Changing the Odds: A Study of Corporate Social Principles and Practices in Addressing Problem Gambling

This paper documents a quantitative study into socially responsible principles and practices adopted in registered clubs in New South Wales Australia to manage one of their social impacts – problem gambling. The survey utilised an adapted version of Aupperle's (1982) corporate social responsibility instrument to measure the priority given to economic, legal, ethical and discretionary principles in club machine gambling operations. The survey also assessed support for certain management practices in responsible gambling. The results indicate that the participating club managers prioritise economic, legal, ethical and discretionary principles respectively, and that these are statistically related to practices they have implemented and support in responsible gambling. The managers most favoured secondary harm minimisation practices, followed by reactive primary intervention. Less favoured were proactive primary intervention and discretionary practices. These principles and practices contrast markedly with those advocated by key stakeholder groups, as expressed in semi-structured interviews and submissions to the NSW Gaming Inquiry. Non-industry stakeholders favoured a more balanced set of principles and a more holistic set of management practices in responsible gambling. The results also provide validation of Aupperle's (1982) instrument when applied to corporate management of a single social impact and for Carroll's (1979, 1991) construct of corporate social responsibility.     

Social media marketing: Who is watching the watchers?

The ready access to and availability of social media has opened up a wealth of data that marketers are leveraging for strategic insight and digital marketing. Yet there is a lack of professional norms regarding the use of social media in marketing and a gap in understanding consumers’ comfort with marketers’ use of their social media data. This study analyzes a census-balanced sample of online adults (n = 751) to identify consumers’ perceptions of using social media data for marketing purposes. The research finds that consumers’ perceived risks and benefits of using social media have a relationship with their comfort with marketers using their publicly available social media data. The research extends the applicability of communication privacy management theory to social media and introduces marketing comfort—a new construct of high importance for future marketing research. Marketing comfort refers to an individual's comfort with the use of information posted publicly on social media for targeted advertising, customer relations, and opinion mining. In the context of the construct development, we find that targeted advertising is the strongest contributing component to marketing comfort, relative to the other two dimensions: opinion mining and customer relations. By understanding what drives consumer comfort with this emerging marketing practice, the research proposes strategies for marketers that can support and mitigate consumers’ concerns so that consumers can maintain trust in marketers’ digital practices.     

互联网时代的口碑营销及应用策略

口碑营销是近年来企业进行营销传播的常用营销策略之一.互联网的出现使得消费者的口碑传播行为呈现出新的特点,同时为企业进行口碑营销活动提供了新的机会,因此,研究互联网时代的口碑营销具有一定的理论与实践意义.本文首先阐述了网上口碑传播的内涵,指出了网上口碑传播的途径,然后论证了网上口碑传播的特点.以此为基础,探讨了企业开展网络口碑营销的应用策略.     

The impact of technology on the Arab communication style and culture: Implications for marketing

‘Culture is communication and communication is culture,’ as Hall (1976, Beyond culture, Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, Doubleday) reminds us. The main purpose of this paper was to assess the impact of technology on the Arab communication style. The Internet is a unique environment with particular characteristics that might cause shifts in people's communication styles. The setting/context of online communication is very different from face-to-face communication and thus assumptions about communication styles need to be reexamined. The data analysis indicates that significant changes to the Arab culture are taking place and these changes are likely to have an impact on marketing practices in the region.     

Determinants of Consumers’ Purchase Intentions of Organic Vegetables: Some Insights from Malaysia

This study tests the mediating effects of corporate social responsibility (CSR), product image, and corporate reputation on the relationships between green marketing awareness and consumers’ purchase intentions of organic vegetables. Data from 200 valid questionnaires was analyzed utilizing a partial least squares approach. Results show that product image was confirmed as the leading factor that partially mediated the influence of consumer green marketing awareness on consumers’ purchase intentions of organic vegetables, and this was followed by CSR, but that corporate reputation was not established as a mediator. Marketing managers should, therefore, develop various effective strategies to communicate their companies’ product image, embracing green marketing practices in order to increase market awareness, and providing positive recommendations to friends and relatives via various marketing communication channel including the short message service (SMS), emails, and social networking sites (SNS).     

What Is and What Is Not Social Marketing: The Challenge of Reviewing the Evidence

This paper describes our experience in undertaking a review of the effectiveness of using social marketing to tackle nutrition problems. One of the biggest challenges was identifying programmes which could be genuinely defined as 'social marketing'. Here we describe how we applied and tested a framework for identifying and assessing legitimate social marketing research. Implications for both social marketing theory and practice are discussed.     

