Viral Marketing Communication: The Internet Word-of-Mouth

Viral Marketing Communication – A study on consumer perception and response MBA Thesis ’2009
1) Selective exposure – Consumer chooses whether to make themselves available to
information
2) Selective attention – Consumer chooses to focus attention on certain stimuli while
excluding the rest
3) Selective comprehension – Consumer interprets the information based on his own
attitudes, beliefs, motives and experiences
4) Selective retention – Consumer remembers only part of the information he sees, hears and
reads even after paying attention to and understanding it
(Belch & Belch, 2001)
Understanding how consumers perceive information from external sources is important to
marketers in devising their marketing and communication strategies. Moving on, we will now
proceed to discuss more about the consumer response process.
2.2 Consumer Response
2.2.1 The response process
The receiver‟s set of reactions after seeing, hearing or reading the message is known as a
response. Consumer response can range from non-observable actions such as storing
information in memory to observable actions such as actual product purchase (Belch &
Belch, 2001). The general consumer response process consists of the following dimensions
(Wells et al, 2006).
Perception – Process of interpretation of stimuli through five senses
Cognition – How consumer responds to, learns and understands information
Affective/emotional response – Feelings that stimulate wants and creates feelings
Association – Brand takes on symbolic meaning for the consumer
Persuasion – Changes consumer‟s attitude and behavior
Decision making – Consumer determines if he needs or wants the product
Behavior – Consumer wants to try and buy the product
Figure 2.2: Dimensions of the general consumer response process
Low Jiun Wee Xavier and Goh Yun Shuang Summer Page 14 of 93