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1 – 10 of 132Elena Dowin Kennedy, Alisha Blakeney Horky and Ethan Kaufmann
The purpose of this paper is to examine how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) within an entrepreneurial community engage in cross-promotion on social media via Facebook. This…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) within an entrepreneurial community engage in cross-promotion on social media via Facebook. This paper specifically examines how SME community members leverage their horizontal and vertical ties to generate publicity, improve brand perceptions and drive traffic to themselves or community events.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a qualitative approach, examining 1,025 Facebook posts from 27 members of an entrepreneurial community in the southeast USA to develop typologies of posting strategies, post purposes and post functions.
Findings
This paper finds that in the entrepreneurial community of interest, many members engage in cross-promotion via social media at various frequencies and with distinctive purposes. This paper identifies five distinct patterns of cross-promotion – quality signaling, traffic driving, community amplifying, hybrid cross-promotion and infrequent engagement. This paper also notes differences between cross-promotional strategies of vertical and horizontal partners.
Originality/value
This paper advances understanding of social media marketing and identifies key patterns of SME social media behavior. Although previous research has noted the importance of social media for SMEs, there has been little research regarding posting strategies being used by these firms. Further, to this point, there has not been a framework to understand how firms can use social media to cross-promote one another. This paper seeks to begin filling these gaps by providing a useful framework that can be used by SMEs in coordinating their social media posting strategies as well as by researchers studying SME cross-promotion.
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Elzbieta Lepkowska-White, Amy Parsons and Aylin Ceylan
This paper aims to examine whether advertisers attempt to engage consumers with online information presented in print advertisements by investigating whether they respond to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine whether advertisers attempt to engage consumers with online information presented in print advertisements by investigating whether they respond to consumers’ motives for using advertisements and whether these engagement practices have improved over time. By creating connections among different advertising channels, marketers strive to be more effective in building brand equity, online traffic and sales.
Design/methodology/approach
The Uses and Gratification theory is utilized as the framework to content analyze the content and presentation of web references in 2,613 advertisements from 2008 and 2,159 advertisements from 2012. Chi-square analysis is used to compare the content of web references in both time periods.
Findings
Even though past literature suggests that consumers use media and advertising to satisfy a variety of informational, personal identity, social and entertainment needs, advertisers respond with mostly ineffective and generic informational web references that fail to address those needs.
Research limitations/implications
The study suggests that advertisers may have difficulty adopting the new advertising paradigm which identifies customers as active respondents of advertising. Web references analyzed in this study do not address consumers’ motives for advertisement use.
Practical implications
Advertisers have not been effectively utilizing cross-promotion when it comes to directing traffic from print advertisements to Web sites. More attention and resources should be given to cross-promotion to ensure effective coordination between media types.
Originality/value
This study questions advertisers’ current approach toward cross-promotion. Findings help advertisers evaluate and develop better practices to encourage consumer engagement with web references placed in print advertisements to drive traffic to online stores.
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This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.
Design/methodology/approach
This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.
Findings
SMEs have created communities on Facebook in order to cross-promote, improving individual and collective visibility, and as a result, revenue and profitability.
Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.
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Robert Sparks and Melissa Westgate
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study that analyzed use of traditional and targeted sponsorship approaches by eight companies involved in the 1998-99 Canadian…
Abstract
This paper reports findings from a qualitative study that analyzed use of traditional and targeted sponsorship approaches by eight companies involved in the 1998-99 Canadian Hockey Association women's corporate support program. The study found the sponsors used methods from direct and relationship marketing to support corporate goals of sales, advertising, community-involvement and brand image and awareness. Several factors are discussed that would improve the sponsorships' effectiveness in the women's market.
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A well‐integrated multi‐channel format enables consumers to examine goods at one channel, buy them at another channel, and finally pick them up at a third channel. Multichannel…
Abstract
A well‐integrated multi‐channel format enables consumers to examine goods at one channel, buy them at another channel, and finally pick them up at a third channel. Multichannel retailing offers synergies, as it can result in an increased customer base, added revenue, and higher market share. Common characteristics of a well‐integrated retail strategy include: highly‐integrated promotions, product consistency across channels, an integrated information system that shares customer, pricing and inventory data across multiple channels, a process that enables store pick‐up for items purchased on the Web or through a catalog, and the search for multi‐channel opportunities with appropriate partners. This article provides a check‐list to enable a retailer to assess its readiness to undertake a multi‐channel strategy.
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The author explains in this paper (originally presented at a conference) the rationale behind developing a web site for one of Flextech Television's products.
Abstract
The author explains in this paper (originally presented at a conference) the rationale behind developing a web site for one of Flextech Television's products.
