The co-evolution of the “social” and the “technology": a netnographic study of Social movements in virtual worlds

Virtual worlds provide new forms of social interaction. They offer alternative spaces where social functions can be carried out in online three-dimensional virtual environments. One social phenomenon which has moved into the virtual world is the social movement, which are an important means of bringing out social, cultural and political changes through collective action. These social movements exist in an immersive technological ecosystem which is constantly evolving as designers release patches which change the way users “live” within these environments. Using a biography of artifacts approach, we explore not just the evolution of the technological artifact itself (the virtual world), but also its co-evolution with the social phenomena (a social movement). Using Netnography, a modified version of ethnography, and actornetwork theory, we explore a social movement in World of Warcraft, and observe how it evolves over time as changes to the virtual world are implemented

Got Phished? Internet Security and Human Vulnerability

A leading cause of security breaches is a basic human vulnerability: our susceptibility to deception. Hackers exploit this vulnerability by sending phishing emails that induce users to click on malicious links that then download malware or trick the victim into revealing personal confidential information to the hacker. Past research has focused on human susceptibility to generic phishing emails or individually targeted spear-phishing emails. This study addresses how contextualization of phishing emails for targeted groups impacts their susceptibility to phishing. We manipulated the framing and content of email messages and tested the effects on users’ susceptibility to phishing. We constructed phishing emails to elicit either the fear of losing something valuable (e.g., course registrations, tuition assistance) or the anticipation of gaining something desirable (e.g., iPad, gift card, social networks). We designed the emails’ context to manipulate human psychological weaknesses such as greed, social needs, and so on. We sent fictitious (benign) emails to 7,225 undergraduate students and recorded their responses. Results revealed that contextualizing messages to appeal to recipients’ psychological weaknesses increased their susceptibility to phishing. The fear of losing or anticipation of gaining something valuable increased susceptibility to deception and vulnerability to phishing. The results of our study provide important contributions to information security research, including a theoretical framework based on the heuristic-systematic processing model to study the susceptibility of users to deception. We demonstrate through our experiment that several situational factors do, in fact, alter the effectiveness of phishing attempts

Modelado de la efectividad en el e-mail marketing – Una aproximación basada en la teoría de jerarquía de efectos

[EN] Despite the importance and pervasiveness of e-mail marketing, improving the effectiveness of e-mail marketing programs continues to be a priority for most businesses due to their revenue-generating potential. However, the study of e-mail marketing has been mostly neglected by academic research. More notably, the lack of holistic approaches and conceptual frameworks to tackle this challenge stand in the way of helping companies to better plan and deploy their e-mail marketing strategies and campaigns. This study addresses this issue by proposing a comprehensive model for the study of e-mail marketing effectiveness based on the hierarchy-of-effects theory. The effectiveness model is built by linking the stages of the AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action) model to the sequence of steps that consumers undergo when they interact with promotional e-mails. This approach allows identifying different partial effectiveness metrics associated with the cognitive, emotional and conative stages, which are later operationalized through key performance indicators with widespread adoption in the industry (open rate, clickthrough rate, retention rate and conversion rate). Thus, attention is linked to open effectiveness, interest is linked both to click effectiveness and subscriber retention effectiveness, and action is linked to conversion effectiveness. The stage of desire is dropped from the model because it usually takes place outside the e-mail marketing process. The study includes a practical illustration of the adequateness of the framework based on data and results from prior studies.[ES] Pese a la importancia y difusión del e-mail marketing, la mejora de su efectividad continúa siendo una prioridad para la mayoría de anunciantes dado su potencial para la generación de ingresos. Sin embargo, el estudio del e-mail marketing ha sido en gran parte ignorado por la comunidad científica. En concreto, la ausencia de enfoques holísticos y marcos conceptuales de estudio impiden a las compañías mejorar la planificación y ejecución de estrategias de e-mail marketing. Este estudio responde a este problema mediante la propuesta de un modelo general de efectividad de e-mail marketing basado en la teoría de jerarquía de efectos. Así, cada una de las fases del modelo AIDA (Atención, Interés, Deseo, Acción) se vincula a las diversas etapas del proceso secuencial experimentado por los consumidores en su interacción con los correos electrónicos promocionales. Esto permite identificar diferentes métricas parciales de efectividad asociadas a las etapas cognitiva, afectiva y conativa, que a su vez pueden ser operacionalizadas a través de tasas habitualmente utilizadas por la industria (apertura, clic, retención y conversión). En concreto, la etapa de atención queda vinculada a la efectividad de apertura, la etapa de interés a la efectividad de clic y de retención de suscriptores, y la etapa de acción a la efectividad de conversión. El modelo no asocia ninguna métrica a la etapa de deseo dado que ésta ocurre habitualmente fuera del proceso del e-mail marketing. El estudio incluye un ejemplo de la adecuación del modelo conceptual a partir de datos y resultados de estudios previos

Political Giving as Civic Participation: Identifying Donors and Motivating Giving

