Frequency Marketing Programs

Frequency marketing programs, a type of long-term consumer sales program, have become extremely popular in recent years. However, a certain amount of confusion surrounds exactly what constitutes a frequency marketing program and how the pro- grams differ from other forms of promotion. A promotional frame- work is presented which classifies various types of consumer sales promotion. Frequency marketing is positioned as a subset of patron- age reward programs. Further, the researchers discuss the goals and defining guidelines for establishing successful programs. Four his- torical examples are included to illustrate the use of the programs.     

Problems and challenges in social marketing

This article reviews the problems that arise when general marketing principles are applied to social programs. Social marketing is conceptualized as the design, implementation, and control of programs seeking to increase the acceptability of a social ideal or practice in a target group. These problems can occur in 8 basic decision-making areas: market analysis, market segmentation, product strategy development, pricing strategy development, channel strategy development, communications strategy development, organizational design and planning, and evaluation. Social marketers find that they have less good secondary data about their consumers, more problems obtaining valid and reliable measures of relevant variables, more difficulty sorting out the relative influence of determinants of consumer behavior, and more problems getting consumer research funded than marketers in the commercial sector. They tend to have less flexibility in shaping their products and more difficulty formulating product concepts. Problems associated with establishing, utilizing, and controlling distribution channels comprise another major difference between social and more conventional forms of marketing. Social marketers also find that their communications options are somewhat limited as a result of problems associated with use of paid advertisements, pressures not to use certain types of appeals in their messages, and the need to communicate large amounts of information in their messages. Moreover, social marketers must function in organizations where marketing activities are poorly understood, underappreciated, and inappropriately located. Finally, they face problems trying to define effectiveness measures or estimating the contribution their program has made toward the achievement of certain objectives. If all these problems are anticipated and handled creatively, social marketing efforts can succeed.     

Managing advertising investments in marketing channels

This paper investigates how should manufacturers optimally allocate resources to retailer-initiated (retailer) advertising through cooperative advertising programs and own (manufacturer) advertising in a bilateral monopoly. Retailer advertising stimulates immediate sales but may also harm long-term (post-advertising) demand, whereas manufacturer advertising aims at building brand equity and stimulates both immediate and long-term sales. A game-theoretic model in which a manufacturer and a retailer set pricing and advertising decisions over a two-period planning horizon is developed to account for the differences between manufacturer and retailer advertising. We characterize equilibrium solutions for four advertising scenarios for the manufacturer, ranging from no investment in any advertising activity to undertaking own advertising and supporting retailer advertising simultaneously. Comparing the two players’ equilibrium strategies and profits across these scenarios, we find that manufacturers should avoid offering exclusively cooperative advertising programs to retailers. When retailer advertising positively influences long-term sales, manufacturers should offer cooperative advertising supports to retailers in addition to undertaking their own advertising. When retailer advertising negatively affects long-term sales, manufacturers can still undertake own advertising and offer cooperative advertising under certain conditions. However, if these conditions are not met, focusing exclusively on own advertising is their best advertising strategy. Retailers also prefer scenarios in which manufacturers advertise, but may choose not to participate in manufacturers’ cooperative advertising programs. This leads to suboptimal outcomes if cooperative advertising programs are not enhanced by additional incentives (e.g., side payments or other services).     

Referral marketing: Harnessing the power of your customers

The differences between traditional and referral marketing programs are so great that the two share little overlap in terms of appropriate target markets, marketing objectives, marketing organization, and overall planning and implementation strategies. Traditional marketing programs seek advocates among current employees to spread word of mouth, aim marketing efforts at high lifetime-value customers, focus on customer satisfaction, and use promotional programs that heavily rely on social media. In contrast, referral marketing relies on motivating satisfied/delighted customers as a referral base, seeking current customers that can provide referrals with a high lifetime value, using referral-based marketing programs to augment traditional promotions, and developing a compensation system for referrals based on either direct payment or increased visibility. Major advantages of referral marketing programs as compared with traditional marketing programs include greater credibility of friend/family member recommendations over paid advertisements, access to new customers that traditional marketing programs may not reach, and better matching of referred customers’ needs to a good or service. This article presents an eight-step process to develop, implement, and evaluate the success of a referral program. In addition, it discusses academic research findings and presents examples of successful referral program strategies from—among others—Dropbox, Roku, PayPal, Digitalis, and Omaha Steaks.     

