Has Advertising Lost Its Meaning? Views of UK and US Millennials

The findings of a study of Millennials in USA and the UK—an increasingly important and digitally savvy segment of consumers—reveal that they see advertising as Companies promoting a product or service to people through media. Their perception is simple and all-encompassing with no evidence that they distinguish between different types of media or different types of communication. Some variation between the views of Millennials in the two countries is also identified, although this is less than expected. The findings contribute to an important and continuing debate among academics and marketing practitioners over how advertising should be defined in today’s multichannel environment. The findings are also compared with other recent definitions of advertising, and their implications are discussed.     

A two-generation new product model by considering forward-looking customers: Dynamic pricing and advertising optimization

Nowadays, one of the challenges of the firm managing multi-generation products is the forward-looking behavior of customers. Anticipating the introduction of a newer generation affects the demand and sales volume of the current generation and next generation. In this research, we investigated how to efficiently structure the pricing and advertising strategies of a firm that launches a two-generation new product to a market populated by forward-looking customers. Two thresholds were determined on the advertising expenditure of Generations 1 and 2. Our analysis proposed that the optimal pricing path of Generation 1 was monotonically decreasing or increasing and, then, decreasing. The optimal pricing of Generation 2 followed a concave curve. A heuristic solution method was proposed to solve the numerical examples. Findings revealed that, with increasing the customers' forward-looking behavior, the firm's profit would decrease. In the presence of forward-looking customers, it is beneficial for the firm to reduce the price of Generation 1 and allocate more budget to advertise Generation 2. Among other results, the advertising expenditure was shown to be positively affected by the number of potential customers and advertising effectiveness. Also, the length of the planning horizon had a negative effect on the advertising expenditure. A higher discount rate could lead to lower price, while higher advertising effectiveness and length of the planning horizon would result in higher price. Further, the results showed that, with increasing the word-of-mouth advertising effectiveness, the firm should increase the advertising expenditure and decrease the price firstly and, afterwards, decrease the advertising effort and increase the price.     

‘How do you feel about a disease?’ The effect of psychological distance towards a disease on health communication

Based on construal level theory, this research addresses the moderating role of an individual's psychological distance towards a disease in the effectiveness of advertising messages framed by two distinctive construal level terms (high-level and low-level). In Experiment 1, two different disease types (bronchitis/distant disease vs. influenza/proximal disease) were featured, with the result that an advertisement with high-level construal terms was more persuasive for a psychologically distant disease (bronchitis) than for a psychologically proximal disease (flu). The reverse was true for an ad framed with low-level construal terms. To replicate Experiment 1 and further test the hypothesis, in Experiment 2, the perceived distance individuals have towards one disease (cancer) was measured and used as independent variable. Consistent with the results from Experiment 1, the low-level construal messages were more effective under the psychologically close condition than the psychologically distant condition. Reverse was true for the high-level construal messages.     

How do telecommunications reforms affect labour market arrangements? Evidence from Central and Western Europe

This paper exploits variations in the timing of telecommunications reforms across Europe to investigate the relationship between the rise of alternative work arrangements and the emergence of the Internet. We evaluate whether sectors that are technologically more dependent on information and communication technologies (ICT) experienced disproportionately larger changes in their employment outcomes after telecommunications reforms were introduced. Our main results point to a disproportionate increase in total employment, part‐time work and home‐based work among ICT‐dependent sectors after the implementation of telecommunications reforms. These results suggest that telecommunications reforms affected labour market arrangements by fostering the adoption of ICT. The results are robust to several specifications.     

基于物联网技术平台的O2O商业模式研究

在国家大力推进产业结构调整、信息化的压力下,物联网技术和O2O商业模式作为信息时代的新型生产力,在国内的普及率并不高。本文运用案例分析的方法通过研究大学生创业项目引入O2O商业模式的概念,并与物联网技术有机结合,把握两者之间优势互补的关系,提出两者创新应用,同时从商业模式构成要素的角度对该模式进行系统、深入分析,为中国现代农业信息化建设和结构调整提供了新思路。     

第三方支付相关基础法律问题探讨

第三方支付不是单纯的货币转移支付,而是与商业交易密切相关。互联网支付是典型的"担保支付",第三方为付款人的货币支付和收款人的货物交付进行了担保,有效保证了交易合同的全面履行,付款人支付的货币资金具有反担保保证金性质;预付卡支付和银行卡收单支付都是委托代理支付,预付卡支付第三方收到付款人的货币资金属于保管行为。     

基于GIS技术的智慧校园方案设计研究

为改善高校的教育环境,提高高校的综合管理水平,本文提出了高校智慧校园系统的功能设计方案,然后基于可实现性原则,按照使用要素和使用对象两种分类标准将系统功能模块中的具体功能进行了细化设计,最后对智慧校园系统的具体建设过程提出了方案设计,对于更好的实现智慧校园的功能,有着很大的促进作用。     

Do offline and online go hand in hand? Cross-channel and synergy effects of direct mailing and display advertising

Despite the rise of digital, direct mailing as a marketing communication tool remains relevant and widely applied in practice. Nevertheless, research into the effectiveness of direct mailing in the online environment is scant. Key questions that remain entail how direct mails affect different online and offline consumer activity metrics throughout the purchase funnel and how they interact with digital marketing communication tools. The current paper, therefore, investigates these two questions by conducting two studies. First, we focus on the effect of direct mailing on zip-code level upper, middle, and lower funnel performance metrics over time by analyzing quasi-experimental data from a large European insurance firm. The results reveal that direct mailing significantly influences consumer activity metrics in the online channel (i.e., online search and clicking behavior), in support of cross-channel effects of direct mailing. Moreover, direct mailing is shown to be effective throughout the purchase funnel, both directly and indirectly, with a positive net sales effect. Second, we study the joint effect of direct mailing and display advertising by analyzing field experiment data from the same insurance firm. The results show positive synergy between direct mailing and display advertising. Therefore, despite the rise of digital, direct mailing still serves as an effective marketing tool, both by itself and in combination with digital marketing.     

Observing viewers’ self-reported and neurophysiological responses to message appeal in social media advertisements

PurposeMarketing research mainly uses self-reported method to record respondents' perceptions of creativity, and while self-reported method has its own merits, there exists some critique, particularly in terms of its ability to adequately capture the influence of message appeal on creativity. This paper studies how viewers’ responses to message appeals in social media advertisement compare in terms of self-reported responses versus responses taken through a neurophysiological method of Electroencephalograph (EEG).MethodologyTwo social media advertisements are displayed through a laboratory experiment to 17 subjects observing the subjects' neurophysiological reactions as well as their self-reported responses with regard to the commercials’ emotional, informational, and brand-related content.FindingsResults show that neurophysiological method offers unique details about emotional appeal, which the self-reported method fails to reflect. Furthermore, the neurophysiological measure identifies differences across the two target commercials in the emotional content part, which again are not identified through the self-reported method.OriginalityThis paper advances advertising research in social media literature by comparing content evaluation within advertisement through neurophysiological and self-reported measure. These findings have implications for marketers to use and measure message appeals in advertisement on social media to influence consumer response.