The study of political donations has previously been limited to surveys of identified donors and analysis of reported giving data, and oftentimes limited to higher-dollar donors. A comprehensive review of the current political giving literature yields two distinct questions: first, what role do resources play in determining who gives, and second, what ultimately prompts people to donate to a political organization? I utilize secondary survey data in my first chapter to examine the role of resources and gender in political giving. This chapter provides insight to whether gender merely represents the availability of resources necessary for participation, or whether it is indicative of differing implicit motivations that drive giving. I use three original, partnered field experiments, two of which are fielded with a state-level political action committee, and one that is fielded with a national PAC, to examine which type of strategic appeal most effectively motivates political giving. These chapters yield several distinctive findings. First, while resources ultimately predict who gives to political organizations, gender is marker not only of differing levels of resources but also of different intrinsic motivations for giving. Second, in line with practitioner best practices, explicitly asking supporters to donate does generate donations; however, non-solicitations ultimately drive more traffic to organizations’ websites. Added minor costs – or barriers – to giving do not seem to deter or depress the rate of donations. Finally, I find that when pitted directly against each other, appeals using temporal urgency to prompt giving outperform expressions of gratitude and policy-related anxiety induction. This indicates that we might not fully understanding of what costliness is, in terms of political giving and online political activity. These findings also shed light on the strategies that effectively motivate alternative forms of civic participation

Empowering email marketing

The purpose of this dissertation is to explore an empowering email marketing strategy that marketers can use for effective, modern email marketing. It describes the strategic transformation of email marketing from one-way persuasive communication to customized two-way interaction using Pettigrew´s (1987) context, content, process (CCP) framework. Consumer empowerment is used as the specific context in which email marketing takes place, and the content and process of email marketing are examined in relation to it. Changes in the business environment, accelerated by the Internet, have shifted the power dynamic between consumers and organizations, transforming their relationship from reactive transaction to proactive collaboration. This has created a need to move beyond persuasive marketing to more interactive and tailored communication. Compared to other interactive marketing practices, such as social media or mobile apps, email seems to be stuck in old, inefficient ways of implementation. Consumers view marketing emails as annoying and irrelevant, even though marketers have better opportunities than ever before to use consumer data to tailor and target messages according to consumer expectations. The research consists of three sub-studies: a systematic literature review using inductive qualitative analysis, and two online controlled experiments using different deductive quantitative analysis methods. It evaluates real-world consumer behavior and seeks to answer the main research question: What are the implications of an organization’s adoption of an empowering email marketing strategy? The dissertation proposes that adopting an empowering email marketing strategy requires advanced first-party data management that enables interaction. Email marketing should be based on permission, and the contents of emails should be tailored to the preferences of the individual recipients, but by directly asking about their preferences rather than inferring them from observed data. According to the study’s empirical findings, content matters: relevant content and active engagement improve behavioral email marketing results (open rates, click-to-open rates, and conversion rates). The study also recommends testing email content in the marketer's own operational environment.Voimaannuttava sähköpostimarkkinointi Väitöskirjassa tutkitaan voimaannuttavan sähköpostimarkkinoinnin strategiaa, jota markkinoijat voivat käyttää tehokkaaseen, nykyaikaiseen markkinointiviestintään. Tutkimus kuvaa sähköpostimarkkinoinnin muutosta yksisuuntaisesta massaviestinnästä räätälöidyksi kaksisuuntaiseksi vuorovaikutukseksi käyttäen viitekehyksenä Pettigrew'n (1987) organisaatiomuutoksen kontekstia, sisältöä ja prosessia kuvaavaa mallia. Kontekstina on kuluttajien voimaantuminen, jonka puitteissa tarkastellaan sähköpostimarkkinoinnin sisältöä ja prosessia. Internetin kiihdyttämät muutokset liiketoimintaympäristössä ovat muuttaneet kuluttajien ja organisaatioiden välisiä valtasuhteita ja tehneet reaktiivisesta vaihdannasta aktiivista yhteistyötä. Muutoksen myötä on tullut tarve siirtyä suostuttelevasta massamarkkinoinnista vuorovaikutteisempaan ja räätälöidympään viestintään. Muihin interaktiivisen markkinoinnin muotoihin, kuten sosiaaliseen mediaan tai mobiilisovelluksiin verrattuna, sähköposti näyttää kuitenkin juuttuneen vanhoihin, tehottomiin toteutustapoihin. Kuluttajat pitävät markkinointisähköposteja ärsyttävinä ja turhina, vaikka markkinoijilla olisi aiempaa paremmat mahdollisuudet käyttää kuluttajatietoja viestien räätälöimiseen ja kohdistamiseen. Tutkimus etenee kolmen osatutkimuksen kautta. Systemaattisessa kirjallisuuskatsauksessa käytetään induktiivista kvalitatiivista analyysiä ja kahdessa koeasetelmassa käytetään deduktiivisia kvantitatiivisia analyysimenetelmiä. Työ arvioi kuluttajien käyttäytymistä todellisessa päätöksentekotilanteessa ja etsii vastausta kysymykseen: Millaisia vaikutuksia voimaannuttavan sähköpostimarkkinointistrategian omaksumisesta on organisaatioille? Väitöskirja esittää, että voimaannuttavan sähköpostimarkkinointistrategian omaksuminen edellyttää kehittynyttä, vuorovaikutuksen mahdollistavaa ensimmäisen osapuolen tiedonhallintaa. Sähköpostimarkkinoinnin tulee perustua lupaan ja sisältöön, joka on räätälöity yksittäisten vastaanottajien mieltymysten mukaan kysymällä suoraan heidän mieltymyksistään havaitun datan hyödyntämisen sijaan. Empiiristen tulosten mukaan uutiskirjeen sisällöllä on väliä: relevantti sisältö ja vuorovaikutus parantavat käyttäytymiseen perustuvia sähköpostimarkkinoinnin tuloksia (avauksia, klikkauksia ja konversioita). Tutkimus suosittelee sähköpostin sisällön testaamista markkinoijan omassa toimintaympäristössä