Marketing Commons^™

2026 June, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for June of 2026.

From Gaming To Politics: The Impact Of Political Chatter By Social Media Influencers On Consumer Engagement With Non-Political Content, Mahdi Niknejad Moghadam

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

Social media influencers (SMIs) have become integral to digital marketing, shaping consumer perceptions and promoting products and services. While some SMIs are dedicated to political content or develop such content occasionally, nonpolitical SMIs may also engage in political chatter within their usual content. This study examines the effects of such chatter on consumer engagement by focusing on gaming SMIs. The main analysis is based on a dataset of 43,892 videos from 200 SMIs. The findings indicate that, overall, political chatter intensity in non-political content negatively impacts user engagement. However, this adverse effect is mitigated when SMIs express negative emotions, i.e., …

The Impact Of Multi-Brand Promotions On Visual Distinctiveness And Consumer Choice, Melanie Isabel Paul Austin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In cluttered retail environments, marketers must often decide whether to showcase a brand alone in a single-brand promotion, or alongside other brands in a multi-brand promotion. Prior research has explored the role that different retail promotions play in consumers’ choice contexts. This research explores how multi-brand promotion versus single-brand promotions impact consumers’ purchase behavior. Study 1 uses secondary scanner data to show that multi-brand promotions lead to significantly higher sales of the promoted product compared to single-brand promotions. Study 2 replicates our secondary data findings in a quasi-field study with actual choice behavior. A series of lab studies again confirm …

San Luis Obispo Farmers' Market Mobile App & Rebrand, Joelle To

Graphic Communication

The San Luis Obispo Farmers’ Market, a five-block downtown event featuring nearly 100 vendors, currently lacks a centralized platform for visitors and vendors to easily access information, navigate the market, and communicate efficiently.

This project addresses that opportunity through the design of a mobile app that streamlines vendor information, provides interactive market navigation, delivers real-time event updates, and enhances connections between vendors and attendees.

In addition, the project includes a rebrand and comprehensive brand guidelines integrated into the app design, creating a cohesive visual identity that improves user experience, operational efficiency, and long-term engagement for the San Luis Obispo Farmers’ …

2nd Summer Music Festival: Branding A Small-Scale Music Festival, Scout Corpuz-Carr

Graphic Communication

2nd Summer is a fictitious music festival created to address a gap in the live music event market for Cal Poly students. Existing festivals are often too expensive, poorly targeted toward students, or lack opportunities for student musicians. This project focuses on developing a festival’s branding and marketing, including the visual identity, promotional materials, and overall brand strategy. Designed as an affordable and community-driven event, 2nd Summer emphasizes inclusivity, student culture, and the promotion of emerging student artists. Through cohesive branding and targeted marketing, the project aims to create a recognizable festival identity that resonates with college students and strengthens …

Cor(E) Brand Direction, Jake T. Tokatlian

Graphic Communication

COR(E) is a new record label founded by an artist named Lil Uzi Vert, and for my project I have taken the initial steps to develop their brand identity and create physical products for the label. To achieve this, I made a brand book to help define COR(E) and provide a set of design guidelines, a Spring issue of a quarterly magazine that provides news and behind the scenes of the label’s artists, and a CD design including a cover and tracklist. I believe there is a gap in the market for bringing physical media into the music industry and …

Cycles Of Inequality In The Marketplace: Insights From Macro, Marketer, And Consumer Perspectives, Debora V. Thompson, Amna Kirmani, Rebecca Hamilton, Andy Li, Christilene Du Plessis, Daniel Fernandes, Guillaume Johnson, Brent Mcferren, Jian Ni, Vladmir Pavlov, Francine Petersen, Lisa Scheer, Yan Vieites, Keith Wilcox

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Seeking inequality via differentiation is a fundamental theme in the marketing literature: consumers derive utility from products that convey socially valued attributes, and marketers target consumers by giving them opportunities to differentiate on socially valued attributes. However, as a large body of evidence shows, inequality can reduce consumer well-being and limit economic growth. In this paper, we take a systemic view of marketplace inequality, examining the interdependence among consumers, marketers, and macro forces in shaping inequality in markets for goods and services. Our broad review of the marketing literature across ten marketing journals and a variety of subdomains within the …

Beyond The Shelf: How Reallocating Shelf Space To Emerging Brands Enhances Store Performance Through Dynamic Brand-Level Effects, Jesse Core, Ho Kim

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

This study examines the effects of reallocating shelf space from established to emerging brands in the flavored malt beverage category, a fast-moving, impulse-driven product category. Using a 13-week field experiment in 16 U.S. grocery stores (six treated, ten control), we reallocated one shelf facing from an established to an emerging brand for four weeks before reverting the shelves to their original configuration. Then we analyzed weekly SKU-level data on sales with fixed-effects panel regressions. Results show that the shelf-space reallocation increased category sales by 21.2% during treatment and 27.6% after reversion, revealing persistent gains. At the brand level, emerging brands …

Strategic Sustainability In Fast-Fashion: Consumer Responses To Green Collections, Caroline Le Bon

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

The fashion industry has long been criticized for its detrimental environmental impact. As awareness grows, consumers acknowledge that their demand for variety at low prices has fueled the industry’s unethical practices, making sustainability a key concern for them and for companies. Although fast-fashion brands introduce sustainable collections, they continue to face criticism for prevalent greenwashing practices. Our research explores how integrating such collections into fast-fashion assortments influences consumer perception and purchase intention, depending on their involvement in both fashion and sustainability. Through our quantitative study, we find that implementing strategic sustainability through green collections alone is insufficient to convince environmentally …

