Volume 9 (2021-22)

Each volume of Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing consists of four 100-page issues in both print and online.

The articles published in Volume 9 are listed below.

Volume 9 Number 4

  • Editorial
    Simon Beckett, Publisher, Journal of Digital Social Media Marketing
  • Papers
    Social storytelling in a post-pandemic world: Four content pillars to build relevant authenticity with today’s social consumer
    Valerie Morrow, Manager of Social Media, Dairy Farmers of America

    This paper examines the recent shift in consumer expectations vis-à-vis brands in the social media space, with a focus on how brand authenticity influences brand loyalty and purchasing decisions. Having discussed the application of Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm to social media storytelling, the paper uses a case study of Dairy Farmers of America — the United States’ largest dairy cooperative — to define the four content pillars brands can use to increase their authenticity and humanise their brands through social media.
    Keywords: social storytelling, content strategy, brand engagement, authentic marketing, post-pandemic social media

  • Are your social media posts hitting the bullseye?
    Loran Jarrett, Instructor and Sajeev Varki, Associate Professor, University of South Florida

    Business-to-business firms are increasingly using social media to engage with their customers and develop their relationship with them. As such, firms must be able to gauge the performance of their social media posts against defined marketing objectives. This paper presents a methodology to determine how well companies are meeting their social media objectives at each stage of the relationship life cycle. This methodology adopts the proportional reduction in loss reliability measure developed by Rust and Cooil. Using this measure, the paper provides a step-by-step template for marketers to evaluate their social media content in light of set social media objectives.
    Keywords: relationship quality, relationship life cycle, relationship marketing, social media, business to business

  • Communication in a world of change: Engaging healthcare professionals through Twitter
    Stefania Alvino, Digital Orchestrator and Omni-channel Marketing Manager, Daiichi Sankyo

    This paper provides an overview of how marketers in the pharmaceutical industry can use Twitter to raise the visibility of their companies through, for example, disease awareness campaigns and contests for healthcare professionals, who can in turn use Twitter to increase their visibility, expand their network and keep themselves up to date with events in real time. As this paper demonstrates, leveraging Twitter’s considerable potential requires not only knowledge of the key rules but also a pinch of creativity.
    Keywords: digital transformation, social network, Twitter, digital communication, network, doctor, digital presence, digital reputation, digital ecosystem, visibility, digital marketing

  • Narcissists’ perceived compatibility with social media content: The moderating role of psychological capital
    Benjamin K. Wright, Professorial Lecturer, American University, Brian D. Webster, Associate Professor of Management and Imran Syed, Assistant Professor of Management, Ball State University

    This paper examines the responses of narcissists to social media content that conveys narcissistic qualities. Drawing from the literature on person–organisation fit, the study hypothesises that personality congruence between the individual and the content of a social media post will be associated with a favourable perception of the organisation’s image. Moreover, it suggests that narcissists with high levels of psychological capital perceive more favourable images of the organisation. A sample of 445 participants viewed the experimental manipulation and completed measures of narcissism, psychological capital, organisational image and person–organisation fit. Results from the study highlight the importance of understanding the congruence between consumer and organisational characteristics when forming organisational perceptions, and hence the importance of considering both ‘dark’ and ‘positive’ psychological traits simultaneously when examining attitudes and perceptions.
    Keywords: social media marketing, digital marketing, narcissism, psychological capital, organisational image

  • Hidden online customer journey: How unseen activities affect media mix modelling and multichannel attribution
    Arkadiusz Zaremba, Managing Director, Otomoto KLIK

    The purpose of this paper is to verify the impact of missing the earned media and category media in multichannel conversion attribution models on digital media budget allocation. The analysis is based on a very unique approach: 532 users who declared their will to purchase a selected product in the next 3–5 months agreed to install special addons on all their devices connected to the Internet. These devices will register all the users’ activities throughout three months. All user activities on the path to purchase were extracted by means of text mining (URL analysis) techniques. Finally, 5,171 activities were found and assigned to particular media areas and media channels. The average user spends 20 per cent of their time in the paid media and owned media areas. However, from the point of view of the number of touchpoints, 29 per cent of the activities occur in these two areas. The obtained results clearly show how much of consumers’ activity in the decision-making process is beyond the control of marketers who, on the basis of this partial data, have to make daily decisions about allocating advertising budgets. The study compared the results of conversion attribution for the full funnel (paid media, owned media, earned media, category media) with the conversion attribution based only on paid media and owned media. The results indicate that not all attribution models lead to similar conclusions in both approaches.
    Keywords: decision making, media planning, measures, budgeting, multichannel attribution

