With the emergence of blogs as a new internet media and the transition from mass marketing strategies to target marketing strategies, blog marketing has become a buzz word in the marketing field. Blogs are considered to have great potential as a media...
With the emergence of blogs as a new internet media and the transition from mass marketing strategies to target marketing strategies, blog marketing has become a buzz word in the marketing field. Blogs are considered to have great potential as a media for word of mouth marketing due to their easiness to use and functions that enable fast flow of information. Former studies on blogs used indirect methods of predicting blogging behaviors by researching the motivation and satisfaction factors of blogging. Most prior studies, moreover, were short in their implications for target marketing as they dealt with the general blogger population. This study used a direct method of figuring out blogging behaviors by conducting in-depth interview of bloggers. Through the interview, six types of blogging behavior (library, shopping mall, cafe, cocktail party, stage, and discussion room types) were discovered, based on which multiple regression analysis on the blogging behavior of influential consumers (opinion leader, market maven, early adopter) was conducted.The findings show that shopping mall, cafe, and stage types significantly explain the blogging behaviors of opinion leaders, while cafe, shopping mall and discussion room types do those of market mavens, and cafe of early adopters'. This study implies that companies should adopt the blog marketing strategies that answer to the blogging behaviors of the influential consumer type they target. As each influential consumer type is distinctive in their word of mouth behaviors, it is desirable for companies to target the influential consumer type that is well suited for their products and strategies, and induce them to engage in word of mouth behaviors.