FRIENDVERTISING

In today's world, a shift from conventional to digitalized marketing is increasing in the investment made in the commercial sector. This particular study analyses the growing influence of a new online advertising strategy called “FRIENDVERTISING” pertaining to social media marketing. Thereby, this chapter conducts a content analysis to investigate how social networks are interacting with each other and how consumers are oriented to certain brands advertised in a specific way. According to the results, the brands that motivate the youth to share their own advertisements in the social media more frequently receive more positive comments about their advertisements. One should decide on the following crucial criteria while applying friendvertising practices: cultural background of audience, frequency of social media use, referring to other friends in social media (being knowledgeable and reliable about the brand), expectations of users and their previous experiences about the brand, creativity of advertisements, originality and entertaining content of advertisements, genre, as well as difficulties and opportunities of the field.

G2C Marketing

Public administration has been challenged by “new public management” and “government redesign” paradigms. In addition, the relationship between government and citizen has been changed dramatically based on the mentioned paradigm shift. Customer orientation in the public sector is one of the changes originated from the private sector’s principles and paradigms. Nowadays, scholars emphasize applying concepts and techniques of customer orientation in e-government. In this text, firstly, customer orientation and its importance in government activities, especially e-government, is described. Then, principles, applications, and experiences of citizen relationship management as a technique of customer-oriented governments are described.

Virtual Marketing

For the last two decades, virtuality and virtualization processes have been considered as developing phenomena in management studies, particularly within the context of the creation of inter- and intra-organizational networks, establishing strong relationships with customers and the appreciation of intangible assets in marketing. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the main directions of virtualized marketing and present the detailed changes that occur in marketing due to extensive and intensive Internet usage and the directions of network technology development and its impact on prospective marketing activities. The proposed analyses help to understand the multifaceted impact of the Internet on marketing—its concept, activities, and organization—going much beyond simple “e-marketing” perspective. The presented conclusions can be of significant value for both researchers and marketers. It can particularly influence further research on the relationship between the marketing virtualization and the company’s performance, showing the real impact of such processes on the effectiveness and efficiency of a company. The final conclusions will be interesting to marketing managers, who in the cybermarketing era have to deal with new challenges of collaboration, customers’ engagement, and value network creation.

E-Service Marketing

In the cyber era, the extension of the information economy and electronic networks has caused the shifting of the economy from goods to services and emerging e-service marketing. The synthesis of Internet marketing and services marketing has formed this new area of marketing. This chapter starts with introducing e-service marketing and comparing components of traditional and electronic services marketing. The click-only and click-and-mortar business models are described as types of e-tailing. Afterward, the paradigm shift from traditional e-commerce to e-service is investigated. In order to measure of e-service quality, some scales are discussed. Finally, the chapter suggests 7Cs of the customer interface in e-service marketing.

Cross-Cultural Management

This chapter seeks to impart understanding of cross-cultural management, so as to be able to relate it to managerial activity in the new geoeconomy. The contents provide exposure to the diverse management styles across the globe and impart understanding of different approaches to comparative analysis of each management style. It provides knowledge of mechanics of doing business abroad. This chapter also introduces the importance of business ethics and how it pertains to social responsibility of cross-cultural managers and the role ethics play in the management of transnational companies. In today’s world, it is imperative that the managers possess the ability to integrate and apply concepts about managing in different work cultures. Cross-cultural management has significant applications with regard to influencing the customer experience. Cross cultural management and customer experience management can hence be mutually collaborative disciplines for organizations and these twin concepts can further become organizational assets. Online communities can be useful tools for cyber marketing and customer experience management by being good collaboration enablers.

Online Customer Satisfaction at Point-of-Purchase and Post-Purchase Phases

Consumers worldwide are showing great interest in e-commerce and many believe that e-commerce plays a significant part in the global economy. Selling apparel online is one example of this e-commerce impact. Although many studies investigated satisfaction in an online shopping setting, none of these studies examined it distinctly at point-of-purchase and post-purchase phases. Hence, this study proposes an improved model for measuring customer satisfaction by considering it at point-of-purchase phase and post-purchase phase.

Social Network Marketing

This chapter reviews the specific character of marketing in Internet social networks from three different perspectives. The first concentrates on creating customer value in social networks. The focus of the second part is on a conceptual model of customer relationship management, which consists of five stages: defining, generating, communicating and delivering values for customer, as well as creating value for a company. The competitive actions taken by social networks are the subject of the third part of the chapter.

SMS Marketing

This chapter seeks to extend current knowledge relating to innovative methods in marketing. The authors consider the significance of SMS marketing amongst Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) within South Africa and aim to emphasise the various advantages of SMS marketing to SMEs within emerging economies. They look at how SMS marketing has emerged within the Western world and how it could be just as successful in emerging economies. Different factors are considered such as the background to SMS marketing, what SMS marketing entails, the trends of SMS marketing globally and more specifically within South Africa. The authors then discuss the emergent key themes of SMS marketing relating to its most beneficial characteristics such as cost efficiency, reach, and consumer perceptions. The findings offer significant insight into how SMEs can better understand consumer perceptions about SMS and in turn employ SMS marketing as a source of sustainable competitive advantage.

Recovery Strategies in On-Line Service Failure

Despite a proliferation of a number of studies on service failures and recovery in e-service settings, there is a paucity of knowledge of ways in which service failures and recovery practices are implemented in the fashion industry. Drawing on constructivist perspective, this study offers a new perspective on an effective relational mechanism that would bridge the rupture between consumers and companies particularly in the on-line fashion sector. The analysis adds to studies on service failures and recovery by elucidating recovery strategies relevant to retailers’ operations in on-line environments. This analysis advances knowledge of on-line service failures and recovery in the UK fashion industry. Findings indicate that consumer expectations of service failures and recovery are context driven, which requires companies to fine-tune their recovery strategies to improve recovery satisfaction.

Climate Information Sources (CISs) and Tourist Satisfaction

In recent years, the excellent status of tourism industry and its role on social-economical development has caused more attention to be paid to tourism’s various dimensions in countries, especially developing countries. Publicity and advertizing have significant influence on the sustainable growth of the tourism industry. In addition, the information sources can help tourism. That is why quality of the publicity and information sources are seriously considered by deputies and planners of the tourism sector for marketing of the tourism industry. It seems that the role of Climate Information Sources (CISs) on the tourism industry is more critical than other resources. This research is a descriptive survey study that investigates the satisfaction of CISs quality of foreign tourists in order to attract tourists to Iran. In this chapter, CISs are divided into two main categories: Website sources and printed sources. The two sources are investigated in the aspects of attractiveness, motivating/ influencing, usefulness, validity, user-friendliness, and usefulness. The results show that CISs quality of printed and Website sources are satisfactory from the viewpoint of Iran's foreign tourists. In addition, quality of CISs are good in the aspect of motivating/influencing, but they are not in good condition from the aspects of user-friendliness and usefulness.