The sway of influencer marketing: Evidence from a restaurant group

Influencer marketing has become a powerful channel for brand promotion and market expansion in the hospitality industry. However, those responsible for implementing influencer marketing campaigns are susceptible to the “myth of viewability” and rely on the Cost Per View (CPV) evaluation metric, rather than the more appropriate Cost Per Action (CPA). The current research explores the aforementioned myth from a hospitality management perspective by identifying the types of image (or photo) which attract more audience commentary or liking. A qualitative research approach is adopted involving two experiments with influencer pairs across the restaurant context in Taipei, Taiwan. We selected influencers Q and S as our manipulated group. In sharing images on their social media platform, it was found that they make greater use of personal than of food related images. The opposite was the case for the controlled group - influencers X and A – who shared more food than personal images. The researchers tracked viewer responses and then actions towards influencer postings to determine (a) which influencer approach draws more views and (b) the costs that are attributable to views and/or actions. They drew upon the findings to formulate an Owner-Influencer Matrix, a strategic planning tool and framework that helps owners and influencers to optimize influencer marketing. It is concluded that interactions between influencers and business owners should be beneficial to both parties. This empirical study may provide business owners and social media influencers with insights about communicating the respective brand values of their counterparts and designing sponsorship collaborations with a capacity to generate the desired consumer responses.     

An empirical examination of the effects of design elements of email newsletters on consumers’ email responses and their purchase

In this research, we empirically explore the effects of various design elements of email newsletters on consumers' email responses and their purchases. We capture the consumers' email responses using three metrics, namely email open, email click, and email reopen. We operationalize consumers' purchases as their spending on product items that are featured in email newsletters. Using a novel email marketing database, first, we model the influence of design elements of email newsletter on consumers' email responses at the individual consumer level. The email design elements constitute several email attributes, situational factors, and integrated marketing communication. Second, we quantify the effects of these three email responses, open, click, and reopen, on consumers' purchases. Our empirical results suggest a significant influence of email attributes, situational factors, and marketing communications on consumers' email responses. Furthermore, among open, click, and reopen, we find clicks tend to have the highest impact on consumers’ purchase, followed by email reopening and opening. However, email newsletters with higher opening probability are more effective in influencing purchases than those email newsletters with higher reopening probability. Furthermore, consumers who indulge in all three email responses, namely opening, clicking, and reopening, tend to purchase the most. Results from our study offer several critical insights for email marketing strategy helping managers improving the effectiveness of email campaigns by careful consideration for the design elements of email newsletters.     

Crafting customer insight: What we can learn from the revival of the vinyl record

The recent resurgence of the vinyl record and the proliferation of so-called craft and artisanal products offer unique opportunities to observe ongoing shifts in the contemporary consumer’s values and attitudes. In this article, we explore such thought-provoking market developments and their implications by contrasting them with the conventional understanding of markets and consumers. This understanding can lead to marketing myopia as it works from the utility-oriented assumption that what ultimately matters for both the company and the customer is cost efficiency and convenience. Against this backdrop, in this article, we discuss how market developments representing the contemporary consumer’s mindset prove valuable in creating customer insight that highlights aspects often obscured by an exaggerated focus on cost efficiency and convenience. We provide an alternative approach to evaluating markets and consumers that encourages companies to build their customer-centric market strategies around questions of context, authenticity, story, and resonance. This will help them narrow the gap between their market offerings and the actual wants and needs of their customer, and consequently allow them to revitalize their market.     

National response strategies and marketing innovations during the COVID-19 pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, different nations have adopted a variety of response strategies to fight and contain the new coronavirus. Such national response strategies can be classified into three categories based on their underlying philosophy: strict control with unlimited resources, relentless contribution with limited resources, and rough rationality with limited resources. We discuss the philosophies, characteristics, and performances of the three response strategies and when they should be adopted. We also examine what marketing innovation strategies enterprises should adopt to survive and grow their businesses in both the short and long term. This study provides important strategic implications for national policymakers and enterprises on the use of response strategies as well as marketing innovation tactics and strategies to be used both during and after the pandemic.     

