Place Brand Co-Creation through Storytelling: Benefits, Risks and Preconditions

Co-creation in place branding is used as an umbrella term for the complex brand meaning emerging through stakeholders’ participation in place activities, their contribution, collaborations and interchange of ideas and resources. Co-creation is often an aspiration for places to create and promote their brands collectively. In this context, storytelling—an old technique used in corporate marketing to instigate brand stakeholders’ participation—serves as a method which facilitates place brand co-creation through shared place stories. With the rise of online interactions, the chances of place stakeholders’ participation in brand meaning creation increase, and place stories are effective in allowing diverse place meanings to emerge from various stakeholders. However, when storytelling emerges as a marketing tactic, mostly from a top-down campaign, the stories are not always accepted by all place stakeholders, and they create contrasting brand meanings. The paper aims to investigate the benefits and risks of participation in “Many Voices One Town” (2018), a top-down campaign from Luton, UK, which used storytelling to instigate place brand co-creation. The campaign was created by the Luton Council with an external advertising agency. The campaign attempted to tackle the town’s segregation issues and foster community cohesion through the promotion of seven selected Lutonians’ stories about their diverse and multicultural experiences of living in Luton. The study employs a qualitative methodology to analyse the MVOT case study. Interviews with the council and participants in the campaign and netnographic data from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were used to gain an insight into residents’ participation in a top-down approach and examine the outcomes of co-creation. Residents’ participation in such a campaign shows numerous benefits but also risks for the place brand. The findings show that participation can sometimes intensify disputes about the town if people’s needs are not properly addressed. The study highlights the importance of open communication between all parties involved in the process, bringing into focus the need for careful coordination of top-down initiatives in line with stakeholders’ needs. It also demonstrates the ‘power of the people’ in the sense that stakeholder engagement with the shared stories led to negative outcomes that were not predicted by the Council.

Enhancing the Retailer Gift Card via Blockchain

Though the retailer gift card has been an ultra-practical marketing tactic to attract customers to spend more, it, on the contrary, also places a great number of customers in troublesome situations due to its current limitations. First, dealing with unwanted gift cards is often time-consuming, costly, or even risky due to the frequent occurrences of gift card resale frauds. Worse still, the issuance and redemption of gift cards happen inside the retailer as in a “black-box,” indicating that a compromised retailer can cheat customers (or even third-party auditors) to deny the issuances of some unredeemed gift cards. This paper proposes a practical middle-layer solution based on blockchain to address the fundamental issues of the existing gift card system, with incurring minimal changes to the current infrastructure.

A Vote of Competence: How a Similar Upbringing to Political Candidates Influences Voting Choice

A common strategy employed by political leaders to win elections is to establish similarity with their constituents. This article extends previous research on this approach in several ways. First, the authors test and confirm the commonly used, but underresearched, political marketing tactic of highlighting similarity with constituents through upbringing characteristics. Second, given the debate about why the similarity-voting effect occurs, the authors aimed to establish causality of the effect. They found that perceived competence and liking both mediate this relationship in the context of similar upbringing. Finally, the positive effect of similar upbringing only holds for those with average and above-average self-perceptions of political skills, meaning that this approach would not be effective for some inexpert voting populations. By understanding the mechanism behind the similarity-voting effect in the context of similar upbringing, in addition to its important caveat, political marketers can approach campaigns in a more informed manner.

Firm receptivity regarding marketplace vs political ties

PurposePrior research has examined the sociopolitical force as simply a part of all types of environmental pressures, yet we argue that this force calls for a unique examination of marketing's role in firm responses to sociopolitical pressures. Understanding the degree to which firms attempt to manage forces and pressures in the external business environment is key to understanding marketing's role in impeding vs aiding public policy initiatives, and is the problem this research investigates.Design/methodology/approachUsing structural equation modeling, data from 71 firms demonstrate that managing the sociopolitical force is, in fact, distinct from managing the other four market-based forces – consumer demand, supplier power, competition and technological shifts. Managing the sociopolitical force is shown to require fundamentally different skills and resources.FindingsResults suggest that firm sociopolitical receptivity drives attempts to influence this unique external business environmental force, in turn limiting marketplace sociopolitical receptivity. Furthermore, attempts to influence such a unique force relies on resource-light marketing resources, which limits resource-heavy marketing.Originality/valueManaging a political force with marketplace ramifications involves strategy that utilizes marketing, but is driven by relationships with social and political agents. This is truly an environmental management concept distinct from the management of the other four market-based forces. The analysis in this study demonstrates that managing another environmental force (i.e. competition force) involves different receptivity influences and marketing tactic outcomes.