  • Micro-influencer marketing during the pandemic: New vistas or the end of an era?
    Michael Gerlich, Lecturer, Anglia Ruskin University

    As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses have incurred losses or shut down entirely. At the same time, however, COVID-19 has ushered in new opportunities for some people, notably micro-influencers, whose low overheads make them extremely appealing to companies whose advertising budgets have taken a hit. According to the popular literature, micro-influencers have much greater credibility than popular celebrities and mega-influencers. The findings presented in this study, however, suggest otherwise. Specifically, this study uses both quantitative and qualitative approaches to analyse the results of a survey involving 1,012 participants from Italy, France and Germany, and finds that micro-influencers who are not known personally to their followers have only a minor influence on purchase behaviour.
    Keywords: micro-influencer, influencer marketing, consumer behaviour, consumer psychology, social media marketing, marketing

Volume 9 Number 3

  • Editorial
    Simon Beckett, Publisher, Journal of Digital Social Media Marketing
  • Case studies
    How social media influencers helped the NYC public health system raise awareness of COVID-19 testing among historically disadvantaged populations
    Carmen Boon, External Affairs Vice President, Food Bank For NYC and Emily Golloub, Assistant Director of Communications, NYC Health + Hospitals

    In August of 2020, NYC Health + Hospitals launched an awareness raising campaign with the primary call-to-action to get New Yorkers tested for COVID-19 often. With the primary goal of targeting women, LGBTQ+, some ethnic minorities and other historically disadvantaged populations, a culturally competent campaign was developed. The campaign required the health system to partner with four 360 marketing agencies certified as Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises (MWBEs). Barriers to the success of this campaign included high advertising costs due to competing with election advertising, changes in the TikTok algorithms and preconceived ideas and/or hesitancy towards testing. Through creative influencer-focused marketing, NYC Health + Hospitals was able to successfully implement a multimedia and multiplatform campaign harnessing media personalities, influencers and celebrities with over 12 million combined followers and the effect that they have on like-populations.
    Keywords: influencers; public health campaign; COVID-19; New York City; minority populations; behavioural change communications; Test & Trace

  • Scaling up CRM in a high-growth business
    Catherine Allan, Director of CRM, Jim McCarthy-Cheung, Senior CRM Manager and Veronika Usmanova, Senior CRM Manager, Babylon

    There are a wealth of potential tools, techniques and data that a digital customer relationship management (CRM) team can use to add value to an organisation, yet it can be extremely hard to get all the required data, tracking and systems in place to scale at speed, especially when working within a high-growth business. This paper details how the CRM team at Babylon took the CRM function from one person sending a monthly email newsletter to a global business unit which utilises data-driven personalisation and automation across multiple channels to deliver key business results; all within 30 months, and during a time when Babylon itself doubled in size and value, and added new international markets to its offering. The team went through four key phases: Getting Started; Test and Learn; Scaling Up; and Optimising.
    Keywords: CRM; email marketing; push notifications; app engagement; membership marketing; tracking data

  • How putting the customer at the heart of everything can supercharge growth
    Julie Zhou, VP of Growth Marketing, AdRoll

    Building great technology or products only gets you so far. Customers expect more. They expect relationships as well as results. So if you do not know your customers and they do not know you, there will come a time when they start to disengage and your growth will start to plateau. And if you do not know the signals and how to act on them, then you are going to be in trouble. Using AdRoll as a case study we will talk about how to identify this and the steps you can take and the operating principles you need to embrace to ensure everyone is your customer now and into the future.
    Keywords: growth; business growth; customer marketing; relationship marketing; content plan

  • Practice papers
    The experience economy: Post COVID-19, brands need to refocus on customer experience
    Chelsea Perino, Managing Director of Global Marketing & Communications, The Executive Centre

    To survive in a post COVID-19 era, organisations are going to have to change the way they operate, communicate, develop and deliver products. This article examines the importance of developing meaningful and transparent relationships between consumers and brands, the strategy shifts necessary to do business in a very different economic environment, and what the organisation of the future could look like.
    Keywords: consumer experience; consumer journey; branding; experience; communications strategy; relationship management; COVID-19; peak-end theory

  • Future-proofing your digital measurement for the post-cookie era
    Allan Tinkler, Head of Platform Development and Lead for Privacy and Identity, Quantcast

