Exam Flashcards

Question

Different strategies for different customers?

Answer 1

1. Digital dominance (Branding) Ensure that client has a presence online that positions them as the number 1 brand in their category. (returning customers; new customers) 2. Increase online sales (Performance). Use lower funnel strategies and bidding strategies to increase revenue generated through their own website. (returning customers; new customers) 3. Lifetime Value. Implement intelligent long term strategies that will help increase client retention and engagement. (returning customers)

Answer 2

Independent of channel, we should follow the same five step process. Throughout the whole process we make sure to inject data, and the end product is performance and insights combined. 1. Objective & KPI●Business objective●Optimisation KPI: Define the optimisation KPI based on the overall business objective and customer journey stage 2. Audience●Define audiences●Decide targeting: Key segments will differ depending on objective.Combine 1st and 3rd-party data to analyse and define key segments based on objective. 3. Message●Set communication●Pick formats: Build creative strategy for the audience. Test different variations and build a library of insights.Select formats compatible with objectives. 4. Data●Validate tracking●Form hypotheses: Apply measurement aligned with the objective. 5. Optimisation: Apply automation●Obsessive testing: Adapt optimisation processes and apply custom automation to drive optimisation KPI.

Answer 3

1. Audience first: A best in class audience strategy will be the centre of everything. Brand and performance objectives will not be considered in a silo - instead, we will achieve a deep understanding of how each initiative interacts with others, and most importantly, the end-users. 2. Data foundations: A lot of efforts will be put into building the best possible datainfrastructure, to enable executionon the audience strategy, with the end-user in focus. Precis will ensure best in class usage of GMP, DMP and other marketing platforms. Automation, datastitching and data control will be the focus, with the user’s privacy in mind. 3. Optimise with the best dataPrecis will deliver a holistic approach to media buying, putting a lot of emphasis on optimisingmarketing activities with the bestsignals. Finding the most valuablecustomers long term and credit the marketing channels correct based on an omni-channel data driven attribution approach, will be key.

Answer 4

Collaboration and alignment in allthat we doWhat brings success? By providing us with data insights and new creatives we can push performance even further Outcome: The possibility to embrace multi-moment maturity:●Full customer journey●Cross-channel optimisation●Full attribution●Predictive modelling●Advanced audience segmentation and personalisation

Answer 5

Lamerton and Stephen (2016) discuss about that Over the past 15 years, digital media platforms have revolutionized marketing, offering new ways to reach, inform, engage, sell to, learn about, and provide service to customers. As a means of taking stock of academic work’s ability to contribute to this revolution, this article tracks the changes in scholarly researchers’ perspectives on three major digital, social media, and mobile (DSMM) (digital social media marketing) marketing themes from 2000 to 2015. The authors first use keyword counts from the premier general marketing journals to gain a macro-level view of the shifting importance of various DSMM topics since 2000. They then identify key themes emerging in five-year time frames during this period: (1) DSMM as a facilitator of individual expression, (2) DSMM as decision support tool, and (3) DSMM as a market intelligence source. In both academic research to date and corresponding practitioner discussion, there is much to appreciate. However, there are also several shortcomings of extant research that have limited its relevance and created points of disconnect between academia and practice consequently the positives with digital marketing is that one can express oneself more freely, can help one making decisions when searching online, and as a market intelligence source (Lamberton and Stephen, 2016)

Answer 6

Era 1: Digital Media Shapes and Facilitates Buyer Behavior, 2000–2004. Era 2: Consumers Shape DSMM: WOM and Networks, 2005–2010. Era 3: The Age of Social Media, 2011–2014. and the New Era: The Rise of DSMM Culture and the Postdigital World. (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016)

Answer 7

Lamberton & Stephen (2016). era 1. 2000-2004. In 2000 one started talking about digital interactions. And that marketing is or will soon be about interactive marketing. Internet started to be seen as a place for interaction. In this work, online experiences augmented andinfluenced consumers’offline lives—a theme that would berevisited using experimental and quantitative methods overthe next decade and a half. qUESTIONS arised as if internet is ethical? While qualitative researchers were identifying digitalplatforms as informative research settings, quantitative re-searchers were also exploring online WOM and communi-ties. Two major seed articles for this literature stream wereDellarocas (2003) and Godes and Mayzlin (2004). Dellarocasdiscussed the idea that online WOM offered both promises and challenges, focusing on how online feedback mechanismsaffect individuals’behaviors in online communities. Thisresearch spurred a substantial amount of work, with nearly 39average annual cites in each of the next 12 years. As importantto thefield of marketing as a whole was Godes and Mayzlin’sstudy of how online WOM in online discussion forumsconnected to television show ratings As much as it provided new answers, this work raisedquestions for later scholars to explore. For example, couldcausality truly be inferred from analyses of online WOM andmarketing performance data observed over time? How goodis online WOM as a predictor of offline behavior? How doesoffline behavior influence online behavior, and how can thatinfluence be captured or modeled In era 1, internet started as a searching and decision tool. Theme 3: Internet as a Marketing Intelligence Tool Using the internet as a marketing tool could conceivably benefitboth customers, who might receive products that better matchedtheir preferences (e.g., Ansari and Mela 2003), andfirms, whomight be able to generate higher levels of customer satisfac-tion and loyalty. Companies could more target people and show products they like. Theme 1: The Internet as a Platform for Individual Expression It was recognized early in this period that the Internet could help individuals by providing access to other consumers, either as audience members or as information sources. Theme 2: Internet as Search and Decision Support Tool A second way that the Internet could help consumers was by making search easier and choice better. At the same time that psychology was recognizing perils of choice overload and the downsides of self-determination (e.g., Iyengar and Lepper 2000; Schwartz 2000) and retailers were struggling with assortment decisions (e.g., Broniarczyk, Hoyer, and McAlister 1998, e-commerce presented essentially endless virtual store shelves.

