Digital Commons Network^™

Effective Communication Strategy During Crisis: A Case Of The 2010 Toyota Recall Crisis, Masud Mensah

Masters Theses

Crisis communication is an integral part of public relations and organizational management at large involving the timely and strategic sharing of information during a crisis or emergency. Its primary purpose is to ensure that organizations effectively manage and minimize the negative impact of the crisis on their operations and stakeholders, which invariably helps to maintain trust, credibility and restore their reputation. Based on an interpretivist standpoint, the study utilizes qualitative approaches and takes the form of a case study. It offers a comprehensive account of the crisis, including key occurrences, media representation, and public responses, showcasing its international impact via …

Examining The Impact Of Sports Influencer Advertising On Consumer Behavior In The Us And Saudi Arabia On Instagram., Mohammed Samer Alassaf

Masters Theses

This paper discusses the influence of sports influencers on the buying pattern of fans in the United States and Saudi Arabia. Sports are a crucial part of life in both countries, with numerous athletes being considered celebrities. Sports influencers have a tremendous impact on the audience, who often imitate their behavior and buy the products they advertise. The sports market is huge in both countries, with businesses utilizing sports influencers to promote their brands. Instagram is a popular platform for businesses to gain young fans and customers. The research and development of the sports industry have enabled considerable growth of …

The Impact Of Guilt And Empathy Appeals On Green Advertisement Purchase Intent Among Green Consumers, Jasmine C. Fehr

Masters Theses

The purpose of the study was to examine whether guilt appeals or empathy appeals were more effective at promoting purchase intention among green consumers for green products. This purpose was achieved through studying the effect of using an empathy appeal versus a guilt appeal in a hypothetical green advertisement. To test this objective, participants completed a survey that assessed the relationship between the message condition they were exposed to—either guilt, empathy, or neutral—and their subsequent purchase intent of the advertised product. It was hypothesized that the empathy appeal would lead to higher purchase intention than the guilt appeal, but the …

Branding Small Businesses In Small Communities, Lacey Jenkins

Masters Theses

Branding has grown into a vital part of communicating a brand to its audience members. Unfortunately, large portions of branding tactics are geared towards large corporations in large communities. Small and mid-sized businesses require different tactics in order to create a brand that effectively communicates its purpose and values to its consumers. Because of this, this thesis is looking at the branding tactics of a small business in Charleston, Illinois. This business, Phoenix Elite, showed weaknesses in multiple areas of its branding package. Using a literature review, the goal is to create a better understanding of what branding is, as …

Building A Blog/Building A Brand: Public Relations Campaign For "Goodwill Hunting" Fashion Blog, Yanik Gene Flowers

Masters Theses

The ability to consistently and cohesively communicate a brand's identity is the central focus of a public relations campaign. This project chronicled the creative and promotional efforts put forward to effectively communicate the brand of Goodwill Hunting - a fashion blog based on the thrift adventures of a 21-year-old college student. Exploring concepts embedded in branding, authenticity, blogging and social media; this campaign was able to establish and maintain a brand identity for Goodwill Hunting through the intentionality of content creation and promotional activity. Goodwill Hunting's blog site and Instagram account was ran for four months and the efforts of …

Z-Cube: Mobile Living For Feminist Nomads, Zi Ye

Masters Theses

Homes proclaim our social standing and reflect the trend of the times. This project seeks to explore and redefine the relationship between modern homes and modern women who strive for mobile life styles.

Modernism and globalization have brought us a new way of living that could have never been imagined before— our workspace and homes are no longer limited to a specific unit but have extended to the entire globe. The physical changes compelled by modernity have also complemented the changing role of women. Since the beginning of the 20th century, modern women have expanded their lives outside of their …

Of Music And Media: A Producer Study Of Promotional Encoding On Social Media Through The Lenses Of Paratext And Medium Theory, Connor D. Wilcox

Masters Theses

While music promotion has been important aspect for musicians, bands, and musical organizations for well over a century, the rise of social media in the digital era has profoundly changed the way these promoters perceived of and practice their commercial task of selling music. Paratexts (Gray, 2010a) offer an effective lens for focusing on these promotions while encoding/decoding (Hall, 1980) justifies producer studies to examine and uncover vital aspects of production shape the text and medium theory adds further focus by recentering the medium as being distinctly influential. Existing research on music promotion highlights the uniqueness and evocativeness of the …

Cell Phone Ethnography: Mixed Methods And The Brand Consumer Relationship, Robert Nathaniel Dove

