Business Commons^™

The Impact Of “Humorous” Ads Featuring Social Media Influencers On Perceptions Of The Influencer, Brand, And Purchase Intention, Jason L. Snyder, Robert Forbus

Atlantic Marketing Journal

The present study explored the use of humor in social media ads that featured both a product being advertised and a social media influencer (SMI). Using extant literature and the theory of planned behavior as guides, the goal of the study was to explore the role of perceived humorousness on consumer perceptions of the SMI, the ad, the brand, and consumer purchase intentions. The experiment (N = 292) exposed self-identified males living in the U.S. between the ages of 18 and 40 to one of two versions of an ad for a men’s grooming product. The ads were run …

Mlcp Of Red Bull, Micah Winningham

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Red Bull is a marketer and distributor of one of the first major sports drinks to be introduced into the world, called the same name: Red Bull energy. Since the inception of the drink in the mid 1980’s by Dietrich Mateschitz in Austria as an attempt to create an alternative to coffee, the drink and brand of the Red Bull organization have exploded into one of the most popular and recognizable organizations of all time. The brand pushes the idea of their product giving the greatest boost of energy, and their slogan “Red Bull gives you wings!” reinforces the idea …

The Value Of An Integrated Marketing Campaign To Grow Interest In Visiting The U.S. National Parks, Hermine Granberry

Honors Theses

When the centennial celebration of the National Park Service was approaching in 2016, the National Park Service launched a two-year campaign to only commemorate the last century of NPS, but to also reconnect Americans with the parks. Ten years have passed since the initial creation of the campaign. This thesis researches the value of how another integrated marketing campaign could increase visitation to the U.S. National Parks in the future.

Through evaluating the previous Find Your Park campaign and current trends in travel and vacation, this research investigates not only future campaign ideas but also the use and incorporation of …

Understanding The Business Model Of Content Creation, Taylor Vahey

Honors Projects in Communication

Individuals who post niched consistent content to social media platforms have grown audiences, which presents an opportunity for content creators to monetize the attention their posts receive. Both content creators and marketing practitioners are using trial and error processes to learn how to utilize the newest online promotion strategy; influencer marketing. This research aims to outline the business operations from the perspective of the influencer. Research on all aspects of this industry is insufficient, with only a few hundred published peer-reviewed articles on the topic available. Most of the research focuses on the perspective of the audience or the marketing …

Bridging The Gap Between Skidmore Students And Local Businesses, Charlotte Benson

Self-Determined Majors Final Projects

Skidmore students are an underutilized customer base for small businesses in Saratoga Springs. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the purchasing behaviors of Skidmore students in order to determine how local small businesses can better attract them as customers. Current Skidmore students were surveyed and interviewed to ascertain overarching patterns in their purchasing habits. Results show that word of mouth and social media are influential at Skidmore, but are underutilized by local businesses. Findings also suggest that purchasing habits are largely formed during students’ first year at Skidmore. Finally, interview and survey results indicate that Skidmore students most …

Boosting Persuasion: The Attention Benefits Of Multiple Narrating Voices, Hannah H. Chang, Anirban Mukherjee, Amitava Chattopadhyay

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The "Voice Numerosity Effect”: When hearing different voices narrating a marketing video facilitates persuasion. In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Marketing Research, we investigate the role of voice (narrator) numerosity in marketing videos (Chang, Mukherjee, and Chattopadhyay 2022). For example, consider the following two real-life examples: a product video introducing Apple’s AirPods Max had two narrating voices while a product video introducing Apple’s new Macbook Pro had a single narrating voice. Does the difference in the number of narrating voices influence consumers’ attention and subsequent behaviour?