Answer 8

Era 2: Consumers Shape DSMM:WOM and Networks, 2005–2010 People start to interact more? In contrast to Era 1’s conceptualization of the Internet as apromising but separatetoolfor consumers and marketers,2005–2010 saw mainstream consumers taking a more activerole in their online social interactions through online WOMand social networking. This shift was likely promoted by anumber of events. First, by 2005, Internet use had passed50% penetration, up from approximately 40% in 2000 (PewResearch Center 2014). For marketing academics and practitioners alike, thesetrends raised a number of questions about how to best useonline WOM and social networks for marketing purposes,which invariably required a more detailed understanding ofthese social processes and systems than had been developedin Era 1. As new platforms, particularly social media, beganto allow advertising, marketers were faced with questionsrelated to ROI for this type of spending. Likely as a result, thethree themes identified in Era 2 now took on a differentemphasis. Whereas in Era 1, DSMM was a tool to be used bymarketers and buyers, in Era 2, marketers and buyers activelycontributed to and shaped DSMM. From 2000-2005 marketers used the digital tool for marketing and in 2005-2010, consumers got active with digital marketing as well and participated more in wOM. Theme 1: Online WOM as Individual ExpressionThat Matters to Marketing Recall that in Era 1, academic research had shown the potentialfor online forums to offer tools for individual expression. InEra 2, the tendency to express one’s opinions became moredirectly connected to marketing practice. Earlier work ononline WOM, in particular Godes and Mayzlin (2004), haddemonstrated that online discussion forums could be used tomeasure WOM activity and that such activity was associatedwith marketing outcomes. People started to interact more with one another online in formus after 2004, and the interaction become more connected to marketing practice (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) Similarfindings wereprovided by Villanueva, Yoo, and Hanssens (2008), who testedan empirical model using data from a web hosting company,finding that traditional marketing customers created greatershort-term but less long-term value than those acquiredthrough WOM. Themes 2 and 3 Converge: Digital Networks asTools for Information and Value People started to network more during 2005-2010 One of the key questions during this era had to do withwhowas driving diffusion in networks. On one hand, Wattsand Dodds’s (2007) simulation-based work combined network-and contagion-related concepts to argue that informationspreads not necessarily because an initial transmitter (“seed”)has a disproportionately large number of social contacts (i.e.,is a social hub) but instead due to characteristics of its audi-ence, how susceptible to social influence the mass audiencehappens to be. Trusov, Bodapati, and Bucklin (2010) also made animportant contribution to this literature by developing amethod for identifying influential users in online socialnetworks, where influence is defined by having significanteffects on the online activities of others. Katona, Zubcsek,and Sarvary (2011) took a similar approach by examiningadoption data in an online social network (in their case, aHungarian site) and showed that individual customers’network positions (degree and clustering) were predictive oftheir ability to influence others to join. One started to study how other consumers could influence others. Started to search how click fraud can harm or help advertisers. But echoing practitioner concerns about fraud that wereexpressed in Era 1, researchers also saw that danger mightexist in this highly networked scheme. Wilbur and Zhu (2009)analyzed a phenomenon called“click fraud,”which occurswhen search ads are deceptively clicked on by someone (e.g.,a competitor, a third-party website who receives traffic-basedrevenue from the ads) with the intention to spend an adver-tiser’s budget or to drive up a third party’straffic revenues.They considered how this theoretically could impact a searchengine’s revenue and showed under which conditions clickfraud may benefit or harm advertisers This paper certainly did not settle this question, however,as other researchers still sought to identify“influential”people. In this work, influencers were identified in terms ofnetwork-structure (positional) properties as opposed to, forexample, individual differences such as expertise or per-sonality traits. Identification in such terms was possiblebecause social network position lent itself to relatively easymeasurement. With this knowledge,firms could then targetpotentially influential individuals as part of their WOM/viral/influencer marketing programs. Three articles were partic-ularly important in this regard. Goldenberg et al. (2009) usedonline social networking data from a Korean website to showthat adoption by social hubs—people with disproportion-ately high numbers of connections (i.e.,“degree”in networkterminology)—speeds up diffusion/adoption processes, intheir case, for virtual goods shared between users of thenetwork. Trusov, Bodapati, and Bucklin (2010) also made animportant contribution to this literature by developing amethod for identifying influential users in online socialnetworks, where influence is defined by having significanteffects on the online activities of others. Katona, Zubcsek,and Sarvary (2011) took a similar approach by examiningadoption data in an online social network (in their case, aHungarian site) and showed that individual customers’network positions (degree and clustering) were predictive oftheir ability to influence others to join. This delineation be-tween individual roles and influence provided hinted thatthe high degree of consumer empowerment might radicallychallenge prior business models, as discussed in high-qualityspecialized journals (Deighton and Kornfield 2009). Con-ceptual work in such outlets also set up thefield to push itsfocus beyond isolated individuals and toward complex phe-nomena embedded in the virtual world (Hoffman and Novak 2009;Nambisam and Baron 2007). In contrast, industry sources reported that during Era 2,search engine optimization (SEO) was marketers’top pri-ority. Academia was not wholly unresponsive to this; anumber of articles considered thefirm’s capacity to facilitatesearch and optimize search engine marketing campaigns. Thestudy of online search keyword auctions garnered someattention, primarily from an analytical perspective (Chen,Liu, and Whinston 2009). Similarly, sponsored search alsoemerged as a research topic (e.g., Ghose and Yang 2009). Butthe quantity of research produced by academics did not matchits position as marketers’top priority, possibly because SEOis a mostly tactical and operational activity that offers littlepotential for theory development

Answer 9

Era 3: The Age of Social Media,2011–2014 - how people behave on social media platforms and why they do what they do. - Disicussed the digital as in general: not specifically to one generation. - Theme 1: Individual Self-Expression as a Means ofAmplifying or Dulling Marketing Actions Recall that prior eras laid the groundwork to explore novel ways that the Internet allowed consumers to express their opinions, showed the marketing relevance of online WOM (e.g., because it can affect sales), and pointed out how information or UGC spread via online social networks and social media platforms. In this third era, the consumers came to be seen as more than contributors to WOM streams, but rather as agents who could amplify or undermine the effect of marketing actions. Arguably, this recognition of the consumer’s social influence power was due to the mainstream acceptance of social media as a ubiquitous and likely permanent marketing medium. Because consumers had embraced social media and made it part of their means of meeting goals, constructing identities, socially interacting, seeking information, and learning about the world, their actions in these domains could have far-reaching consequences. In combination with this trend, researchers and practitioners were also inspired by technological innovation that turned purely social online channels into exciting new marketing platforms. In theory, at least, such platforms could be used for large-scale online WOM marketing, viral campaigns, and precisely targeted digital advertising that leveraged the personal information consumers were voluntarily providing both in their public social media profiles and through their actions on social media - A second question that emerged in Era 3 was how con-sumers used social media to meet their own goals. In general,this stream of literature considered drivers of social media useinstead of drivers of specific social transmissions. For instance,Toubia and Stephen (2013) considered drivers of social mediaposting activity irrespective of thetypeof post (i.e., notconsidering content characteristics), starting with the broadquestion ofwhypeople tweet (i.e., use Twitter). They con-sidered individual drivers (instead of Berger and Milkman’scontent drivers) and focused on intrinsic and image-relatedsources of utility from posting. - Using afield experiment, theyobserved how regular Twitter users’posting activity changedas a result of increases in their number of followers over aperiod of time (i.e., an increase in social status on Twitter).Toubia and Stephen concluded that image-related utility is adominant driver (vs. intrinsic utility) of posting activity in mostcases. Importantly, Toubia and Stephen showed that as thenumber of followers a consumer had changed, so too did theconsumer’s behavior. This insight made it possible forfirmsto customize their approach to various consumers accordingto observable information and to behave in a way that wasdynamically appropriate, given the consumer’sstatus.Notethat both Berger and Milkman (2012) and Toubia and Stephen(2013) included experimental components, whether in the labor in afield study. Use of experimental methods allowedresearchers to make more direct causal inferences aboutconsumers’roles as transmitters of information than did priorpurely quantitative or analytical methods Theme 2: User-Generated Content asMarketing Tool heme 2: User-Generated Content asMarketing ToolIn Era 1 and to some extent in Era 2, digital technology hadbeen seen as a tool—a way to facilitate search, push outadvertising messages, or learn about network effects. In Era3, consumers’online activity and content generation itselfbecame a tool for marketers. For example, Ghose, Ipeirotis,and Li (2012) used crowdsourced content to design rankingsystems for hotels that would help consumersfind the bestalternatives, and Albuquerque et al. (2012) and Wang, Mai,and Chiang (2014) explored the dynamics of markets afterintroduction of UGC, both in theory and in practice. ‘Given the high hopes of the period and the increasingamount of relevant research, however, Era 3 was a surprisinglyfallow period in terms of social media marketing’s actualgrowth. At the beginning of this era, expectations were veryhigh: In February 2011,practitioners reportedthat 5.6%of theirmarketing budget was devoted to social media, but theypredicted that by 2015, the proportion of their budget dedicatedto social media spending would more than triple, to about 18%(Moorman 2011). On a scale from 1 to 7, where a 1 indicated a“not at all effective”integration of social media with overallmarketing strategy at theirfirms, respondents reported a meanvalue of 3.8 at that time. experts said thatfirms still had little ideahow to convert data gathered from observing customers andcompetitors in social media into actionable insights. Theme 3: Capturing Marketing Intelligence in Specific Social Media Platforms By Era 3, researchers started to focus on studying particular social media platforms that were widely used by consumers, thus warranting research in their own right. Perhaps because this work has such high significance both to the firms who are using these platforms and to the billions of consumers who have made them part of their daily lives, it has tended to quickly generate citations and capture popular press notice. For example, Toubia and Stephen’s (2013) work on Twitter and Wilcox and Stephen’s (2012) and Naylor, Lamberton, and West’s (2012) work on Facebook have been rapidly gaining citations. In part, this may be because such efforts present methods that allow other researchers to explore these platforms, in the lab, in the field, and as reflected in complex data, thus moving beyond the observational methods that, while offering interesting insights, make causal inferences challenging (e.g., De Vries, Gensler, and Leeflang 2012). Additionally, and arguably more importantly, these articles sought to understand some psychological aspects about how people behave on social media platforms and why they do what they do (Toubia and Stephen 2013; Naylor, Lamberton, and West 2012) or how using a social media platform affects seemingly unrelated psychology such as self-control (Wilcox and Stephen 2012). Each of the three aforementioned articles focused on the psychological characteristics and needs of consumers as determinants of marketing outcomes. Anchoring research in aspects of consumers rather than aspects of specific platforms may be justified; because the platforms themselves are notoriously dynamic, connecting research to consumers’ traits, inference-making strategies, and needs may allow us to revise predictions as the forums evolve.

