupon can be
forwarded. In standard type Awareness Creation,
Benefits Signaling, the value is typically entertainment
(for an example, see the LOral campaign presented in
Table 2). Commonly used applications are greeting
cards that fulfill the desire to communicate with peers
in a funny personal way and provides added value for
both communicators and recipients.
Reward for communicator. Rewards have been
demonstrated to be a major driver of human behavior
in general (e.g., [14]) and are considered by reward
beneficiary (in our case the communicator) as a sign of
appreciation of his or her own behavior by the reward
giver (in our case the marketer). Thus, a reward for the
communicator may motivate to forward the mobile
viral content. In Motivated Evangelism and Signaling
Use, Group Membership communicators may get a
reward for every new user. In Targeted
Recommendation, reward for the transmission may be

an effective strategy to enhance the extrinsic

motivation of communicators. In the Mona Lisa Smile
case study, the communicator got an exclusive ring
tone, when three recipients were persuaded to
participate in the contest. In Awareness Creation,
Benefits Signaling, reward will be possible, e.g., if a
communicator sends personalized SMS to a certain
amount of other people via a brand website. In a
campaign for the video game Resident Evil each
communicator got points for forwarding an SMS from
the brand web site. The more points he or she scored,
the better was the prize he or she could win. [4]
However, the success of mobile viral marketing hinges
on the strong need of communicators to be perceived
as persons communicating with peers in a funny way,
well informed helper, or expert of a particular topic in
their social network and not perceived as a paid agent
of a marketer. Mobile viral marketing strategies that
make too overt attempts to designate communicators to
promote products and services are likely to upset the
balance and reduce the effectiveness of the approach.
Companies would do well to reflect on this very
carefully.
Perceived ease of use. According to Wilson,
viruses only spread when they are easy to transmit
[26]. Thus, like with a disease the probability of a
wider diffusion of the virus increases with its easy
transmission, in mobile viral marketing, the probability
of a wider diffusion of the content increases with its
easy transmission as well. According to Davis [5], we
define perceived ease of use as the degree to which a
person believes that receiving and forwarding mobile
viral content would be free of effort. While most case
studies used (for most people) simple forwarding
mechanism like sending SMS and MMS or using IVR
(typically in Awareness Creation, Benefits Signaling),
perceived ease of use is relevant at other instances.
Generally, in Motivated Evangelism and Signaling
Use, Group Membership the implementation process
of mobile services has to be convenient to avoid a
breakup during the adoption process that is described
by Rogers [23]. In Targeted Recommendation, ease of
use will be of importance, if Java- or WAP-based sendto-a-friend options are used. Due to limitations of
mobile devices (e.g., small screen and key pad) typing
a name, MSISDN, or email address may be difficult for
unexercised people and typos may occur. In this
context, a welcome improvement is the JSR 75 (Java
Specification Request) that defines an API (application
programming interface) that gives J2ME (Java 2 Micro
Edition) enabled devices access to contact data stored
in the address book. Thus, future Java-based send-to-afriend options will operate like forwarding an SMS or
MMS as contact data can be easily selected. In case of

Pousttchi, K.; Wiedemann, D. G.: Success Factors in Mobile Viral Marketing: A Multi-Case Study Approach. Proceedings of
the 6th International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB 2007). IEEE Computer Society Press. Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2007.

a mobile short film, fast transmission is required. Thus,

data volume should be little.
Free mobile viral content. In the majority of case
studies, communicators had to pay only transmission
cost and the mobile viral content per se was for free. In
certain cases a premium rate of 0.49 was charged;
thus, the user financed the answer of the marketer. In
the context of electronic viral marketing, Helm argued
that the content should be offered for free. The specific
cost structure of digital products (with the marginal
cost approaching zero) favors this gratis distribution
[10]. We argue that this strategy should be applied in
mobile viral marketing as well, because users were
accustomed to a for free mentality due to their
Internet usage as on the Internet most content is for
free. Additionally, this assumption is based on Pagani
who found out that price is the third important factor
influencing mobile services adoption (after perceived
usefulness and ease of use) [19]. Using mobile viral
marketing as communication concept, such sponsoring
models are problem-free, because receiving advertising
is typically for free. However, this strategy poses a
problem with using mobile viral marketing as
distribution concept, since service providers have to
find sustainable business models. Answers may be that
the free service aims at the use of a further service
offer with costs or the built up customer base is used
for advertising purposes.
Initial contacts. Initial contacts are the first
generation of communicators. Adapting the viral
participant typology of Phelps et al. [20] to mobile
viral marketing, we refer to mobile viral mavens as
customers who receive and forward mobile viral
content frequently; we refer to mobile infrequent
senders as customers who are less avid about sending
content. Consequently, identifying and addressing
mobile viral mavens as initial contacts is an important
success factor in all standard types. Helm suggested
that the initial contacts should be chosen very carefully
and that Internet users that foster intense contact to
other users (e.g. students) are especially interesting
[10]. In the context of mobile viral marketing,
marketers can brief initial contacts on the content at
high-traffic connection points on the stationary or
mobile Internet using Web or mobile advertising
banners. This strategy was used by T-Mobile and
tele.ring in campaigns for 2006 FIFA World Cup WAP
portals [16]. However, this is rather an undirected
strategy as the target group is typically not the whole
group of Internet or mobile phone users. Thus, we
consider it best when marketers inform the initial
contacts by a mobile marketing push campaign. For
instance, in the Mona Lisa Smile case study, women in
the age between 17 and 25 listed in the mobile