Stories And Selling: The Impact Of Narrative Storytelling In Video Commercials, Gabriela Martin

Honors Projects in Communication

In a world where business is so closely tied together with the digital world, it can become easy to miss out on the human component of the marketing field. However, it is the narrative storytelling interwoven into advertisements that make them so compelling to consumers. Customers do not just want to be told about the features of a product, but rather they want to understand how having that product will make them feel. This storytelling can be communicated across several different forms of media, but it is especially apparent in the formatting of video commercials. While basic informational videos can …

Branding For Hope Services, Roberta Garcia

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Hope Services is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit organization located in Seaside, California. Hope Services was in need of a new marketing and branding plan in order to reach more people throughout the various communities that are being served. The first contributing factor is limited outreach throughout the community, the consequence to that is low client rates which brings less staff. The second contributing factor is limited caseworkers, the consequence is low levels of applications being accepted or seen. The last contributing factor is limited access to technology, the consequence is low levels of knowledge of resources for possible clients. The capstone …

The Buzz Behind Alcohol Advertising: A Study Of How Alcohol Advertisements On Social Media Impact Behavior, Alexis Morgan Campbell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Alcohol advertisements are known to be appealing and memorable, and several researchers have investigated what makes these advertisements so attractive. Several trends have emerged regarding the content within alcohol advertisements: themes of parties, celebration, and social success within television, magazines, and social media since the 1970s. Recently, several studies found that new themes in alcohol ads have been found to be popular, especially in social media advertisements (Campbell & Chung, 2022). The elaboration likelihood model (ELM) provides insight into why a person’s attitude could be more susceptible or why their behavior could be more easily influenced by certain types of …

Take Flight Music Festival Branding, Maxwell Bo Chen, Jake Oxenham

Graphic Communication

We created a branding and design campaign for the Take Flight music festival on campus. The project covered many aspects of event creation and marketing such as name, logo, content creation, social media, printed media, vendor outreach, and administration outreach. All these pieces had to work together to create a strong and cohesive brand image for this event which would help ensure a successful turnout and event overall.

How The Financial Services Industry Is Utilizing Social Media To Expand Their Client Base, Kristen Stewart

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

Social media is becoming an increasingly important aspect of all companies’ marketing strategies. It is almost imperative for companies to advertise through social media if they want to have a fair chance of reaching the younger generation. In fact, “the majority (97%) of Gen Z consumers say they now use social media as their top source of shopping inspiration; 65% say they use social media to find entertaining content; and 61% of them are specifically interested in watching more video content” (Kastenholz, 2021). This proves that social media can make a significant and lasting impact on a company’s success. Social …

A Social Media Strategy Plan For The Jane B. Gearhart Full Circle Food Pantry, Sara Katelyn Holm

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Jane B. Gearhart (JBG) Full Circle Food Pantry is a student-led program that provides food assistance for members of the University of Arkansas community. This thesis project includes a social media strategy plan that aims to increase the overall awareness of the pantry and its multifaceted services to decrease food insecurity levels at the University of Arkansas. This plan intends to create behavioral changes that expand usage of the pantry and social media engagement among UA students. Grounded in data-driven insights, this plan is designed from (i) literature on food pantry marketing techniques; (ii) a review of the pantry's …

The Effect Of Social Media On Providence College Students, Kathryn Ernst, Margaret Grasberger, Allie Mcguire, Mairead Ryan

School of Business Student Scholarship

Kathryn Ernst ’24, Major: Marketing

Margaret Grasberger ’24, Major: Marketing

Allie McGuire ’24, Major: Marketing

Mairead Ryan ’24, Major: Marketing

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kevin Newman, Marketing

Recent research indicates that social media usage is addictive both physically and psychologically. Due to the prevalence of social media, our group specifically wanted to study how its usage impacted Providence College students’ mental health, physical health, and communication skills (both in-person and online communication skills). We found that social media usage negatively affects students’ mental and physical health, with females being more impacted than males. However, we did not find evidence to support …

Researching A Marketing Strategy And Building A Website For Small Business, Trinidad Montez

Honors Projects

Research regarding the process and marketing for the design of a website for a local small business.