Answer 10

(Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) In 2015 and early 2016, more than 20 articles in A-levelmarketing journals (published or forthcoming) have exploredDSMM topics. While we cannot yet quantify the impact orlong-run relevance of these papers, the sheer number suggeststhat we have entered into a“boom”era for DSMM research.Consideration of these articles not only allows us to see howour focal themes are continuing to evolve but also gives ussome idea of where thefield may be headed, in terms ofadvances in data, research approach, and substantive domains. (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) Themes 1 and 2 Combined: Revisiting Consumer Expression and Internet as a Tool New research in this era revisits earlier ideas and concepts in a number of ways. First, how consumers express themselves online—a major theme in all previous eras, particularly in the online WOM literature—continues to be examined. (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) A second meta-analysis (Rosario et al. 2016) also suggests that we are beginning to accumulate enough knowledge to offer robust and nuanced findings to practice; these authors also explore the effect of electronic WOM on sales. Here, the authors find that, consistent with previous findings, electronic WOM generally has a positive impact on sales, but its effects vary widely by platform, product, and metric. For example, tangible goods that are novel show a strong positive effect of electronic WOM, but services do not show similar sensitivity to their tenure in the market. Furthermore, Rosario et al. (2016) conclude that WOM volume has a stronger, rather than a weaker, effect on sales compared with WOM valence, implicating high variability rather than negative valence as the largest threat to sales. Thus, this metaanalysis provides both useful insights for managers and an interesting counterpoint to You et al. (2015). (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) Recent work has also revisited the earlier concept of the Internet as a marketing tool, particularly in the context of new forms of digital advertising. As earlier noted, display and search advertising have been explored in the DSMM literature, but articles on these topics never achieved high levels of impact. More recently, due to the rise of social media marketing, research has explored firm-generated or firmbranded content in social channels (e.g., a brand’s post on its own Facebook page or Twitter feed). In practice, this is often called “content marketing,” and it is now used as a complement to (or sometimes as a substitute for) traditional advertising. Some work in Era 3 started looking at this idea (e.g., De Vries, Gensler, and Leeflang 2012), although purely from a customer engagement perspective. Importantly, recent work by Kumar et al. (2016) also considers how firm generated content in social media affects sales. Work on more conventional forms of advertising is also emerging currently, particularly with respect to the mobile advertising space. For example, Bart, Stephen, and Sarvary (2014) study mobile display advertising using field data from a large number of mobile advertising campaigns. In doing so, they are able to determine for which types of products mobile display ads are more effective. They find that mobile display ads seem to be best suited to highinvolvement, utilitarian products, in terms of being able to lift brand attitudes and purchase intent. Other recent articles have also examined topics related to mobile advertising. For example, Danaher et al. (2015) study the effectiveness of location-based mobile coupons delivered to customers’ devices as they walk around a shopping mall, and Fong, Fang, and Luo (2015) consider location-based targeting of offers sent to mobile devices according to proximities to competitors’ physical locations. Even more research on mobile marketing is expected in the near future, including 2017 special issues on mobile in Marketing Science and the Journal of Interactive Marketing and a 2017 special issue on connected and always-on consumers in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. Work on more conventional forms of advertising is alsoemerging currently, particularly with respect to the mobileadvertising space. For example, Bart, Stephen, and Sarvary(2014) study mobile display advertising usingfield datafrom a large number of mobile advertising campaigns.(Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) Another example of new research that has reexamined consumer-expression topics from previous eras is Chae et al. (2016). These authors link to prior work on online WOM and, in particular, firm-encouraged WOM approaches such as “viral” or “seeding” campaigns (e.g., Godes and Mayzlin 2009; Libai, Muller, and Peres 2013). However, in contrast to prior work, they empirically examine the effects of seeding campaigns intended to generate UGC for a specific focal product on other products from competitors or from the same brand but in other categories (i.e., online WOM “spillover” effects). (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016)They are able to show, in the context of beauty/ cosmetics products discussed by consumers on a major Korean social media platform, that seeding a product does indeed spur more online conversation about that product. However, doing so also reduces the amounts of conversation about competing products in the same category (a desirable spillover) and reduces conversation about products in other categories from the focal brand (an undesirable spillover). Recent work has also revisited the earli The future excpects more mobile marketing (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) Even more research onmobile marketing is expected in the near future, including2017 special issues on mobile inMarketing Scienceand theJournal of Interactive Marketingand a 2017 special issueon connected and always-on consumers in theJournal of theAssociation for Consumer Research Readings relate now to psychological theory.  (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) In thefirst half of 2015 alone, we seecombinations of, for example,field and lab experiments,transaction data, coded characteristics of studies, andGoogle Trends data. This approach allows researchersto pinpoint moderators that would not be included in a single-source data set. Perhaps more importantly for marketers, as inEra 3, we see that quasi-experimental approaches, observa-tion, and combined data sets can be analyzed in ways thatoffer insights that previously required large expendituresof time and money. Thus, this new work not only extendsour knowledge but also extends our knowledge-gatheringability. Collective Behavior and New Business Models. Search advertising has also been revisited in recent work. Importantly, new analytic approaches continue to challenge our conceptualization of search advertising. For example, prior work was inconclusive regarding the importance of search order: some work concluded that top positions in search advertising were generally preferable (Chen and He 2011), whereas other work had identified situations in which clicks might not follow ranks (Jerath et al. 2011; Katona and Sarvary 2010). However, Narayanan and Kalyanam’s (2015) work points out that main effects of position may be contingent on characteristics of the brand or of the consumer. Specifically, by analyzing online advertising data from competing companies, the authors find that in the aggregate, the first position is preferable to the second, consistent with prior research. The importance of order effects may primarily hold for smaller or less-familiar advertisers. However, as consumers’ familiarity with a specific brand or desire for an exact match to their preference increases, position effects become substantially smaller and often disappear. Recent work by Li et al. (2016) also contributes to the literature on search/keyword advertising by addressing the important problem of attribution in the context of understanding the value of specific keywords in search advertising. Theme 3: Internet as Market Intelligence Source Revisited and Improved Tools for Data Analysis The idea that search can be a valuable source of marketing knowledge persists in the newest work. Happily, we can see clear advances over early efforts in this domain. Recall that foundational work by Ansari et al. (2000) attempted to develop collaborative filters that would accurately predict consumer preferences. Interestingly, the same goal persists 15 years later—but with arguably more convincing results. Specifically, Du, Hu, and Damangir (2015) argue that marketers can infer shifts in consumer preferences by analyzing the popularity of the words for which consumers search. In turn, marketers can adjust their marketing mix to leverage this knowledge

