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This chapter investigates how alternative digital journalism operates in the broader context of the austerity economy in Greece. Using as a background the historical interweaving of interests between economic power, political power and media, this chapter explores the current state of digital journalism in Greece and whether it can flourish and serve the ideals of independence, objectivity and pluralism. The Internet provides new possibilities for pluralism in journalism and gives rise to alternative media outlets that purport objectivity and independence from vested economic interests (e.g., advertising) and political pressures. However, the financial sustainability of such ventures is questionable and the regulatory framework in a heavily concentrated Greek media ecology weak or nonexisting. In this chapter, we examine the origins and mission statements of selected cases of alternative digital media outlets/projects, as well as their financing sources and business models. We then discuss sustainability issues and the limits to alternative digital journalism. Our empirical data derive from desktop research, short structured interviews with academics and longer semistructured interviews with key actors of alternative digital media.

Social media platforms are currently facing the challenge of declining user activity. Building on the push–pull–mooring (PPM) framework, the current study developed a research model to evaluate factors that affect Facebook discontinuance.

The proposed research model assessed how push factors (e.g. Facebook fatigue and dissatisfaction), a pull factor (e.g. alternative attractiveness) and mooring factors (e.g. personal norms and habit of using Facebook) affected the discontinued usage behavior regarding Facebook. The proposed research model was validated using empirical data (n = 412) collected from Facebook users.

Facebook fatigue, dissatisfaction and alternative attractiveness significantly and positively affected discontinued Facebook usage. Personal norms and habit of using Facebook had a converse influence in this regard. Dissatisfaction had a stronger positive impact than Facebook fatigue and alternative attractiveness on the discontinued usage behavior regarding Facebook. Habits of using Facebook had a greater negative effect than personal norms of using Facebook on the discontinued usage behavior regarding Facebook by users.

This study extends extant literature on social media discontinuance to identify the antecedents of discontinuous usage behavior in social media. This study enriches the literature on social media discontinuance by shedding light on the different degrees of effect of the push, pull and mooring factors on discontinuous social media usage behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to identify key social medial channels which pharmaceutical firms need to consider when desiring to understand consumer behavior, build, maintain and proactively manage relationships. Also, it proposes the application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) sensitivity analysis algorithm to test the stability or robustness of the priority ranking. Specifically, this paper leverages performance sensitivity analysis to evaluate how small changes (perturbation) in the major objectives of the pharmaceutical relationship marketing (PRM) tactics within the social media environment will influence the ranking of the alternative course of actions.

This paper used AHP-based questionnaire survey to evaluate the relative importance of factors accounting for PRM and the impact of social media channels. The major objectives and the alternative strategies used were from literature reviewed. Interviews with senior managers were insightful and helpful in the wording, content and format of the questionnaire.

Customer engagement is the most important PRM tactic, followed by communication and trust. The performance sensitivity analysis carried out on the PRM tactics showed that the ranking associated with social media channel options remained robust or insensitive to small perturbations.

The data procured for this paper were based on one focal pharmaceutical firm. Convincing the same to grant an interview and late responding to the questionnaire was a great challenge.

Social media impact on pharmaceutical marketing relationship is important for pharmaceutical marketers. PRM bodes well with the social media environment. Pharmaceutical industry can build and maintain relationships with consumers through social media. Firms that leverage social media to enhance their PRM tactics will be viewed favorably in terms of trust, transparency, openness and honesty. The results provide pharmaceutical marketing managers with insightful and valuable information with respect to the role or social media impact on the PRM. The AHP model, objectives and their relative importance provide valuable information for managers on how to monitor the values that matters to customers the most.

This paper is one of the very few on the PRM and perhaps the first that examines social impact leveraging the AHP model. In addition, this paper contributes to the relationship marketing literature by leveraging a multi-criteria decision-making algorithm to prioritize the most important factors accounting for the PRM strategies.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal perceptions of news organization bias among people who use the internet.

