Social media marketing strategy for an online italian language school

Social media marketing (SMM) is becoming increasingly relevant for all kinds of businesses; in particular it can be fruitful for small and medium enterprises due to its relative cost-effectiveness and opportunities for organic reach. Besides, brand presence and consistency on social media (SM) can raise brand awareness and increase brand trust. The topic of this project is a nascent brand, Allora School, which is an online Italian language school. This project was developed with the aim of creating a SMM strategy for Allora School as it enters the market. There are plenty of different social media platforms (SMPs), however, due to Generation Z being the target audience (TA) of the brand in question, the author chose Instagram and TikTok. The strategy was developed based on a review of the literature regarding branding, SM, peculiarities of marketing to TA and their learning preferences. In this project, the hierarchy of effects model was adapted to modern day SM and used as a key indicator for SMM design. The exploratory part of the project consisted of observation and benchmarking to gather some insights and nuances to implement in a proposed strategy. The practical part included the overall description of the language school, the innovative platform it uses for storing the materials and conducting interactive lessons for Gen Z learners is provided to give a rationale for the chosen TA, the rationale of the brand name and logo. Finally, there is the explanation of the design of a SMM strategy for Allora School that will serve to increase brand awareness and brand trust, and, consequently, lead to sales.O marketing de redes sociais está se tornando cada vez mais relevante para todos os tipos de negócios, em particular pode ser frutífero para pequenas e médias empresas devido à sua relação custo-benefício e oportunidades de alcance orgânico. Além disso, a presença e a consistência da marca nas redes sociais podem levar a aumentar o reconhecimento da marca e aumentar a confiança na marca. O tema deste projeto é uma marca nascente, Allora School, que é uma escola online de italiano. Este projeto foi desenvolvido com o objetivo de criar uma estratégia de marketing nas redes sociais para a Allora School à medida que entra no mercado. Existem muitas plataformas de mídia social diferentes, no entanto, devido à Geração Z ser o público-alvo da marca em questão, o autor escolheu o Instagram e o TikTok. A estratégia foi desenvolvida com base em uma revisão da literatura sobre branding, redes sociais, peculiaridades do marketing para o público-alvo e suas preferências de aprendizagem. Neste projeto, o modelo de hierarquia de efeitos foi adaptado às redes sociais modernas e usado como um indicador-chave para o design da estratégia de marketing nas redes sociais. A parte exploratória do projeto consistiu em observação e benchmarking para reunir alguns insights e nuances para implementar em uma estratégia proposta. A parte prática incluiu a descrição geral da escola de idiomas, a plataforma inovadora que ela usa para armazenar os materiais e conduzir aulas interativas para alunos da Geração Z é fornecida para fornecer uma justificativa para o público-alvo escolhido, a lógica do nome da marca e do logotipo. Por fim, explica-se o desenho de uma estratégia de SMM para a Allora School que servirá para aumentar a notoriedade e a confiança da marca e, consequentemente, levar a vendas

Epistemological access and authentic learning practice: a case study in hospitality financial management.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban.The recent widespread Fallist student movement taking hold of South African Higher Education has raised debates and tensions relating to the economic and social transformation of academic institutions. Despite National Higher Education funding relief (NSFAS), relentless patterns of economic and social inequalities in South Africa perpetuate unequal access for many first year undergraduates that are working class, first generation and English second language students. Providing students with epistemological access is essentially the counterpart to physical and financial access. How students access these academic ways of knowing, is indeed a cause for concern. At the Durban University of Technology (DUT), compounding this precarious situation, most Hospitality Financial Management (HSFM101) students struggle to access a financial disciplinary identity. Students find engaging with complex assessment tasks, particularly challenging especially as it requires them to align abstract theory to practical contexts. In addition, many students often report that they struggle to understand the relevance of hospitality accounting and its potential contribution to their hospitality careers. Importantly, accessing the tenets of the discipline, its discourse and practice appears to remain elusive to many students. While Morrow (2009) argued that fostering epistemological access (EA) calls for carefully constructed pedagogical and curricula processes, he did not go on to identify the particular pedagogy that could be employed in higher education teaching. In this study, I recognise the different levels of preparedness of prospective university students, and their potential lack of efficacy in gaining access to the epistemologies of their chosen discipline (HSFM101). This study explores student experiences in an HSFM101 programme, carefully designed to integrate the principles of Authentic Assessment with the view to creating enabling conditions for student learning. In addition, this study is a response to a lacuna in South African Higher education scholarship on how students learn and are assessed in Hospitality programmes. The study was guided by the principles of social constructivism and subscribed to an interpretive paradigm. A qualitative, case study design served as the framework to underpin the research. A purposive sample of 20 participants was selected from a cohort of Hospitality Financial Management students at DUT. Due consideration was given to a balanced representation in relation to race and gender. The rigor offered by Interactive Qualitative Analysis (IQA) (Northcutt & McCoy, 2004) was particularly appealing as it provides a systematic protocol that makes explicit both data generation and analysis processes. Data was generated through individual in-depth interviews, student reflective online journals and IQA focus group interviews. The interpretive and qualitative lens adopted for this study enabled a rich contextual understanding of how students experienced learning and acquired epistemic access through an Authentic Assessment (AA) strategy. Following the IQA protocol, focus groups generated ten affinities or themes of their experiences of being assessed in an Authentic learning environment. The primary theme that drove students learning experiences was Life’s Contradictions, whilst the main outcome or primary outcome of the study was getting it right. Despite the tensions, struggles and contradictions that students experienced in authentic learning situations, it was recognised that a pedagogy of authentic learning (the AA strategy in this case) does have the propensity to afford many students EA. According to this study, an AA strategy further revealed that, by affording students scaffolding opportunities, they were able to seek solutions autonomously, share their ideas, or even take the lead in improving collaborative learning. In addition, students wanted to feel included and so by creating and nurturing learning spaces that value diversity in HEIs; does in fact promote cohesive learning which enables EA. The fact that AA allows for students to engage in different ways and challenge their prior beliefs and assumptions; implies that there is transformation in learning. The results of this study further suggest that learning tolerance and accepting diversity was able to advance epistemic growth and emotional intelligence. This fortifies the nexus between social participation and prosperity; hence enabling EA (Sen, 2001). Whilst this study explored the learning experiences of HSFM101 it certainly does have wider implications for curriculum planning and reform towards transformative assessment pedagogies in various Higher Education curricula

