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The paper aims to investigate the value of a network perspective in enhancing the understanding of the business to consumer marketing of high‐involvement product categories. This is achieved through the analysis of the development of fair trade marketing in the UK.

The paper addresses the research question through an analysis of relevant literatures from both marketing and other disciplinary areas. The paper is thus multidisciplinary in nature. Findings from a series of in depth, semi‐structured interviews with senior representatives of a fair trade wholesaler, of a specialist fair trade brand, of supermarket retailers involved with fair trade and of other fair trade labelling and support organisations are reported and discussed.

The relevance of an actor network theory (ANT) informed interpretation of the development of the fair trade marketing network is revealed. Its emphases on the processes of exchange and the role of human and non‐human actants in enabling interactions within the network are shown to be important. fair trade marketing is shown as occurring within an unfolding network of information exchanges. Analysis of this emerging network highlights a shift of emphasis in fair trade marketing from the fair trade process to fair trade products and, latterly, fair trade places.

The paper highlights the requirement for further conceptualisation of the business to consumer marketing of high‐involvement product categories, and reveals the potential of ANT as one approach to meet this need. The paper also provides a detailed insight into the development of fair trade marketing in the UK.

This paper aims to test the proposition that integrated marketing communications (IMC) practice is lagging in the trucking industry. It stems from the more general proposition extant in the literature that business to business (B2B) IMC practice lags business to consumer IMC practice.

In total, 109 trucking managers attending the American Trucking Association Annual Management Conference are asked which communications tools they use and for which strategic purposes. The new product adoption model (NPAM) provides a means of measuring efficient IMC practice.

Joint space perceptual maps generated by correspondence analysis reveal the association between trucking managers’ IMC mixes and the stages of the NPAM. Inspection shows that trucking managers deploy a relatively large number of traditional and digital tools to support all stages of the NPAM, indicating a sophisticated level of IMC knowledge and practice, contrary to the proposition that IMC practice is lagging in the trucking industry.

This contrary result suggests that IMC practice proceeds at different rates across B2B industries and must be examined on a per-industry basis. In combination with Garber and Dotson’s (2002) trucking IMC study, this study provides a second data point from which the evolution of IMC practice in the trucking industry can be tracked into the future. Additionally, this paper demonstrates the efficacy of the NPAM as a means of measuring the efficiency of IMC mixes, as well as for monitoring and training. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to document how restaurant’s business-to-consumer communication strategies evolved on Facebook over time and how consumers’ reactions to a variety of Facebook messages changed over time.

This study analyzed 2,463 Facebook messages posted by seven quick-service restaurant chains and three casual-dining restaurant chains in the fourth quarter of 2010, 2012 and 2014. ANOVA and post hoc t-test were used to compare the differences among four media types (photo, status update, video and hyperlink) in terms of their usage by companies and Facebook users’ reactions to these messages (measured by number of “Likes”, number of comments and number of shares).

Over the three periods of time under observation, there is a substantial decrease of status updates by restaurants and a dramatic increase of photo updates. Photo remained as the most “popular” media type, receiving most “Likes”, comments and shares from consumers. Video was not considered “popular” in 2010 but experienced a slight increase in usage and slowly emerged in 2012 and 2014 as another “popular” media, which no longer had statistical difference with photo in number of comments and shares.

Some limitations include an under representable sample and its longitudinal design, but the findings provide additional insight to current literature in social media.

A series of suggestions were advanced from the findings to help hospitality managers better engage Facebook users.

This is probably the first time-series or longitudinal-like analysis in social media research and yields meaningful findings.

Marketers use e-mail in new, potentially more informative, entertaining and lucrative ways – such as embedding video. The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer responses to audiovisual (i.e. text along with a short video) versus text-only messages in brand communication. Specifically, authors seek to uncover the efficacy of marketer-embedded video (vs text-only) in e-mail on the consumer's product interest, informativeness, perceived prestige, electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) intentions and willingness to pass the electronic message along digitally or on social media. With the dual coding theory and selective visual attention as theoretical guideposts, the intended contribution is a framework that can explain and predict advantages for multi-modal e-mail marketing communications.

