This is the first book to focus on crowdfunding in sport. Crowdfunding is an important new financial instrument that is becoming more popular with sports organisations, and this book examines the ...research evidence for crowdfunding and considers how it might be successfully implemented. Presenting international cases and data, including from European football, the book explains how crowdfunding campaigns have to be fully integrated with strategic marketing plans and require a solid understanding of the needs and motivations of potential investors, consumers, and fans. The book sets out a theoretical framework for applying strategic marketing in the context of crowdfunding in sports clubs, introduces the key characteristics of the sports crowdfunding market and funders’ behaviours in the crowdfunding campaigns of sports clubs, examines the market segments of the campaigns’ funders, and presents recommendations for developing marketing-mix programs to target them. This is important reading for any researcher, advanced student, or practitioner with an interest in sport business, sport marketing, sport finance, consumer behaviour in sport, or entrepreneurship, innovation, or technology in sport.
Digitization blurs the lines between technology and management, facilitating new business models built upon the concepts, methods and tools of the digital environment. The purpose of this study is to ...investigate the role of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Big Data in terms of how businesses manage their digital transformation. The paper argues that the outbreak of IoT and Big Data has resulted in a mass of disorganized knowledge. In order to make sense of the noise, a literature review was carried out to examine the studies, published in the last decade (2008–2019), that analyzed both the Internet of Things and Big Data. The results show that IoT and Big Data are predominantly reengineering factors for business processes, products and services; however, a lack of widespread knowledge and adoption has led research to evolve into multiple, yet inconsistent paths. The study offers interesting implications for managers and marketers, highlighting how the digital transformation enabled by IoT and Big Data can positively impact many facets of business. By treating IoT and Big Data as faces of the same coin, this study also sheds light on current challenges and opportunities, with the hope of informing future research and practice.
•The outbreak of IoT an Big Data caused a huge return of disorganized knowledge.•Strategically IoT and Big Data should consider as faces of the same coin.•Business functions might be deeply reshaped through on IoT and Big Data.•Digital transformation in companies is not just about interiorizing new technologies.•Companies should implement planned strategies fully exploit IoT and Big Data.
The Romanian pharmaceutical market has undergone significant transformation over the past three decades. Pharmaceutical marketing, a harmonization process between the production and consumption of ...medicines, is key to growth and profitability. The research highlights the importance of doctors and pharmacists as main sources of information for patients. A balance of emotional and rational factors, such as the attentiveness of pharmacists, pricing, product availability and proximity, drive consumers to certain pharmacies. Product categories also influence preference, with different pharmacies favored for allopathic medicines, natural remedies, or cosmetic products. Proximity remains the principal decision-making factor, although compassionate staff offering cost-effective solutions play a crucial role in customer retention. Reputed pharmacy chains are preferred due to their promotional activities, diverse product range and knowledgeable in-store advisors. In a shifting landscape, online purchasing is gaining traction, with nearly a third of survey respondents expressing interest in purchasing pharmaceutical products online.
The increasing volume of firm-related conversations on social media has made it considerably more difficult for marketers to track and analyse electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) about brands, products ...or services. Firms often use sentiment analysis to identify relevant eWOM that requires a response to consequently engage in webcare. In this paper, we show that sentiment analysis of any kind might not be ideal for this purpose, because it relies on the questionable assumption that only negative eWOM is response-worthy and it is not able to infer meaning from text. We propose and test an approach based on supervised machine learning that first decides whether eWOM is relevant for the brand to respond, and then—based on a categorization of seven different types of eWOM (e.g., question, complaint)—classifies three customer satisfaction dimensions. Using a dataset of approximately 60,000 Facebook comments and 11,000 tweets about 16 different brands in eight different industries, we test and compare the efficacy of various sentiment analysis, dictionary-based and machine learning techniques to detect relevant eWOM. In doing so, this study identifies response-worthy eWOM based on the content instead of its expressed sentiment. The results indicate that these machine learning techniques achieve considerably higher accuracy in detecting relevant eWOM on social media compared to any kind of sentiment analysis. Moreover, it is shown that industry-specific classifiers can further improve this process and that algorithms are applicable across different social networks.
•We argue that sentiment analysis is inexpedient to identify relevant eWOM.•Instead, we use machine learning (ML) algorithms focussing on relevance for brands.•We compared these to other text analysis techniques for 16 brands across 8 industries.•ML achieves higher accuracy compared to sentiment- and dictionary-based approaches.•Our algorithms are applicable across different industries and social media platforms.
•Digital marketing strategies influence room occupancy and RevPar.•Online review volume and valence mediate the effect of digital strategies on hotel performance.•This mechanism is stronger for ...high-star hotels than for lower-tier hotels.•The mechanism is also more outspoken for chain hotels than for independent hotels.