Data for this study were drawn from the Pew Research Center June 2005 News Interest Index. Respondents were asked if news organizations were politically biased in their reporting. Another question asked respondents if news organizations had a liberal or conservative bias. The final question asked respondents to judge news organization bias on political and social issues.

In two of the three perceptions of internet user/non‐user ratings of ideological bias in news organizations, internet news users surveyed rate news organizations as more biased than non‐users. However, when asked to ascertain either liberal or conservative bias in news organizations, non‐internet news users were more likely to claim that news organizations were biased.

More valid measures of the dimension of liberal and conservative bias could help in analyzing the effect of this particular variable on the use of the internet for news. Also, there is the possibility of some confusion in identifying internet news sources.

Advertising revenue of traditional media could decline as news use shifts to internet sources, and customers of the traditional US news networks would continue to migrate to the internet.

As this new media technology has the potential to reach new markets throughout the world, consumers who perceive that traditional news media are ideologically biased may favor the new medium over more traditional sources of news.

This research examines factors that affect media selection decisions for foreign markets as perceived by advertising executives of U.S. multinational corporations. The main objective is to determine whether cultural factors play a significant role in the selection process. The study investigates the opinions of 84 advertising executives of U.S. consumer durable product manufacturers. Findings reveal that managers place more importance on general factors (type of product, target audience, budget size, cost efficiency, reach and frequency, and competition) than they place on specific non‐domestic factors (media availability, language diversity, legal constraints, level of economy, literacy, and cultural considerations). Findings also suggest that executives tend to be more involved in establishing objectives and budgets than in creative strategy and media selection.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of Web 2.0 and social media in relationship marketing (RM) in banking. The aim is to understand why some banks resist the Web 2.0 trend, how this is aligned with their RM approaches and what the alternative paths for advancing customer relations could be. The paper focuses on the practices of banks in the less‐researched yet dynamically evolving South East European (SEE) region.

A qualitative case study approach was employed for this study. In total, three case studies were constructed, describing practices and RM approaches of retail banks in SEE. Data used for the construct of case studies were collected through in‐depth interviews with top management, documentation and banks’ official web sites.

Primary reasons for refraining from social media included: low customer demand for such form of interaction with banks; concerns over safety of Web 2.0 for banking; and lack of alignment with current RM strategies. While social media were not discarded for the future, they were deemed more appropriate for smaller or younger banks seeking innovative ways to capture market share.

The paper identifies requirements for the adoption of social media in bank marketing and offers insights on possible alternative RM strategies that combine electronic channels with a personal approach to banking.

Case studies offer insights on marketing practices of banks in the SEE region. The paper unveils challenges banks encounter in their RM efforts and their vision of the future of RM in a contemporary online setting.

The purpose of this paper is to understand marketing–sales–service (M-S-S) interface from the point of how social media marketing (SMM) platforms are prioritized and associated business-to-business (B2B) sales process influence. This study also seeks to understand whether effective triadic alignment is achieved between marketing, sales and service.

This study combines literature review and the analytical hierarchy process model. In total, 30 M-S-S managers of a multinational electronics firm situated in Africa and the Middle East participated in this study. The authors collected data from M-S-S managers during training sessions on marketing, sales, service alignment and SMM role in sales process.

In their drive for customer orientation and improved organizational performance, marketing, sales and service managers view understanding the customer as the most important sales process attribute. Considered second most significant sales process attribute is needs discovery, whereas approaching the customer is ranked the least important. From the ratings of sales process attributes evaluation and rankings of SMM platform alternatives, the results show a significant hierarchical influence of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter on sales process. The results also show an enabling influence of SMM activity on M-S-S interface alignment.

This study has a twofold limitation. First, it explored only one major B2B firm in the electronics industry. Second, only the African and Middle East settings are considered in this study. These limitations could be addressed in future research.

