Search results

The novel The Ugly American published in the late 1950s depicts the blunderings which can take place when decision makers are overly ethnocentric. Happily, in interpersonal dealings, executives are becoming more accepting of the ways of other people. Anthropologists such as Edward T. Hall have developed a wealth of material which explores the habits and customs of other people and how to interact in situations with such people. Thus, overt ethnocentrism is largely on the wane. Ironically, as Westerners have become more worldly in their interpersonal dealings with other people, they have also embraced a strong “global marketing” orientation. This global paradigm contains a “covert ethnocentrism” since it presupposes that the whole world is being transformed in the same way by technology. Although in the long flow of history this might be true, global theories are not usually relevant to short‐term analysis on strategic planning. In an era when we have largely purged our thinking of overt ethnocentrism, we must resist this new “covert” ethnocentrism.

There are two claims made by the web marketing/advertising industry. By collecting, managing, and mining data, companies serve consumer's best interests, and by adopting sophisticated analytics, web marketers avoid discriminations that disserve individuals. Although the paper shares an interest in ending social discrimination, the paper is more circumspect about pronounced individualism and technological fixes. Despite its appeal, or perhaps because of it, the paper should not accept the claim at face value. The paper argues that social discrimination may not disappear under smarter marketing; more overt forms may wane only to be replaced by more subtle forms. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The paper compares the two most important techniques of “smarter” marketing – predictive analytics and Facebook's social graph – with current discriminatory practices of weblining and e-scoring. While noting advances against overt discrimination, the paper describes how smarter marketing allows for covert forms.

Innovative strategies to record and mine users' tastes and social connectivity for marketing purposes open the way for covert social discrimination.

The paper provides a critical assessment of two claims made by the web marketing/advertising industry: by monitoring consumer web activity and collecting, managing, and mining data, companies serve consumer's best interests, and by adopting sophisticated analytics, web marketers avoid discriminations that disserve individuals.

While substantial scholarly attention has been given to children’s understanding of advertising in the context of traditional advertising channels, there is a gap in the literature with regard to children’s commercial awareness in the context of online social networking sites. This paper aims to seek to explore the nature and extent of advertising literacy among young consumers in the context of their use of social networking sites, namely, Facebook and Bebo.

A three-stage study was conducted with 12 to 14-year-old girls, using focus group discussions, participant observation and in-depth interviews.

The study illustrates that the increasingly blurred line between online advertising and other forms of online brand-related content is militating against the development of advertising and marketing literacy in young consumers. A key issue which is discussed is the extent to which the traditional conceptualisation of advertising literacy is “fit for purpose” in an online context.

The authors propose an alternative to the advertising literacy concept, namely, the Online Brand Communications literacy framework. This framework recognises the convergence of traditional online advertising and other forms of online brand content and also acknowledges that the messaging around a brand may originate from the brand owner in a variety of overt and covert forms. Equally, online consumers may also act as brand promoters when they engage in brand-related word-of-mouth.

This study aims to investigate pharmaceutical company-sponsored disease information websites that are created and operated by pharmaceutical companies. Without clear indication of the site ownership, these websites look like non-advertising health information websites. Consumers’ responses to pharmaceutical company-sponsored disease information websites were examined in comparison to their responses to typical direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug brand websites.

A field experiment was conducted with a representative sample of US adults. Study subjects were randomly assigned to one of three live websites: pharmaceutical company-sponsored disease information website; DTC brand website with a high level of trust cues; and DTC brand website with a low level of trust cues. After viewing the assigned websites, participants completed an online questionnaire. The questionnaire included measurements for perceived website trust, attitude toward the website, intention to use information, perceived importance of prescription drug information, perceived health, prescription drug use, disposition to trust, prior experience with the website and demographic information.

The pharmaceutical company-sponsored disease information website generated higher website trust and more positive attitude and information use intention than the DTC drug brand websites. The results suggest that company-sponsored disease information websites may present some ethical issues related to website identity information transparency, which seems to inhibit consumers’ persuasion knowledge activation and proper coping responses. Because such websites look like non-advertising health information websites, consumers tend to evaluate them more positively and place higher trust in them than typical DTC drug brand websites with clear advertiser identification.

This is the first study examining pharmaceutical company-sponsored disease information websites, a relatively new form of covert DTC online advertising with potential ethical concerns due to the site identity transparency issues. This study’s findings suggest that consumers are likely to be more trusting and receptive of information presented in websites taking the form of a non-advertising health information website than in DTC brand websites.

Using uses and gratifications theory as a guide, the purpose of this paper is to examine how fans are engaging with Major League Baseball (MLB) teams that are utilizing Instagram postings to demonstrate sporting, business, and social objectives.

An analysis of 1,500 photos (50 from each team) was conducted. A content analysis analyzed the content of the photo, and a textual analysis was implemented to examine the use of hashtags by the teams on their Instagram photos.

