Internet users perception towards viral marketing

Viral marketing has emerged as an important concept in India as in other parts of the developing and developed countries and has become a necessary tool for every organization. Although there is increasing popularity among viral marketing, factors influencing to such a new communication medium, remains largely unknown. Hotmail has become one of the first to exploit online viral marketing since its email service was launched in the late 1990s, when every outgoing email contained a short message at the bottom with a link for people to click and sign up. In 1996, Steve and Tim also took advantage of viral marketing as a new phenomenon to promote the adoption of Hotmail, a free web-based e-mail service provider, and viral marketing launched this e-mail system from zero to 12 million subscribers in only18 months at very little cost (Shukla, 2010). Viral marketing has attained a large growth in popularity in last few years. This paper attempt to study the perception of the internet users on viral marketing and the role of social media on the growth of viral marketing Business firm have risen to occasion and have started responding to environmental challenge by practicing viral marketing strategies.