Improving marketing success: The role of tacit knowledge exchange between sales and marketing

Successful organizations adapt their marketing strategies to marketplace changes. Boundary spanners, such as salespeople, because they are able to embed themselves in social networks outside the organization, play a key role in developing marketplace knowledge. However, if this knowledge remains solely with the boundary spanners, it cannot be used effectively to improve firm performance. This study investigates tacit knowledge exchange between sales and marketing and its ability to enhance marketing success (i.e., marketing program innovativeness, relative efficiency, and relative effectiveness). In addition, by examining five antecedents hypothesized to influence tacit knowledge exchange, it provides guidance to sales and marketing managers, who desire to improve tacit knowledge exchange, and, in turn, marketing success.     

A Framework for Understanding Corporate Social Responsibility Programs as a Continuum: An Exploratory Study

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs are increasingly popular corporate marketing strategies. This paper argues that CSR programs can fall along a continuum between two endpoints: Institutionalized programs and Promotional programs. This classification is based on an exploratory study examining the variance of four responses from the consumer stakeholder group toward these two categories of CSR. Institutionalized CSR programs are argued to be most effective at increasing customer loyalty, enhancing attitude toward the company, and decreasing consumer skepticism. Promotional CSR programs are argued to be more effective at generating purchase intent. Ethical and managerial implications of these preliminary findings are discussed. Julie Pirsch, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Villanova University. She researches in the areas of cause-related marketing, corporate social responsibility, and new product development. Shruti Gupta, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Management at The Pennsylvania State University at Abington, in Abington, Pennsylvania. Dr. Gupta’s research interests lie in the area of corporate social responsibility, cause-related marketing, environmental consumerism, and social marketing issues. Stacy Landreth, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of North Texas. She researches in the areas of cause-related marketing and social marketing alliances, as well as advertising source effects.     

Integrated Marketing Communications and Market Planning

Abstract

This article links the integrated marketing communications (IMC) concept to the planning process in marketing. Following the current conceptualizations as a combination of various marketing communications tools, IMC strategy is applied to an established strategic market planning model named the Boston Consulting Group (BCG)'s growth-share matrix. Advertising, public relations, sales promotion, and direct marketing are defined as crucial elements for the core scheme. Alternative strategies for brands in different stages are identified from the product portfolio analysis. The view may also be thought of as the ongoing process of building and maintaining brand equity for consumers in the long-term period. Conceptual discussions are expected to help marketers think more strategically as they plan IMC programs for their products or services.     

Marketing of noncommercial test institutions

A marketing concept for nonprofit or noncommercial institutions conducting comparative product tests is developed. Special emphasis is placed on a coordination of sales and acquisition marketing. The German “Stiftung Warentest” serves as a example. Its unique aspects in both producing and dissemination a nontangible good, namely information, raise a number of interesting and different issues in which the marketing concept can be creatively adapted so as to further institutional goals.     

Technology sourcing for website personalization and social media marketing: A study of e-retailing industry

Extant streams of literature on technology sourcing, website personalization and social media marketing are distinct from one another and hence are unable to explain the impact of technology sourcing for website personalization and social media marketing on sales. To address this gap, we use various concepts such as efficiency, adaptability, risks of dependency, lack of quality control, asset-specificity and tacit knowledge to hypothesize the direct effect of technology sourcing on sales as well as the indirect effect through social media performance. Using survey data from 105 U.S. e-retailers, we show that e-retailers using mixed technology sourcing for website personalization have greater sales than e-retailers that use either internally or externally developed technology. On the contrary, e-retailers selecting externally developed technology for social media marketing have greater sales than e-retailers that offer social media marketing that uses either internally developed technology or mixed technology sourcing.     