An empirical analysis of individual level casino gambling behavior

Gambling and gaming is a very large industry in the United States with about one-third of all adults participating in it on a regular basis. Using novel and unique behavioral data from a panel of casino gamblers, this paper investigates three aspects of consumer behavior in this domain. The first is that consumers are addicted to gambling, the second that they act on “irrational” beliefs, and the third that they are influenced by marketing activity that attempts to influence their gambling behavior. We use the interrelated consumer decisions to play (gamble) and the amount bet in a casino setting to focus on addiction using the standard economic definition of addiction. We test for two irrational behaviors, the “gambler’s fallacy” and the “hot hand myth”—our research represents the first test for these behaviors using disaggregate data in a real (as opposed to a laboratory) setting. Finally, we look at the effect of marketing instruments on the both the decision to play and the amount bet. Using hierarchical Bayesian methods to pin down individual-level parameters, we find that about 8% of the consumers in our sample can be classified as addicted. We find support in our data for the gambler’s fallacy, but not for the hot hand myth. We find that marketing instruments positively affect gambling behavior, and that consumers who are more addicted are also affected by marketing to a greater extent. Specifically, the long-run marketing response is about twice as high for the more addicted consumers.     

WOM and social media: Presaging future directions for research and practice

Word of mouth (WOM) has become the focus of growing interest among marketing practitioners and consumers. However, the promises of WOM marketing are often oversold, and various assertions about the nature of WOM, its dynamics, antecedents, and consequences at times have been misstated in mass-mediated articles and books on the topic. In this introductory paper for the special issue on WOM and social media, we survey the current state of WOM knowledge and the role of WOM in contemporary marketing, reconsider common beliefs about the WOM process in an effort to separate WOM facts from fallacies, and presage some future directions and best practices in light of evolving online channels of WOM generation and transmission.     

Visualizing CSR: A visual framing analysis of US multinational companies

The aim of this research study is to investigate how different levels of corporate social responsibility are visually framed through corporate publications used in marketing communications. Photographs used as visual marketing communication tools in the annual and sustainability reports of top American multinational companies that practice and promote measures of corporate social responsibility were analyzed. Findings indicate the corporations overall emphasize environmental sustainability efforts and visually communicate their practices through depictions of employees while other social responsibility efforts are often communicated through depictions of consumers. A discussion on the patterns of visual frames that communicate corporate social responsibility and the impact of visuals on organizational identity, brand image, and reputation are offered.     

略论网络社区营销的实施策略

网络社区的蓬勃发展推动了网络社区营销的深入开展。网络社区营销活动具有精准性、互动性、成长性、软性营销的特点。企业可以借助网络社区开展市场调查,传播促销信息,实施活动营销,塑造品牌形象。网络社区营销还可以帮助企业强化危机管控,管理公共关系。     

Improving integrated marketing communications practices: A comparison of objectives and results

Marketing managers face increasing demands for effectiveness measurement including more rigorous assessment of the match between marketing communication objectives and results. This study provides an analysis of current objective-setting practices and a comparison with past industry practices by applying a traditional communication task model to marketing communications award competition entries. The results indicate that there is still room for improvement in communication objective-setting practices. Suggestions for improving these practices include (1) making a commitment to assessment, (2) offering actionable objective-setting education, (3) increasing attention to the impact of new media, and (4) expanding the role of agencies. The authors conclude that the study of the objectives and results aspect of marketing communication management will create new opportunities for integrated marketing communications scholars and practitioners to increase the effectiveness of promotional activities.     

Hedonic and utilitarian use of user-generated content on online shopping websites

The Internet has made it possible for consumers to share reviews, opinions, and thoughts about products and services on online shopping websites. This user-generated content (UGC), which can be considered to be part of social commerce, is likely to influence other consumers’ attitudes toward a product and subsequent purchase intentions. The purpose of this study was to investigate two major uses of UGC: hedonic and utilitarian, and how they impact purchase intentions, along with users’ trust for different types of comments and reviews. Also investigated are associations between hedonic use, utilitarian use, and trust, with purchase behavior at online shopping websites. Results of this study will add to the domain knowledge related to marketing and how it impacts consumer psychology and behavior. From a practitioner perspective, marketers need to understand the impact of UGC so they can monitor this method of marketing communication as it can impact trust and purchase intentions.     

Shopping on the Internet–Online Purchase Behavior of New Zealand Consumers

ABSTRACT

The Internet provides an evolving channel for both business people and consumers to achieve their mutual aims. The rapid growth of Internet users in New Zealand provides a developing prospect for E-marketers. New Zealand has literate, educated, technology savvy “netizens” who are willing to spend time and money over the Internet. If E-marketers know the demographics of online New Zealand purchasers and the relationships between these demographics and online buyers' behavior, then they can further develop their marketing strategies to convert potential customers into active ones, while retaining the existent online customers. This paper provides an insight into the demographic profile of New Zealand's online purchasers. Some implications are also provided in this research.     

