Personalized ads on Facebook: An effective marketing tool for online marketers

A growing number of researchers have examined the effects of personalized advertising in traditional media, however, little has been known about personalized advertising on Facebook. The primary objectives of this research are threefold: (1) Develop a comprehensive model that captures the effects of perceived personalized ads on Facebook on customer attitudinal and behavioral reactions (ad credibility, ad avoidance, ad skepticism, ad attitude, and behavioral intention) to the ad; (2) Test hypothesized relationships using two data sets collected through an online survey; and (3) Develop appropriate customer segments based on personal views of personalized ads on Facebook. The paper reveals that eleven out of thirteen hypotheses are supported and that three market segments are identified including Ad Lovers, Ad Accommodators, and Ad Haters. The paper concludes with conclusion and discussions highlighting managerial and research implications.     

The Moral Intensity of Privacy: An Empirical Study of Webmaster' Attitudes

Webmasters are a key moral agent in the issue of privacy. This study attempts to understand the factors underlying their attitudes about privacy based on the theory of moral intensity. Webmasters of high-traffic sites were invited via email to participate in a web-based survey. The results support the application of moral intensity to the domain of privacy and the population of webmasters – both outcomes and social norms have statistically significant main effects on attitudes. The results also suggest a reconfiguration of the dimensions of moral intensity. This is based on the observation that proximity to the organization has a negative main effect on attitudes, and it moderates the relationship between social norms and attitudes. The original theory of moral intensity did not acknowledge the possibility of this moderating role for proximity. These observations have important implications for future research and practice in the areas of privacy, moral intensity, and ethical decision making.     

基于微信的地方特色产品营销体系研究——以苏州碧螺春为例

近年来,随着智能手机的普及,微信已成为企业营销的新宠,但目前地方特色产品行业在营销过程中面临着诸多问题。微信营销体系主要包含内容发布、营销渠道、团队建设、客户服务等。通过网络和实地调研两种渠道对2014上半年碧螺春营销现状进行了深入调研。碧螺春在每年的7月下旬,需求量比较大,消费人群集中在沿海地带,但绝大部分茶农只了解淘宝电商平台,对此,搭建以碧螺春为主题的具有特色的微信公众号,拓展营销渠道,并请专业人员打理,以更好地服务于客户。     

Corporate Psychological Defences: An Oil Spill Case

Organisational psychological defences protect the self-esteem and moral integrity of the organisational personality even at the expense of sacrificing the morality of actions. This paper analyses the spectrum of defences used by an oil refinery and its parent company during an oil spill incident. A hypothetical model of defences built on Swajkowski’s four responses to accusations of organisational misconduct – refusals, excuses, justifications and concessions – is tested through this case. On the basis of empirical findings it is obvious that defences delay, impede and interrupt the mitigation and recovery actions of incidents. It is not possible to break the defence behaviour of individuals because it is a built-in psychological mechanism in all humans serving a valuable purpose of dosing the pain of injury. However, it is possible to separate individual and organisational behaviour so that automatic organisational procedures mitigate, recover and, ultimately, prevent incidents. The organisational psychological task of crisis management is to mitigate the organisation’s ego defences, recover from its emotional turmoil and prevent further traumas by making its ego stronger and more flexible. The argument of this paper is that in practice organisational defences act as bumpers against becoming too conscious of the gap between the corporate rhetoric and reality, as subconscious breaks against too fast change demands, and as batteries in their preconscious effort to prepare for the change. Organisational refusals act as bumpers, excuses as breaks and justifications as batteries, while concessions imply that a change towards a more responsible corporation is taking place. Tarja Ketola is Adjunct Professor of Environmental Management at the Department of Management, Turku School of Economics, Finland. She took her Ph. D. at Imperial College, University of London, and worked as a Lecturer in the Department of Management Studies at Brunel University before returning to Finland. Her research interests include eco-psychological leadership, strategic environmental management and corporate responsibility. She has written books and published articles in many journals, including Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, Business Strategy and the Environment, Sustainable Development and Long Range Planning.     

