Practitioners’ Perspectives on Branded Entertainment in The United States

As contemporary consumers become more skeptical of traditional media, marketers tend to rely on alternatives, such as product placement or branded entertainment. This study explores marketing practitioners’ perspectives on the latter: branded entertainment. It examines, specifically, their perspectives on its execution, measurement, and on brand characteristics. This study investigates how marketing practitioners (branded entertainment agents and advertisers) view branded entertainment differently from product placement. In addition, this exploration of practitioners’ perspectives on branded entertainment sheds some light on the future direction of such entertainment. Public policy implications on branded entertainment are also discussed.     

Strategic marketing planning guided by the quality-of-life (QOL) concept

An emerging ethical philosophy in marketing is developing. This philosophy is based on quality-of-life studies which are becoming an important topic of research in behavioral and social sciences (basic and applied research). This paper addresses the QOL orientation in marketing from a decision-making perspective. Specifically, this paper shows how marketers can engage in strategic marketing planning guided by the QOL concept. M. Joseph (Joe) Sirgy is social/consumer psychologist and a professor of marketing at Virginia Tech. He has written extensively about quality-of-life issues in business and society. He is presently serving as executive director of the newly formed International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies.     

The Use of Marketing Plans and Advertising Among Accounting Firms

A decade has passed since accounting firms were allowed to advertise. While the response has been mixed, a more important question is whether accounting firms have embraced a marketing orientation as measured by their use of marketing plans. This study investigates the attitudes toward and use of advertising and marketing plans by accounting firms. The results provide insight into the marketing orientation of the accounting profession and the viability of efforts b marketers to develop a marketing orientation. It is suggested that the current environment provides a real opportunity for marketers to become an important part of the accounting firm's organizational structure and provide the expertise needed for the firm to be competitive into the next century.     

The branded carnival: the dark magic of consumer excitement

ABSTRACT

This ethnography outlines experiences of the marketer-facilitated World Series of Beer Pong. Consumers, in carnival spirit, augment marketer-facilitated mimetic (moderate, controlled) forms of experience with non-mimetic (dangerous, uncontrolled) consumption rituals, enacted in pursuit of contemporary excitement. Consumers serendipitously hijack the facilitating brand’s ideology resulting in the promotion of marketplace tensions. This study contributes to marketing and consumer culture theory by extending current experiential marketing frameworks via the introduction of the branded carnival, a non-mimetic communal brand-centric phenomenon; showing how non-mimetic excitement emerges in marketplace contexts; highlighting the implications for experiential and brand community marketers; and positioning the branded carnival within a broader cultural gravitation towards non-mimetic behaviour opposing marketplace ideology. Finally, limitations are discussed, and directions for further research are suggested. Readers are encouraged to engage with carnival spirit: profanities go uncensored.     

Beyond the Usefulness of Branded Applications: Insights from Consumer–Brand Engagement and Self‐construal Perspectives

Branded mobile applications (apps) present one of the most promising opportunities for marketers to reach current and potential customers, sell products or services, and facilitate customer engagement with brands. This study aims to explore how branded apps influence consumers’ brand repurchase intention and continuance usage intention. Integrating the utilitarian view from information systems research and the view of consumer–brand engagement from marketing research, a complementary engagement path alongside the utilitarian path was devised and tested in order to elucidate consumer perceptions toward branded apps. Independent self‐construal and interdependent self‐construal moderate relationships along the utilitarian path and engagement path, respectively. Data collected from 637 respondents support most of the proposed hypotheses. Results show that the engagement path has more influence on continuance intention and equal influence on repurchase intention when compared to the utilitarian path. Findings show that apps users have different thoughts along each of the two paths, depending on their self‐construal. The study's findings also provide app designers and marketers with new perspectives on how to better design branded apps.     

Branded App Usability: Conceptualization,Measurement, and Prediction of Consumer Loyalty

Despite the importance of usability assessment, few studies have taken a consumer-centric approach to conceptualize and measure the underlying dimensions of branded app usability. Addressing this gap in the literature, we developed and validated a holistic measure of branded app usability based on consumer evaluations rather than the various technical issues previously addressed in mobile marketing studies. The results indicate that branded app usability, as a multidimensional construct, consists of 13 items in five factors: user-friendliness, personalization, speed, fun, and omnipresence. Theoretical and practical implications for measuring branded app usability are discussed.     