Answer 11

UGC stands for user-generated content. By definition, user-generated content is any form of content—text, posts, images, videos, reviews, etc. —created by individual people (not brands) and published to an online or social network. (Lamberton & stephen, 2016)

Answer 12

(Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) Collective Behavior and New Business Models Researchers in the DSMM space have often focused on buyers’ volitional participation in communities, most of which are based in friendships or shared affinities. However, little work has directly tied these social networks to marketing outcomes. At this point, marketers have found ways to more directly take advantage of consumers’ tendency to act in groups. For example, the rise of consumer-focused crowdsourcing of innovations offers one means to exploit collective behavior for marketing gains. This topic has been examined by Bayus (2013), in the context of Dell’s Ideastorm.com idea crowdsourcing community, and in recent work by Stephen, Zubcsek, and Goldenberg (2016), which examines the role of online networks in driving the innovativeness of consumers’ ideas in “interdependent product ideation” tasks online. It is also likely that we will see more research into the “sharing economy” due to the growth of services such as Uber. As collaborative consumption firms increasingly seek to differentiate themselves from traditional market competitors while raising standards for quality and safety, understanding the psychological experience unique to technology-enabled exchange will also increase in importance.(Lamberton & Stephen, 2016)

Answer 13

(Lamberton & Stephen, 2016)Firm Use of Consumer Data and Privacy Considerations Certainly, it is a positive development that we are getting better at gleaning information from digital sources. However, recall that in Era 1, Godes and Mayzlin (2004) questioned the ethicality of acquiring data from consumers’ online behavior without their explicit permission. Other articles had explored the importance of trust and privacy but had not yet gained large volumes of citations: for example, Bart et al. (2005) analyzed the drivers of online trust in different websites and consumer segments, and Urban, Amyx, and Lorenzo (2009) conceptualized consumer trust and privacy. Citations for these articles hit their peaks in 2014 and 2015, as issues related to trust and privacy online once again became prominent among firms, consumers, and policy makers. Some researchers, notably Catherine Tucker, have been working on developing research based on issues pertaining to consumer data privacy and regulation in online advertising. For example, Tucker (2014) considers the trade-offs between well-targeted ads (that exploit often highly personal consumer data available to firms) and consumer-perceived privacy invasion. But many questions remain: Is it ethical for firms to acquire as much information as possible about consumers, even without permission? How should firms respond if consumers become similarly acquisitive with regard to their products, again, without permission? How do consumers feel about their information being used by firms for marketing purposes? These questions are likely to warrant additional, multimethod research as consumer protection groups, industry organizations, and lawmakers increasingly debate their importance.

Answer 14

(Lamberton & Stephen, 2016)Multichannel and Multitasking Behavior Some researchers have sought to bridge the online and offline world, considering the ways that digital and nondigital marketing activities interact (e.g., Danaher, Wilson, and Davis 2003; Naik and Peters 2009; Stephen and Galak 2012; Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels 2009; Zhang et al. 2010). However, as noted, practitioners in Era 3 struggled with ways to integrate “digital” with “traditional” or ways to incorporate “new media” into existing marketing mix models in ways that indisputably create value. The emerging era appears to be somewhat responsive to this need (e.g., Joo et al. 2014), but we believe the crossover between the online and offline worlds warrants deeper exploration. Or, rather, the omnichannel worlds in which consumers search for products, interact with brands, share information and experiences, and buy products should be understood more thoroughly and deeply. Recently, Liaukonyte, Teixeira, and Wilbur (2015) used a quasi-experimental design that found that firms that advertise on television create higher sales levels in the two-hour widows around the time of their ad broadcasts, compared with firms that do not advertise on television. The authors apply constructs from consumer psychology to further untangle these effects, differentiating between action-, emotion-, information-, and imagery-focused ads. While all types raise the number of consumer transactions, they do so through different combinations of direct visits and search engine referrals. By using a difference-in-difference approach and regression. discontinuity analysis, the authors are able to present causal arguments without conducting costly field experiments. It is likely that new analytic techniques, coupled with relevant behavioral theory, multiple data sources, and creative methods, will help us to further understand the immersive experience that consumers have with DSMM technologies across multiple channels and goals and, therefore, to identify the best stand-alone or combined uses of channels of both communication and sales available to marketers. New work that considers “social TV”—how consumers use social media while watching television—and how this multitasking behavior affects advertising effectiveness (Fossen and Schweidel 2016) is a good example of this approach that will become increasingly important moving forward

Answer 15

Toward a Theory of Mobile Marketing(Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) Relatedly, mobile use represents a domain of online–offline convergence that warrants independent consideration—and, importantly, will require the development of a data-driven theory. There are good reasons to push at this point for a comprehensive theory of mobile marketing. This is not to say that no theories of mobile use have been offered. In fact, conceptualizations of mobile marketing were described five to six years ago in specialized journals (e.g., Shankar and Balasubramanian 2009; Shankar et al. 2010). A recent review and agenda-setting article by Grewal et al. (201) is also an important development in this literature. However, we can still benefit from testing these theories comprehensively and developing a better understanding of how the mobile and nonmobile DSMM contexts relate to each other (e.g., Ghose and Han 2011; Shriver, Nair, and Hofstetter 2013). As noted in Ghose and Han (2011) and Shriver, Nair, and Hofstetter (2013), results from the mobile domain appear to be a bit different from those found in the nonmobile context. It may be that these findings can be reconciled by recognizing that mobile may present a more task-oriented focus for consumers, while nonmobile Internet use lends itself more to network building and relationship development. At present, though, such explanations are only speculative. That said, as the world becomes heavily “mobile first” with respect to how consumers use the Internet, mobile versus nonmobile comparative research might lose relevance rapidly. Thus, we advocate that researchers focus on understanding the marketing value of aspects of mobile technology that allow marketers and/or consumers to do things that cannot be done with nonmobile technology (e.g., geo-located ad targeting; making use of sensors in mobile devices that measure ambient contextual attributes, or even user biometrics, in the case of wearable devices). Arguably the best way to develop a more comprehensive understanding and more generalizable theory of mobile consumer behavior and mobile marketing will be to combine big data with field experiments that enable consumer-level insights. For example, Andrews et al. (2015) combine data from one of China’s largest mobile providers on nearly 15,000 consumers with a follow-up survey that explores consumer motivations. The researchers find evidence that in highly crowded spaces (e.g., crowded commuter trains), people turn inward, seeing their mobile phones as a “welcome relief” to the anxiety-producing crush around them, and that when in this state they are more receptive to mobile advertising. This is a good example of how a combination of empirical insights from large data sets and psychology-based explanations can be used to move the mobile marketing literature forward. The mobile domain also introduces the importance of both geographic and temporal proximity in determining the effectiveness of marketing promotions, which are, in essence, contextual factors that reflect real-world environments. In many ways, this thinking revisits some of the earliest DSMM qualitative work but inverts its perspective. For example, recall that early work (Schau and Gilly 2003) highlighted the way that online experiences could shape consumers’ offline lives. In comparison, the research of Andrews et al. (2015) is entirely about how an offline contextual factor (physical crowdedness) affects online behavior. Similar examples can be found in Danaher et al. (2015) and Fong et al. (2015), who use location-based targeting for mobile coupon delivery and thus consider how physical proximity or geographic factors affect both online and offline behavior because their studies involve mobile delivery of coupons for offline products/services (see also Luo et al. 2014). Yet another example comes in Hui et al. (2013), whose work considers the offline effects (i.e., travel distance in stores) of coupons delivered in online (mobile) formats on in-store spending. As such, mobile research offers a unique opportunity to build new theories of behavior in digitized or digitally enhanced environments where both virtual and real contextual factors are important.

