Business Commons^™

Online Vs. Face-To-Face Learners: An Exploratory Segmentation Of The Student Market, Renée J. Fontenot, Richard Mathisen, Susan Carley, Randy Stuart

AMTP Proceedings 2013

This study compares the characteristics and motivational factors influencing educational decisions of online vs. face-to-face learners. Using a survey of undergraduate marketing students from colleges in the Southeastern U.S., demographic, attitudinal and learning style differences are examined to determine the roles they play in student selection of online vs. traditional classroom modes of educational delivery. Alternative approaches to segmentation of the student market are explored, as are implications for marketing education. Likert scales and open ended questions were used to determine student perspectives on various dimensions of online versus face-to-face courses. A cross section of students were surveyed including those …

Internal Marketing Implications Of Workplace Bullying: The Integration Of Multiple Perspectives, Mary F. Mobley, Michael C. Mobley, Richard Easley, Clinton Amos

AMTP Proceedings 2013

This special session will highlight marketing, behavioral, leadership, and legal perspectives of workplace bullying behavior and how such behavior can negatively affect an individual’s wellbeing and adversely impact an organization’s welfare. The discussion will be couched within an internal marketing framework with special emphasis on strategic implications. Behavioral aspects of those who bully and the impact that their behavior can have on their targets will be given special consideration. Also, various leadership issues that arise in workplace environments with respect to workplace bullying will be explored. Further, an overview of the legal ramifications of workplace bullying will be integrated into …

Good Media Mix Strategies For Bad Times: Sequencing Optimizes, Marsha Loda, Barbara Carrick Coleman

AMTP Proceedings 2013

This paper summarizes an experiment which compares three commonly used marketing elements: advertising, Internet websites, and publicity. These elements are rated on two dependent variables: message acceptance (credibility and message strength), and message response (attitude and purchase intent). Direct effects of each variable are examined. Sequencing effects are also examined to see if it matters in what order potential customers encounter the marketing message. Results indicate that a website, used alone, can make a significant difference in message strength. However, to impact purchase intent, a multimedia campaign is necessary. The current study extends the authors’ 2005 research comparing only advertising …

Using Smartpls In Online Loyalty Assessment, Ali Dehghan, John Duggar

AMTP Proceedings 2013

Because of the low cost, fast expansion of the Internet and increasing demand for innovative educational systems, online learning is becoming popular and attractive (Zhang, Zhao, Zhou, and Jr, 2004). As of 2009, almost 12 million out of 20.4 million post-secondary students, within the United States, took at least one online course and this number will reach 22 million by 2014 (Nagel, 2009). The explosion of the use of online learning systems in higher education, allows students to leave the online programs quite easily (Tham and Werner, 2005). Therefore, educational institutions should try to retain their existing students. Thus, student …

Is Fantasy Football’S Popularity Decreasing Fan Attendance? : A Social Identity Perspective, Stefan Sleep

AMTP Proceedings 2013

When most people think of football they think of specific teams and the fans associated with the team. Fans close identification with their team has made the National Football League (NFL), the most popular sports league in the United States. However, the NFL faces an interesting dilemma as fans are becoming more involved with league oriented activities, such as fantasy football, versus team specific activities which causes a dichotomy in league growth. Growth is increasingly being driven by league level activities, such as television and fantasy sports, while the core component of team revenues, game attendance, decreased from 2007 to …

Supply Chain Management: Impact Of Customer Relationship Marketing On Performance Under Cooperation And Competition Strategies, Maria Eugenia Barua

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The dissertation investigation proposes a modified supply chain management model that is grounded on marketing theory and the concept of production sharing. Specifically, the model challenges the traditional cooperation-conflict continuum of strategic marketing management with a new managerial approach based on a cooperation-competition continuum. I investigate the significance of the new model in explaining behaviors in the supply chain management and its performance. In addition, I investigate whether the proposed managerial continuum (cooperation-competition) is consistent with other behaviors including power, conflict, trust, and customer relationship marketing such that coordination and supply chain performance is enhanced.

The data collection from manufacturers, …

Technology Readiness In A B2b Online Retail Context: An Examination Of Antecedents And Outcomes, Roisin Vize, Joseph Coughlan, Aileen Kennedy, Fiona Ellis-Chadwick

Articles

This paper develops and empirically tests a model that examines the role of Technology Readiness (TR) in the Business-to-Business (B2B) context. It examines how the antecedents of TR affect the construct, and how the construct affects evaluations of a complex credence based B2B service. The research investigates how the retailers’ TR impacts their evaluation of web solution service providers (WSSPs). It responds to previous research calls by extending the TR construct from the business-to-consumer (B2C) perspective that is traditional in the extant literature into the B2B domain. The key findings of a survey conducted with 133 firms in the retail …

