Marketing Commons^™

Rhetorical Analysis Of Successful Brands In Social Media Discourse, Maja Stevanovich

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

The expression "content is king" is a sentiment those in the marketing and public relations industries live by. When it comes to social media, still considered a newer form of communication, not all brands are sure of what makes for successful utilization of the medium. This study performed a rhetorical analysis on three brands considered to be social media standouts in their respective industries, Coca-Cola, Southwest Airlines and the U.S. Army and identified patterns on what makes these brands successful in their social media discourse. The study proved that social media discourse has much to do with sound communication principles …

Does Paying For Online Product Reviews Pay Off? The Effects Of Monetary Incentives On Content Creators And Consumers, Andrew Stephen, Yakov Bart, Christilene Du Plessis, Dilney Goncalves

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that although incentivizing product reviews results in more helpful content, disclosing payment lowers review consumers’ product quality expectations. This effect occurs because disclosure induces doubt in product quality and persists when more objective information is available, irrespective of disclosure specificity, across product categories and even after product trial.

Our Celebrities Our Selves: Reconstructing Ourselves As Online Personalities, Arne Baruca

WCBT Faculty Publications

Celebrity influence on consumer behavior at the online macro level is the motivation for this study that addresses the nature of celebrity consumption and how consumers apply that consumption to develop their online self-presentation.

The sample for this study is limited to consumers with active accounts at online social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Methodology is a three-part design. A multi-factor qualitative exploratory study (n=73) reveals four celebrity-consumer relationships whose proposed measurement scales are tested in a quantitative pilot study (n=85). Finally, a large sample study (n=593) is used to test the measurement model and to test the proposed …

The Marketing Effectiveness Of Hotel Facebook Pages: From Perspectives Of Customers And Messages, Xi Yu Leung

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the hotel industry, social media marketing has become a new trend hoteliers are chasing and an increasing number of hotels are using social media to promote their business. However, the marketing effectiveness of social media is still a big challenge in both academic and business world. Since social media marketing is totally different from traditional marketing approaches, traditional marketing theories and practices may not be applicable to social media. Besides, very few studies have examined the effectiveness of social media marketing in the academic world.

Therefore, this study intended to provide an in-depth examination on the marketing effectiveness of …

Regional Identity And The Reputation Of Willamette Valley Wines: A Multiple Stakeholder Assessment, Katherine Byers, Julia Prow

2012 Projects

The Keck Summer Collaborative Research Program provides opportunities for Linfield College students and faculty to conduct research on issues related to the Pacific Northwest, and to bring the research findings back into the classroom within the subsequent academic year. Students partner with faculty to conduct research and present their work to other students, Linfield staff and faculty, and community members during a series of brown bag lunches. Kathie Byers and Julia Prow conducted research with Sharon Wagner and gave this presentation during the summer of 2012.

This presentation gives a project overview, explaining the purpose of the research and where …

Ua42/1 Summer Sessions Annual Report, Wku Summer Sessions & Winter Term

WKU Administration Documents

Annual report of the Summer Session demographics, enrollment trends, faculty stipends, tuition rates and marketing.

Attitudes Toward And Behavioral Intentions To Adopt Mobile Marketing: Comparisons Of Gen Y In The United States, France And China, Rebecca Wells, Catherine E. Kleshinski, Terence Lau

Management and Marketing Faculty Publications

The rapid global diffusion of mobile marketing makes it increasingly important to understand cross-­‐cultural consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward mobile marketing as a promotional channel. By building on the previously published research of Altuna and Konuk (2009), this work investigates the attitudes and behavioral intentions toward mobile marketing of Generation Y consumers in the United States, France, and China. Based on this analysis, Chinese Gen Y have the most positive attitude toward mobile marketing, and their overall attitude is significantly more positive than the attitudes of French and American Gen Y groups. While American Gen Y's behavioral intentions are …

Appearances Do Matter! What Libraries Can Learn From Clinton Kelly, Nancy E. Fawley

Library Faculty Research

One could easily mistake Clinton Kelly’s closing keynote presentation at ACRL 2011 in Philadelphia last March as light fare. Kelly, cohost of TLC’s What Not To Wear, spoke enthusiastically about the importance of one’s appearance and the necessity of making an extra effort in the way individuals present themselves. His keynote address, and the fact that a fashion expert was a speaker at a conference for librarians, sparked debates on Twitter and in the blogosphere.

