Content marketing · Survey-based empirical study using motivational constructs to predict forwarding of online content.
Viral Marketing: Motivations to Forward Online Content
Journal of Business Research · 2010
Summary
The need to belong, be individualistic, be altruistic, and seek personal growth are identified as motivations associated with forwarding; relative importance differs across users.
For your marketing
Possible founder application
Use it as a behavioral mechanism or experiment-design reference, not a direct forecast for a SaaS funnel.
Reported result
What the study found
The need to belong, be individualistic, be altruistic, and seek personal growth are identified as motivations associated with forwarding; relative importance differs across users.
Research question
What the authors investigated
What motivations lead consumers to forward online content?
Design
Survey-based empirical study using motivational constructs to predict forwarding of online content.
Sample and setting
Online users who forward online content; measures cover belonging, individualism, altruism, and personal-growth motives.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
Self-reported forwarding and cross-sectional survey design limit causal claims and may not predict actual referrals or paid conversion.
Research sources
ScienceDirect abstract explicitly lists the four motivation categories and frames the paper as viral-marketing forwarding research. Direct publisher-page retrieval was recorded on 2026-10-09; this profile uses publisher metadata/abstract and does not claim independent review of unavailable full text.