Five hypotheses are tested experimentally with a one-factor experiment with two conditions (text-only vs audiovisual). The sample was 240 adult participants. Real brands (Audi and Apple) were used. For both brands, participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions of the e-mail (i.e. audiovisual vs text-only). The stimuli are identical, with the exception of embedded video in the e-mail body. The videos are authentic brand videos, are approximately 50 s and use a product feature appeal. Participants’ pre-existing brand attitude was measured. Then, five dependent variables (product interest, informativeness, perceived prestige, e-WOM intentions and willingness to pass the electronic message along digitally or on social media) were considered with respect to consumer exposure to e-mail with video and text in the e-mail from the brand versus text-only e-mail from the brand.

The results supported the hypotheses that audiovisual messages (i.e. those with text and video) heighten informativeness, product interest, perceived prestige, intentions to spread e-WOM for a brand and willingness to pass along the e-mail along to friends and family when compared to text-only messages. These experimental findings from a one-factor experiment with two conditions (text-only vs audiovisual) are generally consistent for an American consumer technology brand Apple (iPhone) and a German luxury automobile brand Audi (S4). Hypotheses are supported for both brands (Apple and Audi), with the exception of product interest for Audi, which may be explained by the high price of a luxury automobile.

An implication here for the dual coding theory is that the theory may be extended to consider what happens after the consumer codes the information with both the verbal and the non-verbal subsystem. The finding of interest to information processing scholars is that a video accompanying text communication from a brand to a consumer has an advantage over text-only communication. Brands that communicate with multi-modal marketing communication have better outcomes in informativeness, brand prestige perceptions and intentions of online consumer behaviors, including positive e-WOM for the brand in general and willingness to pass the specific content along in digital and social media platforms. Consumers can become brand advocates by being more inclined to forward the e-mails with the product short video as well as the e-mail text.

Brand marketers should consider e-mail in an integrated brand promotion (IBP) campaign as a cost advantage; one of the reasons e-mail should have a solid place in the IBP toolkit is due to e-mail's relatively low cost. The main cost comes with administration and production of the video. As a managerial implication for advertisers, embedding ads of a short video format in e-mails is a way to be more effective than plain-text e-mails. Short videos in e-mails are a reasonable idea to include in an integrated marketing communications effort (plausibly due to information processing with both a verbal and a non-verbal system). Brands can use videos in e-mails to enhance informativeness regarding products to enhance product differentiation from competitors. Yet, it is important to raise caution with some concerning disadvantages potentially associated with e-mail marketing and video. The three areas of caution include potential issues of privacy, clutter and technical inhibitors.

Despite the fact that e-mail is one of the most heavily used communication tools in marketing, there is scarce literature on e-mail and branding. By brands evoking a degree of prestige with embedded videos, consumer willingness to become part of the marketing communications is enhanced, as their e-WOM and willingness to share the branded content increase.

The final chapter of the book titled ‘Beyond multi-channel marketing: Critical Issues in Dual Marketing’ aims at summarising issues related to the concept of dual marketing (DM). Starting from the analysis of a structured literature review on the selected subject, spread across three decades and reflecting on the different contributions of the research showed in the present book, the chapter tries to open the path to giving to the topic a new guise. In order to fulfil this duty, not only works on DM and multichannel marketing were taken into account, but also other research paths that share several features with the main topic were under scrutiny.

The use of e‐commerce and the Internet is increasing in acceptance for a wide range of businesses from large enterprises to small and micro businesses. While the literature on e‐business and e‐commerce is evolving, there is limited substantive research focused on the theory and practice of e‐business systems amongst small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper provides an insight into thirty‐four SMEs actively utilising e‐commerce. The paper also provides a theoretical contribution by developing a conceptual model of e‐commerce utilisation for SMEs within the Australian context, which depicts the relationship between the use of e‐commerce by SMEs, the degree of business transformation and the strategic significance of e‐commerce. Keywords: Case Study, Small Business, Electronic Commerce, Business Transformation

This paper aims to provide a deeper understanding of the effective use of Facebook within the hotel industry. It explored which current Facebook practices are effective/persuasive using the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) as the main theoretical foundation.