Do appearances matter? I say they do and add that this applies to buildings and objects, as well. Academic libraries, especially, could benefit from some …

From The Last Frontier To The New Cosmopolitan A History Of Casino Public Relations In Las Vegas, Jessalynn Strauss

Occasional Papers

This research chronicles the history of public relations by the gaming industry in Las Vegas. Reflecting larger trends in the field, public relations efforts by the casinos and hotels in this popular tourist destination have used a variety of communication tactics over time to promote themselves to potential Las Vegas tourists. Based on archival materials from over 30 casinos and gaming corporations, this paper identifies four ways in which public relations is practiced in the gaming industry and four macro-level trends in the evolution of casino public relations in Las Vegas.

Being Critical In Marketing Studies: The Imperative Of Macro Perspectives, Nikhilesh Dholakia

College of Business Faculty Publications

In this article, I argue that an elevated macro-level perspective is imperative for conducting critical studies in the fields of marketing and consumer research. There are epistemic barriers to operating in this manner, and I offer several suggestions for overcoming these barriers. Finally, I review the research spaces for critical studies of marketing in various global settings and conclude that United Kingdom and Nordic Europe have the best epistemic climate, and this region needs to take leadership in promoting greater range of macro and critical studies of marketing in the rest of the world.

Perceived Firm Transparency: Scale And Model Development, Jennifer Dapko

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last few years alone, calls for transparency by consumers have grown louder. No longer are consumers willing to sit back and allow firms to make `closed door' decisions that benefit the company (and its executives) at the expense of consumers and society. This dissertation begins to answer the call for a greater understanding of transparency from both practitioner and academic perspectives. In particular, this dissertation focuses on systematically developing a succinct definition of perceived firm transparency, developing a valid measure of transparency, and empirically testing antecedents and consequences of transparency.

Two studies were conducted to develop the transparency …

Status: In A Relationship How Effective Is Customer Relationship Marketing On Facebook?, Courtney Weiss

Honors Projects in Marketing

Facebook provides an avenue for companies to connect with consumers in new ways. Since so many tools for communication are available on the site, it can be difficult for a company to focus its marketing efforts. This study examines how consumers respond to Facebook Advertisements and company pages on Facebook in order to determine where companies should allocate their resources on the social networking site. Specifically, it explores consumer click-through rates on Facebook Ads, as well as consumer perception of various Facebook promotional tools. The methodology includes traditional research in the form of a literature review, as well as focus …

The Growing Use Of Social Media In Political Campaigns: How To Use Facebook, Twitter And Youtube To Create An Effective Social Media Campaign, Kaitlin Vonderschmitt

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

A political campaign is carefully crafted for each candidate, to address their constituency and present the candidate and party in the best possible way. After the creation of the United States suffrage was limited to land owning white men, these men were involved in politics by reading local newspapers and visiting the politicians face to face. However as we fast forward to the 1930’s President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the radio to connect with the American public, and then in 1960’s Nixon and Kennedy’s debate introduced the mass-produced version of face-to-face politics through televisions all over the country we begin …

Twitter: Businesses Increasing Their Revenues 140 Characters At A Time, Adekemi O. Oyalabu

Honors Projects in Communication

With the consumer market becoming more competitive by the day, businesses must find innovative yet cost effective means of reaching their target markets and steadily increasing their revenues. While businesses compete with one another to remain the best, they must have a strategic market plan that differentiates their products and/or services from their competitors. In an effort to do this, many businesses have begun using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn as a means of reaching their target markets. Such sites have opened businesses to a new level of advertising where they reach consumers faster, have the …

The Impact Of Social Networking Sites On College Students' Consumption Patterns, Whitney Sue Thoene

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This research study examines the effect of social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, on the purchasing habits of college students by testing for correlations between recommendations on social media and consumption patterns. Moreover, the research also examines the role of gender and social media usage frequency on consumption patterns. Findings revealed that both Facebook and Twitter are being used to obtain sales information and promotions. Furthermore, gender has an impact on both social networking sites. Additionally, this study found the higher the frequency of social media usage the more likely customers are to shop at the businesses they have befriended.