Engagement in Cause-Related Marketing Reduces Pro-Environmental Behaviors

A prevailing marketing tactic, called cause-related marketing (CRM), involves donating to a charity contingent on consumer purchases. Building on moral licensing theory, the current research identifies a negative effect of engagement in CRM on consumers’ subsequent pro-environmental behaviors through two studies. Study 1 ( N = 100) established that people act in less eco-friendly ways (i.e., consuming more water) after engaging in CRM that is associated with environmental benefits. Study 2 ( N = 301) verified the above results in a larger sample and further revealed that even though engaging in CRM has no apparent environmental benefits, it also reduces the probability of behaving in environmentally friendly ways (i.e., choosing a low-carbon mode of transportation). Overall, the current research shows that the effects of CRM could spill over from the consumption domain into the environmental domain, calling attention to the net environmental effect of CRM.

Use of Mobile Advergame as Brand Communication Tool

The new and creative marketing strategies came into existence to attract consumers towards the brand by marketing agencies. One of these innovative marketing tools is mobile advergame which is observed as an attractive marketing tactic to enhance product awareness. The present study aims to identify the use of mobile advergame as a brand communication tool in Malaysia. A total of 366Malaysian gamers were taken into consideration as respondents of this study. A structured online based questionnaire wasdesigned for the study and self-brand congruity measurement was adopted to measure an association between consumer’s self-image and characteristics of brand’s value among gamers. The participants were asked about their experiences related to the advertisements occurred during the game. The findings revealed a positive relationship between self-brand congruity’s brand recall, brand attitude and purchase intention, entertainment brand recall, and brand attitude. As the main purpose of mobile advergame is to enhance the brand awareness; therefore, a consistency between the product and game content should be identified by the advertising company.

Consumer responses to shopper solutions in service settings

Purpose Retailers are continuously seeking to improve upon the in-store shopping experience for their customers. The present research aims to examine consumers’ responses to one such initiative – the shopper solution – that, despite its growing marketplace prominence, remains largely unexamined in academic literature. Design/methodology/approach Two studies employed a 2(shopper solution: present vs. absent) between-subjects design. MANOVA and regression analyses were used to test hypothesized relationships. Findings Findings across two studies reveal that the presence (vs absence) of solutions positively influenced shoppers’ perceptions of shopping convenience, as well as their purchase intentions. These favorable effects also extended to the provider in higher word-of-mouth and loyalty intentions. Shopping convenience was identified as the mechanism underlying the impact of solutions, while “smart shopper” self-perceptions were shown to moderate these mediating effects. Practical implications Shopper solutions represent a low-cost, in-store marketing tactic that enhances shopping convenience. They are easy to implement, result in little to no overhead costs and can benefit both shoppers and retailers. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research represents the first academic examination of the impact of shopper solutions. The authors identify key mediating and moderating influences of the effects of solutions.

eSports Sponsorship

Previous chapters have articulated that eSports has arrived and is worth deep investigation and consideration. Billions of participants, a competitive gaming market, technology advances, and celebrity athletes are among many other positive characteristics. As seen in other properties with characteristics like this, sponsorship becomes a viable revenue source as brands are able to reach engaged consumers/fans and seek to achieve their own business objectives. This chapter introduces the marketing tactic of sponsorship, applies and examines it in eSports and assesses its future potential.

Upliftment of OTC Medicines Towards Innovative Marketing Strategies

Now a day, self- medication is becoming most easiest way for consumer. In spite of visiting doctors by spending their time and money for their minor illness many consumer has chosen to consume over-the-counter medicines (OTC). In order to capture these consumers the pharmaceutical company is using various marketing strategies to promote their company OTC medicines. The marketing strategy is an essential tool to promote their OTC medicine in an effective way. The purpose of this paper stands to explain the different types of marketing tactic used by the pharmaceutical company to detain in the market. This article also elaborates about OTC medicines, marketing strategies, advertising, promotion and its impact.

The impact of customer equity drivers on loyalty intentions among Chinese banking customers

PurposeThe implementation of customer equity drivers (CED) as a crucial marketing tactic to surge customer loyalty intentions has received a considerable importance in the literature. However, most of the research done in the past has mainly centralized around western societies. To make it even more interesting is the fact that the significance of customer emotions has been ignored by the previous studies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper to explore the impacts of CED on loyalty intentions along with exploring the moderating role of customer emotions (positive emotions and negative emotions).Design/methodology/approachA sample of 661 Chinese banking customers was collected by making the use of store-intercept survey design. The gathered data were then utilized to empirically validate the proposed model by making the use of hierarchical moderated regression.FindingsLoyalty intentions were found to be driven by emotions of Chinese banking customers. Consequently, in order to better forecast the loyalty intentions of the customers, the emotional aspect is vital and therefore should be incorporated along with other cognitive aspects (value equity, brand equity and relationship equity).Practical implicationsThe managers of the banks should make every effort to make the visit of their customers as pleasant as possible as the emotional responses of customers have a significant impact on the formation of loyalty intentions.Originality/valueThe current study holds its unique contribution by including emotions in the service-oriented settings.