Commodities Must Begin to Act Like Branded Companies: Some Perspectives from the United States

The agricultural commodity industry needs to focus more on profits, less on value, and must change with the consumer. In short, a branded approach is needed. Households today are comprised of time-starved persons working outside of the home who have less experience shopping for and distinguishing between ready-to-eat fruits and vegetables and ones that may be overripe. Consumers want to place their trust in branded companies to give an official endorsement that the product is indeed good and worthy of purchase (e.g., Dole Brands, Sun-Maid Raisins). This change in the mindset of today's food shopper has provided an unprecedented opportunity for marketers of commodities to begin to act like branded companies by stamping the name of a well-known brand onto a commodity thereby guaranteeing its goodness and freshness. A profitable opportunity exists on the horizon for commodity marketers to behave in a manner that is more consistent with branded companies and today's consumer. A case history of Ocean Spray, which has recently faced a decision to protect the brand or sell off and take the risk of being a non-branded commodity in an extremely competitive market, is also discussed.     

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.     

Marketing virtue

This paper is designed to respond to the conference theme of making business ethical specifically within a marketing context. Ethical marketing challenges marketers to move away from illusory and deceptive brand promises to make way for a form of marketing which serves the consumer with creative and truthful messages. The paper markets virtue to marketers whilst exploring existing marketing deontologies and the problem of the depersonalised relationship between marketer and consumer. 'Marketing virtue' is approached within an ontology that begins with the marketer as a moral agent. Six virtues–based principles are proposed as a creative resource to improve the ethical performance of contemporary marketing. True prosperity for both marketer and consumer is seen within the Aristotelian concept of ευδαιμονια (eudaimonia).     

Implementing Marketing

Professional service marketers are becoming increasingly concerncd by the problems they face in implementing marketing plans and strategies in their organizations. Many of the barriers to implementation are directly related to the strong organizational cultures that are typically present in professional service firms. This paper seeks to enable professional service marketers to analyze their own organizations and to plan implementation strategies using an 'Internal Marketing Strategy' framework which has been successfully used in the UK.     

What's inside matters: The impact of ingredient branding on consumers' purchasing behaviours in services

Ingredient branding has been widely used as a marketing strategy to create added value and enhance market competitiveness in a variety of durable and non-durable product categories. Despite its prevalence in practice, current research into ingredient branding offers little guidance for the services sector and is, in any event, limited to studies that analyse intentions rather than actual behaviours. This paper contributes to the literature by using scenario-based and field experiments to examine the impact of ingredient branding on consumers' purchasing behaviours in a service context. The scenario-based experiments highlight the mediating role of quality perception on willingness to pay, which increases by up to 9 % for a food item that is ingredient branded. The results of the field experiment show that the actual sales of an item increase by 40 % when it is ingredient branded. Consequently, this paper provides both theoretical and managerial insights into the favourable impact of ingredient branding on consumers’ purchasing behaviour. This paper concludes by proposing an agenda for future research.     

Ethical Issues Related to the Mass Marketing of Securities

This paper examines ethical issues involved in the mass marketing of securities to individuals. The marketing of products deemed “socially questionable” or “sinful” (like tobacco and alcohol) has long been recognized as posing special ethical challenges (Kotler, P. and S. Levy: 1971, Harvard Business Review 49, 74–80; Davidson, D. K: 1996, Selling Sin: The Marketing of Socially Unacceptable Products (Quorum Press, Westport). We contend that marketers should consider securities (i.e. common stock, options) in a similar vein, as a potentially dangerous product. Given the inherent volatility of equity prices, responsible marketers need to exercise caution and restraint in promoting securities. We evaluate whether the NYSE’s current guidelines adequately encourage ethical marketing practices and deter unethical ones. Using recent examples of controversial brokerage advertisements, we expose weaknesses in the Exchange’s vague injunction that members not “mislead” reasonable people by making “exaggerated claims” in their communications. From a moral perspective, we find it troublesome that intentionality need not be present for a promotion to be considered misleading. Also problematic is the continued invocation of the reasonable person standard to judge the propriety of advertisements. We close with some thoughts on improving the quality of securities marketing. We suggest that the NYSE, in the interests of fostering higher ethical behavior among member marketers, may need to revive a marketing code of conduct prevalent on Wall Street in an earlier era.     

The Mediating Role of Customer Relationship on the Social Media Marketing and Purchase Intention Relationship with Special Reference to Luxury Fashion Brands

The reach of internet technology and social media has opened abundance of opportunities for marketers as well as for consumers across the globe. To anticipate future purchase behavior of consumers, marketers are not leaving any stone unturned. The main objective of this study is to investigate the direct and indirect impacts of social media marketing activities (entertainment, customization, interaction, word of mouth, and trend) on consumers' purchase intentions in luxury fashion brands. This study employed higher order Structural Equation Modeling to test the study model with (n = 243) sample data. We found positive significant impacts of social media marketing and customer relationships on consumers' purchase intentions. In addition, our study model confirmed full mediation of customer relationships in the relationship between social media marketing and consumers' purchase intentions. Based on our research findings, we strongly recommend that marketers of luxury fashion brands engage in social media marketing activities to provide value to customers.     

