Online Social Media as a Driver of Buzz Marketing: Who's Riding?

‘Buzz Marketing’ is an alternative strategy of creating preference and demand among prospective customers. Though given caution, this geometrically progressive marketing strategy offers significant opportunities for firms. The popularity of online social media adds a new dimension of buzz marketing, as these social networking sites accommodate a massive exchange of views among the users. Companies planning to use online social media as a driver of their buzz marketing efforts inevitably face the challenge of acquiring favorable response from a versatile and almost uncontrollable mass of users. Hence, profiling the users of social media is valuable. This paper examines the users of online social media and creates profiles of these “buzz riders.†Qualitative in nature, this study also proposes strategic implications for the different categories of online social media users to elicit positive responses of the buzz marketing efforts of the companies.