Business Commons^™

Noodz: A Strategic Communication Plan For A Startup Restaurant Targeting The College Market, Payton M. Fronapfel

Senior Theses

Advertising has evolved significantly throughout the past decade, lending to the current usage of direct response, social media, and online methods of advertising. Considering how these tactics have changed in recent years and how restaurant marketing, specifically, changes in response to a college demographic, companies must consider more in-depth communication plans. This thesis will identify the most effective methods of marketing restaurants in the United States and determine how a college demographic changes the techniques utilized in marketing communication plans. Furthermore, this thesis will develop a comprehensive strategic communication plan for a new Asian restaurant, Noodz, located in Columbia, South …

The Impact Of Social Media Marketing On The Broadway Industry: A Study Of Hamilton: An American Musical, Jordan Pontelandolfo

Senior Theses

In recent years, social media has become an increasingly important part of the marketing strategies for many Broadway productions. Yet, many Broadway marketing teams do not take complete advantage of their social media channels, instead relying on traditional marketing methods to attract audiences. Hamilton: An American Musical is a recent Broadway production that has used an innovative social media marketing strategy to attract diverse audiences and create a dedicated fanbase. By analyzing the strategy across Hamilton’s Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok, I determine what made its social media so successful and how other Broadway shows can learn from …

Advertising And Social Media Strategy For America’S National Parks: A Case Study Of Congaree National Park, Abigail Gallup

Senior Theses

Advertising for America’s National Parks comes in many different forms but is highly limited for national parks with lower visitation rates and less funding. Congaree National Park located just outside of Columbia, South Carolina has a small budget for advertising and goals to increase their visitation rates and visitor diversity. Particularly, Congaree rangers hope to increase visitation from the local Black community which surrounds Congaree National Park. Rangers at Congaree mainly use social media to advertise but have also investigated other forms of advertising and fundraising as well, including a Friends of Congaree Swamp license plate. This thesis will show …

The Effectiveness Of The Counter Marketing Strategy Of The Truth® Campaign, Maura Castronuovo

Senior Theses

The counter marketing strategy of the truth® campaign is unique. They use a voice that does not talk down to the teens in their target market; instead, they talk to teens in their own voice. Throughout this paper, I work to determine the effectiveness of the truth campaign’s counter marketing strategy. I do this through my own research, in which I utilize a survey and two focus groups, in addition to secondary research. As many of the studies I looked at were from the time of the launch of truth®, conducting my own research allowed me to gain a better …

#Readyforrio: How A Revised Rule 40 Impacted Sponsorship At The 2016 Summer Olympics, Anthony Carson

Senior Theses

When planning and executing the Olympic Games, a premier event in modern sport, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) relies heavily on sponsorship revenue from their official sponsors. “Worldwide Olympic Partners,” the top 11 sponsors of the 2016 Olympics, had exclusive rights during the Olympic cycle from 2013-2016.

With the purchase of these expensive sponsorship deals, brands are looking to capitalize on the “glow” of the Olympics, and use excusive Olympic intellectual property to make ties from their brand to the Games. In order to make these sponsorship deals more valuable, the IOC has historically provided official partners with added exclusivity …

Paradox And The Consumption Of Authenticity Through Reality Television, Randall L. Rose, Stacy L. Wood

Faculty Publications

We position reality television within the broader category of consumer practices of authenticity seeking in a postmodern cultural context. The study draws on relevant perspectives from consumer research, literary criticism, sociology, and anthropology to argue that viewers of reality television encounter three elements of paradox in the process of constructing authenticity. The negotiation of each paradox exceeds the process of coping with or resolving their inherent contradictions to encompass the creation of new values. We argue that consumers blend fantastic elements of programming with indexical elements connected to their lived experiences to create a form of self-referential hyperauthenticity.

