Conceptualization of Brand Experience in an Event Marketing Context

ABSTRACT

Despite the growing importance of brand experience and event marketing, research addressing what constitutes brand experience in an event marketing context is scarce. The purpose of this article is to develop a conceptualization of brand experience that is specifically applicable to an event marketing context. Drawing on qualitative data collected from an international motor show, which is an important form of event marketing in the automotive industry, this article develops a conceptualization of brand experience as consumers' multifaceted interaction with brands enabled through four interrelated processes of multisensory stimulation, bodily performance, social interaction, and discovery/learning. In turn, these four interaction processes trigger perceptual, embodied, social, and epistemic brand experience. Drawing on data and the relevant literature, the article elaborates on these dimensions of brand experience and discusses their theoretical and managerial implications.     

Managing Trade Show Campaigns: Why Managerial Responsibilities Matter?

This article examined the relationship between managerial responsibilities for important trade show tasks and the marketing performance of exhibiting firms. Drawing theoretical insights from the functionalist perspective of managerial roles and organizational role theory, this article proposed and validated theory based, multiple, task-managerial responsibility linkages using a large international b2b trade show as a context. The empirical results indicated that the marketing performance of exhibiting firms was enhanced when (a) middle managers were assigned the trade show objective setting task, (b) lower and middle managers were involved in the trade show selection decision and (c) lower managers executed the booth management task. The paper concluded by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Implementing social media marketing strategically: an empirical assessment

The purpose of this study is to examine how firms implement social media systematically to drive strategic marketing actions. To this end, the study conceptualises social media implementation as a multidimensional, organisational construct composed of social media strategy, active presence, customer engagement initiatives and social media analytics. Using primary data, the study operationalises the social media implementation construct and tests its effect on firm performance isolated into social media performance and marketing performance. The results indicate that all except the active presence dimension of social media implementation are positively related to social media performance. The results further indicate that social media performance is positively related to marketing performance. The study contributes to the literature by offering a novel conceptualisation and empirical validation of the social media implementation construct.     

Identifying factors affecting consumers purchase incidence at retail trade shows

The purpose of this article is to examine variables influencing purchase incidences at retail trade shows. To this end, retailer and consumer related antecedent variables are proposed. The retailer related variables are represented by store environmental cues of sales staff services, store atmosphere and product assortment. The consumer related variables are represented by impulse buying tendency and perceived time pressure. Drawing on relevant literature, hypotheses are developed to link each of these variables to purchase incidence. Data were collected using questionnaire from shoppers (N=95) at a large retail trade show. The hypotheses were tested using partial least square path modeling. The findings indicate that consumers’ favorable evaluation of retailers’ sales staff services, store atmosphere and product assortment led to more purchase incidences. The findings about the consumer related variables indicate that impulse buying tendency led to more purchase incidences whereas perceived time pressure led to fewer purchase incidences. Drawing on these results, several implications for practice and research are suggested.     

Big is efficient: Evidence from agricultural cooperatives in Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, there is a renewed interest in agricultural cooperatives as an institutional tool to improve the welfare of smallholder farmers. One of the pathways through which cooperatives benefit their members is scale economies. However, the establishment of cooperatives in Ethiopia seems to pay little attention to the size of the organizations. This article aims at investigating the effect of size on cost efficiency of agricultural cooperatives. More specifically, the purpose is to examine whether a single cooperative can serve a given number of farmers at a lower cost than two or more smaller cooperatives could. We employ the concept of cost subadditivity to compare the cost efficiency of large versus small cooperatives, and by extension unilateral actions. We estimate a flexible production technology using cross‐sectional cooperative‐level data. Findings show that costs would drop by 78% to 181% if farmers join hands in relatively large rather than small cooperatives.     

IMC – an integrative review

This paper reviews and integrates extant work in the integrated marketing communication (IMC) literature. With this in mind, three alternative and widely disseminated conceptual frameworks proposed in the IMC literature are employed as a starting point. The review locates important points of theoretical intersection among these three frameworks, and drawing on the wider literature, develops and cross-fertilizes them into IMC constructs. The review then combines the constructs into an integrative framework by proposing theory-driven relationships and formalizing them using testable propositions. The final outcome offers a clearer synthesis and re-conceptualization of IMC.