Advertising and Word-of-Mouth Effects on Pre-launch Consumer Interest and Initial Sales of Experience Products

This study examines how consumers' interest in a new experience product develops as a result of advertising and word-of-mouth activities during the pre-launch period. The empirical settings are the U.S. motion picture and video game industries. The focal variables include weekly ad spend, blog volume, online search volume during pre-launch periods, opening-week sales, and product characteristics. We treat pre-launch search volume of keywords as a measure of pre-launch consumer interest in the related product. To identify probable persistent effects among the pre-launch time-series variables, we apply a vector autoregressive modeling approach. We find that blog postings have permanent, trend-setting effects on pre-launch consumer interest in a new product, while advertising has only temporary effects. In the U.S. motion picture industry, the four-week cumulative elasticity of pre-launch consumer interest is 0.187 to advertising and 0.635 to blog postings. In the U.S. video game industry, the elasticities are 0.093 and 1.306, respectively. We also find long-run co-evolution between blog and search volume, which suggests that consumers' interest in the upcoming product cannot grow without bounds for a given level of blog volume

Content marketing model for leading web content management

This paper is envisaged to provide the Ukrainian businesses with suggestions for a content marketing model for the effective management of website content in order to ensure its leading position on the European and world markets. Our study employed qualitative data collection with semi-structured interviews, survey, observation methods, quantitative and qualitative methods of content analysis of regional B2B companies, as well as the comparative analysis. The following essential stages of the content marketing process as preliminary search and analysis, website content creation, promotion and distribution, and content marketing progress assessment were identified and classified in detail. The strategic decisions and activities at each stage of the process showed how a company’s on-site and off-site content can be used as a tool to establish the relationship between the brand and its target audience and increase brand visibility online. This study offered several useful insights into how website content, social media and various optimization techniques work together in engaging with the target audience and driving website traffic and sales leads. We constructed and described the content marketing model elaborated for effective web content management that can be useful for those companies that start to consider employing content marketing strategy for achieving business goals and increasing a leadership position

Strategic Marketing Management in the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry:a Theoretical Framework

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on strategic marketing management .. This study adopted a expost facto research methodology to examine the strategic marketing management literature in an attempt to attain their desired level of performance. The overall findings suggest that strategic marketing is a driver of organizational positioning in a dynamic environment, and that it helps to enhance the development of new product/service for existing markets. These findings, along with other interesting findings of the study, are discussed. From the empirical and anecdotal managerial evidence as well as from the literature implications are drawn for the efficient and effective strategic marketing practices in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. Based on the findings of the study, the concepts and principles of total quality management within a holistic framework it is recommended that (i) efforts should be made by organizational marketers towards understanding the relevant economic factors that affect both clients’ behaviour and the strategic options that may be adopted to cope with such behaviours; ((ii) in a constantly changing business environment, firms can adopt different strategic marketing practices since the yardstick is the enhancement of business performance

What is referenced in marketing publications and has it changed over time?

Academic research has identified that business/marketing journals tend to draw on knowledge from a diverse set of disciplines. However, there has been limited examination of the source of these ideas in terms of types of materials (journals, books, conferences, business/popular press and other sources) or whether the use of these sources has changed over time. This paper examines these issues and found that within the three leading marketing journals (JM, JMR, JCR), the citation of journal articles has generally increased over time and the citation of nonjournal sources (i.e., journals, books, conferences, business/popular press and other sources), have generally decreased. There are, however, differences in the specific citation behaviour in the three journals and thus the citation of materials may be journal specific.<br /

Community Health Workers as Social Marketers of Injectable Contraceptives: A Case Study from Ethiopia.

Ethiopia has made notable progress in increasing awareness and knowledge of family planning and is considered a success story among funders and program planners. Yet unmet need among rural women (28.6%) is almost double that of urban women (15.5%), with a wide gap in total fertility rate depending on urban (2.6) or rural (5.5) residence. This study investigates the impact of a service delivery model that combines community-based distribution (CBD) of contraception with social marketing in Tigray, Ethiopia, to create a more sustainable approach to CBD. Between September 2011 and October 2013, 626 volunteer CHWs were recruited and trained to administer depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) injections and provide counseling and referrals to the health post for other methods; the project implementation period ended in June 2014. The CHWs received a supply of DMPA injections in the form of a microloan from a drug revolving fund; the CHWs charged women a minimal fee (5 birr, or US$0.29), determined based on willingness-to-pay data, for each DMPA injection; and the CHWs returned part of the fee (3 birr) to the drug revolving fund while keeping the remaining portion (2 birr). The CHWs also promoted demand for family planning through door-to-door outreach and community meetings. Existing health extension workers (HEWs) provided regular supervision of the CHWs, supplemented by in-depth supervision visits from study coordinators. Baseline and endline representative surveys of women of reproductive age, as well as of participating CHWs, were conducted. In addition, DMPA provision data from the CHWs were collected. Between October 2011 and June 2014, the CHWs served in total 8,604 women and administered an estimated 15,410 DMPA injections, equivalent to providing 3,853 couple-years of protection. There was a 25% significant increase in contraceptive use among surveyed women, from 30.1% at baseline to 37.7% at endline, with DMPA use largely responsible for this increase. Changes in quality of family planning markers from baseline suggested services improved between baseline and endline: nearly 50% more women reported being told about side effects and what to do if they experience side effects, and 25% more women said they were told about other methods of contraception. The results from household surveys at baseline and endline suggest that CHWs in this model made a significant contribution to family planning in the region

Framing audience prefigurations of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: The roles of fandom, politics and idealised intertexts

Audiences for blockbuster event-film sequels and adaptations often formulate highly developed expectations, motivations, understandings and opinions well before the films are released. A range of intertextual and paratextual influences inform these audience prefigurations, and are believed to frame subsequent audience engagement and response. In our study of prefigurative engagements with Peter Jackson’s 2012 film, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, we used Q methodology to identify five distinct subjective orientations within the film’s global audience. As this paper illustrates, each group privileges a different set of extratextual referents – notably J.R.R. Tolkien’s original novels, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of The Rings film trilogy, highly localised political debates relating to the film’s production, and the previous associations of the film’s various stars. These interpretive frames, we suggest, competed for ascendancy within public and private discourse in the lead up to The Hobbit’s international debut, effectively fragmenting and indeed polarising the film’s prospective global audience

Stock Market Reaction To Chief Marketing Officer Appointment Announcements

This paper investigates the stock price performance of 166 firms appointing a new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) between 1999 and 2005. Following event study methodology, the results reveal that abnormal stock returns around the appointment day are greater for firms appointing a CMO with prior marketing executive experience, in firms where the new CMO explains the intended future marketing strategy on the appointment announcement day, whereas it is lower in firms operating in higher growth, high technology industries with higher product differentiation. Announcement-induced returns are also greater for firms that experienced poor stock price performance in the year leading to the appointment. Taken together, the results suggest that the market’s assessment of a change in marketing leadership should not be viewed as being uniformly beneficial, but should be assessed against the profile of the appointee and the appointing firm

Geoportals: an internet marketing perspective

A geoportal is a web site that presents an entry point to geo-products (including geo-data) on the web. Despite their importance in (spatial) data infrastructures, literature suggest stagnating or even declining trends in visitor numbers. In this paper relevant ideas and techniques for improving performance are derived from internet marketing literature. We tested the extent to which these ideas are already applied in practice through a survey among 48 geoportals worldwide. Results show in many cases positive correlation with trends in visitor numbers. The ideas can be useful for geoportal managers developing their marketing strateg