Designing and measuring the optimal pattern of referral advertising process in Iranian society

Referral advertising allows brands to send their messages to their customers through people they trust. In referral ads, the customer receives the ad from someone he or she knows beforehand and gives him or her more confidence in knowing that the person in question is not the ad recipient. The purpose of the present study is to identify the factors influencing the likelihood of a customer being advertised and accepting referral advertising on the social network of Instagram. The research method is by nature in the category of Mixed Method (qualitative and quantitative). In the first stage, 8 variables were identified as influencing factors on the likelihood of advertising referrals through interviewing social network users on Instagram and analyzing interview codes with the Thematic Analysis approach: Social Media Characteristics, Product Characteristics, Intermediary Role, Consumer Demographic Characteristics, Content Characteristics, Reference Motivation, Brand Relationship Strength, and Interpersonal Relationship Strength. In the second phase, a questionnaire was developed and distributed to users of the social networking Instagram. A total of 334 questionnaires were collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that all these factors had a positive effect on the probability of referral and the probability of acceptance of the referral advertisement. Also regarding the moderating variables, the results showed that the two groups of youth and the gender of women had the most reaction to the model stimuli.