marketing service providers data base were informed

about the campaign by using push SMS.
First-movers advantage. Helm stated that at least
in the initial phases, the content should have no
competitors in the perception of the customers [10].
This requirement is typically important for Motivated
Evangelism and Signaling Use, Group Membership.
As network externalities are high in these standard
types, we can apply Metcalfes law that suggests that
the overall value of a network increases with the square
of the number of users [25]. Thus, a first-movers
advantage can increase exponentially when he is able
to effectively dominate a network early on. For
instance, it is very likely that Paybox gained its
customer base of 850.000 users till 2003, because of
their first-movers advantage in this early stage of
mobile payment.
Critical mass. Products and services with network
externalities are often indicated by the existence of a
critical mass point [7]. The critical mass is defined as
the minimal number of adopters of an innovation for
the further rate of adoption to be self-sustaining (e.g.,
[23]). Thus, the critical mass concept means that an
equilibrium market for the good does not exist unless
the installed base is greater that a minimum level [7,
p. 31]. In the context of mobile viral marketing,
reaching the critical mass is crucial for Motivated
Evangelism and Signaling Use, Group Membership as
the level of network externalities is high in these types
in opposite to Targeted Recommendation and
Awareness Creation, Benefits Signaling. However, as
Mahler
and
Rogers
argued,
especially
telecommunications innovations with strong network
externalities which are highly interactive in nature and
which are characterized by direct network
externalities4 should be expected to have a more
pronounced critical mass in their rate of adoption [17,
p. 720]. Thus, this success factor is especially crucial
for services contained in Motivated Evangelism. In the
Zlango example (Table 2), the critical mass concept
would mean that a customer is not interested in
adopting the application because the installed base is
too small, i.e., he cannot send Zlango messages to any
other mobile phone users like an SMS, and the
installed base is too small because an insufficiently
small number of customers have adopted Zlango. This
mechanism is called the chicken and the egg paradox
that logically arises in such markets (e.g., [7]).
Scalability. Wilson argued that a viral model has to
incorporate scalability [26]. Scalability refers to the
ability of a system to accommodate an increasing
number of elements or objects, to process growing
4

Goods showing direct network externalities do not have any utility

per se and are only useful if others also use this good (e.g., [Ec96])

Pousttchi, K.; Wiedemann, D. G.: Success Factors in Mobile Viral Marketing: A Multi-Case Study Approach. Proceedings of
the 6th International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB 2007). IEEE Computer Society Press. Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2007.

volumes of work gracefully, and/or to be to

enlargement [2, p. 195]. Scalability can be a very
important feature for both user and service provider.
For an user, it means he or she can invest in a service
or product with confidence that it will work for the
future irrespective of the number of other users. For a
service provider, it implies that the underlying business
model offers the potential for economic growth. In
particular, this is important for Motivated Evangelism
and Signaling Use, Group Membership. For instance,
Zlango and Paybox (Table 2) require their own
infrastructure to transmit the messages and process the
payments respectively. If the strategy is very
successful, capacity of underlying infrastructure must
be expanded very quickly to assure fast response time
and overall performance of the system or the rapid
growth will die.
The case study research and literature review
revealed eight success factors of mobile viral
marketing and indicated that the significance of
success factors varies in different standard types. This
is shown by the success factor framework in Table 3.
Table 3. Success factor framework

Perceived ease of use

Free mobile viral content

Initial contacts

First-movers advantage

Critical mass

Scalability

Motivated
Evangelism
Signaling Use, Group
Membership
Targeted
Recommendation
Awareness Creation,
Benefits Signaling

Reward for communicator

Type

Perceived usefulness by recipient

Success factor

There are narrow differences with the success

factors perceived usefulness by recipient, reward for
communicator, perceived ease of use, free mobile viral
content, and initial contacts. However, first movers
advantage, critical mass, and scalability are important
for Motivated Evangelism and Signaling Use, Group
Membership as the level of network externalities is
high in these types.