This paper provides practical insights into how M-S-S managers may leverage social media to enhance customer orientation and boost organizational performance. The use of SMM can help M-S-S managers of the focal firm to predict purchase behavior of customers more accurately and as a result effectively manage and improve sales performance. In that drive of using SMM-based competitive intelligence to deliver superior customer experience and enhance sales performance, B2B marketing-oriented firms can also leverage the interdependence (information sharing and involvement) in the M-S-S interface during the SMM activity to enhance triadic alignment.

This study contributes to the literature by developing a framework for modeling SMM influence on M-S-S and B2B sales process to deliver superior customer experience and drive business performance.

Despite the increasing volume of scholarly work in international advertising, media selection has received very little attention. This study seeks to address three fundamental issues in media selection for non‐domestic markets: the relative importance of cultural factors, the relationships between organization structure, and the relative weight that executives place on cultural and non‐cultural factors in their media selection, and the relationships between cultural orientations of advertising executives and their perceptions of specific non‐domestic factors of media selection.

A mail survey of executives for US consumer durable manufacturers operating internationally was conducted. The sample involved managers responsible for media selection in 106 firms listed in the Fortune directory of the 500 largest industrial multinational corporations (MNCs). Three waves of the same questionnaire were sent. Of the selected executives, 84 returned the questionnaire, making the response rate 79.25 percent.

The findings reveal that advertising executives of US MNCs place more importance on general environmental factors (type of product, target market, budget size, cost efficiency, reach and frequency, and competition) than on specific non‐ domestic factors (media availability, language diversity, legal constraints, level of economy, literacy and cultural considerations). Furthermore, managers in centralized decision firms and managers in decentralized decision firms do not differ significantly in their assessment of the relative importance of general and specific non‐domestic factors. However, non‐culturally oriented managers in contrast to their culturally oriented counterparts place greater importance on media availability when determining and executing media‐selection decisions. The surveyed executives also tend to be more involved in establishing objectives and setting budgets than in designing creative strategies and selecting specific media for international advertising campaigns.

Although localized and globalized marketing campaigns have steadily increased in the last 20 years, very few studies have examined MNC advertising managers' views about media selection. The research adds new insights to the understanding of this critical‐decision process.

This paper aims to analyze the ways socio-economic issues are represented in mainstream news media and how it is consumed, understood and interpreted by Israeli young adults (YAs). It examines how mainstream media uses neo-liberal discourse, and the ways YAs internalize this ethic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome its limitations.

This was a mixed methods study. First, it undertook content analysis of the most popular Israeli mainstream news media among YAs: the online news site Ynet and the TV Channel 2 news. Second, the authors undertook semi-structured in-depth interviews with 29 Israeli YAs. The analysis is based on an online survey of 600 young Israelis, aged 18–35 years.

Most YAs did not perceive mainstream media as enabling a reliable understanding of the issues important to them. The content analysis revealed that self-representation of YAs is rare, and that their issues were explained, and even resolved, by older adults. Furthermore, most of YAs' problems in mainstream news media were presented using a neo-liberal perspective. Finally, from the interviews, the authors learned that YAs did not find information that could help them deal with their most pressing economic and social issue, in the content offered by mainstream media. For most of them, social media overcomes these shortcomings.

Contrary to research that has explored YAs’ consumerism of new media outlets, this article explores how YAs in Israel are constructed in the media, as well as the way in which YAs understand mainstream and new social media coverage of the issues most important to them. Using media content analysis and interviews, the authors found that Young Adults tend to be ambivalent toward media coverage. They understand the lack of media information: most of them know that they do not learn enough from the media. This acknowledgment accompanies their tendency to internalize the neo-liberal logic and conservative Israeli national culture, in which class and economic redistribution are largely overlooked. Mainstream news media uses neo-liberal discourse, and young adults internalize this logic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome the limitations this discourse offers. They do so by turning to social media, mainly Facebook. Consequently, their behavior maintains the logic of the market, while also developing new social relations, enabled by social media.