Research Paper (postgraduate) from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,0, University of Münster, language: English, abstract: The marketing landscape has undergone tremendous changes throughout the past decades (Keller 2009: 139). This has resulted in a communication environment in which the isolated usage of traditional media techniques is challenged. Already in 2006, 65% of consumers felt bombarded with an infinite variety of marketing messages (Porter and Golan 2006: 30). Moreover, evidence has been found that consumers proactively seek to avoid mass media messages through digital video recording (DVR), spam filters, and pop-up blockers (Hann et al. 2008: 1094). In addition, consumers increasingly rely on peers¿ advice rather than on company¿s marketing messages (Hinz et al. 2008: 55). As a response to these alterations, many companies have shifted their marketing budgets from traditional advertising techniques to new marketing formats that are supposed to better take the identified consumer needs into account. This led to the advent of viral marketing.