Your Privacy Is Sealed: Effects of Web Privacy Seals on Trust and Personal Disclosures

Online privacy is an issue of increasing national importance, and voluntary privacy seals provided by third‐party organizations such as TRUSTe and BBBOnline have been proposed as a means of assuring consumer privacy. Few studies have examined privacy seal effects. This study presents results of an online experiment that evaluated consumer response to privacy seals in a naturalistic exposure setting. Findings suggest that privacy seals enhance trust in the Web site and expectations that the site would inform the user of its information practices. While concern for privacy‐threatening information practices had no influence, privacy self‐efficacy, confidence in ability to protect one's privacy, moderated seal effects. Implications for the continued role of privacy seals are discussed.     

浅议电子商务时代隐私权的法律保护

电子商务的发展日新月异,但因为种种原因致使越来越多网络用户的个人信息被窃取、泄露、传播,个人生活安宁被扰乱,隐私权遭受侵害。就我国目前的立法情况来看,保护隐私权采取的是间接方式,保护力度很弱,保护范围很窄,与电子商务时代个人隐私权遭到频繁侵害的现状显得极不协调,受害人很难依据现行法律法规维护合法权益。本文通过剖析我国现行法律对隐私权保护的缺陷,提出从法律层面完善电子商务环境下隐私权保护制度的基本思路,以更好地促进电子商务行业的蓬勃发展。     

Self-Disclosure and Managing Privacy: Implications for Interpersonal and Online Communication for Consumers and Marketers

In our fast-changing technological world, the line between the offline and online world has become blurred and individuals are faced with constant opportunities to divulge personal details. The process of disclosing sensitive information to others is necessary for establishing, maintaining, and building relationships, both with people and businesses; however, it also creates opportunities for misuse of the disclosed information. Consumers who are willing to disclose personal information online may often be unaware of the full implications of such disclosure. By thoroughly exploring the origins and processes of self-disclosure, and outlining its development in interpersonal and online communication, individuals will become more aware of their (sometimes competing) implicit and explicit disclosure behaviors necessary for enacting strong privacy management. Utilizing communication privacy management (CPM) theory, this article proposes a framework for ongoing consideration of how self-disclosure and privacy function online. By framing privacy in terms of the literature of communicative self-disclosure, CPM instructs the building of privacy boundaries that are functional for consumers and marketers alike, allowing people to protect themselves online while also ensuring their continued enjoyment of Internet provided benefits.     

Social media and sports: driving fan engagement with football clubs on Facebook

Abstract

Sport fans develop unique and engaging relationships with their favourite sport teams, both offline and online. However, research on sport fan engagement is still limited in relation to social media. The purpose of this research is to understand why and how sport fans engage with clubs on social media. Following the Uses and Gratifications approach and the Consumers’ Online Brand-Related Activities framework, seven motivations (Information, Entertainment, Personal Identity, Integration and Social Interaction, Empowerment, Remuneration and Brand Love) and three dimensions of online engagement behaviours (Consumption, Contribution and Creation) were considered. A web-based survey was conducted among football club fans of a major UEFA league on Facebook, resulting in 562 responses. The need for Information, Empowerment and Brand Love mainly drive Consumption, Contribution and Creation, respectively, while the need for Integration and Social Interaction emerged as the second most important motivation overall. This study contributes to the emerging research on social media use in the sport marketing literature, thus revealing additional opportunities for managers to engage their fan base online.     

An Analysis of Endorsement Effects in Affinity Marketing: The Case for Affinity Credit Cards

In recent years, affinity-marketing strategy has been widely used by for-profit organizations, particularly financial institutions, to leverage the goodwill and endorsement of affinity groups to promote their service offerings to group members. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the underlying factors driving the effectiveness of endorsement as it affects the process by which members make choices. Applying affinity credit cards as the research context, this study examines whether the addition of endorsement effects (i.e., affect transfer effect, perceived quality effect, and cause-related effect) of a positively valued affinity group would have any impact on its members' choice processes as depicted in the traditional hierarchy-of-effects model. The results of this empirical study confirm all the hypotheses, with the exception of affect transfer.     

