Digital Commons Network^™

An Imc Approach To Building Trust Among Nonprofit Donors, Catherine A. Romaine

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the role of a holistic Integrated Marketing Communications strategy within the nonprofit sector. The research aims to identify the effectiveness of different marketing communication tactics in soliciting donations for nonprofit organizations. It examines the influences and motivations of donors when choosing one organization over another for their monetary contributions. The thesis investigates the impact of specific integrated marketing strategies in building and maintaining relationships with different stakeholders such as donors, volunteers, and employees.

Through a literature review of successful nonprofits and missteps within the sector, this thesis identifies various factors that contribute to nonprofit marketing success, including …

Are Generational Attitudes Toward Digital Marketing Technology Exhibited In Automobile Purchase Behaviors?, Scott Whitaker

Doctor of Business Administration Dissertations

This dissertation was focused on the current digital purchasing trend in the used automotive industry in order to understand which factors impacted the growth of this trend through the lens of generational cohort theory. The growth of consumer informedness in the automotive sector has created drastic changes in how consumers are able, and willing, to purchase vehicles. Used car dealerships who adopt successful internet marketing techniques can capture and engage potential customers and then convert that engagement into sales. Companies like Carvana, Vroom, and CarMax have seized this opportunity and created a digital marketing phenomenon with major impacts on consumer …

Buy-Online-Pickup-In-Store (Bopis) Business Strategy: A Multivarite Study Of Bopis Influencing Factors On Customer Satisfaction, Addison G. Smith

Honors Thesis

Purpose- The purpose of this study was to identify the attitudes consumers have towards buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPIS) and its influence on customer satisfaction.

Design- Data were collected from 567 respondents and resulted in 476 usable responses. This paper uses multivariate regression and two separate multiple regression analyses to examine the differential effects of multiple constructs (i.e. perceived usefulness online, perceived ease of use online, trust online, hedonic values online, perceived usefulness pickup, perceived ease of use pickup, trust pickup and hedonic values pickup) on customer satisfaction within online ordering and physical pickup portions of BOPIS process.

Findings- The result of this …

Trust And Bias In Peer-To-Peer Ratings: Why Peer-To-Peer Service Ratings Are Nearly Always Positive, And How They Can Be Fixed, Michael Moorhouse

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Transactions in the peer-to-peer sharing economy carry high risk and uncertainty. Consumers exchange with non-professional providers with whom they have no past history, and must rely on ratings and reviews for choice selection. However, there is a large positive bias in the ratings, making differentiation difficult, and causing some consumers to lose trust. Despite these concerns, little progress has been made to demonstrate the cause of the bias or how it can be fixed. I address this gap by demonstrating that consumers evaluate peer-peer experiences based on trust. This trust evaluation, in concert with network and social factors, contributes to …

The Relationship Between Organizations' Response To Customer Complaints, Customer Trust, And Loyalty, Abimbola Ajibola

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the relationship between organizations’ responses to customer complaints and their effects on customer loyalty and trust. Four hypotheses were established for this study to help us gain a greater understanding of the dynamics of the responses to customer complaints and their relationship with trust and loyalty. Five independent variables (apology, timeliness, explanation, compensation, and dialogue/active listening) and two dependent variables (trust and brand loyalty) were used to test the hypotheses. An online survey was conducted through Qualtrics and data were collected from participants who were students at a Midwestern University. Facebook …

The Social Media Machines: An Investigation Of The Effect Of Trust Moderated By Disinformation On Users’ Decision-Making Process, Zulma Valedon Westney

CCE Theses and Dissertations

Social media networking sites (SMNS) have become a popular communications medium where users share information, knowledge, and persuasion. In less than two decades, social media's (SM) dominance as a communication medium can't be disputed, for good or evil. Combined with the newly found immediacy and pervasiveness, these SM applications' persuasive power are useful weapons for organizations, angry customers, employees, actors, and activists bent on attacking or hacking other individuals, institutions, or systems. Consequently, SM has become the preferred default mechanism of news sources; however, users are unsure if the information gathered is true or false. According to the literature, SMNS …

Do Perceptions Of Businesses Differ Between Higher And Lower Counts Of Social Media Post Engagements?, Tally Shaw

Honors Theses

Social media is bringing consumers and businesses together like never before. Using social metrics such as “likes” and “shares”, businesses can both measure and influence consumer attitudes and behaviors. In an effort to expand upon growing research into the effects likes and shares may have on constructs such as attitude, intent to follow, trust, and adoption intention, this study designs an experiment which manipulates one small and one national business’s actual Facebook posts to measure the effects simply having higher or lower likes and shares can have on a consumer’s perception of that business. Using T-test and Regression Analysis, adoption …

A Consumer-Based Brand Equity Model For The Luxury And Upscale Hotel Sector, Hairong Shan

Theses: Doctorates and Masters

Luxury and upscale hotels, in common with businesses in other service industries and more broadly, seek to develop a strong brand that will contribute to a long-term competitive advantage. However, research on consumer-based brand equity in luxury and upscale hotels is limited. Therefore, the current research, based on fundamental theories of brand equity development established in the packaged goods and the service industries including hotels, has developed a consumer-based brand equity model for the luxury and upscale hotel sector.

A mixed methods research design was employed. A qualitative study was first conducted using focus groups with the data being content …

Perceived Firm Transparency: Scale And Model Development, Jennifer Dapko

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last few years alone, calls for transparency by consumers have grown louder. No longer are consumers willing to sit back and allow firms to make `closed door' decisions that benefit the company (and its executives) at the expense of consumers and society. This dissertation begins to answer the call for a greater understanding of transparency from both practitioner and academic perspectives. In particular, this dissertation focuses on systematically developing a succinct definition of perceived firm transparency, developing a valid measure of transparency, and empirically testing antecedents and consequences of transparency.

Two studies were conducted to develop the transparency …

The Differing Effects Of Satisfaction, Trust, And Commitment On Buyer's Behavioral Loyalty: A Study Into The Buyer-Salesperson And Buyer-Selling Firm Relationship In A Business-To-Business Context, Brian Rutherford

Marketing Dissertations

This study is one of the first studies to fully address the relationship that business-to-business buyers have with both the selling firm and salesperson within an integrated model. Finding from this survey research support 14 of the 26 original hypotheses and the 2 additional linkages using structural equation modeling. This study finds that the relationship customers have with the selling firm is a stronger predictor of continuance than the relationship that the buyer has with the salesperson. While this relationship is stronger between the buyer and the selling firm, findings suggest that the salesperson can have a direct negative impact …