Exploiting the installed base using cross-merchandising and category destination programs

We investigate two ways to increase sales and customer loyalty by taking advantage of a store's installed base of current customers. We propose a classification of products into two types. Products of Type 1 are products for which consumers have a loyalty to a specific retailer and, as far as possible, always shop at that retailer for these products. The other products (Type 2) are not associated with any retailer and are bought at whichever retailer consumers happen to shop when they plan or remember to buy the product. With this in mind, we test the potential of two marketing tools to help retailers increase their share of sales of the Type 2 segment. Using a category destination program we show that one can successfully transform Type 2 into Type 1 products. Using cross-merchandising promotions, we show that one can increase the sales of Type 2 products thereby gaining a larger share of discretionary purchases than what one would receive from a straight random allocation. Both series of tests yielded significant increases in sales and profits and were deemed successful by the retailers who implemented them.     

Cross channel effects of search engine advertising on brick & mortar retail sales: Meta analysis of large scale field experiments on Google.com

We investigate the cross channel effects of search engine advertising on Google.com on sales in brick and mortar retail stores. Obtaining causal and actionable estimates in this context is challenging: Brick and mortar store sales vary widely on a weekly basis; offline media dominate the marketing budget; search advertising and demand are contemporaneously correlated; and estimates have to be credible to overcome agency issues between the online and offline marketing groups. We report on a meta-analysis of a population of 15 independent field experiments, in which 13 well-known U.S. multi-channel retailers spent over $4 Million in incremental search advertising. In test markets category keywords were maintained in positions 1-3 for 76 product categories with no search advertising on these keywords in the control markets. Outcomes measured include sales in the advertised categories, total store sales and Return on Ad Spending. We estimate the average effect of each outcome for this population of experiments using a Hierarchical Bayesian (HB) model. The estimates from the HB model provide causal evidence that increasing search engine advertising on broad keywords on Google.com had a positive effect on sales in brick and mortar stores for the advertised categories for this population of retailers. There also was a positive effect on total store sales. Hence the increase in sales in the advertised categories was incremental to the retailer net of any sales borrowed from non-advertised categories. The total store sales increase was a meaningful improvement compared to the baseline sales growth rates. The average Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is positive, but does not breakeven on average although several retailers achieved or exceeded break-even based only on brick and mortar sales. We examine the robustness of our findings to alternative assumptions about the data specific to this set of experiments. Our estimates suggest online and offline are linked markets, that media planners should account for the offline effects in the planning and execution of search advertising campaigns, and that these effects should be adjusted by category and retailer. Extensive replication and a unique research protocol ensure that our results are general and credible.     

Circular or angular? How nostalgia affects product shape preference

As an important marketing strategy, nostalgia marketing is widely used by enterprises to attract consumers and influence their decision-making. Besides, feelings of nostalgia can be easily elicited in people's daily life and exert a great impact on them. Though the effect of nostalgia on consumer behavior has been extensively studied, whether and how nostalgia affects consumer preference for products with certain visual designs remain underexplored. Our research extends this domain by focusing on product shape preference as a new downstream consequence of nostalgia. Five studies (including one field experiment) demonstrate that nostalgia can increase consumer preference for circular-shaped products, with social connectedness as the underlying driver. Moreover, the indirect effect of nostalgia on circular shape preference via social connectedness is moderated by consumers' current social connections, such that the effect holds true for consumers with a low number of current social connections but is eliminated for those with a high number of current social connections. Together, marketers seeking to increase the sales of circular-shaped products may use nostalgic elements or cues in marketing campaigns.     