    After Google’s most recent announcement, third-party cookies are expected to be fully deprecated from all web browsers in mid-2023, when market-leading Google Chrome joins Apple’s Safari and other browsers in no longer recognising the bits of code placed on web browsers that help companies understand consumer behaviour across the internet. As such, the trusted open internet will lose its current basis for advertising campaign measurement and attribution. The primary way in which advertisers and publishers currently derive insights into ad effectiveness will go away, impacting everything from how brands decide to spend their advertising budgets and grow their businesses, to how publishers fund themselves and survive in the future and how valuable the internet is for consumers around the world. Despite the extended timeline (the change was originally scheduled for January 2022), the countdown is still on for the industry to adapt. So, what will the future of advertising on the open internet look like? How will consumer consent be recognised and success be measured? And what actions do advertisers need to take now to get ready for the change? This paper will address important factors to consider, and why identity solutions, consumer privacy and first-party data should be at the heart of advertiser contingency plans.
    Keywords: cookies; digital advertising; online publishing; data privacy

  • Content that converts: How to co-create powerful video stories that keep audiences engaged all year long
    Michael Hoffman, CEO, Gather Voices

    At a time when trust in brands and institutions is low, the growing preference for content that is authentic, passion-driven and human-centric is accelerating. It is no longer enough to simply create and curate high-quality content consistently. To cut through the noise in the crowded digital landscape, organisations must find ways to invite the community to join in the conversation. People demand to be active participants in organisations’ content, not passive consumers of it. User-generated video offers a powerful means for organisations to achieve these goals. By collaborating with the real people at the heart of its mission to produce authentic user-generated video content, an organisation delivers content that people actually want to engage with. This paper examines how: 1) communication preferences and digital marketing trends are reshaping the future of community engagement, 2) to use the Hero’s Journey framework to tell video stories that resonate and drive real results and 3) simple steps to get started with user-generated video.
    Keywords: video marketing; user-generated video; user-generated content; engagement; authenticity; content marketing; content co-creation

  • The social economy: monetising the transactional nature of social media
    Melanie Shreffler, VP Strategy & Cultural Insights and Amber McCullough, VP Strategy & Insights, empatiX Consulting

    The value proposition of social media for the many people who spend time on such platforms has evolved from being spaces to find, follow and interact with one’s friends to being platforms that provide acceptance and a sense of closeness among strangers. This shift became more apparent in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic; with loneliness on the rise, social media has become the de facto answer to a looming crisis by offering a welcoming virtual community at one’s fingertips. Influencers and individual creators are capitalising on this shift, building businesses and monetising their followings — and brands have the opportunity to do the same with their communities. Gone are the days of finding it strange to pay for social content or ‘chip in’ to a creator — apps like Venmo and Cash App have made it easier than ever to send money in a way that feels like you are simply supporting a friend. This new era of monetising social transactions is not only for the little guys, but big brands have also entered the fray by tapping into micro influencers and leveraging social selling techniques that feel more intimate and personal, even in a digital environment. Readers of the article will gain an understanding of transactional trends that are occurring in the social space. As social platforms continue to evolve it is imperative to understand the impacts to all players to better prepare for the future.
    Keywords: influencers; microinfluencers; creators; community; monetisation; transactions; tipping

  • Maximising the impact of A/B testing
    Narayan Keshavan, Head of Digital Analytics (Customer Sentiment), Dell Technologies

    Experimentation is widely used by many organisations to test and validate ideas and hypotheses. While there are many resources that give comprehensive information about experimentation in terms of the tools, infrastructure and set up, this paper focuses on aspects beyond those. It describes the three C’s of experimentation—Culture, Connect and Clarity, that are critical for the success of an experimentation programme. It starts with an overview of the experimentation approach followed at Dell Technologies. It uses examples of actual A/B tests to articulate how these three pillars are essential to maximise the impact of experimentation. Many organisations with significant resources devoted to A/B and multivariate testing might fail to derive the potential benefits due to shortcomings in one or many of these aspects.
    Keywords: experimentation; A/B testing; conversion rate optimisation; user experience; user experience insights

  • Research papers
    Lite app adoption and cannibalisation
    Tianfu Wang, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Yam B. Limbu, Professor of Marketing and Junzhou Zhang, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Feliciano School of Business, Montclair State University