5. Conclusion and future research

Starting point for our consideration was the fact
that mobile viral marketing is tremendously attractive
for marketers but neglected by academic research. We
provided four standard types and identified eight
factors assuring the success of mobile viral marketing.
With clear reflections of their significance in different
standard types we structure the relationship and
developed a success factor framework. This framework
supports marketers in defining as well as evaluating
mobile viral strategies. Following these straightforward
and intuitive guidelines increases the likelihood of high
viral diffusion of mobile viral content. Typically, not
all of the above mentioned factors are necessary to
make mobile viral marketing successful. However, the
probability of success increases with the number of
success factors considered.
On issues of future research, the standard types
offer some interesting research avenues: First, further
research on the standard type Motivated Evangelism,
especially its instance mobile community, is needed.
Interesting research topics are the content of
customers articulation and the motivation behind the
decision to engage in such communication. Another
question is how marketers can use mobile communities
to promote and distribute products and services.
Second, this type as well as the type Signaling Use,
Group Membership deserve closer examination in the
context of diffusion theory. As both deal with network
externalities, it may be valuable to know what
motivates early adopters to actively persuade recipients
to also try or passively disseminate such services.
Third, considering the standard types Targeted
Recommendation and Awareness Creation, Benefits
Signaling, it may be very enriching to analyze motives,
reactions, and behaviors of those who forward and
receive mobile viral content, especially mobile ads. In
addition, on issues of future research, the success
factors offer some interesting research avenues: For
instance, the success factor initial contact deserves
closer examination. Thus, fourth, an extremely
interesting next step for future research could be to
profile types of viral participants. If detailed behavioral
and psychographic profiles could be developed,
marketers would be able to target those valuable
mobile viral mavens more easily. Of particular value
would be a large-scale psychographic segmentation
study. Our future research will begin to tackle these
challenges.
With large technological and cultural changes
looming on the horizon, we see clear evidence that for
the advertising and mobile industry mobile viral

Pousttchi, K.; Wiedemann, D. G.: Success Factors in Mobile Viral Marketing: A Multi-Case Study Approach. Proceedings of
the 6th International Conference on Mobile Business (ICMB 2007). IEEE Computer Society Press. Toronto, Ontario, Canada 2007.

marketing will be an increasingly important force in

the near future.
Table 2. Typical case study examples

Awareness
Creation, Benefits
Signaling

Targeted
Recommendation

Signaling Use,
Group Membership

Motivated
Evangelism

Type

Company (campaign name) and description

Zlango:
The communication service enables creation and sending
of messages made up of over 200 icons to express words,
concepts, or feelings. Communicators as well as recipients
are required to download the mobile application to use the
service. Network externalities are high as both and others
users benefit from a wider diffusion of the service, and
active persuasion by early adopters is common.
Paybox:
The mobile payment procedure enabled among others
money transfers between customers. When a user sent
money to an unregistered user, he or she was able to
receive the money only after signing up for the mobile
payment procedures. Network externalities are high as
both and other users benefit from a wider diffusion of the
service, and persuasion by communicators is passive as
the recommendation was done by an SMS from paybox
that informed about the service.
Adidas (+10 campaign):
Initial contacts were briefed on the commercial WAP portal
by advertisement on a mobile network operator portal.
Communicators use a send-to-a-friend-option and
recommend the commercial WAP portal by entering his or
her name as well as the name and the MSISDN of
recipient who receives a WAP Push leading to the WAP
portal. Network externalities are low as both do not benefit
from a wider diffusion of the WAP portal, and active
persuasion by communicators is common as they have to
choose the recipients.
L'Oral (Mobile Kiss):
Initial contacts were briefed on the sound greeting cards by
Push SMS. Communicators sent an SMS with their name,
the selected a sound card indicated by F or M according
their sex and the recipients MSISDN to L'Oral. The
company sent the sound greeting card and afterwards an
SMS with information about the communicator and the
forwarding mechanism to receivers.

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