Toward an Expanded Conceptualization of Transformative Learning: A Case Study of International Service-Learning in Nicaragua

This dissertation research stems from both practical and theoretical problems related to understanding the nature of transformation in international service-learning. In terms of the practical problems, the primary motivation for conducting this study had to do with pedagogical challenges associated with fostering adult college students\u27 transformational learning as the coordinator and instructor of Tompkins Cortland Community College\u27s international service learning program (TC3-NICA)1 over the past eight years. A review of theoretical and empirical literature in the fields of adult learning, service-learning, and intercultural learning did not adequately address the concerns that ( had about the significant and problematic nature of change TC3-NICA students were experiencing as a result of their participation in service in Nicaragua

Experiential marketing: bridging the gap between value creation to customers and value capture by firms

An already voluminous literature addressing the value of marketing to the firm has, until now, fallen short of expectations. In a context in which marketers have increasingly been challenged to prove their worth, the scholarly attempts to demonstrate the value of marketing to the firm have stumbled to reach unquestionable results. Part of the problem may lie in the lengthy and twisted chain of effects from marketing actions to marketing performance outcomes. Between inputs and outputs lie numerous uncontrollable and often confounding external factors, such as the actions of customers, competitors, and other market agents. The problematic operationalization of such complex market structures impelled researchers to analyze fractions of this web of effects rather than attempting to study overarching conceptual models in full. Prior empirical research has typically considered either the impact of marketing actions in the marketplace or the consequences to the firm of the behaviors of customers and rivals. There is still a gap in the literature of an all-encompassing end-to-end demonstration of how specific marketing inputs can drive specific marketing outputs unequivocally contributing to organizational performance. This thesis addresses the issue of marketing as a value-capturing corporate function through its determinant role in managing value-creating exchanges with customers in the marketplace while hindering competitors from appropriating it. Our research suggests that experiential marketing may bridge the gap between value creation to the customer and value capture by the firm. In particular, our findings show that marketing-crafted valuecreating online shopping experiences may predict value-capturing marketing performance outcomes with the mediation of superior customer-level marketing performance. Thus, our results suggest that experiential marketing may offer an opportunity to bridge the gap between "give and take," value creation and value capture, and demonstrate how relevant the contribution of marketing to the firm's value rising can be.Uma já volumosa literatura abordando o valor do marketing para a empresa tem até agora ficado aquém das expectativas. As tentativas para demonstrar a valia do marketing para a empresa não têm conseguido alcançar inequívocas demonstrações de como o marketing pode ter uma contribuição relevante para a apropriação de valor pela empresa. Parte do problema reside na longa e sinuosa cadeia de efeitos ligando os estímulos de marketing aos resultados do desempenho. Entre uns e outros existem inúmeros fatores externos, incontroláveis e perturbadores, tais como as ações de outros participantes no mercado. A investigação empírica anterior tem tipicamente estudado ou os efeitos the ações de marketing no mercado, sobretudo nos clientes, mas também nos concorrentes, ou então as consequências para a empresa dos comportamentos dos clientes e rivais. Consequentemente, há uma lacuna na literatura de uma demonstração abrangente de como determinados estímulos de marketing podem conduzir a efeitos específicos precursores do desempenho da organização. Esta tese equaciona o marketing como função de captura de valor para a empresa através do seu papel determinante na gestão de trocas de valor com clientes, em paralelo com o impedimento aos concorrentes de se apropriarem do valor criado. A nossa investigação sugere que o marketing experiencial pode estabelecer a ligação entre criação de valor para o cliente e captura de valor para a empresa. Em particular, os nossos resultados mostram que experiências de compra criadoras de valor para os clientes em ambientes digitais podem conduzir à captura de valor para a empresa através da mediação de desempenho de marketing a nível de cliente. Portanto, os nossos resultados sugerem que o marketing experiencial pode ser uma grande oportunidade para preencher a lacuna entre “dar e receber”, criação e captura de valor, e mostram quão relevante pode ser a contribuição do marketing para o valor da empresa