If You Can't Take The Tweet: Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility Through The Lens Of Social Media Marketing, Julia Winterhalter

Honors Projects in Communication

Companies are increasingly taking action on societal issues and are aware of the impact that their corporate voice has on impressionable publics. Existing research focuses greatly on corporate social responsibility and the moral standards that set up companies to market themselves authentically to the values they build themselves on. The current study explores how three companies utilize their platform to share their values in relation to ethical issues arising in the modern world. Through the Twitter accounts of Ben & Jerry's, Patagonia, and Starbucks, a content analysis was conducted on their use of language related to their ethical standpoints on …

Rise Of Social Media Influencers As A New Marketing Channel: Focusing On The Roles Of Psychological Well-Being And Perceived Social Responsibility Among Consumers, Jihye Kim, Minseong Kim

Integrated Strategic Communication Faculty Publications

This empirical research investigated the structural relationships between social media influencer attributes, perceived friendship, psychological well-being, loyalty, and perceived social responsibility of influencers, focusing on the perspective of social media users. More specifically, this study conceptually identified social media influencer attributes such as language similarity, interest similarity, interaction frequency, and self-disclosure and examined the respective effects of each dimension on perceived friendship and psychological well-being, consequently resulting in loyalty toward social media influencers. The authors collected and analyzed data from 388 social media users in the United States via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk with multivariate analyses to test the hypothesized associations …

Promoting A Walk/Run Event To Expand Services For Individuals With Disabilities, Mckenzie Rodgers

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The Suzanne Vitale Clinical Education Complex (CEC) at WKU provides services to many individuals and families affected by autism spectrum disorders and other developmental delays and disabilities. As a nonprofit organization, the clinic relies heavily on donations and fundraisers as sources of income. One of the CEC’s primary fundraisers is the annual LifeSkills Run/Walk for Autism. This event is held each April during autism awareness month, at the Bowling Green Ballpark, providing an opportunity for the community to support the clinic in an enjoyable way.

For an honors capstone experience, the author promoted the 15th annual LifeSkills Run/Walk for Autism …

Racial Composition In Advertisements And Its Effects On White Consumers' Perceptions And Purchase Intention, Chung-Ting Wang

Honors Program Theses

Previous marketing research has generally not examined how ethnic majority consumers perceive advertisements featuring mixed racial compositions of model groups. This paper presents an investigation into how White consumers’ perceptions and purchase intentions change depending on the racial composition of the people represented in an advertisement. The study uses a single 12-condition experiment, in which we examine the type of advertisement (product vs. social advocacy advertising), racial composition (all-White vs. diverse mix vs. all-Black), and racial priming effects (racially-primed vs. racially-neutral message). Additionally, consumers’ levels of self-referencing to the ad and strength of ethnic identification are explored as possible mediation …

Social Media Preferences Of Individuals Seeking Graduate Business Degrees, Peyton N. Boxberger, Hannah C. Lee

Management Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to provide actionable insight to the Walton MBA Programs Office for a cohesive social media strategy that is inclusive of all audiences. This research hopes to help the Walton MBA program better understand potential and current students based on their social media behavior and learn how social media use has changed due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. This report will analyze the results of a survey crafted to better understand the social media preferences of individuals seeking graduate business degrees. From these, a social media marketing strategy can be created to tailor content to …

Kobe Influencer Marketing: Using Social Media To Promote A Herbal Tea Brand, Patricia Lui, Lipika Bhattacharya

Asian Management Insights

In July 2019, Evangeline Leong, co-founder and CEO of Kobe, a Singapore-based start-up providing influencer marketing services, had a challenging task ahead of her.

Connecting Charities With Creatives: Bridging The Gap Between Local Nonprofit Organizations And University Of Mississippi Students, Natalie Pruitt

Honors Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the need for marketing resources among North Mississippi nonprofit organizations and apply the findings to develop and launch a website based on primary and secondary research that connects local North Mississippi nonprofit organizations with University of Mississippi graphic design, marketing, bachelor of fine arts and integrated marketing communication (IMC) students seeking experience to complete various marketing and graphic design- related tasks and develop and implement an integrated marketing plan to promote and raise awareness for the website.

Nonprofits face the challenge of allocating funds from donations to create functional and creative communications …

Market To Me: A Case Study On The Marketing Efforts Of Salesforce Software Company, Marissa Adrianna Spiess Espinola

Experience Industry Management

Social media platforms constitute outstanding channels for fostering relationships with consumers. Recently, there has been a drastic shift towards social media marketing and away from traditional marketing. Marketers are beginning to understand the importance of social media opportunity and are implementing social media marketing strategies and initiatives into companywide marketing practices. Companies cannot afford to lack presence on social media, as competitors could outpace them with marketing efforts of products and services to the public. Social media has become a necessary tool when marketing and advertising. The purpose of this study was to examine social media marketing practices of Salesforce …

5 Ways To Boost Your Business Through Influencer Marketing, Patricia Lui

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Covid-19 pandemic’s economic impact put pressure on marketing budgets. Brands are more careful when deciding how they spend the funds on digital marketing, including influencer strategy. The blog offers tips on how to tap on influencers to create brand awareness and generate business leads and conversions.

Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins, Stacey F. Stearns

Journal of Applied Communications

A review of Marketing Rebellion: The Most Human Company Wins, by Mark Schaefer.

Consumer Food Socialization In The School And Home, Ashley Deutsch Cermin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Consumer socialization literature has focused on individual socialization agents and their isolated effects. However, as John (1999) pointed out, children do not grow up in a social vacuum. Instead, the multitude of agents socializing children find their narratives interacting and their effects continually shaped and co-created. To understand how school-age children learn about food, I interrogate the complexity of socialization in three essays.

In the first essay, I take an ethnographic approach to investigate the interactive effect peers and adults, namely service workers, have on children’s food socialization in a public-school lunchroom. By combining a Loseke’s (2007) layered narrative model …

Advertising And Marketing Communications, Aswin Thomas

Creative Thinking: Theory and Practice

Creativity in Advertising and Marketing Communications

Best Practices For The Collection Of Feedback From Campus Constituents Utilizing Campus And Community Partners, Maggie Mason Smith, Jessica L. Serrao, C. Lili Klar, Deanna Mcentire, Anne Grant, Gabriel Israel

Collaborative Librarianship

The Clemson Libraries Campus Feedback Task Force was created to collect feedback from a broad sample of campus constituents. This article outlines the Task Force’s approach and how the group effectively succeeded at the given charge. Seven Libraries employees, each with diverse expertise and a collaborative and supportive mentality, worked together to break down tasks and assign responsibilities based on members’ strengths, identifying and relying on outside partners as needed. This article will discuss the importance of collaboration within a library Task Force on a project that required skills in online and face-to-face campus interactions by examining the composition of …

Viewing The Covid-19 Resilient Skincare Market Through A Sociohistorical Lens: The Patterning Of Conspicuous Consumption Mediated By Marketing, Siren Chen

Senior Projects Fall 2020

The Chinese skincare market distinguishes itself with an inelastic consumer demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. This project employs the endogenous preferences economic framework and a sociohistorical lens to analyze the social forces that sustain the resilient beauty market. Through setting up a socially embedded framework for economic analysis, this project highlights the active role of marketers, which are omitted in mainstream economics, in fostering a bond between consumers and skincare products. With a comparative analysis of both the colonial and the COVID-19 pandemic contexts, this project demonstrates how marketers connect consumers to skincare products through reference to the system of …

Group Brands As An Innovative Pedagogical Tool: Using Marketing Theory In Real-World Collaborative Teaching, Cheryl A. Tokke

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This teaching and learning pedagogy paper demonstrates how group brands were used as interdisciplinary teaching tools in marketing, business, research, and social science classes by applying theories of branding, collaborative learning, affinity, and social identity in experiential learning. There were two primary reasons why this project was done. First, implementing a pedagogical tool would bring students together in a collaborative team over the period of a semester gaining a critically important business tool; the requirement of working in teams and networked relationships. Second, by enriching the curriculum of business marketing and social science courses through incorporating a semester long term-based …

Asserting Librarian Expertise And Value In Strategic Marketing Efforts, Memo Cordova, Elizabeth Ramsey

Library Faculty Publications and Presentations

This case study of librarian-led marketing efforts at a mid-size academic library examines workarounds to obstacles that librarians frequently encounter when taking on marketing for their libraries. These obstacles often stem from a combination of misunderstanding and/or misplaced priorities at both the unit and administrative levels. Challenges in this case study include a number of factors: no marketing strategy at the administrative level, a lack of understanding from colleagues generally, little time to complete tasks or improve marketing skills, and no dedicated funding. To address these challenges the authors embarked on an internal marketing campaign engaged extensively on social media …