Making healthy eating messages more effective: combining integrated marketing communication with the behaviour ecological model

Encouraging healthy living involves a complex set of factors that interact with each other. Effective social communication strategies and conceptual models are needed in order to plan and maintain a desired level of societal change. More understanding is needed as to how different levels of society are affected by social communication messages. This paper examines how a social marketing strategy should be targeted in order to maximize societal change. In this paper the Multi‐levelled/Multimedia Model of Social Change is presented. This amalgamates integrated marketing communication principles and the Behavioural Ecological Model. It provides a basis for understanding how consistent messages and methods of communication affect long‐term behavioural or attitudinal change at the individual and societal levels.     

How Does Perceived Effectiveness Affect Adults’ Ethical Acceptance of Anti-obesity Threat Appeals to Children? When the Going Gets Tough,the Audience Gets Going

Little is known on the appraisal of ethically questionable not- for-profit actions such as social marketing advertising campaigns. The present study evaluates the ethical acceptance by adults of anti-obesity threat appeals targeting children, depending on the claimed effectiveness of the campaign. An experiment conducted among 176 Belgian participants by means of an online survey shows that individuals’ acceptance of social marketing practices increases along with the claimed effectiveness of the campaign. As such it demonstrates that the audience adopts a pragmatic perspective, challenging the non-consequentialist stance of social marketers who refrain themselves from using these ‘questionable’ techniques although highly effective. The trade-off between ethical judgment and claimed effectiveness varies depending on whether the threats focus on the child’s physical integrity or social life. Individual characteristics such as parenthood and age also influence the relationship. All in all, it seems that people with stronger connections to the issue such as parents are more ready to compromise. These findings enrich our insights into consequentialism in social marketing campaigns, how people respond to controversial messages targeted at vulnerable group, and open new venues to social managers and public policy makers. Managerial implications and concrete advice on how to communicate with the various audiences are proposed, as well as suggestions for future studies.     

Marketing as auto‐communication

In contemporary culture, marketing has defined itself as the beneficial institution par excellence, concerned primarily with the needs of society and its members. Through elaborate systems of communication, the marketing institution claims to link organizations with markets and publics and, thus, to foster openness and sensitivity to different voices. Against this image, this paper demonstrates that although marketing‐oriented organizations are heavily engaged in external communication activities, they often communicate primarily with themselves. Marketing may, in other words, be described as a system of auto‐communication, that is, a set of self‐referential communication practices through which the organization recognizes and confirms its own images, values and assumptions; in short; its own culture.     

Effective influencer marketing: A social identity perspective

Social networking in the form of online communities and social groups is a characteristic of social media communication that has profound implications on the identity dynamics and behavior of social media users. Drawing from social identity theory, this research brings the social identity construct (i.e., followers' perception of the self in relation to the influencer community) to the literature on influencer marketing and examines the effect of followers' social identity, along with their interest fit and the influencer's opinion leadership, on their purchase intention. This research also examines the moderating role of storytelling, a pervasive approach of social media influencers, in enhancing the social identity–purchase intention link. Empirical results from 467 Instagram users show that all three factors positively impact followers' intention, but social identity has a more salient effect than the others. Storytelling posts can enhance these effects. Studying influencer marketing through the social identity angle contributes to better understanding of influencer marketing effectiveness.     

Influencer marketing: Homophily,customer value co-creation behaviour and purchase intention

Given the rise in influencer marketing on social media, this paper explores how homophily between influencers and their audiences affects customer value co-creation behaviour, resulting in increased expected brand value and purchase intention. A sample of 910 respondents from the United States completed an online investigation. The results indicate that homophily positively influences customer value co-creation behaviour as well as positively correlates with expected brand value and purchase intention. Customer value co-creation behaviour plays a multi-mediating role. Para-social relationship moderates the relationship between homophily and customer participation behaviour. Overall, this study encourages further research on value co-creation in influencer marketing and can constitute a valuable reference for marketing practitioners and influencers.     

MANAGING INTEGRATED MARKETING COMMUNICATION (IMC) THROUGH STRATEGIC DECOUPLING: How Luxury Wine Firms Retain Brand Leadership While Appearing to Be Wedded to the Past

Firms increasingly leverage cultural sources of authenticity in their communication strategies to derive competitive advantage and brand value. The management of authenticity presents problems for brand managers. This paper draws on institutional theory by examining how firms deliberately decouple projected images from internal operations to create powerful brand images. The authors explore the strategies of 26 prestige wineries across 5 countries, and find that brand managers deliberately decouple outward images from internal practices, walking a fine line between remaining "true" to important values and real commercial considerations. The findings challenge whether integrated marketing communication (IMC) always requires tight integration with internal operations (the "one voice, one look" view of IMC). Our findings have particular relevance for niche marketers.