Credit Cards As Lifestyle Facilitators, Matthew J. Bernthal, David Crockett, Randall L. Rose

Faculty Publications

Credit cards are an increasingly essential technology, but they carry with them the paradoxical capacity to propel consumers along lifestyle trajectories of marketplace freedom or constraint. We analyze accounts provided by consumers, credit counselors, and participants in a credit counseling seminar in order to develop a differentiated theory of lifestyle facilitation through credit card practice. The skills and tastes expressed by credit card practice help distinguish between the lifestyles of those with higher cultural capital relative to those with lower cultural capital. Differences in lifestyle regulation practice are posited to originate in cultural discourses related to entitlement and frugality.

The Role Of Normative Political Ideology In Consumer Behavior, David Crockett, Melanie Wallendorf

Faculty Publications

This study of African-American consumers living in a large racially segregated midwestern city adds to extant theory on ideology in consumer behavior by considering the role of normative political ideology in provisioning. The specific roles of traditional black liberal and black nationalist political ideologies are discussed. We conclude that normative political ideology is central to understanding shopping as an expression of social and political relations between households confronting attenuated access to goods and services, ranging from housing to food, in a setting stratified by gender, race, and class. Beyond the specifics of this demographic group and setting, we suggest contemporary …

Consumer Self-Confidence: Refinements In Conceptualization And Measurement, William O. Bearden, David M. Hardesty, Randall L. Rose

Faculty Publications

The development and validation of measures to assess multiple dimensions of consumer self-confidence are described in this article. Scale-development procedures resulted in a six-factor correlated model made up of the following dimensions: information acquisition, consideration-set formation, personal outcomes, social outcomes, persuasion knowledge, and marketplace interfaces. A series of studies demonstrate the psychometric properties of the measures, their discriminant validity with respect to related constructs, their construct validity, and their ability to moderate relationships among other important consumer behavior variables.

An Exploration Of High-Risk Leisure Consumption Through Skydiving, Richard L. Celsi, Randall L. Rose, Thomas W. Leigh

Faculty Publications

A sociocultural approach is used to explore voluntary high-risk consumption Specifically, we examine the dynamics of individuals' motives, risk perceptions, and benefit/cost outcomes of participation in increasingly popular high-risk leisure activities such as skydiving, climbing, and BASE jumping (parachuting from fixed objects). An ethnography of a skydiving subculture provides the primary empirical data. We propose an extended dramatic model that explains both macroenvironmental and inter- and intrapersonal influences and motives for high-risk consumption. Key findings indicate (1) an evolution of motives that explains initial and continuing participation in high-risk activities and (2) a coinciding evolution of risk acculturation that leads …

An Attributional Analysis Of Resistance To Group Pressure Regarding Illicit Drug And Alcohol Consumption, Randall L. Rose, William O. Bearden, Jesse E. Teel

Faculty Publications

This article investigates the role of attributional thinking in generating resistance to pressures toward conformity in the illicit consumption of drugs and alcohol. The results of four studies regarding how conformity influences illicit drug and alcohol consumption among high school and college students are reported. In study 1 more than two-thirds of the respondents reported concern for the implications of their own dissent or compliance regarding the reactions of their peers. Study 2 demonstrated a significant relationship between high school students' attributional thinking concerning a peer group's illicit beer consumption and conformity, expressed as intentions to drink the beer. In …

Attention To Social Comparison Information: An Individual Difference Factor Affecting Consumer Conformity, William O. Bearden, Randall L. Rose

Faculty Publications

Interpersonal influence in consumer behavior is moderated by the extent of consumer sensitivity to social comparison information concerning product purchase and usage behavior (cf. Calder and Burnkrant 1977). Two survey studies indicate that Lennox and Wolfe's (1984) attention-to-social-comparison-information (AT-SCI) scale has adequate convergent and discriminant validity and moderates the relative influence of normative consequences on behavioral intentions, as predicted. A quasi-experiment and an experiment in which control subjects under no social pressure are compared with high and low ATSCI subjects under pressure reveal that high ATSCI subjects are more likely to comply with normative pressures.