Posts that overly demonstrated the business and social objectives had some of the lowest numbers of likes and comments, indicating that fan engagement is not often achieved through these methods.

Results of this research demonstrate that while MLB teams are able to address their multiple objectives on Instagram, fans are not necessarily interested in all three of these efforts. Posts about on-field action, consumer buying opportunities, and charitable efforts were all created by the majority of teams, but the sporting objective posts had, by far, the highest average number of both likes and comments when compared to the charitable and promotional objectives of the teams. Therefore, the results provide some best practices for teams looking to use the photo and video sharing network.

This research contributes to literature on marketing communication by exploring the roles of depth of processing and the dispositional factor, need for cognition (NFC), on consumer perceptions of product placement.

A web-based experiment with a 2 (low versus high prominence) x2 (low versus high brand awareness) x2 (with versus without prior disclosure) between-subjects full factorial design was conducted.

The results indicate that prominent placements were found to elicit more extensive processing, which was negatively correlated with brand attitudes. A significant negative relationship between NFC and purchase intention towards a placed brand was also revealed.

The study offers managerial and policy implications for practitioners and educators. It is suggested that brand practitioners should avoid placing brands too prominently or in film genres which are cognitively demanding. The low NFC group appears to be more vulnerable to covert marketing. Therefore it is suggested that media educators target this group and plan effective media literacy programs to guard youngsters from surreptitious selling.

This is the first study to empirically examine the role of prominence, brand awareness and prior disclosure in the processing of product placement information and their influence on product placement effectiveness.

Discusses the link between AIDS and marketing for companies, and the effect this has had on conventional and unconventional products. Defines three levels of marketing “unmentionables”: taste, ethical and legal. Owing to the subject‐matter, language and images used in anti‐AIDS campaigns, marketing has new freedom and can use its power to shock the public. Concludes that, although some topics which were previously unmentionable are now acceptable, society continues to produce new taboos.

This paper aims to explore whether and how consumers perceive the impact of pharmaceutical marketing on their own doctor’s prescribing behaviors, and subsequent responses toward their doctor’s advice.

Three experimental studies were conducted. Studies 1 and 2 are based on text-based manipulations and undergraduate student research participants. Study 3 uses image-based manipulations and average adult consumers.

Study 1 demonstrates that consumers can be quite skeptical about their doctor’s motives for prescribing certain brand-name drugs; in particular, consumers can construe doctors as agents of persuasion for prescribed brands. Study 2 shows that this can result not only in choosing generic drugs over prescribed brands but also in opting out of pharmaceuticals altogether by choosing alternatives like natural remedies. Study 3 further demonstrates that these effects can be easily triggered by visual cues in a non-student sample.

This research builds on the existing literature on pharmaceutical marketing communications, and extends the theory of persuasion knowledge into healthcare settings.

Hotels, the second largest component of online travel, have traditionally collected customer data through loyalty or customer relationship management programmes, compiling data about customers and using it to improve customer service and marketing efforts (Piccoli & O’Connor, 2003). Recent growth in online sales has given them access to even more granular and topical data. In particular technologies such as cookies, web bugs and beacons allow data on an individual’s browsing (e.g. the pages they have visited or the searches they have conducted) to be collected, consolidated and analysed to reveal detailed insights about customers which can subsequently be used for marketing purposes (Gilbert, 2008). While previous studies have investigated data collection by hotels, for the most part these have focussed on data surrendered voluntarily, with none addressing data collection through automated means. This chapter therefore attempts to fill this research gap, investigating whether and how hotel companies use such techniques, and whether consumers are adequately informed about this data collection process. Using the top 50 global hotel brands as a population, it explores both cookie disclosure and cookie practice by global hotel brands. The findings demonstrate that hotel brands, particularly those with their headquarters in the USA, are making extensive use of online monitoring technologies, typically for marketing purposes. In most cases, this data collection is happening surreptitiously, with the data protection notices that exist overtly long as well as crouched in highly technical language. Despite legislative changes that amplify the need to inform consumers about data collection, few hotel chains currently comply with the principles of informed consent, leaving many open to potential sanction.

This paper aims to investigate personalized communications through digital media, which include display, search, social and mobile communications.

Drawing on the literature pertaining to different digital mediums, the authors explore how different factors influence consumers’ responses to personalized communications. The current study integrates and reviews prior literature related to personalization, seeking a richer understanding of when personalized communications improve or hinder customer–firm interactions.

Personalization can both enhance and diminish consumer engagement with the firm: it may heighten privacy concerns because consumers worry about how their data are collected and used, and it can also benefit them in meaningful ways. Thus, firms must use the information that they collect in a strategic manner to balance this personalization-privacy paradox. This paper finds that the benefits of personalization may vary as a function of the medium through which the communication is conveyed. It suggests directions for research in each of these media and strategies firms can implement to mitigate privacy concerns.

This investigation of emerging themes related to search, display, social and mobile communications provides a more comprehensive overview of current research, as well as a foundation for further research into personalization.