An Investigation of the Evaluation of the Viral Marketing Research

This paper aims to locate the key schools of thought in viral marketing (VM) literature, recognise the various sub-sets within viral marketing overall area of research and to identify the different gaps in viral marketing research literature offering a summation of the existing work done so far. The paper tries to build on the existing body of literature in the field of viral marketing, its related electronic word of mouth (eWOM) context and to present a taxonomic classification for future research. The review uses the paradigm funnel to examine the development of VM, key research contributions and categorises the published literature according to their objectives, analytical approaches and their contributions to theory. The literature addresses many subjects of study (e.g. E-Marketing, E-Word of Mouth, Social Media, Peer-to-Peer Communications, Viral Marketing, Buzz Marketing, Stealth Marketing, Viral Advertising, Viral Videos and other aligned research areas). The findings illustrated that there are various gaps in the literature that require further investigation. Based on the findings, it is evident that the existing frameworks arising from the literature should be enhanced by the adoption of qualitative approaches that explore how general observations respond to contingent factors.