International Marketing Ethics from an Islamic Perspective: A Value-Maximization Approach

International marketing practices, embedded in a strong ethical doctrine, can play a vital role in raising the standards of business conduct worldwide, while in no way compromising the quality of services or products offered to customers, or surrendering the profit margins of businesses. Adherence to such ethical practices can help to elevate the standards of behavior and thus of living, of traders and consumers alike. Against this background, this paper endeavors to identify the salient features of the Islamic framework of International Marketing Ethics. In particular, it highlights the capabilities and strengths of this framework in creating and sustaining a strong ethical international marketing culture. At the heart of Islamic marketing is the principle of value-maximization based on equity and justice (constituting just dealing and fair play) for the wider welfare of the society. Selected key international marketing issues are examined from an Islamic perspective which, it is argued, if adhered to, can help to create a value-loaded global ethical marketing framework for MNCs in general, and establish harmony and meaningful cooperation between international marketers and Muslim target markets in particular.     

Conventionalists,Connectors, Technoisseurs and Mobilarti: Differential profiles of mobile marketing segments based on phone features and postmodern characteristics of consumers

The high penetration of mobile phones amongst the South African population presents mobile phones as an attractive interactive marketing communication medium. This paper argues that the access and actual use of different phone device features can be productively used as a segmentation approach, which may enable marketers to be more effective in planning interactive marketing communication plans. This study, based on 330 students, developed segments derived from mobile phone usage patterns using cluster analysis. The outcome revealed four clusters that were named: Connectors, Conventionalists, Technoisseurs and Mobilarti. Connectors made daily use of a full range of communication functions. Conventionalists were inclined to limit their use of mobile phone features to talking and texting. Technoisseurs were found to use a whole range of sophisticated mobile phone facilities. Mobilarti were identified as a group of expert users; using the full range of functions available to them on their phones, despite recording the lowest percentage of smartphone ownership when compared to the other groups. These groups were further profiled by analysing attitudinal and behavioural variables pertaining to two newly developed postmodern dimensions, which were introduced in the study as mobile importance as an attitudinal aspect, and social transformation as a behavioural outcome. For marketers, an understanding of the proposed segments, as well as the differences in attitudes towards mobile importance and social transformation behaviours, coupled with typical financial and social realities of these segments, allow targeting strategies that are more clearly actionable.     

International Channels of Distribution and the Role of Comparative Marketing Analysis

To enter international markets successfully, firms need to secure adequate distribution channels for their products in the targeted markets. But gaining access to, as well as developing and maintaining marketing channels in foreign markets requires substantial knowledge of the distribution structures and patterns in thos markets. This follows because the so-called standardized (globalized) approach to international marketing strategy does not apply to distribution strategy in foreign markets. Comparative marketing analysis can provide international marketers with the means for obtaining the knowledge needed by providing (1) a substantial literature on distribution in different countries, (2) a variety of methodologies that can provide insights into foreign distribution structures, and (3) by sensitizing international marketers to changing patterns of distribution around the world.     

Consumers as legitimating agents: How consumer‐citizens challenge marketer legitimacy on social media

Previous research has shown that consumers increasingly challenge the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online contexts. Based on a qualitative study, this article examines how and for what reasons consumers challenge marketer legitimacy—the perceived appropriateness of marketers and their activities—in the empirical context of Reddit, a popular social news and community website. The study suggests that consumers challenge or accept marketer legitimacy in online communities based on particular, community and situation specific, legitimacy criteria that reflect and reproduce the values and norms of the community. In doing so, it is argued, consumers play a role as legitimating agents—consumer‐citizens that have the power to confer or deny legitimacy in the context of business‐society relations. Overall, the study advances knowledge in the field of consumer studies in two ways. First, it builds a symbolic interactionist perspective on consumer‐citizens as legitimating agents who enact their active citizenship role in the marketplace by assessing and constructing marketer legitimacy in online communities. Second, it offers an empirically grounded account of how and for what reasons consumer‐citizens challenge or accept the legitimacy of marketers and unsolicited marketing communication in online communities.     

Integrating ethics into international marketing strategy: An extension of Robin and Reidenbach's framework

This study proposes and tests an extension of Robin and Reidenbach's (1987) model of integrating ethics into the strategic marketing development process. The model extension may help marketing managers to identify the publics that might be negatively impacted by a given strategic option and the duties marketers may assume to safeguard public welfare in these instances. A sample of 155 marketing practitioners was used to examine how marketers apply ethical values upon entering new markets. This study suggests that, contrary to public sentiment, marketers are sensitive to potential consumer harm and act to minimize this risk.