Using an experimental design, the effects of consumers’ exposure to treatments, involving different levels of elaboration and source credibility, were examined to determine whether consumer’s process information from Facebook communication through a central or peripheral route.

The results of this research showed that consumer attitudes are affected by the source credibility, but not by the level of elaboration. Also, intentions to stay at the hotel and intentions to engage with the hotel brand via social media were not affected by the level of elaboration or source credibility.

This study presents an important step forward in understanding how consumer persuasion takes place in an online environment. Also, this paper provides a first-hand account of the manner in which social media adds value to a business organization. In addition, this paper provides insight on how consumers process online information.

As this is the first conceptualization of the ELM in a social media context, this study is uniquely able to explain the concept of persuasion in the hotel industry. Such knowledge is invaluable to academics and hotel decision makers, especially because the research provides specific insights on the manner in which attitudes change in consumers.

This study aims to investigate how business-to-business (B2B) companies use message strategies on social media platform and how these strategies are effective in improving customer perceived value and encouraging customer engagement, as well as how B2B companies differ from business-to-customer (B2C) counterparts in terms of utilization and effectiveness of social media message strategy.

Based on content analysis of Sina Weibo brand pages and survey of website visitors, this paper examines the differences of social media message strategies and their impacts upon customer perceived value and customer engagement between B2B and B2C companies.

B2B companies use more rational appeals and less emotional appeals, have lower degree of informativeness and perform better in interactivity and variety than B2C companies. These five dimensions of message strategy have different roles in engaging customers via perceived value across B2B and B2C settings.

The research makes significant contributions to B2B social media marketing literature by answering two interrelated questions, namely, “What companies are doing?” and “What companies should do?” on social media websites. Besides, it provides insightful implications for B2B companies on how to implement appropriate message strategies in their social media marketing efforts by conducting Importance-Performance Analysis.

This research aims to generate new insights into consumer ethics by tapping into business executives' first-hand experience. The overarching goal of this novel, discovery-oriented approach is to illuminate the interactive relationships between business and consumer ethics, and to offer contextualized insights into consumers' (un)ethical behaviors.

Three focus group interviews were conducted with senior business executives representing nine different industry sectors. Thematic analysis was performed to identify key themes for an integrative model.

Four key themes emerged, highlighting: (1) the mutual influence between business and consumer ethics, (2) the nature and intensity of consumer ethics, (3) the dual influence of digital communication, and (4) the partial influence of consumer education. The themes gave rise to an integrative conceptual model.

This research was limited somewhat by the small and judgmental sample.

Consumers' growing demands for business ethics underscore the need for companies to elevate ethical considerations. The amplified consumer voice on social media is dreaded by business practitioners and is regarded as unethical consumer behavior to be actively managed.

Business and consumer ethics can mutually influence each other in a benign or vicious circle. Consumer education is effective in some but not all domains.

Business practitioners' insights reveal (1) the interactivity of business and consumer ethics and (2) the diversity of (un)ethical consumer behaviors. They point to the need for an enriched definition of consumer ethics and an expansion on the categorical structure of consumers' (un)ethical practices.

Corporate communications is often less successful when it is competing for influence with neighboring functions such as marketing or sales within organizations. This article addresses the internal positioning of communication departments by developing a conceptual framework which helps to understand, analyze and optimize their standing in organizations.

The research is based on a literature review across several disciplines (e.g. organizational communication, strategic management) and supported by 26 qualitative in-depth interviews with board members, executives and communicators in a global industry company. By combining the theoretical and empirical insights, a framework for positioning communication departments within organizations was developed.

The framework depicts seven strategies (e.g. expectation and impression management, supporting ambassadors from other departments) and three spheres of influence (organizational integration, internal perceptions and social capital) to strengthen the position of corporate communications.

The conceptual framework has been supported by one case study so far, and future research may further develop and verify it by applying it to a larger number of companies in different industries.

Practitioners can use the framework as an analytical tool to reflect the current situation in their organization and identify opportunities for strengthening it.

This article introduces a novel view in the academic debate about the role and influence of corporate communications. It establishes a framework that helps to identify different drivers and strategies, and lays ground for future research.