Digital marketing communication in global marketplaces: A review of extant research,future directions,and potential approaches

Digital marketing communication, that is, communication through digital or electronic media among businesses and consumers, is growing rapidly, especially during the COVID-19 era. We propose a framework for analyzing digital marketing communication along four major dyads, business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and consumer-to-business (C2B). We review and summarize, for researchers and practitioners, the literature during 2000–2021 in these dyads along four major components: goals; channels, media, and platforms; content; and responses. We find that extant research in digital marketing communication pertains mostly to a specific, national level rather than a global level, despite the porousness of national boundaries for digital marketing. We derive important insights, identify key research gaps and questions in each of the dyads along these dimensions. We suggest approaches to address these research questions under three major components: substantive issues, data, and methods. These approaches can offer the insights that managers need to better formulate digital marketing strategies in local and global contexts.     

Optimal targeting of latent tourism demand segments

This paper identifies for the first time the optimal target markets employing the latent tourism demand expenditure, a novel concept in tourism literature. The study quantifies latent tourism demand between each pair of origin-destination through distinguishing by type of tourism and seasonality. It works with market shares that are estimated via a fractional regression model. Moreover, latent demand is clustered using a market segmentation approach based on a latent class regression. Finally, the optimal target markets are chosen depending on the expected latent tourism expenditure. The result has clear policy implications in terms of which markets are promoted, the optimal channels of communication and the maximum budget for each marketing campaign.     

The function-specific microfoundations of dynamic capabilities in cross-border mergers and acquisitions

In mergers and acquisitions, the acquiring firm must combine two firms’ resources and capabilities so that the outcome yields value. In individual firms, the marketing & sales, and R&D functions have typically developed intertwined and complex relationships over time. These multifaceted dependencies may obscure the integration of the firms and their functions. In order to reveal to what extent cross-functional relationships determine the success or failure of an acquisitions, we have made one of the first attempts to study merging firms’ function-specific capabilities, underlying microfoundations, and their cross-functional relationships during the integration process—instead of focusing on acquisition capabilities as such. We use longitudinal data from two cross-border acquisitions between US and Finnish SMEs. Our results indicate that major differences between merging firms’ cross-functional microfoundations—that is, their structures, processes, routines, and skills—might either enforce or erode the seemingly promising synergies at the product and market levels, depending on managerial awareness of their nature.     

Coffee value chains on the move: Evidence in Ethiopia

Important changes have happened to the upstream segment of the coffee sector in Ethiopia - Africa’s biggest - in the last decade, as illustrated by the increasing adoption of improved production, harvest, and post-harvest practices. Upstream marketing has also improved and there have been large investments in processing capacity, shown by the extended coverage of wet mills. These improved practices are shown to be associated with positive impacts on coffee productivity and prices. Changes appear to be linked with multiple factors including local market reform, greater presence of public extension agents, high international prices, and a push for certification by international buyers. On the other hand, a combination of production (lack of improved seedlings, weather and disease shocks) as well as institutional issues (saving constraints and lack of vertical integration and traceability) have seemingly impeded more widespread uptake of improved practices and therefore better farm performance. The study illustrates the significant complexity in obtaining transformation at the farm level in these settings.     

The Effects of Search-Related and Purchase-Related Mobile App Additions on Retailers’ Shareholder Wealth: The Roles of Firm Size,Product Category,and Customer Segment

Mobile channel additions have been shown to increase consumer-brand relationships, brand satisfaction towards and overall purchasing from a retailer, but what is less apparent is whether shareholders are fully rewarded for retailers’ mobile channel additions. Results from an event study on 115 announcements relating to mobile app additions of publicly traded U.S. retail firms between 2009 and 2016 indicate that the stock market responds generally positively to mobile app additions, but specifically to the two mobile app addition types. Stock market responses to search-related and purchase-related app additions are moderated by firm size, product category, and target customer age. For announcements of search-related apps, the market responds more positively to product retailers than to service retailers, and to small firms than large ones. For announcements of purchase-related apps, the market responds less positively to firms that target younger customers than firms who do not especially target them.     

Marketing perspectives on digital business models: A framework and overview of the special issue

Strong digital developments are changing markets, and firms may adopt a digital business model to deal with these developments. This special issue focuses on such digital business models. In this editorial, we discuss the relevance of digital business models, propose a conceptual framework, and discuss how digital business models affect firms, firm performance, and markets. We introduce the papers in this issue and show how they each fit within the conceptual framework. We discuss four important areas for future research.