Want to Spread Your Message on Facebook?

Dr. Linchi Kwok, Syracuse University

Editor’s note: We are pleased to welcome Linchi Kwok, assistant professor of Hospitality Management in the David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics at Syracuse University, whose research interests include social media and its business implications, organizational behavior, and service operations. Dr. Kwok and Dr. Bei Yu, also of Syracuse University, published “Spreading Social Media Messages on Facebook: An Analysis of Restaurant Business-to-Consumer Communications” on September 24 in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly.

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Want to Spread Your Social Media Messages on Facebook?
This Study May Help

Being a phenomenologist and a practitioner of social media, I see Facebook as one of the most important means for B2C (business-to-consumer) communications. When a Facebook user likes, posts comments, or shares content with their Facebook credentials, an update will appear on this person’s wall, helping companies rapidly spread information. Thus, companies must pay close attention to Facebook users’ reactions to the messages they send on Facebook. Facebook users’ endorsement of a message can be very important in indicating the effectiveness of a company’s social media strategy.

Dr. Yu and I adopted the text mining techniques to identify the type(s) of Facebook that are endorsed (and thus propagated) by Facebook users. We analyzed 982 Facebook messages initiated by 10 restaurant chains and two independent operators, of which were among the top restaurants in terms of sales volume and number of Facebook fans. We found the following results: the “more popular” messages, which receive more “Likes” and comments, contain keywords about the restaurant (e.g., menu descriptions); the “less popular” messages seem to involve with sales and marketing. Dividing the messages into four media types (i.e., status, link, video, and photo), photo and status receive more “Likes” and comments. To dig further, we coded the messages into two message types, namely sales/marketing and conversational messages, which do not directly sell or promote the restaurants. As compared to sales and marketing messages, conversational messages receive more “Likes” and comments even though they only account for one third of the messages in this study. There is also a cross-effect of media type and message type on the number of comments a message received.

Based on the research findings, we outlined several detailed practical tactics in this paper to help companies improve their use of Facebook. Theoretically, the findings of this study provide ground work for developing a defined typology of Facebook messages and an automatic text classifier with the machine learning techniques.

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Click here to read the article in the OnlineFirst section of Cornell Hospitality Quarterly. Follow this link to learn more about the journal and this one to receive e-alerts about newly published articles that provide timely and actionable prescription for hospitality management practice and research.

Educating Our Future Business Leaders

target=”blank”>The Cleveland Kid (CC BY 2.0)

Do you have a paper to submit? The Journal of Marketing Education is now accepting research on ethics, corporate social responsibility, sustainability and numerous other topics, welcoming cross-functional submissions about educating our future business leaders.

About the Journal

The Journal of Marketing Education (JME) is the leading international scholarly journal devoted to contemporary issues in marketing education. Its mission is to provide a forum for the exchange of ideas, information, and experiences related to the process of educating students in marketing and its subfields. Its audience is largely composed of marketing faculty members at institutions of higher education where teaching is an integral component of their overall responsibilities.

The main function of the Journal of Marketing Education is to publish articles focusing on the latest teaching/learning strategies and tactics in marketing education. JME also publishes articles that address various professional issues of importance to marketing faculty members. The journal’s readership is international in scope with significant representation in university libraries.

Submit Papers in these Areas

JME is accepting bylined articles from experts and practitioners on a wide range of topics related to marketing education, including:

• Evaluating teaching effectiveness
• Experiential exercises
• Marketing in developing economies
• Ethics
• Student team projects

JME also plans to publish a special issue on ethics, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability in marketing education, with guest editors Victoria Crittenden and Linda Ferrell. The deadline for submissions is November 1, 2012. Please visit jmd.sagepub.com to view the special issue call for papers.

Manuscripts should be submitted electronically to the Editor, Donald R. Bacon, at mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jmed. Authors are expected to review and conform with manuscript submission guidelines prior to making a submission. Questions about the submission process should be forwarded to the Editor at dbacon@du.edu. For more information, please visit jmd.sagepub.com and click “Manuscript Submission.”

“Eclectic, Timely, and Targeted”: Philip Kotler and Bill Novelli on Social Marketing

Joelk75 (CC BY 2.0)

As the U.S. election season heats up, political marketing is everywhere. How does it interface with social marketing, which aims to change the behavior of individuals?

Management INK is pleased to announce the first SAGE-published issue of Social Marketing Quarterly (SMQ), which answers this question and more. This week, we present a special series to highlight the March 2012 edition, offering fresh perspectives on eclectic topics from the effectiveness of green marketing to the impact of a Facebook fan page. Click here to view the Table of Contents.