Advertising The Thin Ideal-The Effect On Women, Christine Murphy

Irish Business Journal

Debate on the thin ideal has been prevalent for many decades, however given the substantial increase in eating disorders and the omnipresent influence of the media the time is now ripe for decisive action in the area of women in advertising. Most research in this area has focused on the psychological impact of the thin ideal. The new research presented in this paper is important as it explores the marketing implications of the portrayal of women in the fashion and cosmetic industry. The success of this industry depends entirely on how receptive consumers are to the images portrayed. This paper …

Diy Pr: How Independent Music Artists Use Online Social Networks For Public Relations Purposes, Martina Lawless

Theses

Significance of the study: Independent musicians are a huge part of the Irish music industry and yet they are the part that do not have the backing of a record label. This means independent musicians need to look at cheap or even free ways to promote themselves to existing fans and potential new fans. With the emergence of social networks musicians both signed and independent have the tools necessary to engage in a new form DIY PR. The purpose of this study is to look at the different ways that social networks have helped musicians in recent years, but also …

Acculturation Effects On Preference For English And Spanish-Language Tv Commercials Among Hispanic Audiences Of Mexican Descent, John Burton

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The growth of the U.S. Hispanic population and its purchasing power over the past twenty years continues to be monitored closely by corporate interests anxious to gain market share and brand loyalty of the segment that now represents the largest minority group in the country. Marketers continue to look for competitive advantages in effectively communicating targeted messages to Hispanics in order to increase revenues and profits.

This study focused on the historically dominant mass-reach medium of television and explored concepts of acculturation theory to examine the effects of acculturation sub-dimensions on TV commercial language preference and attitudes among Hispanic audiences …

Our Celebrities Our Selves: Reconstructing Ourselves As Online Personalities, Arne Baruca

Marketing Faculty Publications (Archived)

Celebrity influence on consumer behavior at the online macro level is the motivation for this study that addresses the nature of celebrity consumption and how consumers apply that consumption to develop their online self-presentation.

The sample for this study is limited to consumers with active accounts at online social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Methodology is a three-part design. A multi-factor qualitative exploratory study (n=73) reveals four celebrity-consumer relationships whose proposed measurement scales are tested in a quantitative pilot study (n=85). Finally, a large sample study (n=593) is used to test the measurement model and to test the proposed …

Ironic Advertising: Theory, Evidence And Practice, Ekin Pehlivan Yalcin

2012

Irony is one mechanism that advertisers use to attract consumer attention. Although ironic advertising (IA) is utilized in the mass media, it has received surprisingly little conceptual or empirical attention from marketing scholars. Perhaps one reason for this is that in marketing irony has been viewed primarily from a postmodern perspective. This is in marked contrast to psycholinguists where the phenomenon is approached from a more ecumenical, realist point of view. This dissertation is based on the premise that a realist approach to ironic advertising would produce insights for both marketing theory and practice.

This dissertation comprises of three papers …

Top 10 Law School Home Pages Of 2011, Roger Skalbeck

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For the third consecutive year, the website home pages for all ABA-accredited law schools are evaluated and ranked based on objective criteria. For 2011, law school home pages advanced in some areas. For instance, there are now thirteen sites using the HTML5 doctype, up from a single site in 2010. In addition, seventeen schools achieved a perfect score for three tests focused on website accessibility, up from eight in 2010. Nonetheless, there’s enough diversity in coding practices and content to help separate the great from the good.

For this year’s survey, twenty-four elements of each home page are assessed across …

How Social Media Communities Impact Consumer Behavior, Leslie Martinka

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Social media, in particular, Facebook and Twitter, are comprised of communities typically of like-minded individuals. Through social media sites we can network with these communities and converse in ways that are sometimes difficult to do offline. But do these social media communities influence how one purchases online? Mead’s theory of symbolic interactionism describes how offline communities influence one’s actions and helps to create our cultural norms and ideologies. Using Mead’s theory as a basis for the following study, this thesis attempted to determine if Facebook and Twitter communities influence consumers’ online purchasing behaviors. Employing a Likert-like scale of 1-3, a …

Communicating During An Organizational Crisis: Using Facebook As A Relationship Management Tool, Vjollca Hysenlika

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to determine how organizations communicate on Facebook during a crisis, from a relationship management perspective, and how their interactivity, responsiveness, and transparency affect their Fan page's relevance, importance, and appeal. In this study, the researcher conducted a controlled experiment to examine if a strategized Facebook Fan page that contained a high level of interaction, responsiveness, and transparency contributed to long-lasting relationships with fans or helped organizations recover/prevent a crisis. The researcher created eight different conditions (Facebook Fan Pages) presenting a crisis message, and recruited 200 students (25 participants per condition) from the University of …

Recruiting For Higher Education: The Roles That Print, Web, And Social Media Play In The Decision Process For Prospective Students, Brandon X. Karcher