Masters Theses

Overall, the goal of this study is to identify and differentiate the various motivations and cultural influences that can be used to explain consumer behavior. In doing so, this study hopes to facilitate the development of new and innovative marketing strategies, providing a new research design for the ethnographer’s toolkit. More importantly, this model can give shape to new constructs and new variables for further empirical testing in the field through quantitative and qualitative methods. By blending the two approaches, using qualitative interpretive anthropological analysis by field study with quantitative sentiment analysis adapted from market researcher Jeffery Breen’s (2012) methodology, …

Get Schooled: A Visual Social Semiotic Analysis Of Target's Branding Using Instagram, Chelsea Bevins

Masters Theses

With new technology arising, brands must be able to adapt to them. This thesis will break down brand management, using David Aaker's framework, of the Target Corporation to see if they are using modern resource, Instagram effectively. This thesis will also look at how the theory of visual social semiotics, applied to communications, is used to decipher intended meaning. Brand management embodies a company and people are driven by what a brand portrays. People are driven by values, emotions and quality within a brand. People associate products with memories, celebrities, attributes and symbols. Brands are more than just a name. …

Selling Life To Abortion-Seekers: A Content Analysis Of Passive And Active Persuasion In Crisis Pregnancy Center Marketing, Alexander Kocman

Masters Theses

For supporters of the pro-life cause, crisis pregnancy centers (or CPC's) have become the "darlings of the movement," according to the New York Times (Belluck, 2013), offering women with unplanned pregnancies free advice, information, classes, childcare, and needed supplies. For abortion advocates, such establishments are intended to seduce vulnerable abortion-seekers into a situation where they will be counseled out of an abortion and possibly even proselytized. Yet for as much controversy as exists in the news media, medical community, and legal realm about CPC's, there is an unsettling lack of understanding of how--and why--CPC's market themselves the way they do. …

Canadian Patriotism And The Timbit: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Tim Horton's Inc.'S Canadian Connection Through The Application Of Semiotics, Shelanne Jennings

Masters Theses

This study examines the content of Tim Horton's television advertisements from 1980 to 2014 from a communication perspective. Using Peirce's semiotic theory, this study examines the significations of Canadian culture as they appear within each advertisement for the purpose of establishing the time and extent to which Canadian culture was used over the course of Tim Horton's advertising history. This study finds that Tim Horton's advertisements did not purposefully use Canadian significations during the 1980s to create a connection between their brand and Canadian patriotism. However, after discovering Canadians' natural affinity to the Tim Horton's brand through focus group research …

Like, Retweet, Repeat: Social Media's Impact On Real Estate Marketing, Emily Kendall

Masters Theses

With the advent of Facebook and Twitter, people from all walks of life in all parts of the world have the ability to connect electronically, impersonally, and constantly. Small businesses are just beginning to unlock the power of social media marketing, specifically real estate professionals. Shelly Chaiken created the Heuristic Systematic Model of persuasion, the descendant of the Elaboration Likelihood Model. This study applies the tenets of Chaiken's HSM to the methods of persuasion employed by real estate agents via Facebook and Twitter. Fifty participants were surveyed by the researcher in order to gauge their activity, interest level, and motivation …

Quench The Thirst: A Content Analysis Of The Persuasive Techniques Of Unicef's Tap Project, Rachel Chadalavada

Masters Theses

This study analyzes the persuasive techniques utilized by UNICEF's Tap Project. This water related campaign began in 2007 and since then has created four themes. These themes are: Dine out, Celebrity Tap, Facebook Push and Cellphone Challenge. The study finds that the videos employed by the Tap Project portray all six Facets of Effects. However, their usage was based on the message that was being delivered. That said, not all videos utilized all of the facets. This implies that an advertisement need not necessarily use all six Facets of Effects to be successful. The facet of association however, stood out …

Text Size Impact Of Responsibility Messages In Magazine Alcohol Advertisements Among College Students, Sumin Shin

Masters Theses

Although warning labels on products and in advertising have been much studied and discussed in the past several decades, the effect of text size on recall of these messages has been largely ignored, particularly with regard to alcohol advertising. Guided by the bottom-up model of visual attention processing, this study hypothesizes that a responsibility message with larger text attracts more consumer attention and creates greater message recall. One hundred twenty three magazine alcohol ads were collected in preliminary research, and the average size of their responsibility messages was found to be approximately 6 points. An experimental survey of college students …

The Tweet's The Thing: Exploring The Intersection Of Social Media And Broadway, Hilary Sutton

Masters Theses

In 2009 the little known Broadway musical Next to Normal rose to fame through the aid of an unprecedented Twitter campaign conducted by Situation Interactive, a digital marketing agency. The Next to Normal Twitter account gathered over one million followers throughout a six-week campaign in which the Situation Interactive team joined forces with the book writer and lyricist of Next to Normal to recreate the plot in one hundred and forty-character snippets. By analyzing the data collected the researcher cultivates a collection of best practices for running a successful Twitter marketing campaign for a live experience.