    Over the past few years, firms have increasingly adopted mobile applications (ie apps) to reach and serve their customers. More recently, the trend for simplified versions of these apps (ie lite apps) has been growing. To date, little is known about how the adoption of lite apps affects customer usage across different online channels. To address this gap in the literature, this study conducts empirical analysis to examine whether the adoption of a new lite app increases or cannibalises customer spending/transactions on a company’s existing app and across all channels. Econometric analysis is performed using a unique dataset obtained from an online platform where merchants offer daily deals to their customers. The market shock induced by the platform’s introduction of a lite app provides an opportunity to examine customers’ adoption and usage of a lite app. The difference-in-differences models coupled with dynamic propensity score matching reveal that the lite app channel cannibalises the original app channel. Moreover, the lite app adoption does not improve existing customers’ total contribution across all online channels. These findings provide important implications for firms to manage mobile apps effectively.
    Keywords: app; adoption; cannibalisation; channel interdependency

  • Money on the table: Increasing revenue through menu order
    Steven C. Huff, Associate Professor of Marketing, Utah Valley University

    This research investigates the relationship between menu order and restaurant revenue. It finds that while uncommon, menus listing items in descending price order may provide more revenue to online retailers than other, more common, menu orderings. These findings are drawn from a field experiment conducted in a single restaurant with upscale clientele. In the experiment, menu order was manipulated (eg ascending or descending by price) across conditions. Analysis of daily subtotals revealed that diners’ choices were influenced by menu order, with diners spending over 10 per cent more on purchases from descending menus than ascending menus. This result suggests that restaurateurs may be experiencing suboptimal revenues when they post menus in ascending or random/ aesthetic order (which is standard practice), and that by posting menus listing items in descending price order, or posting a high-priced item at the top of their menus, they might be able improve their profits.
    Keywords: e-commerce; menu design; menu order; willingness to pay; anchoring and adjustment; references prices

Volume 9 Number 2

  • Editorial
    Simon Beckett, Publisher, Journal of Digital Social Media Marketing
  • Papers:
    How L’Oreal adopted new technologies to scale personalisation, adapt to new customer demands and evolve into the top beauty tech company
    JaKenna Gilbert, Nordic Group Digital Director, L’Oréal Denmark

    Across the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive — and likely long-lasting — impact on commercial and consumer trends. For companies specialising in consumer packaged goods and traditionally reliant on physical stores for the majority of their sales, success is no longer about staying relevant, but rather on preparing for a world where significant portions of their business will emanate from e-commerce. With brick-and-mortar sales declining and consumers becoming more tech-savvy, this paper argues that beauty companies (both large and small) must look to advanced ways for customers to discover, consider and purchase beauty products. By way of illustration, the paper describes how L’Oréal embarked on a programme of digital transformation that would prepare it to outlast the current context and continue to advance in spite of a challenging market.
    Keywords: beauty tech, virtual-try-on, digital services, digital marketing, consumer behaviour, digital transformation, innovation

  • Using social media benchmarking to inform strategy
    Casper Vahlgren, Senior Strategist, Falcon.io, Denmark

    With the continued growth of social media, there is an increasing volume of data available for marketers to measure, understand and use to compare the performance of one company with that of its competitors. This article outlines how social media benchmarking can be used to create performance targets for social media and measure the related key performance indicators. It also discusses how these benchmarks can be used to analyse the need and potential for market penetration. Finally, it outlines how marketers can use competitive benchmarking to deliver insights around competitor strategies and content approaches, as well as the potential hazards when doing so.
    Keywords: Benchmarking, strategy, market penetration, marketing strategy, positioning, social media marketing, social media content, white space

  • Behind a success story: How the NFL used digital marketing to grow a mainstream sports audience in the UK
    Jamie King, Director of Social Media & Digital Content Strategy, NFL International and Lewis Wiltshire, CEO, Seven League

    The US National Football League (NFL) staged its first regular season game in London in 2007. Since then, London has hosted 28 games, featuring 31 of the 32 teams that make up the NFL. These games have provided local relevance in the market, while the season-long marketing approach taken by the NFL has grown the fanbase to the point where the UK can be considered ‘franchise-ready’ for an NFL team to move there at some point. This paper looks at how the NFL has used digital and social media marketing to appeal to this strong fanbase while continuing to bring in new audiences and deliver high levels of growth, with a view to making American football a mainstream sport in the UK.
    Keywords: social media marketing, digital marketing, NFL, sport marketing, digital, social media

  • Ethical design: Persuasion, not deception
    Jeanette R. van der Lee, PhD student, Utrecht University and Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets, Dries Cuijpers, Senior Enforcement Official, Mareille de Bloois, Behavioural Scientist, Jessanne Mastop, Senior Behavioural Scientist, Winnie van Heesch, Senior Enforcement Official, Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets and Elianne F. van Steenbergen, Professor, Utrecht University

