Abstract
In business, a dropship or an agent is an intermediary between suppliers and customers where he/she will get the commission or profit from markup price through the online selling. A dropship does not own any stocks or products for the business but takes possession in the business distribution process. Meanwhile, viral marketing is a marketing technique that induces social media users to spread detailed information about a certain product or service. This technique is very powerful since it takes a very short time to reach potential customers. Instagram is one of the effective social media platforms in providing a good environment for disseminating information by using image posts. However, the effectiveness and the strength of certain promotion for every product that has been posted on Instagram are uncertain. Some might go viral and some might not. The purpose of this study is to investigate the dynamics of drop shipping business through Instagram in a given period of time. The epidemic model being applied in this study consists of a system of three differential equations with three state variables, namely the number of followers, the number of people reach the contents, and the number of people stops visiting the profile. The parameters involved are the message transmission rate between the reachable followers and the registered followers and the recovery rate between the reacted followers and the reachable followers. The data was collected from the dropship Instagram account, babykids.branded_shoppe. There are four categories of products: attire set, dress, shoes, and backpack. Each product has several items. The attire set, dress, shoes, and backpack consist of nine, five, six, and three items, respectively. The solution of the model was obtained using MATLAB software. The results showed that message transmission reaches its peak within 2 days. The value of the basic reproduction number shows that a few items were viral among Instagram followers.
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Sharif, N., Abu Bakar, S.N.A., Ku Akil, K.A. (2020). Drop Shipping Business via Instagram: An Epidemic Model Approach. In: Kaur, N., Ahmad, M. (eds) Charting a Sustainable Future of ASEAN in Business and Social Sciences. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3859-9_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3859-9_3
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