How Minority Sporting Organisations In Ireland Are Promoting And Growing Their Sports Using Social Media: A Public Relations Perspective., Peter Lucey

Theses

The aim of this research study was to explore how minority sports organisations in Ireland are using social media to effectively grow and promote their sport. The researcher has analysed how these organisations are currently making use of social media and how it has benefited them in their operations. Relevant secondary literature was studied in depth along with the primary research methods that were used for this study. The research methodology used by the researcher constituted elements of both quantitative and qualitative analyses. Interviews and questionnaires made up the main research tools in addition to an action research approach as …

How Social Media Networking Is Supporting Customer Engagement And Brand Awareness: A Pr Perspective In An Irish Context., Miriam O'Regan

Theses

The primary purpose of this thesis is to investigate the phenomenon of social media networking in the Irish organisational context. The study examines how Irish organisations are utilising social media networking as a communication platform. The research assesses the aspects of phenomenon that provide organisational advantages in Public Relations. Therefore, aim of the study is to identify how social media networking is influencing customer engagement and brand awareness.

The first research phase comprises of an extensive literature review of key academic sources of secondary research including reports, articles and publications. This review cultivates a range of sources with insight into …

Sales Manager Support: Fostering Emotional Health, Motivation And Customer-Orientation In Salespeople, Elyria Kemp, Aberdeen Leila Borders, Joe M. Ricks

Faculty Articles

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of sales manager support in promoting the subjective well-being of salespeople as well as the function of the sales manager in cultivating positive, motivating and productive environments. Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory assessment of the relationship between sales manager support and emotional health in salespeople was conducted by interviewing sales professionals from diverse industries. The insight offered from these individuals, in conjunction with prior literature, provided the basis for the development of a conceptual model that elucidates the impact of sales manager support on the emotional well-being of salespeople …

Online Book-Buying Behavior, Carolina Ziegler

Theses

Generally speaking, the Internet is directly influencing the buying decision-making process of the consumer. More than ask relatives and friends' opinions, current customers tend now to acquire information about products on search engines, social networks, blogs, or websites. Therefore, this research was set to develop a better overall understanding about online buying behavior.

The e-commerce is growing every year and the number of consumers willing to spend money on virtual transactions follows this tendency. In order to better understand this trend, the market for academic books was chosen as a reference to appreciate how consumers behave when buying a specific …

Madécasse: Competing With A 4x Fairtrade Business Model, Scott Marshall, Darrell Brown, Bex Sakarias, Min Cai

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Brett Beach and Tim McCollum, co-founders of Madécasse, spent two years as Peace Corps volunteers in Madagascar. During that time, they fell in love with the country and its people. Recognizing the need of the Malagasy for stable jobs and fair wages and the connection between poverty and environmental destruction, Brett and Tim discussed possibilities for a social enterprise in the country.

Madagascar presents a beautiful yet challenging place to operate a business. It has a wide range of flora and fauna, approximately 70% of which are found nowhere else on Earth and it produces coffee, vanilla, sugar, cotton, pepper, …

The Challenge Of Intervention To Monetarily Support Or Not Support The National Airline Carriers: A Case Of The Airline Industry In Eastern Europe, Dawna L. Rhoades, Tamilla Curtis

Management, Marketing and Operations - Daytona Beach

The airline industry has been considered a special case in national and international business virtually since its beginning. Because of this status, national governments have repeatedly intervened to support national carriers in order to prevent bankruptcy and failure. The nations of Eastern Europe are no exception to this rule and are currently considering additional intervention to support their carriers. This paper explores the rationale for intervention, particularly the suggested economic impact, using traffic and financial information from the Flightglobal database. The conclusion is that the case for intervention is weak at best and that the results may not justify the …

Will "Smarter" Marketing End Social Discrimination? A Critical Review, Frances Grodzinsky, Andra Gumbus, Stephen J. Lilley

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

Purpose - There are two claims made by the web marketing/advertising industry. 1) By collecting, managing, and mining data, companies serve consumer’s best interests and 2) by adopting sophisticated analytics web marketers avoid discriminations that disserve individuals. Although we share an interest in ending social discrimination, we are more circumspect about pronounced individualism and technological fixes. Despite its appeal, or perhaps because of it, we should not accept the claim at face value. In this paper we argue that social discrimination may not disappear under smarter marketing; more overt forms may wane only to be replaced by more subtle forms. …

A Typology Of Consumer Preference Parabolas, Jie Sun

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates choice scenarios where consumer preference is a non-linear function of determinant product attributes. Chapter One reviews the extant literature, identifies a number of research questions, develops a conceptual framework, and creates a propositional inventory; a central aspect of the conceptual framework is a proposed typology consisting of a two (mechanism: attribute tradeoff or target-attribute matching) by two (attributes: single or multiple) classification scheme. Two empirical essays test the conceptual model in a single attribute context (Chapter Two) and a multi-attribute context (Chapter Three). The purpose of the dissertation is to advance our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms …

What's Love Got To Do With It? The Role Of Brand Love In Brand Community Experience, Phillip M. Hartley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The work presented here explores and conceptually documents the consumer’s experience of brand communities—groups of people brought together by their mutual appreciation of a commercial brand. The relationships between individuals’ motives for joining, their participation, and the social and brand-related outcomes associated with such groups are tested. In addition, the role of Brand Love in the individual’s experience is assessed. The results of the research indicate that Participation may reduce the influence of a person’s original reasons for joining the community on the ultimate outcomes of membership. Further, a person’s degree of love for the underlying brand influences the likelihood …

Social Entrepreneurship That Truly Benefits The Poor: An Integrative Justice Approach, Nicholas J. C. Santos

Marketing Faculty Research and Publications

The phenomenal growth of social entrepreneurship over the last decade has ably demonstrated how technology, innovation, and an entrepreneurial spirit can afford better solutions to the vexing social and
environmental problems of our time than can traditional aid and charity-based efforts. In most cases, but not always, the poor and disadvantaged have benefited from the growth of social entrepreneurship. In order to ensure that social entrepreneurship does indeed benefit the poor, it is imperative that there be normative guidelines for fair and just engagement
with impoverished populations. A model that has been presented in the marketing and public policy literature …

Competitive Threats, Strategic Responses And Performance Of Brazilian B2b Firms, Syed H. Akhter, Paulo Fernando Pinto Barcellos

Marketing Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose – The economic realignment in Latin America has created two clusters, one stagnant in the north and the other growth-bound in the south. This study aims to focus on Brazil, the key player in the growth-bound southern cluster, and address three fundamental questions: how Brazilian executives in four B2B sectors (telecommunications, business equipment, steel, and transportation) viewed the internal competitive developments, how they strategically responded to these developments, and what were the marketing and financial outcomes of these strategies.

Design/methodology/approach – Data were obtained by interviewing top decision makers such as president, chief executive officer, and director of the …

Nigeria In Transition: Acculturation To Global Consumer Culture, Steven Lysonski, Srinivas Durvasula

Marketing Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which young urban Nigerians in Lagos have become acculturated to global consumer culture and the impact of acculturation on consumer ethnocentrism and materialism.

Design/Methodology/Approach

A total of 165 young Nigerians living in Lagos completed a survey. The survey scales consisted of seven different dimensions of global consumer acculturation, ethnocentrism, materialism and demographics. All scales had strong reliabilities.

Findings

Nigerians were acculturated to a large degree in terms of cosmopolitan tendency, exposure to marketing activities of multinationals, English language usage, social interactions, and global mass media exposure. However, openness …

Analyzing The Presence Of Marketing In Campus Recreation Departments, Amy Gibson

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

The University of Kentucky’s Campus Recreation department is currently operating without professional marketing personnel to promote the programs and services the facility offers. With the university expanding campus housing for incoming students, the question of how activity spaces will accommodate and reach out to these students is certainly one to consider.

I conducted this research with the aim of analyzing the importance of marketing in Campus Recreation facilities and to see if marketing efforts have an effect on facility usage by participants. The department began conducting surveys in 2010 to assess its programs and services in order to determine student …

Towards A Folk Taxonomy Of Popular New Media Marketing Terms, Nathalie S. Collins, Jamie Murphy

Research outputs 2013

Word of Mouth and Brand Community Marketing terms have emerged to describe particular people and their effectiveness in promoting messages, particularly with the emergence of social media. The development of the terms and their use are concurrent in academic literature, industry literature and popular culture. Furthermore, it is common for these terms to converge, borrowing meanings, connotations and subtexts. This paper explores five key community marketing terms−Geek, Maven, Alpha User, Evangelist and Fanboy−and develops term classifications and relationships into a folk taxonomy. Tourism and hospitality practitioners and academics can use the taxonomy for word of mouth activities and research.

Social Media In The Business Curriculum, Pauline Ash Ray, Jenny Swearingen

AMTP Proceedings 2013

Due to the prolific development of Web 2.0 tools and the growing demand for their use in business this study explores the status of their inclusion in the business curriculum. Social media use is valuable, not only to marketing students, but also to all business students as well as the ability to build a personal brand to further their careers. There is a growing consensus to include social media in the curriculum but to what extent: A course, a major or a MBA specialization? A literature review for research of social media inclusion in curriculum is conducted for the current …

From Push To Pull — How Smartphones Are Changing Mobile Marketing, Julie M. Pharr

AMTP Proceedings 2013

As “smartphones” have displaced traditional cell phones, mobile marketing—marketing via wireless handheld devices—has become increasingly more sophisticated. This paper highlights the dramatic shifts underway in the field of mobile marketing with the advent of mobile technology that simultaneously delivers web access, location information, and social networking capabilities. The paper makes a case for why smartphones may foreshadow the end of traditional push marketing, giving way to a new style of marketing that is location-based, context-specific and superior at initiating consumer pull.