Refresh. Create. Inspire. The Mission, Vision And Values Behind The Coca-Cola Company And The Digital Marketing Strategies Of The "Open Happiness" Campaign, Sara Svendsen

Masters Theses

Due to the influence of Coca-Cola on advertising, digital marketing, and marketing strategies, the present rhetorical analysis seeks to show the many aspects of digital media in the Company's present "Open Happiness" campaign. The study of the campaign seeks to show that the Company mission statement, Company values and the vision of The Coca-Cola Company are implemented into all of the different facets of the Open Happiness campaign, and in the context of Mood Management Theory, exude the overall theme of the campaign, happiness. The parts of the campaign that were analyzed were focused on the YouTube channels of The …

The Phenomenon Behind The Bite: Altercasting As It Applies To Apple Technology, Elizabeth Baldwin

Masters Theses

This paper investigates how the brand Apple markets their product so that consumers feel obligated to buy their product. By looking at five main categories of brand loyalty, environmentally friendly practices, being up-to-date with technology, pricing with value and customer service, this paper will rhetorically analyze how successful of a job it does. To get an inside look at what the public thought on the the way that Apple fulfilled their altercasting this paper analyzed what people said about Apple verses competing technology brands. By drawing overall conclusions, recording trends and making observations about the way that people had been …

Fifteen Percent Or More: A Content Analysis Of Geico's Commercial Advertising, Paul Davis

Masters Theses

In this media saturated world which is lived in today, the general public is bombarded by a multitude of advertisements. This thesis was conducted to examine Geico's commercial advertising looking specifically at their use of humor. The Elaboration Likelihood Model and the Humorous Message Taxonomy were used to conduct this content analysis. The research examined the route of persuasion and elaboration that were used in 60 Geico commercials from five of their most recent campaigns. The Humorous Message Taxonomy helped to establish which types of humor were being used along with the processes and relationship between elements. Three research questions …

Unleashing The Power Of Social Media Marketing Within Non-Profits, Through The Lens Of Social Cognitive Theory, Kerah Kemmerer

Masters Theses

While many organizations still struggle to effectively incorporate the present-day promotional framework of social media marketing, research reveals that non-profit organizations are lagging even further behind when it comes to the implementation of effective social media and interactive marketing strategies. The interactive marketing strategy model incorporates technology and media-based tactics designed to enhance marketing strategies within any industry. In this project, the primary researcher explored why non-profits are struggling to incorporate these specific strategies, and considered it through the lens of social cognitive theory. The purpose of this project was to focus on a specific non-profit organization and apply the …

Seattle's Seafaring Siren: A Cultural Approach To The Branding Of Starbucks, Briana Kauffman

Masters Theses

Many corporate brands tend to be built on a strong foundation of culture, but very minimal research seems to indicate a thorough analysis of the role of an organizational's culture in its entirety pertaining to large corporations. This study analyzed various facets of Starbucks Coffee Company through use of the cultural approach to organizations theory in order to determine if the founding principles of Starbucks are evident in their organizational culture. Howard Schultz' book "Onward" was analyzed and documented as the key textual artifact in which these principles originated. Along with these principles, Starbucks' Website, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube page …

Two Types Of Couponers Discovered: The Smart Family Shopper And The Game Player, Alana Stephenson Phillips

Masters Theses

In 2011, 3.5 billion coupons were redeemed, which is up 6.1% from 2010. Even with coupon redemption on the rise, coupon distribution is down, average coupon values are lower, and average usable time before expiration has been shortened. Coupon users, or couponers, are also fighting a bad reputation and stricter store coupon policies.

Despite all the issues facing couponers, couponing has become more popular in recent years. Some of this popularity may be due to the thousands of coupon blogs that aide couponers in matching coupons to available deals. Couponers no longer have to search all sale ads and keep …

The Effects Of Advertising On Inter-Industry Growth Rates, Norman K. Plummer

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

The Interrelationship Between Pop Art And Advertising, John Edward Pajkos

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.