Analysis of factors influencing the transmission of viral content on social networks

Viral marketing is used more and more intensively with the effect of digitalization. Since marketing messages on digital platforms spread very quickly from person to person, the spread of these messages is called viral marketing. Companies realized the power and potential of viral marketing and started to use it more intensively. In this master's thesis, it is aimed to determine the factors affecting the transmission of viral content in social networks. For this purpose, first of all, the factors affecting the transmission of viral messages by users on social networking sites were tried to be determined. Then, the weights or the degree of influence of the factors affecting the transmission of viral messages were determined. In addition, in this thesis, the role of gender in sharing online content on social networks has been tried to be determined. The data used in the research were collected through an online survey from consumers using social networks and transmitting viral messages. The analyzes made in the thesis study were carried out on a total of 558 observations. The hypotheses of the research were tested using the multiple regression analysis method. As a result of the research, it was seen that the factors of link strength, benefit motivation, sender satisfaction, source reliability, thinking of others and self-development positively affected the intention of users to forward viral content. Another important result was that there was a negative relationship between the information quality factor and the transmission of viral content. In addition, the intention of users to transmit viral content was analyzed according to demographic characteristics such as gender related to the determined factors. In this context, it was seen that the gender factor did not have a significant effect.