In the introduction, “American Politics and Social Marketing,” SMQ Editor Bill Smith talks with Philip Kotler, author of the worldwide bestseller “Marketing Management” and S.C. Johnson & Son Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at Northwestern University; and Bill Novelli, Distinguished Professor of the Practice at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. The experts discuss the “intersecting circles” of political and social marketing and what we can learn from them:

Americans are getting ready to purchase a new set of politicians. The two great competing companies have pilot tested their products, even as new competitors are threatening to eat into the market share of the brand leaders. Segmentation research is guiding each party’s marketing strategy while continuous polling and focus grouping are keeping both campaigns agile. Ten of millions are being spent on new media and old media in the race to price and promote the two dominant product extensions.

As we inaugurated a new publisher for the Quarterly, this seems like a good time to reflect with two of social marketing’s iconic figures, Phil Kotler and Bill Novelli, on the interface between political and social marketing.

We’re not interested in picking the winners and losers, or which political party is doing better than the other. We want to talk about the process of modern political marketing and what we can learn from it that might be useful to us in social marketing.

Read the whole conversation here—and stay tuned for more highlights from SMQ on Management INK.

Social Marketing Quarterly, peer-reviewed and published quarterly, is a scholarly, internationally circulated journal that covers theoretical, research and practical issues confronting social marketers. Published in association with FHI360, SMQ is the only journal exclusively focused on social marketing issues. SMQ targets social marketers and other public health, communication, marketing, and social science professionals with research studies, case studies, conference notices, essays, editorials, book reviews, and other relevant news regarding social marketing efforts around the world. To learn more about the journal, please click here.

Are you interested in receiving email alerts whenever a new article or issue becomes available? Then follow this link!

JSR’s Founding Editor Receives AMA Educator Award

Roland T. Rust has been awarded the 2012 American Marketing Association/Irwin/McGraw-Hill distinguished Marketing Educator Award for his distinguished service and outstanding contribution in marketing education. Among his many contributions to the field is one near and dear to the SAGE family. Dr. Rust was the founding editor of the Journal of Service Research.

Free Trial to SAGE Marketing Content

To celebrate the Winter Marketing Educators’ Conference of the American Marketing Association, SAGE is pleased to offer access to our Marketing journals via a free trial through March 19th, as well as links to our other Marketing and Management products. See below for details.

Register for a free trial to SAGE journals in Marketing and Hospitality.

Calls for Papers – View a full list of SAGE journals to read Aims & Scope and manuscript submission guidelines by journal.

SAGE Business and Management Journals, includes Marketing, in the 2010 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2011) – View highlights from the 2010 report.

SAGE Open – a new open-access publication from SAGE – publishes peer-reviewed, original research and review articles in an interactive, open access format. Articles span the full spectrum of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities.

Marketing Journals: Click to Access Marketing Journals

Marketing Journal Rankings: Read the most-viewed post on Management INK from the Journal of Marketing Education.  Source: “A Comprehensive Analysis of Marketing Journal Rankings” by Michelle D. Steward and Bruce R. Lewis.

Marketing Books: Click to Access Marketing Books

Don’t miss these new texts: International Marketing by Daniel W. Baack, Eric G. Harris and Donald Baack; and Social Marketing: Influencing Behaviors for Good, Fourth Edition by Nancy R. Lee and Philip Kotler

Management Journals:

Click to Access Management Journals

Management Books:

Click to Access Management Books

Additional Resources:

SAGE Leadership Solutions

SAGE Research Methods

We hope to see you at the AMA Winter Marketing Educators’ meeting. Whether you’re able to attend or not, feel free to use these resources with our compliments.

Examining Markets, Marketing, Consumers, and Society through Documentary Films

Russell Belk, York University, published “Examining Markets, Marketing, Consumers, and Society through Documentary Films” on August 23rd, 2011 in Journal of Macromarketing’s OnlineFirst collection. Dr. Belk kindly provided the following responses to his article.

Who is the target audience for this article?

Those with an interest in macromarketing, historical, or film research regarding markets, marketing, consumption, and society.

What inspired you to be interested in this topic?

I have been making documentary videos myself for the past 25 years and have been co-chairing a consumer research film festival for the past 10 years.

Were there findings that were surprising to you?

This is a conceptual piece trying to stir researchers to utilize documentary films in their work, so there are no findings as such.

How do you see this study influencing future research and/or practice?

I hope it opens scholars eyes to the wealth of documentary material available.  On YouTube alone there are over 150 million videos posted, many of which qualify as documentary films.  All constitute a valuable archive of consumer (and marketer) use of visual online media and are ripe for analysis.  Together with other resources identified or exemplified, the time has never been better for documentary film research.

How does this study fit into your body of work/line of research?

As noted above, I have created documentary films as well as encouraged others to make them and show them at the film festivals I have coordinated.  I am now encouraging others to make use of the growing corpus of relevant film material.

