Awareness and application of viral marketing in restaurant industry by utilizing social media

Abstract

Viral marketing can be termed as generating and uploading some form of content with the purpose of brand building (Ho & Dempsey, 2010). It is similar to conventional word of mouth but by utilizing internet as the main tool so it is also referred to as electronic word of mouth. The proposed study intends to explore such viral marketing practices in our restaurant sector for gaining insight in to local perspective that how our restaurant sector implementing these techniques for the purpose of brand building of their restaurants and how the elements of Disneyization model are being promoted by using viral marketing techniques on social media. In depth interviews were conducted with restaurant management to probe the awareness and current practices of restaurant management about viral marketing.