Answer 16

• Why do people use social media? How has it affected their lives?(Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) • When is social media marketing preferable to traditional marketing? • What are the key elements in a successful social media strategy? • Should marketers still be differentiating among consumers (i.e., doing work to identify influencers and hubs), or is this segmentation irrelevant? • How important is viral content in driving sales? What is the sales elasticity of social transmission vis-a-vis, for example, ` advertising? • What makes a digital marketing initiative a success for firms or consumers? Are there metrics beyond ROI that matter? • How has the consumer’s fundamental decision-making process changed due to digital experiences and environments? • What is the optimal balance between online and offline marketing? • What is the optimal balance between human and technologically enabled interaction? How can this lack of answers be rectified? Of course, truly novel contributions will continue to be highly valued by the field, particularly given the fast-paced nature of technological innovation that underpins much of the DSMM marketing space. In addition, however, we recommend that research that directly builds on prior work in meaningful, relevant, and constructive ways should be considered valuable contributions. Thus, our definition of “contribution” has to expand(Lamberton & Stephen, 2016) to include new inquiries into and extensions of prior work. Following calls in the behavioral literature (e.g., Lynch et al. 2015), replication work is also needed to learn whether DSMM effects are stable over time and across methods

Answer 17

Conclusion Lamberton and Stephen, 2016 There is much to like about the way that academic research has approached DSMM in the past 15 years, and there is a great deal of opportunity moving forward. We have seen a proliferation of topics, an evolution of methods, and continued enthusiasm for this domain. From its roots on the fringe of marketing research and practice, DSMM is now represents a mainstream subfield within marketing on the academic side, drawing interest across methodological and philosophical boundaries. In practice, we are rapidly entering a “postdigital” world in marketing, where the siloed thinking that divided marketing into “digital” and “traditional” (or everything else) is being replaced. Instead, we are at a point in practice where digital marketing is just marketing, simply because almost all marketing activities a firm might consider now can have some kind of digital aspect. Our hope is that this article provides insights about the way this domain has developed, as our perspective on DSMM has increasingly highlighted its transformational power in business and consumer life. As these transformations continue, we hope that recognizing the key ideas on which we’ve gained—and failed to gain—ground can help researchers contribute in meaningful and relevant ways while avoiding pitfalls that can threaten scientific progress. Many challenges certainly lie ahead, but collaboration, the application of the wide range of methods used by marketing academics, and strong relationships with practice can help create an exciting future for DSMM research in marketing.

Answer 18

(Lamberton and Stephenson, 2016); Some researchers have sought to bridge the online and offlineworld, considering the ways that digital and nondigitalmarketing activities interact (e.g., Danaher, Wilson, andDavis 2003; Naik and Peters 2009; Stephen and Galak 2012;Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels 2009; Zhang et al. 2010).However, as noted, practitioners in Era 3 struggled with waysto integrate“digital”with“traditional”or ways to incorporate“new media”into existing marketing mix models in waysthat indisputably create value. The emerging era appears to besomewhat responsive to this need (e.g., Joo et al. 2014), but webelieve the crossover between the online and offline worldswarrants deeper exploration. Or, rather, the omnichannel worldsin which consumers search for products, interact with brands,share information and experiences, and buy products should beunderstood more thoroughly and deeply.Recently, Liaukonyte, Teixeira, and Wilbur (2015) used aquasi-experimental design that found thatfirms that advertiseon television create higher sales levels in the two-hour widowsaround the time of their ad broadcasts, compared withfirmsthat do not advertise on television. The authors apply con-structs from consumer psychology to further untangle theseeffects, differentiating between action-, emotion-, information-,and imagery-focused ads.