The Role Of Media Richness Of Channels On Consumer Decision- Making And Channel Choice, Moutusy Maity, Mayukh Dass

AMTP Proceedings 2013

With the increasing popularity of multichannel strategies, many retailers actively encourage their customers to undertake purchasing activities across various retail channels. Extant literature on multichannel strategies advances our understanding of why and how consumers select channels, but our knowledge is limited on how different channel characteristics affect consumer behavior, decision-making across channels and channel choice. In this paper, we focus on one such channel characteristic, called media richness of the retail channels, and investigate the effects of media richness of channels on consumer decision-making and channel choice. Media richness, as originally described by Media Richness Theory, is a set of …

Content And Design Characteristics Of Chinese Corporate Homepages, Lixuan Zhang, Sufen Tian, Patti Miles

AMTP Proceedings 2013

Many Chinese companies have built their online presences; however few studies examine if the Chinese corporate websites follow recommended design guidelines. Through a content analysis of 487 websites of the largest Chinese companies, the study analyzes 55 content and design elements of the corporate homepages. A new coding scheme for Chinese web design is developed by utilizing existing schemes and identifying design elements unique to Chinese web including content, information architecture and usability, multimedia, and interactivity. In addition, the study also finds two unique design elements on Chinese corporate homepage. The differences in web design practices between American and Chinese …

A Comparison Of Potential Student Blood Donors To Actual Donors, Harold Ogden, Kelly Campbell Lefort, Matthew Kerr, Matthew Maclellan, Zachary Briggs

AMTP Proceedings 2013

With a growing need for blood and blood products, managers of blood collection agencies are interested in increasing donation rates. A better understanding of how donors are different from the general public might inform decisions on how to promote to make non-donors more like donors. A sample of 74 student blood donors was surveyed at two university blood donor clinics about their attitudes and beliefs about blood donation. A convenience sample of 134 respondents in a university student population was also surveyed for comparison. The latter was later split by level of commitment to blood donation. Differences among these three …

Relationships Of Brand Awareness, Logo Associations And Prior Shopping Experience: A Pre-Test Study, Tulay Girard, M. Meral Anitsal, Ismet Anitsal, Zhenye Zhang

AMTP Proceedings 2013

Branding is instrumental in achieving success in today’s highly competitive markets. Successful brands are those that differentiate themselves from competition in the minds of consumers even though they satisfy the same needs. Brand name, logos, jingles, slogans, brand personalities/characters, URL of a web site, signs and packages, letterheads, business cards are some of the tools that companies and organizations use as part of their external branding efforts. Companies typically spend considerable sums in their logo design activities. Some of them even try to revive their brands by changing their logos over time. Despite the importance of this research topic, little …

Emotional Intelligence: The Antidote To Persuasion?, Rose Opengart, Michael Mccall

AMTP Proceedings 2013

The study of emotion can be traced back to the early work of William James (1884). Consequently, it is hardly surprising that such a fundamental building block of human experience remains a fertile area for academic researchers and practitioners in fields as diverse as psychology, economics and marketing. Although there have been numerous calls for marketers to focus on touching customers’ emotions, a number of important gaps remain. We consider here, the notion that emotional intelligence mediates the impact of social influence attempts in consumer decision making. Specifically, we argue that emotional intelligence may serve to mute and/or lessen individual …

Internal Communication As A Tool For Stakeholder-Organization Identification, Ania Izabela Rynarzewska

AMTP Proceedings 2013

Identification has long been considered to be one of the main concepts in organizational behavior. Fortunately, organizational identification has also shifted into marketing and communication literature. Recent streams of marketing literature suggest that organizational identification may be a key to connecting employees and consumers to an organization on much deeper level than any other relationship known before. Due to the possible impact of customerorganizational identification on performance, marketing scholars have become increasingly interested in possible advantages of this relevant construct. Identification with an organization is popular in both management and marketing research as the means of fostering a relationship between …

Failure In Rural Entrepreneurial Marketing: The Otop Case In Thailand, Edward Kasabov, Pitchaya Panupattanapong

AMTP Proceedings 2013

Marketing scholarship continues to theorise about the significance of marketing resources to firm-level success, and resources are commonly viewed as the source of competitive advantage (Day & Wensley, 1988; Aaker, 1989; Webster, 1992; O’Donnell et al., 2002; Morgan el at., 2009). Businesses which effectively and efficiently deploy and exploit their market-based assets are assumed to be better placed at attaining superior business performance (Morgan & Vorhies, 2005). However, the input of firm resources to competitive advantage has generally been theorised and empirically examined in the context of large companies. Less frequent are discussions about resources in small firms and entrepreneurial …