Viral marketing for cultural product: The role of emotion and cultural awareness to influence purchasing intention

Abstract

Marketing communication tools evolve and this trend enables the marketers to design and implement powerful but still affordable marketing communication programs. Viral marketing plays an important role to communicate product offerings ranging from digital products, services, and tangible products. Previous studies investigated the role of emotion in viral marketing to increase brand awareness and intention to forward the message. In particular, the continuum of emotion (i.e., positive and negative emotion) distinguishes the effect of viral marketing on consumer behavior through a lack of consensus on its robustness. This study extends the discussion the role of emotion in the context of viral marketing especially for a cultural product namely Batik. Based on the nature of cultural products, this study examines the role of emotion to enhance viral marketing towards consumer decisions. In particular, its role to boost the effect of cultural awareness as intervening variable between viral marketing and consumer decision for cultural products. The proposed model fills the gap from previous studies by taking into account the role of emotion and cultural awareness in the viral marketing model.