Answer 19

``` (Lamberton and Stephenson, 2016) YES number one researchers study is social media marketing, it is researched much more than: Social Networks Digital Advertising Sales/ROI Mobile UGC Big Data Diffusion Multichanne. ``` HOWEVER WOM is highly cited by researchers!!

Answer 20

yes, DSMM work has a “long tail” that includes many | other types of keywords. Lamberton and Stephenson, 2016

Answer 21

Integrated marketin communication (IMC) integrated marketing are the coordinated, consistent means by which firms attempt to inform, incent, persuade, and remind consumers – directly or indirectly – about the products and brands they sell (batra and keller 2016)

Answer 22

Createawareness●Conveydetailedinformation●Createimageryand personality●Buildtrust ●Elicitemotions.●Inspireaction●Instillloyalty●Connectpeople

Answer 23

- Ad on tv, sales person, PR EVENT, physical location, TV , RADIO,

Answer 24

website, email, display ads, mobile , social media, search ads

Answer 25

New media; greaterpersonalizationofmessagecontent, timing, and location, enablingmarketersto utilizemoremedia typesto accomplishspecificcommunicationobjectives

Answer 26

Yes. Combine new and old media; how do you plan your digital marketing campaign? What are the different medias good for? How can they complement each other., how do you achieve the best mix of both digital and offline communications? (Lamberton and Stephen, 2016)

Answer 27

The AIDA-model creating customer action (e.g. purchase)The customerjourney(TraditionalAida) - First you need to create a desire, - Before you desire you need to make sure your audience is interested - Before that need to know it exists. - Focusing on the early adopters - Social media, word of mouth ATTENTION, INTEREST, DESIRE, ACTION

Answer 28

The consumer decision journey. How do we create this loyalty loop that consumers come back to you so that we get returning customers. 1. first the consumer considers an initial set of brands, based on brand perceptions and exposure to recent touch points. 2. then consumers add or subtract brands as they evaluate what they want 3. ultimately the consumer selects a brand at the moment of purchase. 4.after purchasing a product or service, the consumer builds expectations based on experience to inform their next decision journey they can continue this loyalty loop and purchase again if they liked the brand.

Answer 29

you may chose a specific channel based on what you want to focus on in the decision journey stage. for instance if you want to focus on needs, then television, search, direct, selling, and display marketing are great approaches (Batra and keller). If one wants to engage people, then the great approaches are promotion, events, PR, Social Media, website, mobile and direct marketing (and not selling, search, display or TV)

Answer 30

Batra and Keller 1. Coverage: the proportion ofthe targetaudiencereached 2. Cost: efficiency 3. Contribution: abilityofa marketing communicationto createthe desiredresponse 4. Commonality: heextentto whichdifferent communicationoptions sharethe same meaning(e.g. highlightingdifferent aspects) 5. Complementarity: Extentto whichtheycomplementthe menaningtheygive. 6. Cross-Effects: Whentwochannelsstrengtheneachother. E.g. offlineand online is like 1+1= 3 7. Conformability: worksin different steps in customerjourneyBatraand Keller

Answer 31

Owned media is when you leverage a channel you create and control. This could be your company blog, YouTube channel, your website, or even your Facebook page. Even though you don’t strictly “own” your YouTube channel or your Facebook page, you do control them and don’t have to pay for basic usage. Earned media is when customers, the press and the public share your content, speak about your brand via word of mouth, and otherwise discuss your brand. In other words, the mentions are “earned,” meaning they are voluntarily given by others. Paid media is when you pay to leverage a third-party channel, such as sponsorships and advertising on third-party sites.

Answer 32

Contentmarketing is a strategicmarketing approach focusedon creatingand distributingvaluable, relevant and consistentcontentto attractand maintaina clearlydefinedaudienceand, ultimately, to resultin an profitable action ofthe clientfor the business (ContentMarketing Institute, 2015).

Answer 33

Digital InboundMarketing representsthe process ofreachingand convertingqualifiedconsumersby creatingand pursuing organic tactics in online settings.

Answer 34

All the free traffic sources! Organic marketing uses SEO, social media, research/white papers, WOM, podcasting, Q+A sites, social networks, webinars, document sharing, infographics, news/media/Pr, blogs/vlogginng,blogging/ comment marketing, online video, forums, social bookmarking, direct/referring links, type-in traffic, SEO, email, and a variety of other channels to increase brand awareness. Organic marketing is a strategy that generates traffic to your business over time rather than using paid methods. This includes blog posts, case studies, guest posts, unpaid tweets, and Facebook updates, youtube?.

Answer 35

Järvinen and Taiminen , 2016. :) automation of content marketing. ”Harnessingmarketing automation for B2B contentmarketing”, people go through different stages first you identify the consumer and then target and then there is a purchase; there are 5 stages. :)

Answer 36

●Search advertising ●Display advertising ●Classified advertising

Answer 37

Classified advertising is a form of advertising, particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals, which may be sold or distributed free of charge. Classified advertisements are much cheaper than larger display advertisements used by businesses,[1] although display advertising is more widespread.[2] They were also commonly called "want" ads, starting in 1763,[3] and are sometimes called small ads in Britain.[4] - a single advertisement in a classified advertising section (as of a newspaper) —usually called classified ad Classified advertising is a marketing medium commonly found in newspapers and other periodicals such as magazines and newsletters. Some Web sites and search engines also have classified advertising sections offered to their users for free or at minimal costs. Neighborhood papers that are supported by display advertisers and provided free of charge to the local area frequently offer free classified advertising in specific categories. Ads in this classification are normally comprised only of text that generally contains many abbreviations to save space and keep costs low. The moniker of classified refers to the placement of ads under specific classifications, such as auto sales, employment opportunities or rental properties (!!). this type of advertising has maintained popularity over many years. This is generally attributed to the low cost of the ads as well as their availability of placement to the general public. For a nominal fee, customarily based on the number of words or characters in the ad, anyone can advertise goods for sale, rent or trade. Details of goods and services are sometimes included in the ad. Other classified ads offer little more than the name of the service or item along with a contact phone number or e-mail address.

Answer 38

Display advertising is a method of attracting the audience of a website, social media platform or other digital mediums to take a specific action. These are often made up of text-based, image or video advertisements that encourage the user to click-through to a landing page and take action (e.g. make a purchase). Most display and online advertising campaigns are charged on a cost per click (CPC) basis. That is to say, every time the user on a search engine clicks on your ad, you’ll get charged an amount based on your overall bidding strategy. They can also be used for retargeting campaigns. This is where ads are served to users who have already visited a specific website. The aim is to “retarget” them and encourage them to return to the website to take the same action (or an action at a different stage of the funnel). 1. Banner Ads: One of the oldest and traditional forms of advertising, banner ads usually appear at the top of websites in a “banner” format. 2. Interstitial Ads: These ads appear as web pages that are served to users before they are directed to the original page they requested. In the example below, you can see how this appears before accessing a web page or app on a mobile device: 3. Rich Media: These ads include interactive elements, such as video, audio and clickable elements. The example below shows an ad from DemandGen that includes an opt-in form right within the ad itself: Video Ads: The YouTube advertising platform, as well as social networks like Instagram and Facebook, have opened a whole new avenue for marketers. Video ads allow you to reach your audience and connect with them on a personal level, and are well worth investing in.

Answer 39

Diversity: Display ads come in many shapes and sizes. And as you’ve seen above, they can be presented in a number of formats, too. This means you can choose a style and advertising format that will help you achieve your goals. Reach: Thanks for the Google Display Network (GDN), you can access millions of sites straight from your Google Ads account. Targeting: Because of GDN’s extensive reach, you can also target the right audience by placing your ads on the right websites. This includes demographic and geo-targeting, along with specific interests of your target audience. Measurable: Clicks, impressions and conversions can all be tracked from Google Ads, as well as Google Analytics for more granular performance and engagement tracking.

Answer 40

Banner Blindness: Because of the prolific nature of display ads, many users have come to ignore them completely. This means a lower click-through rate. However, this can be circumvented using remarketing and rich media ads. You’ll learn all about remarketing later in this guide. Ad Blockers: Along with this, ad blocker technology has risen in popularity over the last few years. Many brands and media outlets have tried to circumvent this, however, by giving users the option of allowing ads or purchasing a subscription:

Answer 41

Search engine marketing (SEM) includes 1. SEO that is organic search and 2. search advertising

Answer 42

yes, PPC (pay per click) = pay to have your websites shown to the customer: different pricing for different search terms.

Answer 43

Pay to have your websites shown when the customer searches for key words.. Pricing is set by auction –the highest bidder gets their adds shown. Different prices for different search terms.

Answer 44

Search engine optimization= The goal is to make your website listed highly on search engines. Not paid.Optimize the structure, content and headings and meta data

Answer 45

Search engines (e.g. google and bing)1.They “crawl” the internet –finding out what’s in there to build and index.Imagine the web as a subway. Each stop is a unique webpage, image or file.2. They provide answers to users when they search

Answer 46

yes; often the terms are used interchangeably. Basically, “paid search” refers to all ads that you can place on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) like results pages on Google, Bing and more. “PPC” – meaning ads that the advertiser only pays for when people click them – is a very common model in paid search advertising.

Answer 47

Lemon lovin campaign had fLYERS NEWSPAPERS DIRECTED PEOPLE TO THE FACEBOOK PAGE - Strength of each channel to the other

Answer 48

yes truee 8) ●Ranking highly for organic search results is crucial; between 70% and 80% of users completely ignore paid advertisements

Answer 49

In 2017, Google accounted for over 79% of all global desktop search traffic, followed by Bing at 7.27%, Baidu at 6.55% and Yahoo at 5.06%.●Ranking highly for organic search results is crucial; between 70% and 80% of users completely ignore paid advertisements●Google “near me” searches have increased by two times over the past year.●Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day

Answer 50

Search engine optimization EOis the umbrella term for all the methods you can use to ensure the visibility of your website and its content on search engine results pages (SERPs) Search engine results pages are web pages served to users when they search for something online using a search engine, such as Google. The user enters their search query (often using specific terms and phrases known as keywords), upon which the search engine presents them with a SERP. The page that a search engine returns after a user submits a search query. In addition to organic search results, search engine results pages (SERPs) usually include paid search and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Thanks to search engine optimization (SEO), ranking position on a SERP can be highly competitive since users are more likely to click on results at the top of the page. With the launch of schema markup, SERPs are becoming much more complex to try to anticipate user needs. What is a search engine results page? A search engine results page, or SERP, is the page you see after entering a query into Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine. Each search engine’s SERP design is different, but since Google is the most popular—holding over 80% of the market share—we’ll focus on their features and algorithms.

Answer 51

●We don’t know exactly! How Google and Bing do to rank pages exactly is a secret●Studies are done to understand google does to rank pages

Answer 52

5 things to do1.Publish Relevant Content2.Update Your Content Regularly3.Metadata1.Title Metadata2.Description Metadata3.Keyword Metadata4.Have a link-worthy site5.5. Use alt tags

Answer 53

Paying for clicks

Answer 54

themerchant(also known as 'retailer' or 'brand')●thenetwork(that contains offers for theaffiliateto choose from and also takes care of the payments)●thepublisher(also known as 'the affiliate')●thecustomer - Can pay on performance. - A third party owns the affiliate - PPS – PAY PER SALE - CPA COST PER ACTION - CPC - cost per click

Answer 55

●Cookies aresmall text fileswhicharesent to yourdevicewhenyouvisit a website. Cookies arethensent back to the originatingwebsiteon eachsubsequentvisit, or to anotherwebsitethatrecognisesthatcookie. ●Cookies actas a memoryfor a website. ●Cookies canrememberyourpreferences, improvethe userexperienceas wellas tailorthe advertsyouseeto thosemostrelevant to you. Facebook can sell the data and track you.

Answer 56

(Attribution)

Answer 57

1. Annual marketing: - Examples:–New site visitors–Gaining leads–etc-> Annual budgets 2. Specific campaings, e.g. product launch - New visitors–Converting to sales–Repeat sales to existing–Etc.-> Campaign budgets

Answer 58