What, if anything, would you do differently if you could go back and do this study again?

If I had more pages I could go on and on about relevant films and provide many more examples.  Also after a few years the supply of available film material is not only going to be much larger, but will likely take new forms that we cannot imagine at present.

To learn more about the Journal of Macromarketing, please follow this link.

Are you interested in receiving email alerts whenever a new article or issue becomes available online? Then click here!

Visitor Centers, Collaboration, and the Role of Local Food and Beverage as Regional Tourism Development Tools

Abel Duarte Alonso, University of Western Sydney; Edith Cowan University, and Yi Liu, Curtin University, published “Visitor Centers, Collaboration, and the Role of Local Food and Beverage as Regional Tourism Development Tools: the Case Of The Blackwood River Valley in Western Australia” was published on OnlineFirst on July 14th, 2011 in the Journal of Hospitality and Travel Research. Dr. Alonso kindly provided the following thoughts on the article.

Who is the target audience for this article?

Academics, practitioners, industry bodies, in essence, the main stakeholders in the process of tourism development, marketing and management.

What inspired you to be interested in this topic?

I have a strong interest in tourism development in rural areas, and in studying its potential to be incorporated or blended with other sectors, including food and beverage.

Were there findings that were surprising to you?

Yes, for instance, the fact that to date very little has been done to promote local foods or blend this component into a more wholesome tourism experience in addition to sightseeing and outdoor activities.

How do you see this study influencing future research and/or practice?
The study offers insights that could be further studied in the region and elsewhere. An aspect of key importance would be to continue studying the developments in the region longitudinally.

How does this study fit into your body of work/line of research?

This is the line I am pursuing at the moment: Studying a region seeking to establish or develop its image as a tourism destination, as well as identifying opportunities and challenges in the successful development (and consistency) of tourism and destination marketing.

How did your paper change during the review process?

It changed in the sense that reviewers’ suggestions and constructive feedback were incorporated, for instance, consulting additional literature, exploring the theoretical foundation of the paper further and providing more thorough implications. We believe that these elements contributed to more rigour and to a better, more carefully crafted paper.

What, if anything, would you do differently if you could go back and do this study again?

Definitely, studying the perceptions of local food producers and whether they are or not currently working with visitors centres in any form could have complemented well to the data collected from visitor centres. This important aspect may be incorporated in a future study.

Glocal Conservatism

“Glocal conservatism: How marketing articulated a neo-traditional Saudi Arabian society during the first oil boom, c. 1974-1984” was published by Relli Shechter, Department of Middle East Studies, Ben-Gurion University, in the May 2011 issue of the Journal of Macromarketing. Mr. Shechter kindly provided some background on his article.

Who is the target audience for this article?

Scholars interested in globalization, marketing and socio-political change. Area-specialists on the Middle East.

What inspired you to be interested in this topic?

I was curious to learn how the making of new markets in Saudi Arabia interacted with local tradition and patriarchy.

Were there findings that were surprising to you?

That current global capitalism allows states, as opposed to individuals, to form their own unique authoritarianism.

How do you see this study influencing future research and/or practice?

This publication centers mass consumption as a source for Middle Eastern socio-political conservatism during the oil-boom and since. It should be helpful in the rewriting of regional history in light of events taking place nowadays in the Middle East.

How does this study fit into your body of work/line of research?

The article is a part of a wider research, a comparative analysis of Egypt and Saudi Arabia during the first oil boom (c. 1974-1984). For those interested please see my: “Glocal Mediators: Marketing in Egypt during the Open-Door Era (infitah).” Enterprise and Society 9:4, 762-787.

How did your paper change during the review process?

The editor, Terrence Witkowski, guided me well through the process. Under his encouragement and challenge I did further empirical research and improved on the overall argument of the article.

Sustainable Market Orientation

“Sustainable Market Orientation: A New Approach to Managing Marketing Strategy”, by Robert W. Mitchell, Ben Wooliscroft, and James Higham, all of the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand, was the most frequently read article in the Journal of Macromarketing in 2010. Ben Wooliscroft has provided a brief reflection on the article:

This paper and Rob Mitchell’s doctoral research arose from a growing frustration with conceptual models of business orientation and business success being, almost, entirely economically focussed. There is evidence of those conceptual models leading to business decisions with little regard for societal and ecological imperatives.

The conceptualisation of SMO is designed to provide a corporate strategic management framework for considering firms asfull citizens, rather than solely economic citizens.

New Journal of Marketing Education Podcast Live!

Regina Pefanis Schlee and Katrin R. Harich talk to JME Editor Doug Lincoln about their article, “Knowledge and Skill Requirements for Marketing Jobs in the 21st Century”. The article appears in the December 2010 issue of the Journal of Marketing Education. Click here to listen to the podcast.