Department of Computer Graphics Technology Degree Theses

Recruiting in higher education is a process that has been an evolving process since it first began. The most traditional methods for recruiting have been through print, web, and campus visits. However, with new social media like Facebook, Twitter, and other services, many universities have adopted the new media for recruiting purposes. Social media, coupled with a more technologically adept population of prospective students forces universities and colleges to look at an increasing number of mediums for recruiting. There is a lack of literature that documents the usefulness of the newer social media outlets. This study was designed to determine …

Identifying Barriers And Incentives Related To Attending The Performing Arts: An Examination Of First Year College Students, Laura J. Sweet

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Young adults entering their first year of academic study beyond high school face seemingly limitless opportunities. For the first time, they’re on their own: deciding everything from when to eat to where to study and what to do in their free time. Campuses are rich with possibilities. From official student organizations and clubs, to impromptu pizza parties and dorm floor trivia contests, daily decisions create the experiences that shape the life to come. On many large campuses, alongside academic buildings are art galleries and performance spaces. Research shows that early exposures to the arts lead to increased engagement during student …

Transparency Through Social Media: Improving The Credibility Of Pr Professionals In The Twenty-First Century, Pete Voss

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

This correlational study identifies opportunities for PR (public relations) professionals to gain trust by engaging online communities using unprecedented levels of transparency. The thesis begins by reviewing literature and setting the stage for how and when PR gained its PR problem (Thomas et al., 2009). The study observes how PR professionals are currently engaging these audiences, and also demonstrates how the public perceives these actions. The philosophical framework for this study stemmed from Aristotle's belief in goodwill in communities (Book 1, Chapter 1), and Augustine's (1909) belief that "All wish to rejoice in truth" (p. 186). Sherif's Social Judgment Theory …

Modeling Multichannel Home Video Demand In The U.S. Motion Picture Industry, Anirban Mukherjee, Vrinda Kadiyali

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The U.S. motion picture industry has become increasingly reliant on posttheatrical channel profits. Two often-cited drivers of these profits are cross-channel substitution among posttheatrical channels and seasonality in consumer preferences for any movie. The authors use a differentiated products version of the multiplicative competitive interaction model to investigate these two phenomena. They estimate the model using data from 2000 and 2001 on two posttheatrical channels in the U.S. market: purchase and rental home viewing channels. Contrary to expectations based on business press commentary, after controlling for seasonality and movie attributes, the authors find low cross-channel price and availability elasticity for …

Identifying Social Influence In Networks Using Randomized Experiments, Sinan Aral, Dylan Walker

Business Faculty Articles and Research

The recent availability of massive amounts of networked data generated by email, instant messaging, mobile phone communications, micro blogs, and online social networks is enabling studies of population-level human interaction on scales orders of magnitude greater than what was previously possible.1'2 One important goal of applying statistical inference techniques to large networked datasets is to understand how behavioral contagions spread in human social networks. More precisely, understanding how people influence or are influenced by their peers can help us understand the ebb and flow of market trends, product adoption and diffusion, the spread of health behaviors such as smoking and …

An Observation Of The Facebook Messaging Strategies Of Nonprofit Vs. For-Profit Organizations, Kristin Parker

Communication & Leadership Dissertations and Theses

Over the last five years, organizations have begun to invest in non-traditional marketing communications strategies, specifically, social media marketing. While organizations, in general, are clear about the value of social media marketing, their current strategies are not engaging and uninspiring. The literature on this topic highlights critical considerations for the most significant communications impact (Foulger, 2004; Lasswell, 1948), such as the importance of human interaction, interpersonal ability, personal influence and intimacy (Lazarsfeld, 1944 ; Short, Williams & Christie, 1976). Additionally, a study by Boase, Horrigan, Wellman & Rainie (2006) presents research on how the Internet and Social Networking are revolutionizing …

Creating Social Contagion Through Viral Product Design: A Randomized Trial Of Peer Influence In Networks, Sinan Aral, Dylan Walker

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We examine how firms can create word-of-mouth peer influence and social contagion by designing viral features into their products and marketing campaigns. To econometrically identify the effectiveness of different viral features in creating social contagion, we designed and conducted a randomized field experiment involving the 1.4 million friends of 9,687 experimental users on Facebook.com. We find that viral features generate econometrically identifiable peer influence and social contagion effects. More surprisingly, we find that passive-broadcast viral features generate a 246% increase in peer influence and social contagion, whereas adding active-personalized viral features generate only an additional 98% increase. Although active-personalized viral …