    Companies are continuously developing and refining techniques to influence the online consumer. There is, however, a fine line between persuasion and deception. This article discusses the boundaries of online persuasion, drawing on the guidelines developed by the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets. It describes the pitfalls associated with knowledge disparity between sellers and consumers, and argues that information asymmetry, cognitive biases and personalised communications can all impair the ability of consumers to make an informed choice. Using real-life examples, the article demonstrates how the design of online sales environments can go wrong. The article goes on to describe the benefits of ethical design, and provides guidance on how to make ethical design choices and use consumer data to test whether the design of an online environment is unfairly influencing consumers. Using these guidelines, marketing professionals can make thoughtful choices in the design of their online environment that will benefit both their company and its customers.
    Keywords: cognitive biases, consumer protection, dark patterns, online marketing ethics, unfair commercial practices, fairness by design

  • Managing the business-to-business customer’s experience using engagement insights
    Xenthe Bang, Global Customer Experience Director, S&P Global Ratings

    Digital transformation has made today’s business environment more global, dynamic, complex and competitive. Customers have higher expectations than ever and are more likely to interact with firms through a wide range of omni-channel touch points. To remain relevant and target growth effectively, business practitioners must leverage these omni-channel engagement insights and deliver efficiently with agile and innovative execution. In the business-to-business (B2B) professional services environment, where the business relationship traditionally hinges on service, how does the customer’s experience across the firm’s human and digital touch points ultimately impact their engagement with the firm? Leveraging the fundamental propositions of Brodie’s customer engagement framework, service-dominant logic and its associated lexicon, this paper presents a management approach that focuses on customer engagement as a business outcome and discusses the associated challenges particular to practitioners in B2B professional services organisations.
    Keywords: customer experience, customer engagement, SD logic, business-to-business professional services, touch points, omni-channel

  • Digital engagement strategies in a pandemic
    Seanice Lojede, Group CEO, Blu Flamingo Digital

    This paper discusses Blu Flamingo Digital’s approach to digital marketing in a pandemic, examining the trends that have emerged and how the ecosystem has changed, along with solutions to mitigate the risk of not understanding how these developments are affecting consumer behaviour. More than anything else, however, the paper stresses the importance of flexibility, that is learning to adapt to an evolving situation without losing sight of one’s original goals.
    Keywords: new normal, digital marketing strategies, pandemic, digital strategy, new media, e-commerce, PPC, digital engagement strategies, SEO, CRO, search terms, mobile traffic

  • What are consumers saying online about your products? Mining the text of online reviews to uncover hidden features
    Miriam Alzate, PhD candidate, Marta Arce-Urriza, Associate Professor of Marketing and Javier Cebollada, Professor of Marketing, Public University of Navarre

    Thanks to the growth of the internet and the increasing use of social networks, companies can now access huge volumes of online texts in order to understand consumers’ preferences and needs. This article illustrates some methods to extrapolate information from such texts. The text-mining analysis covers such issues as word frequency, sentiment analysis, paired words, similarities in textual content and the main topics discussed in online reviews. From a practical point of view, brand managers can use the proposed methods to gain consumer insights into products and brands, to be able to improve and adapt their marketing strategies.
    Keywords: eWOM, online reviews, text mining, sentiment analysis, topic modelling

Volume 9 Number 1

  • Editorial
    Simon Beckett, Publisher, Journal of Digital Social Media Marketing
  • Papers:
    The US Army’s path to virtual recruiting
    Xeriqua Garfinkel, Public Affairs Officer and Shauna M. Clark, Digital Media Program Manager, US Army Recruiting Command

    The US Army is currently undergoing a multi-year process of adopting virtual techniques to recruit its target market. When the world pivoted to social isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Army easily adapted to the new environment. The US Army Recruiting Command, responsible for marketing the Army and processing new recruit packets, focused on leveraging virtual tools, social media intelligence analysis, and adapting its traditional culture of in-person recruiting to a more online, story-centric and visual content recruiting effort. The COVID environment expedited the expansion of virtual recruiting practices from just marketing to include most of the job application process, traditionally completed in-person. The result is an engaged online following that is reaching the target audience who are eligible for military service. The Army achieved its personnel end-strength goal for fiscal year 2020 despite closing 1,400 physical recruiting stations for two weeks, reopening less than 1 per cent through the summer and cancelling nearly all physical recruiting events. The Army also demonstrated its adaptation to virtual recruiting by digitally processing eligible civilians into the military while taking care of its existing force by adhering to nationwide social distancing mandates.
    Keywords: Virtual recruiting, digital media, social media marketing, online influencer, marketing strategies