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Tobacco sponsorship of sports has increasingly been cast as a public issue on the grounds that it supports pediatric smoking by circumventing advertising restrictions and…
Abstract
Tobacco sponsorship of sports has increasingly been cast as a public issue on the grounds that it supports pediatric smoking by circumventing advertising restrictions and communicating positive brand information to children(28,31,32). Research on tobacco sponsorship effects on children is as yet inconclusive, but growing evidence suggests that sponsorship is an effective medium for building cigarette brand awareness and image among under‐aged youth. Research in this area has been inconclusive in part because it lacks a unified framework in which the various contributions of sponsorship to brand knowledge and use can be analysed holistically. This paper proposes that the brand equity concept(1,2,18) provides such a framework. The paper reviews previous research on tobacco sponsorship and children, and presents findings from a study that assessed the relative contribution of sponsorship to brand awareness among fourteen year‐olds (n=366) in Dunedin, New Zealand. The value of sponsorship‐derived cigarette brand knowledge among youth is expressed in terms of Keller's(18) concept of customer‐based brand equity. The study found that children's awareness of tobacco brands and tobacco sponsorships varied according to their smoking experience, sports interests and gender. Cigarette brands with the strongest event associations were those that sponsored events that had a high appeal for the youth in the study. The brands with the highest unaided recall levels were those that were prominently shown in point of purchase displays in stores frequented by the youth, and included those with the highest sponsorship profiles. The research demonstrates that tobacco companies can achieve significant brand recall among children through sport sponsorship, as well as interest‐based (lifestyle) segmentation and targeting benefits, and brand positioning (personality) benefits. The findings have implications for public policy and industry practice. In policy terms, if the goal of tobacco advertising prohibitions is to denormalise smoking by restricting the positive promotional imagery of cigarettes, then sport sponsorship and point of purchase displays need to be incorporated into advertising legislation. In terms of industry practice, the fact that tobacco sponsorship reaches and influences under‐aged youth stands to be a matter of concern for any entity that does not want this social burden. It is recommended that corporations considering involvement in a tobacco‐sponsored event should evaluate the reach of the event and the potential effects of its promotions on youth. Where a youth‐interest connection has been demonstrated for the event, corporations should weigh the social risks and costs of the sponsorship. For non‐tobacco related entities these costs include the potential negative impacts of tobacco‐linked event cross‐promotions on their own brands and corporate image.
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Few empirical studies have probed the effects of culture on the standardization/adaptation decision in the context of controversial products. This study aims to investigate the…
Abstract
Purpose
Few empirical studies have probed the effects of culture on the standardization/adaptation decision in the context of controversial products. This study aims to investigate the relationship between sociosexuality and the adaptation decision for editorial images and advertisements in Playboy magazine through content analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is a qualitative research using content analysis as the research approach. The content analysis is done for Playboy magazines from four culturally diverse countries conducted for this study.
Findings
The result shows that editions of the magazine across four culturally diverse countries reveal that sociosexuality is positively correlated to the degree of nudity in photographs and to the usage of advertising for controversial products. Moreover, the paper uses the concept of sociosexuality to gain a better understanding of the empirical discrepancies concerning nudity or sex appeal.
Originality/value
This research is an empirical study developed by author to confirm the influence of culture on the standardization/adaptation decision in the context of controversial products. This research is originally developed by author and has not been published before.
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Marketers try to influence food shopping behaviour of children through various in-store food promotional strategies (FPS). These in-store FPS comprise of attractive packaging…
Abstract
Purpose
Marketers try to influence food shopping behaviour of children through various in-store food promotional strategies (FPS). These in-store FPS comprise of attractive packaging, accessibility, availability of foods in wide varieties and presence of helpful and friendly sales personnel. However, little is known about how children buy and the extent to which these marketing strategies are successful. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate food shopping behaviour of children in retail stores and to study the effectiveness of in-store FPS and demographic factors (age and gender of child and monthly family income) on food shopping behaviour of children.
Design/methodology/approach
Data have been collected from 473 mothers of children in age category four to 11 years. Data have been analysed through descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations), bivariate correlations, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and hierarchical regression analysis.
Findings
The study explores and validates four factor structure of food shopping behaviour of children in retail stores in Indian settings. These factors include children’s active assessment of foods, impact of availability and variety on children’s purchases, influence of TV food ads on children’s purchases and influence of packaging on children’s food purchases. Further, the findings also reveal that in-store FPS are truly effective in influencing food shopping behaviour of children.
Practical implications
Marketers may highlight packaging attributes in food advertisements as they can help escalate food purchase requests of children in retail stores. In addition to this, food advertising is strongly associated with assessment of foods in retail stores and looking for availability of advertised foods in retail stores. This suggests that food advertising as a medium of communication should not be ignored. However, sales personnel can also be used more effectively as they are seen to help children in identifying availability and variety of foods in retail stores.
Originality/value
As no such study has been conducted so far (to the best of researcher’s knowledge), this study potentially helps in bridging gaps in literature.
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Tries to piece together a brief jigsaw of sales' various promotional bodies and their history. States that the year of 1933, which was the year when the British Sales Promotion…
Abstract
Tries to piece together a brief jigsaw of sales' various promotional bodies and their history. States that the year of 1933, which was the year when the British Sales Promotion Association was conceived, was not followed by its American equivalent until 23 years later. Discusses, in depth, the Association's early years from its inauguration with six members to its growth years, taking in the Second World War, which of course delayed progress everywhere. Says that the association grew to be 700 members and still growing in 1983.
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