Internet and Social Media Strategy in Sports Marketing

The Internet and social media are transforming sports marketing. Historically television broadcasting was the main source of revenue for elite sports teams, leagues and sports federations. This is now changing because the Internet creates new possibilities for the distribution and consumption of sporting events. Social media is creating new forms of communication between fans, athletes, teams and sponsors. Mobile technology is also changing the way that fans consume sports content generally and also at live events. These changes create many strategic challenges and opportunities. This case study presents several frameworks and ideas, in particular the sports ecosystem model, event-driven marketing, star marketing and international differences in sports viewing for specific sports. These concepts are illustrated using sports marketing data from ComScore, individual sports organisations and personal research. A framework for the development of a social media strategy is proposed that can be used to evaluate the current position of a sports organisation and also to facilitate the development of a social media strategy. A series of questions is posed to structure the discussion of the strategic and technology issues facing the commercial director of a major sports team. \ \ Keywords: Sports marketing, social media, Internet strategy

International Examples of Large-Scale Systems - Theory and Practice III: Competition and Strategy in Electronic Marketplaces

Electronic marketplaces are evolving in both business to business, and business to consumer contexts. Although the initial hype surrounding all types of marketplaces appears to overstate their short-term impact, established companies across all types of industrial sectors are entering into collaborative, industry-wide initiatives to agree on common technical and trading standards to improve the effectiveness of the interactions between buyers and sellers on a global scale. An overview of contemporary developments is presented, and common patterns across different sectors are identified. Three case studies are presented in the areas of automotive, banking, and consumer markets. It is shown that product-market characteristics affect the formation of business relationships and market structures, and the design of information flows and shared systems is a reflection of typically strong business relationships and hierarchical market structures

The IS Core - X: Information Systems Research and Practice: IT Artifact or a Multidisciplinary Subject?

Much recent debate focuses on the nature of information systems as an academic endeavour and whether it constitutes a single, coherent subject discipline in its own right. This paper comments particularly on the recent paper by Benbasat and Zmud [2003] that proposes an IT artifact model to provide an integrative theme for IS research, and the response by Alter [2003] who presents an alternative paradigm that emphasizes the importance of systems. The approach taken here is to define the terminology of IS and put it into a management context which is implicit in most IS research but is often overlooked in the debates on the nature of academic IS research. It is proposed that a multidisciplinary approach to IS research is the most appropriate way of conceptualizing IS problems, academic research, and business practice, and that the integrating themes arise from the terms \u27information\u27 and \u27systems\u27 rather than from the technology. A multidisciplinary view of IS has different implications for identifying appropriate research problems, research design, publication and dissemination, and for the development of professional bodies than the IT artifact philosophy. It has some similarities to the systems model proposed by Alter and takes this concept further to stress that the IS research field can make a claim not only to systems but to much broader core disciplines in management because of the ubiquitous nature of not only IT, but also because of the central role that information plays in the co-ordination of economic activity in business enterprises. To support the argument, examples of historical IS research are outlined and the importance of earlier multidisciplinary research areas is described, particularly the antecedents of OR research practice in the UK. Finally some tentative ideas on future IS research and practice are outlined

Introduction to International Examples of Large Scale Systems: Theory and Practice

This article is an introduction to a series of papers by international authors who presented their work at the 2002 Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Each of the papers is concerned with an analysis of international, large-scale systems: SAP R/3 Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation in China; the development of a major outsourcing contract in an Asian company; a strategic analysis of international electronic marketplaces; and a collection of case studies of electronic commerce in ten large Australian companies

The Influence of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index and Product Complexity on Search Behaviour: A Cross-sector Study of the U.S., Germany and U.K.

Consumer search is analysed in a cross-sector study of six markets in the US, Germany and UK using online panel data. Two constructs are used to measure the search process: the consideration set and use of price comparison engines. The consideration sets range from 2.3 to 3.1 in the US, from 2.3 to 2.6 in Germany and from 2.6 to 3.2 in the UK, regardless of the use of price comparison engines. These results are significantly smaller than expected compared to pre-Internet studies and theory predictions. However, they are consistent with the few published results that used online panel data. It is shown that the consideration set is a function of the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index. The use of price comparison engines is inversely related to product complexity. The theoretical and managerial implications of the research results are explained and the potential of using online panel data for future research into online consumer behaviour and strategy is outlined

IMPUTING OR SMOOTHING? MODELLING THE MISSING ONLINE CUSTOMER JOURNEY TRANSITIONS FOR PURCHASE PREDICTION

Online customer journeys are at the core of e-commerce systems and it is therefore important to model and understand this online customer behaviour. Clickstream data from online journeys can be modelled using Markov Chains. This study investigates two different approaches to handle missing transition probabilities in constructing Markov Chain models for purchase prediction. Imputing the transition probabilities by using Chapman-Kolmogorov (CK) equation addresses this issue and achieves high prediction accuracy by approximating them with one step ahead probability. However, it comes with the problem of a high computational burden and some probabilities remaining zero after imputation. An alternative approach is to smooth the transition probabilities using Bayesian techniques. This ensures non-zero probabilities but this approach has been criticized for not being as accurate as the CK method, though this has not been fully evaluated in the literature using realistic, commercial data. We compare the accuracy of the purchase prediction of the CK and Bayesian methods, and evaluate them based on commercial web server data from a major European airline

Focus Issue on Legacy Information Systems and Business Process Change: Introduction

This editorial is an introduction to a focus issue on legacy information systems research that has been conducted under the aegis of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) research programme into systems engineering and business process change. An overview of the legacy information systems problem is presented in terms of its scale, definition, and relevance to practicing managers and academics. It is shown that legacy systems represent a critical area of study in both software engineering and strategic information systems. The legacy system issues include the software methods and costs of maintaining and evolving existing systems, the technical problems of migrating complex legacy systems to new technology, and the difficulties of designing and implementing novel business processes in the context of existing structures, strategies and systems. In addition to the problems associated with legacy systems, the strategic opportunities of exploiting legacy systems are also outlined. Six related papers, which together cover the identification of the problem, planning and modelling of change, and the implementation of new systems and business processes, are described

Online Search Behavior in the Air Travel Market: Reconsidering the Consideration Set and Customer Journey Concepts

The online air travel market is a complex and dynamic multi-channel environment in which consumers use a range of decision criteria to search for their best flight options. Online Travel Agents and Price Comparison Engines have transformed the search process and enhanced market transparency. These Air Travel Intermediaries (ATIs) are sophisticated decision support tools that enable online search and booking across thousands of flight options for all users, regardless of user expertise. An experiment was conducted to explore the detailed search behavior and processes of 29 individuals. A revised model of the customer journey as search funnel and a different operationalization of the consideration set is described that are more realistic representations of actual search behavio