We investigate to what extent digital marketing strategies (such as having a digital marketing plan, responsiveness to guest reviews, and monitoring and tracking online review information) influence hotel room occupancy and RevPar directly, and indirectly through the mediating effect of the volume and valence of online reviews they lead to, and to what extent this mechanism is different for different types of hotels in terms of star rating and independent versus chain hotels. The research was carried out in 132 Belgian hotels. The results indicate that review volume drives room occupancy and review valence impacts RevPar. Digital marketing strategies and tactics affect both the volume and valence of online reviews and, indirectly, hotel performance. This is more outspoken in chain hotels than in independent hotels, and in higher-star hotels than in lower-tier hotels.
•Extant research on minimalism views consumers as homogeneous and not heterogeneous.•The antecedents and motives of minimalistic consumption are identified.•The research gap is addressed through ...developing a consumer typology.•Firms can design strategies to satisfy the unique goals for each consumer segment.
Minimalistic consumption has received increased attention during the last few years with a substantial segment of consumers having adopted this notion. Minimalism highlights subjective well-being, happiness, and increased quality of life. Despite minimalism gaining significance, we know little about minimalistic consumption, its various forms, its antecedents, and its impact on consumer behavior. Extant literature does not offer a clear or concise conceptualization of minimalism in consumption or the potential strategies to identify, target, and engage minimalistic consumers. This has been a major deterrent in advancing research on minimalistic consumption. This article provides a conceptualization of minimalism and offers a typology of consumers that engage in minimalistic consumption based on two dimensions: the conditional susceptibility and goal orientation of consumers. It presents a framework of brand engagement strategies for each type of consumer and shows how firms can potentially benefit in terms of sales, profitability, and customer relationships by engaging with minimalistic consumers.
Dynamic Relationship Marketing Zhang, Jonathan Z.; Watson, George F.; Palmatier, Robert W. ...
Journal of marketing,
09/2016, Volume:
80, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Firms routinely engage in relationship marketing (RM) efforts to improve their relationships with business partners, and extant research has documented the effectiveness of various RM strategies. ...According to the perspective proposed in this article, as customers migrate through different relationship states over time, not all RM strategies are equally effective, so it is possible to identify the most effective RM strategies given customers' states. The authors apply a multivariate hidden Markov model to a six-year longitudinal data set of 552 business-to-business relationships maintained by a Fortune 500 firm. The analysis identifies four latent buyer-seller relationship states, according to each customer's level of commitment, trust, dependence, and relational norms, and it parsimoniously captures customers' migration across relationship states through three positive (exploration, endowment, recovery) and two negative (neglect, betrayal) migration mechanisms. The most effective RM strategies across migration paths can help firms promote customer migration to higher performance states and prevent deterioration to poorer ones. A counterfactual elasticity analysis compares the relative importance of different migration strategies at various relationship stages. This research thus moves beyond extant RM literature by focusing on the differential effectiveness of RM strategies across relationship states, and it provides managerial guidance regarding efficient, dynamic resource allocations.
The authors examine the effect of consumer reviews on relative sales of books at Amazon.com and Barnesandnoble.com. The authors find that (1) reviews are overwhelmingly positive at both sites, but ...there are more reviews and longer reviews at Amazon.com; (2) an improvement in a book's reviews leads to an increase in relative sales at that site; (3) for most samples in the study, the impact of one-star reviews is greater than the impact of five-star reviews; and (4) evidence from review-length data suggests that customers read review text rather than relying only on summary statistics.
Given the unprecedented reach of social media, firms are increasingly relying on it as a channel for marketing communication. The objective of this study is to examine the effect of firm-generated ...content (FGC) in social media on three key customer metrics: spending, cross-buying, and customer profitability. The authors further investigate the synergistic effects of FGC with television advertising and e-mail communication. To accomplish their objectives, the authors assemble a novel data set comprising customers' social media participation data, transaction data, and attitudinal data obtained through surveys. The results indicate that after the authors account for the effects of television advertising and e-mail marketing, FGC has a positive and significant effect on customers' behavior. The authors show that FGC works synergistically with both television advertising and e-mail marketing and also find that the effect of FGC is greater for more experienced, tech-savvy, and social media-prone customers. They propose and examine the effect of three characteristics of FGC: valence, receptivity, and customer susceptibility. The authors find that whereas all three components of FGC have a positive impact, the effect of FGC receptivity is the largest. The study offers critical managerial insights regarding how to leverage social media for better returns.
Relationship marketing (RM) has emerged as one of the dominant mantras in business strategy circles, though RM investigations often yield mixed results. To help managers and researchers improve the ...effectiveness of their efforts, the authors synthesize RM empirical research in a meta-analytic framework. Although the fundamental premise that RM positively affects performance is well supported, many of the authors' findings have significant implications for research and practice. Relationship investment has a large, direct effect on seller objective performance, which implies that additional meditated pathways may explain the impact of RM on performance. Objective performance is influenced most by relationship quality (a composite measure of relationship strength) and least by commitment. The results also suggest that RM is more effective when relationships are more critical to customers (e.g., service offerings, channel exchanges, business markets) and when relationships are built with an individual person rather than a selling firm (which partially explains the mixed effects between RM and performance reported in previous studies).
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