Marketing As Practice: Resolving The Hunt-Anderson Stalemate Through Practice Theory, Stephen A. Lemay, Martin Svendsen

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

This paper revisits methodological debates in marketing theory, tracing the progression from Sidney Levy’s work on symbolic consumption to the Hunt–Anderson empiricist–relativist debate. We argue that this debate rests on a category error: marketing has been misclassified as either a science or an interpretive discipline. Drawing on contemporary practice theory, we reconceptualize marketing as a professional practice oriented toward creating and managing exchange relationships within cultural contexts. This perspective resolves the Hunt–Anderson stalemate, clarifies the epistemological foundations of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) and Transformative Consumer Research (TCR), and generates distinct research questions and methods. Through comparative exemplars, we show how …

“I” Or “We” In Times Of Crises: Should Marketers Use Individualist Or Collectivist Language When Times Are Tough?, Milad Hour, Golshad Parsimoghadam, Ali Jamei

Journal of Applied Marketing Theory

During the pandemic, as people dealt with fatalities, lockdowns, and the psychological impact of reduced social interactions, some marketing messages still captured significant public attention. What was the key element contributing to the success of these communications during such challenging times? This study focuses on the role of collectivism as a stress-coping mechanism included within marketing communications. Analyzing approximately 56,000 brand-generated posts on Platform X, the research examines how the use of collectivist language (e.g., we, us, etc.) relates to message likability, particularly as the pandemic nears its peak. The findings reveal that collectivist terms are positively associated with the …

Online Shopping Non-Adoption In South Africa: A Distrust-Centric Framework Integrating Social Exchange, Trust Transfer, And Social Presence Theories, Cleopatra Moipone Matli, Jeevarathnam P. Govender

Journal of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in Emerging Markets

Online shopping non-adoption remains critically underexplored, especially in emerging markets. Addressing this gap, the authors develop and test a distrust-centric framework that applies the inhibitory logic of social exchange, trust transfer, and social presence theories to explain pre-emptive avoidance. Focusing on South Africa, where only 18.16% of the population engage in e-commerce, data was collected from 414 consumers who have never shopped online. Structural equation modelling reveals that perceived lack of reciprocity directly increases the intention of non-adoption. Moreover, distrust in online payment systems transfers to broader channel scepticism, which in turn drives avoidance. Perceived lack of social presence further …

Unveiling The Power Of Credibility: How Virtual Influencers Shape Consumer Attitudes And Purchase Intentions In Fashion, Danita Van Heerden, Jade L. Verbeek

Journal of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in Emerging Markets

Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of influencer marketing, particularly in the fashion industry. Consequently, brands are using virtual influencers (VIs) to engage consumers in this space. Yet little is known about VIs’ credibility and their influence on purchase intentions, especially in an emerging market where they are less prevalent. This study examines the influence of VIs’ credibility (i.e., trustworthiness, attractiveness, and expertise) on consumers’ attitudes towards VIs and the subsequent impact on purchase intention for fashion products in South Africa, grounded in the Source Credibility Theory. Data were collected from active social media users using non-probability convenience and …

Bridging The Justice Gap: A Comparative Study Of Legal Aid Marketing In Canada, Australia, And The United States, Farah O. Haq

Student Theses and Dissertations

Access to justice remains a central challenge across legal systems, particularly for immigrants and refugees, Indigenous communities, and survivors of domestic violence. While legal aid organizations play a critical role in bridging this gap, their effectiveness increasingly depends on how clearly and compassionately they communicate legal information online to their target audience. This thesis conducts a comparative content analysis of nine nonprofit legal aid organizations in the United States, Canada, and Australia, three countries united by a common law tradition but divided by the communication barriers their communities face, examining 180 social media posts and nine websites through the lens …

Modern Visual Solutions For Established Brands: Making Graphic Design Accessible To Legacy Businesses, Emma R. Shanton

Masters Theses

Legacy businesses, often family-owned shops or companies that have been around for decades, have real history and loyal customers, but many look old-fashioned and struggle to attract new people today. Outdated logos, hard-to-read designs, and the habit of using ready-made templates or AI-generated images lead to branding that feels generic, turns customers away, excludes people with disabilities, and can even cause legal trouble.

This study asks a simple question: How can small, long-running businesses update their look in a way that is affordable, easy for everyone to use, legally safe, and still feels true to their story, without high costs, …

How The Sustainable Value-Action Gap Influences Alter Across Generations, Jessica Holden, Ismet Anitsal, Melek Meral Anitsal

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Generative Ai’S (Genai) Impact On Sales Performance: An Empirical Study On Business-To-Business Sales Process, Michael Rodriguez, Michael Rodriguez, Mike Krush, Dawn Deeter-Schmelz

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

The Effect Of Ai Disclosure On Donation Intentions, Jihoon Jhang, Da'mya Brittian

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

Mental Model Dilemma Of Technological Shifts And Generational Gaps? Incorporated From The Musings Of An Octogenarian., Madhavi Chakrabarty

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.

An Exercise In Personal Branding: Marketing Students Mentoring College Athletes In The New Age Of Nil, Michelle C. Carpenter Mba, Jay O’Toole Ph.D., Brendan O’Hallarn Ph.D., Craig A. Morehead Ph.D.

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

No abstract provided.