Locating a Space for Ethics to Appear in Decision-making: Privacy as an Exemplar

Using concepts from Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society, this paper argues that as expertise proliferates questions of ethics in decision-making fall through gaps between domains of expertise. As a consequence, unethical outcomes are unattached to actions taken with no one accountable or responsible for these outcomes. Using Actor-Network Theory (ANT), a case study is presented showing how the sale of students’ personal information by the Calgary Board of Education (CBE) escaped questions of ethics. The sale of student information was the product of the convergence of narrowly focussed technology and education expert actions and decisions with an earlier two-stage translation of privacy from a potential ethical issue to an issue of expert rule creation and interpretation. The purpose of this paper is to show, through an example, how questions of ethics are displaced in expert decision-making and to enable the public, managers, individuals and experts to recognize displacements and, through this, create a space for ethics to appear. Bill has conducted extensive research in the area of information technology and privacy, with a particular emphasis on how privacy issues play out in practice. The variety and complexity of interacting influences that shape privacy in practice has lead Bill to expand the scope of his research to include history, ethics and public plicy.     

Information Privacy Research: Framework for Integrating Multiple Publics,Information Channels,and Responses

This article puts forth a framework for understanding critical consumer information privacy issues in direct and interactive marketing that consists of three broad dimensions: (1) multiple publics, (2) information channel developments, and (3) the publics' responses to privacy actions. Within this structure, the authors review and integrate existing research and issues, and identify an agenda for future research.     

Privacy versus accessibility: The impact of situationally conditioned belief

The information age we are living in and the technology that supports it, raises new ethical concerns. Among these concerns are privacy — the rights of individuals to withold information they consider sensitive, and accessibility — the rights of individuals to obtain information that is relevant to the decisions they must make. Arguments about potential impacts of information technology on privacy and accessibility mask and underlying conflict — that one person's beliefs about their right to relevant information is likely to conflict with another person's belief's about their right to withold information they consider sensitive. This paper proposes that the conflict is likely to be a function of the role the individuals plays in the decision making situation — situationally conditioned belief (SCB) — rather than a function of the person's underlying ethical values.This paper presents an empirical study involving information privacy and accessibility in routine business and market decisions, designed to reveal the presence of SCBs. The results indicate that SCBs cause a gap in beliefs about information accessibility and privacy. Impacts of the SCB gap are discussed. A negotiation technique called information exchange is suggested as a means of closing the SCB gap in routine business and market transactions. Dr. Laura Lally received her Ph.D. in Information Systems. Dr. Lally pursues research on the impacts of information technology on a nation's culture, on business profitability, and on the ethical choices faced by individuals. She has published articles in Decision Sciences, the Information Society, the Journal of Global Information Management and in the Journal of End User Computing. She is currently investigating the risk factors involved in process reengineering under a grant from the National Science Foundation.     

Privacy and RFID Technology: A Review of Regulatory Efforts

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is rapidly becoming a common tool for manufacturers and retailers as they seek to manage supply chains and provide products and services to consumers. However, the widespread use of RFID technology also introduces consumer privacy concerns. This article reviews current regulatory efforts related to RFID, identifies gaps, calls for the enforcement of current guidelines, and provides suggestions for future research.     

Consumer Perceptions of Privacy and Security Risks for Online Shopping

Government and industry organizations have declared information privacy and security to be major obstacles in the development of consumer‐related e‐commerce. Risk perceptions regarding Internet privacy and security have been identified as issues for both new and experienced users of Internet technology. This paper explores risk perceptions among consumers of varying levels of Internet experience and how these perceptions relate to online shopping activity. Findings provide evidence of hypothesized relationships among consumers’ levels of Internet experience, the use of alternate remote purchasing methods (such as telephone and mail‐order shopping), the perceived risks of online shopping, and online purchasing activity. Implications for online commerce and consumer welfare are discussed.     