``` Measuring outcomes of campaign objectives –several layers step 0: volume unique visitors / reach % step 1. quality = conversion rate 2. cost = cost per click (CPC) 3. cost per aquisiton =(CPA) 4. Campaign ROI % 5. Branding metrics step 6. lifetime value ```

Answer 59

“Financial and informational electrically mediated transactions between an organization and any third party it deals with” (Chaffey, 2014)

Answer 60

similar but wider in scope –includes digital means of doing business, including digital support for e.g. product development, HR etc.

Answer 61

●Social commerce encourages participation and interaction of customers in rating, selecting and buying products●“Social commerceinvolvesusingWeb 2.0 social media technologiesto support online interactionsand usercontributionsto assist in the acquisitionofproductsand services”.

Answer 62

``` business to business B2B Business to consumer B2C Business to government B2G Consumer to consumer C2C Consumer to Business C2B Consumer to government C2G Government to consumer G2C Government to business G2B Government to government ```

Answer 63

``` C2C business examples include Amazon, Alibaba, and the online sites of brick-and-mortar stores such as Target and Walmart. C2C – Consumer-to-Consumer. Consumers sell to other consumers with the aid of an online intermediary who takes a cut. C2C eCommerce examples include eBay, Amazon Marketplace, and Mercari. sOCIAL COMMERCE, doesn’t have eto be a physical product.. Second hand platform. - ebay - peer to peer Blogs and communities Product recommendations social networks: MySpace, Bebo ```