  • How agencies are adapting during COVID-19
    Marco Giuliani, Content Marketer and Xenia Muntean, Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Planable

    The impact of COVID-19 has been felt by agencies, big and small, worldwide. The advent of the ongoing pandemic saw many agencies scrambling for new ways of working, as non-essential businesses closed down and workers around the world bunkered down in their homes. While much ink has been spilled on the impact that COVID-19 has had on agencies, little research has been conducted into how agencies are adapting to it. Teams have replaced meeting halls with Zoom calls and water cooler chit-chat with online, socially distanced team-building exercises. This paper explores how agencies have been affected by COVID-19, the implications, and various ways of adapting to the new economic landscape.
    Keywords: COVID-19, agencies, marketing, digital media, advertising

  • Scaling search engine visibility for franchises: A guide for multi-location brands
    Steve Wiideman, Chief Executive Officer, Wiideman Consulting Group

    Organisations with multiple brick-and-mortar locations face an array of challenges controlling and improving visibility within popular search engines such as Google and Bing. Problems stem from content development at scale to rogue franchisees or location managers competing against corporate efforts rather than working collaboratively. This article references case studies and research to provide a multi-location strategy for improving keyword rankings within blended search results, including digital maps, navigation and organic web search results.
    Keywords: SEO, SEO strategy, search engine optimisation, local marketing, franchise marketing, inbound marketing, Google, maps

  • Is offline media becoming the biggest driver of online engagement? A review of recent trends and opportunities
    Srikanth Ramachandran, Founder and Chief Executive Officer and Mehul Mandalia, Co-founder and Head of Demand Platforms, Moving Walls Holding Pte

    As advertising spend continues to shift online, out-of-home (OOH) advertising has bucked the trend by transforming itself using digital technologies. Indeed, in all types of locations, the age-old billboard is proving to be an effective driver of online engagement. This article examines how this offline channel has intertwined itself with online media and the various ways in which marketers can use it to drive digital campaign performance. It also looks at OOH’s pivotal role at different stages of the marketing funnel.
    Keywords: Out-of-home media, outdoor advertising, digital marketing, offline media, programmatic advertising, location data

  • How the study of social media data has evolved through time, putting social media insights-led actions at the heart of many organisations’ strategy
    Jackie Balchin, Senior Social Strategist, NetBase Quid

    This article reviews how the use of social media data has evolved over the last ten years. It also provides actionable tips on how social media data obtained through social media listening platforms can be analysed more efficiently, with examples of how to go beyond standard platform outputs to obtain a deeper understanding of customers. The article argues that social media data should be a guiding force for brand action and thus have a seat at the table when strategic decisions are being made. It also provides guidance on how to obtain this level of maturity.
    Keywords: Social media insights, campaign reporting, social data, social listening

  • Marketing collaborations between luxury brands and hip-hop artists: An analysis of community feedback on Instagram
    Jonas Polfuß, Professor of Brand Management and Marketing, EBC Hochschule

    Luxury fashion and hip-hop music have become intertwined, but their relationship remains conflict-ridden. This study examines the collaboration between luxury brands and rappers based on three marketing collaborations from 2019: Gucci, Fendi and Chanel. Critical user and community feedback are examined using quantitative and qualitative in-depth analyses of Instagram posts. The evaluation takes the form of an engagement and sentiment analysis, the results of which mirror previous research on hip-hop marketing and social media monitoring. This study provides insights into the opportunities and risks of lifestyle marketing in collaboration with artists.
    Keywords: Marketing, social media, Instagram, likes, user engagement, luxury brands, hip-hop, community

  • The influence of the relationship life cycle on business-to-business social media: Theory and practice
    Loran Jarrett, Instructor and Sajeev Varki, Associate Professor, Muma College of Business

    Business-to-business (B2B) firms are increasingly using social media platforms to engage with their customers as they seek to maintain and grow their relationships with customers. This study examined the social media communication objectives of B2B firms at the exploration, expansion and maturity phases of the relationship life cycle. Social media experts were interviewed regarding social media efforts and objectives. The objectives observed in practice were contrasted with theoretical recommendations of appropriate objectives at corresponding phases of the relationship. Several gaps between practice and theory were identified. Further research is necessary to better understand those social media communications objectives deemed important in practice but for which there is little theoretical support.
    Keywords: relationship quality, relationship life cycle, relationship marketing, social media, business to business