跨国零售企业行为分析框架:以沃尔玛为例

近年来,外资零售企业在华投资及扩张行为已引起人们普遍关注,急需从理论与实践两方面深刻解读其扩张机理.文章基于零售企业性质与资源特征视角,以邓宁的三优势模式为理论依据,运用规范分析与案例分析相结合的方法,系统分析了零售企业对外直接投资的决定因素,揭示了三优势模式之于跨国零售企业的特定内容,提出了跨国零售企业对外直接投资行为分析的一般理论框架.     

Educational Marketing in the Latin American Context: An Executive MBA Case

ABSTRACT

This paper provides Latin American Executive MBA students' approaches to studying, achieving profile, preferences and perceptions of instructional methods used in teaching marketing courses and educational marketing segments based on their preference ranking of instructional methods and approaches to studying. Results indicate that, in general, these students have a strong need for excellence, and for gaining status with experts. Their approach to studying is directed first at understanding what they learn, and then at doing well in their courses. Results also indicate that such students strongly prefer courses using participative instructional methods, such as case studies, to the instructor-dominated lecture method. Thus, there appears to be a gap between the types of instructional methods now being emphasized in MBA classrooms and the methods preferred by the students. These students can be placed into four distinct segments, namely Technology Sophisticated Learners, Academic Success Seekers, Degree Seekers and Instructor-Oriented Learners. Managerial implications from the results are drawn both for the administrators and for the faculty members teaching in an EMBA program.

RESUMEN. Este estudio ilustra el enfoque do los estudiantes latinoamericanos de MBA Ejecutivo sobre las materias de estudio, trazado de un perfil, preferencias y percepción de los métodos de enseñanza utilizados en los cursos de mercadeo y mereadeo educacional en base a sus preferencias, que se utilizaron para desarrollar un sistema de clasificación de los métodos y enfoques de la enseñanza y el aprendizaje. De acuerdo a los resultados, los estudiantes sienten una gran necesidad de alcanzar la exceleneia, y de adquirir renombre junto a los expertos. Ellos encaran sus estudios eonsiderando prioritaria la función de comprender lo que aprenden, y tienen como meta secundaria el obtener buenos resultados en sus cursos. Además, los resultados también indican que estos esludiantes prefieren claramente usar métodos de enseñanza participativos–tales como los estudios de caso–al método disertivo dominado por el profesor. Consecuentemente, nos parece que existe una brecha entre los métodos de enseñanza que se están implementando en las salas de aulas de los cursos de los MBA, y los métodos preferidos por los alumnos. Estos estudiantes pueden dividirse perfectamente en cuatro segmentos, o sea, Estudiantes de Tecnologías Sofisticadas, Buscadores de éxito Académico, Buscadores de Diplomas y Estudiantes Orientados por el Instructor. En el estudio trazamos las implicancias administrativas inherentes a estos resultados, así como para los docentes que están enseñando el programa EMBA.

RESUMO. Este trabalho apresenta a visão de estudantes do MBA Executivo da América Latina, em relação ao estudo, à formação do seu perfil, às preferências e às percepções dos métodos didáticos utilizados nos cursos de marketing e nos segmentos educacionais dc marketing, baseados no ranking de suas preferências pelos métodos didáticos e pelas abordagens do estudo. Os resultados indicam que, em geral, estes estudantes buscam rigorosamente a excelência e a conquista de status através de especialistas. A sua abordagem do estudo está direcionada. primeiramente, ao conhecimento e, em segundo lugar, ao sucesso do seu desempenho. Os resultados também indicam que tais estudantcs preferem nitidamente os cursos que utilizam o método didático participativo, como o estudo de casos, ao método de ensino tradicional expositive Assim. parece haver uma lacuna entre os tipos de métodos didáticos atualmente sendo enfatizados nas aulas de MBA e entre os métodos preferidos pelos estudantes. Estes alunos podem ser classificados em quatro segmentos distintos: Aprendizes da Alta Tecnologia, Perseguidores do Sucesso Acadêmico, Perseguidores de Títulos e Aprendizes Orientados por Instrutor. As implicações gerenciais, a partir dos resultados, são delineadas tanto para os administradores quanto para os membros do corpo docente que ensinam no programa de MBA Executivo.