Allocating a Promotion Budget between Advertising and Sales Contest Prizes: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective

This paper develops and analyzes a normative model for allocating a fixed, short-term promotion budget between product advertising and prizes of a rank-order sales contest for a homogeneous sales force when sales are driven by both personal selling effort and advertising. The model provides insights into how the optimal budget allocations vary with the synergy between advertising and selling effort, sales force size, salesperson risk-tolerance, perceived cost of effort, selling effectiveness and sales response uncertainty. The analysis highlights the need for and value of close coordination between marketing and sales management in designing a promotion program involving both advertising and sales force incentives.     

Online display advertising for CPG brands: (When) does it work?

This study examines how online display ads, alone or in combination with more conventional media (television and print), can help drive sales in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) sector. It also assesses how the combined sales effect of online and offline ads depends on the volatility of their expenditures over time. We explore these relations for 154 brands across 68 Dutch CPG product categories. We find that, even though display ads are not effective for the “average” CPG brand, they do have a significant impact for a sizable, and considerably larger than expected by chance, subset of brands. Importantly, this impact depends on the type of product. While display ads are found to be ineffective for low-involvement utilitarian products, they can significantly enhance sales for other CPG product types. Moreover, the effect depends on whether they are used in combination with other media: while display ads are best used as a stand-alone medium for high-involvement utilitarian products, it is better to combine them with traditional media for hedonic products. Finally, the long-term effectiveness of display messages increases significantly when they are spread more evenly in time.     

The application of "integrated marketing communications" to social marketing and health communication: organizational challenges and implications

Influencing consumer behavior is a difficult and often resource-intensive undertaking, with success usually requiring identifying, describing, and understanding target audiences; solid product and/or service positioning relative to competitors; and significant media and communication resources. Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is a new way of organizing and managing persuasive communication tools and functions which involves realigning communications to consider the flow of information from an organization from the viewpoint of end consumers. Although the application of IMC to social marketing remains relatively unexplored, the IMC literature and recent efforts by the US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control suggest that integrated communication approaches have much to offer social marketing and health communication efforts. IMC, IMC and social marketing, and implications of IMC for public and private sector social marketing programs are discussed.     

Using marketing tools to improve employee relations

In the same way that customers are the focus of marketing models designed to increase sales, employees-as-customers can be at the core of programs designed to improve human-resources management by increasing morale and reducing turnover     

基于网络的消费者社会互动及管理研究

消费者的购买决策受到其他消费者意见和行为的影响,现代技术的发展极大地提升了消费者社会互动作为市场力的重要性,同时信息技术的发展也为企业促进这两种社会互动创造了越来越多的机会。通过介绍口碑传播和观察模仿的内涵,分析其对销售的不同影响及产品生命周期对消费者社会互动的影响,认为企业应在产品的投入期关注消费者社会互动,应在网站上提供现有消费者的选择信息,应慎重提供消费者发布评语的平台,应区分不同等级的顾客;应根据不同的产品市场状况,制定不同的反应策略,正确应对第三方的产品评论,以此管理消费者的社会互动。     

Does advertising grow markets?

Many observers believe advertising increases market size (with the implication that fewer people would smoke or drink alcohol or buy cars if there were no advertising for those products), and that it works by creating desires. This paper examines the historical evidence and recent case histories of successful marketing campaigns from the UK’s IPA Effectiveness Awards. It turns out that very few advertisers have tried to increase the size of their market or claim to have done so. In the few cases that describe an increase in market size, we see consumers switching from one type of product to another, without increasing their total category consumption. No case claims to have created a new desire. The inference is that banning or restricting advertising may be an ineffective instrument of social policy.     

A Taxonomy of Cause-Related Marketing Research: Current Findings and Future Research Directions

ABSTRACT

Cause-related marketing is an increasingly popular method of improving marketing relationships with customers, both for the sponsoring company and for the participating cause. This paper outlines the rewards and risks for the company and the cause as they consider this type of partnership, as well as the benefits and drawbacks for the customers asked to participate in these programs through the purchase of the sponsored product or service. Future directions for research are recommended in order to (1) expand the findings within this domain, and (2) to maximize sales results from cause-related marketing initiatives for businesses and causes.