Answer 64

- priceline | - consumer feedback, communities or campaign

Answer 65

feedback to government through pressure group or individual sites

Answer 66

``` transactional: amazon relationship-building:BP Brand-building: Unilever Media owner: News Corp Comparison intermediary: Kelkoo, pricerunner ```

Answer 67

transactional: euroffice relationship-building: BP Media owned: Emap business publications B2B marketplaces: EC21

Answer 68

1. Feedback to government businesses and non governmental organisations 2. the majority of B2G businesses are private companies in various fields ranging from machinery, electronic equipment, infrastructure to weapon trading or military defense systems development. A B2G business can be as modest as a small IT business supporting services to a town government.

Answer 69

national government transactional: tax - ibland revenue national government information local government services government to consumergovernment to consumer people can pay their taxes and access other services

Answer 70

Government services and transactions: tax | legal regulations

Answer 71

inter-government services exchange of information Government to government (G2G) is the electronic sharing of data and/or information systems between government agencies, departments or organizations. The goal of G2G is to support e-government initiatives by improving communication, data access and data sharing. Several factors are driving local and federal governments to institute G2G initiatives. One of theme is federal government legislation such as the Open Government Directive. G2G initiatives are also being driven by budgets and funding. By sharing information and systems, governments are able to reduce IT costs government offices can be more efficient and streamline procedures, allowing citizens to access information over the Internet. They may also qualify for grant funding, depending on the project. An example of a successful G2G project is the Northeast Gang Information System (NEGIS). NEGIS is used by states in the northeast to share information about street gangs, including gang-related activities and gang intelligence. The system connects all the state police departments of the participating states, and the police departments transmit the collected information to their states’ other law enforcement and public service agencies

Answer 72

yes i would argue so: What is an eCommerce mobile app? An e-commerce mobile application is a solution created for mobile device users to interact with a retail brand. The wide adoption of mobile shopping apps has led to the emergence of the mobile commerce concept that lets consumers purchase goods using their mobile devices.

Answer 73

”an architecturefor product, service and information flows, includinga descriptionofthe variousbusiness actorsand theirroles; the potential benefitsfor the variousactors; and the varioussourcesand revenues” (Timmers, 1999) such as business model canvas

Answer 74

The value being offered by the firm products, services or information ●The value being received by the firm such as revenue, promotion, products, services or information. ●The role the firm plays in the value chain e.gintermediary or manufacturer/wholesaler●The entities with which the firm interacts e.g. customers, suppliers etc.●The nature of the interactions including the channels of interaction such as the Internet, face-to-face and telephone.

Answer 75

Spotify - Interacts with - Offers value - Receives value - Role in the supply chain - Nature of interaction - Spotify ads on Instagram - Social interaction - What value does spotify offer? Entertainment for us , help tp interact with friends and share the playlist, get money through advertising and subscription

Answer 76

- Archetypes of e-business models (Zhang et al., 2012) - such as direct shipment from supplier to customer -customers direct pay to retailers (Paypal) Customer  (payment) retailer . Paypal or Klarna, you know you can trust klarna or paypal. - customers order, deliver, then pay customer buy, and retailers get the item from the supplier (such as amazon, napster.com, iTube)

Answer 77

long tail theory e-commerce will fatten and stretch the tail The long tail is a business strategy that allows companies to realize significant profits by selling low volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers, instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The term was first coined in 2004 by researcher Chris Anderson. Classic examples of Long Tail businesses include Amazon and Netflix. In addition to online retailers you will also find Long Tail businesses in micro finance and insurance to name just two industries.

Answer 78

YES true, well because: Some reasons ●1. Traditionaleconomiesofscale, scopeand learning ●2. Network effects–The value of a network increases with number of connected people 3. Switchingcostsand lock-in–”Amazon Prime” 4. Abilityto harnessk new technologyand knowledge–Expensive and requireslots ofknoweldegeto e.g. use Big Data and AI

Answer 79

Metcalfe's Law: 2 telephones = 1 connection 5 telephones = 10 connections 12 telephones = 66 connections

Answer 80

twitch dominates viewrship of top 20 titles.

Answer 81

PLATFORM BUSINESSES. A platform is a business model that creates value by facilitating exchanges between two or more independent groups, usually consumers and producers - Platforms harness and create large scalable networks of users and resources that can be accessed on demand. - Platforms create communities and markets with network effects that allow users to interact and transact. - Platforms get 30% - Apple keep 30 per cent. You provide not only the services and goods –but the market place itself! Example: 1. Libracoin Currency as a platform business?Not onlycreateIngthe market, butthe currency? 2. Like Facebook, Uber, or Alibaba, these businesses don’t directly create and control inventory via a supply chain the way linear businesses do. Platform businesses don’t, to use a common phrase, own the means of production— instead, they create the means of connection. 3. Online marketplaces: Etsy, ebay, amazon 4. App stores: 5. Collaborative economy platforms 6. Video sharing platforms: Youtube, daily motion 7. payment systems: Paypal, Apple pay 8. Internet search engines: Google, Bing? others? yahoo!? 9. Specialised search tools: Trip advisor, Yelp, Twenga 10. Location-based business directions: google maps, maps 11. News aggregators

Answer 82

What are small companies that manages to win in e-commerce?●How do they do it?●What are the dangers of selling through platforms?●What do you do if you are today a “Brick and mortar” company (i.e. –with physical locations)

Answer 83

Platform categories and companies. - Downside monopolies are forming which is not good. , they can then pick their own margin and customers have to pick it. That’s why bill gates is rich. - Once they've achieved scale and network effects have kicked in, platforms are tough to displace. Network effects create high barriers to entry and the data that platforms amass about their users both increase their switching costs and decrease their transaction costs. so customers feel like forced to use the platform as it has a monopoly

Answer 84

Multichannel e-commerce: ●When e-commerce started, companies created new “channels” to sell to customers●E-commerce in a separate business –often cheaper to buy online from same customer●Tod ay, com p ani es stri ve to create a m ore consistent experience

Answer 85

Create a community can help small companies , find a niche and get a network effect. Using that you are a small company to your advantage. LIBRA COIN. - Currency as a platform business? - New currency, facebook dropped out.

Answer 86

ICA NÄRA’lncan buy from the app, ica can track you, your (loyalty card) track where you are. And can taylor offerings based on that, traditional single channel store before, but now it is an omnichannel, we have website, chatbot on fb for a specific ICA store, buy things in different ways, multichannel or / and ? omnichannel. yeah i'd say it is an omnichannel

Answer 87

- Buy things in different ways, same consistent relationships in a company , allowing customers to jump from one channel to another, - this happened to jon 8) Buying a bike, getting discount for the locker since I bought a bike - Hard to keep track of you. (is it really so though?) - Subsidiaries that compete with each thers , franchises, separate companies hard to have same incentives, requireis not only technical but organizational ones. - Using different channels, but trying to give the same consistent experience across channels and allow for customers to swap channels during their customer journey–Better integration offline and online–Requires different organization

Answer 88

The rise of social media has meant that people are more connected than we have ever been in the history of time. But our reliance on social media can have a detrimental effect on our mental health, with the average Brit checking their phone as much as 28 times a day. While social media platforms can have their benefits, using them too frequently can make you feel increasingly unhappy and isolated i

Answer 89

New media technologies facilitating interactivity and co-creation that allow for the development and sharing of user-generated content among and between organisations(e.g. teams, government agencies and media groups) and individuals (e.g. customers, athletes and journalists).

Answer 90

a collectionofsoftwarebaseddigital technologiesthatprovideuserswithdigital environmentsin whichtheycansendand receivedigital contentover sometypeofonline social network●anothertypeofdigital marketing channelthatmarketerscanuseto communicatewithconsumersthroughadvertising●digital placeswherepeopleconductsignificantparts oftheirlives (Appelet al 2019)

Answer 91

1. Social networkingplatforms–facilitateinteractionwithotherusersand the buildingofinterestcommunities.Examples: Facebook, LinkedIn2. Publishing–Writing Examples: WordPress, Blogger, MediumPodcast Examples: iTunes, SoundcloudMultimedia Examples: YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr 3. Microblogging: iNTERACTION: twitter, insta, tumblr, vine, platforms where users post small elements of content like short sentences, single images, links, etc. 4. Review platform: platforms gather a collection of reviews and ratings by users about businesses, products, services or even people. Examples: Expedia, Goodreads 5. BookmarkingBookmarking platformsallowusersto store and shareInternet bookmarksand provideorganisationaltools, categorisation, tagging, commentingetc.Examples: Pinterest, Reddit, Delicious, Digg 6. Geolocation –location focused services, Examples: Yelp, Foursquare 7. Social Knowledge-a collectiveknowledgeplatformbuiltthroughusercollaborationand participation.Examples: Wikipedia, WikiHow

Answer 92

Because of the netwok effect, don’t publish where things doesn t happen, publish where things happen.

Answer 93

Corporate social media just aren’t that popular ”The problem wassimple and obvious–becausethe topexecutivesdidn’tseecollaborationand engagementas a gooduseoftheirtime, employeesquicklylearnedthattheyshouldn’teither.”

Answer 94

Kietzmann et al., 2021 consequences to manage the sharing etc; The Honeycomb model is a way of setting out the most important forces behind the social media ecology which all social media marketers, users and platforms operate within. It’s made up of seven blocks, each of which represents a key aspect of how social is used: Sharing – “The extent to which users exchange, distribute and receive information.” Presence – “The extent to which users know if others are available.” Relationships – “The extent to which users relate to each other.” Identity – “The extent to which users reveal themselves.” Conversations – “The extent to which users communicate with each other.” Reputation – “The extent to which users know the social standing of others and content.” Groups – “The extent to which users are ordered or form communities.” These seven blocks can be used either individually or together to help marketers analyse things like their social media activities, their audience, and the wider social media ecosystem in which they are operating. The key way the honeycomb enables this is by focusing our attention on the most important elements of how social media works. We can use it as a checklist of key strategic factors, to work through methodically during planning or evaluation. Structuring strategy sessions in this way can help ensure crucial areas don’t get left out of our anlyses. So, if you were creating a social media masterplan for a brand, you might ask “How will we factor in our audience’s social media sharing habits?”, “What’s our plan for building our reputation on social?” etc. Using the honeycomb model, like so, ensures all the most important strategic bases are covered.

Answer 95

Kietzmann et al., 2021 How much communication between users could be happening via private social channels, such as Twitter DMs or Facebook Messenger? Marketers refer to these types of communication as “dark social” – as in, the side of social we can’t see. Read more on this in our guide to dark social. How should the brand interact with its audience via social? Which channels should be used, and how will customer service interactions via social be managed? How will the brand stay tuned-in to public conversations involving itself on social media? Staying updated on what people are saying about the brand and its sector helps with managing PR threats and creating the right social content. We cover this topic in detail in our podcast episode

Answer 96

CONVERSATIONS (Kietzmann et al., 2021) What can we identify about how our audience shares content? What are the characteristics of the content they share? What are the mutual interests of people in the brand’s target audience? Identify these and you’ll have a strong basis for creating content that gets shared to the right people from a commercial perspective.

Answer 97

Honeycomb; Kietzmann et al., 2021 To what extent is a person or business present on social media, and how aware are other users of this? Some social media platforms have mechanisms for making the extent of a user’s presence public: for instance, Facebook Pages are automatically updated with a read on how long the page owner usually takes to respond. Another aspect of presence is how a person’s presence on social media relates to their presence in the physical world. This connection is made through actions such as location tagging, and the listing of bricks-and-mortar business addresses. Key questions: How present will our brand be on social? Does this align with customer expectations? What are our customers revealing about their physical location on social? Could and should we feed that information into our social marketing strategy? Post-campaign evaluation Identity While our ad campaign had good reach, we need a better mechanism for capturing user data if we are to maximise benefits. Conversations Our Google Analytics data suggests the campaign may have led to a high volume of “dark social” sharing and traffic. Sharing The content produced for our campaign was heavily shared. More of the same next time. Presence Users expect a faster message response time from our Facebook page. Relationships We lost efficiency in the sales funnel by failing to support transactions over social. This mechanic of the B2C relationship should be reviewed. Reputation We gained 5,000 likes as a result of the campaign. That brings us in line with our top competitor on this particular reputation metric. Groups We have insufficient data on whether our campaign content was shared in any groups or subcommunities.

Answer 98

Brandtzaeg and Heim (2011) Segments of users behave in different ways Some users are more for information, otherws for recreation, some have low and high participations. Different types of social networking users (SNS): LURKERS: they are there not really participating. use internet to kill time. More lurkers online around 27 % ? use social media to see if somebody has contact them SPORADICS: also low participation, however are there for information? DEBATERS: more active and there for information? least people online around 11 %. use social media to see if somebody has contact them, write/read a contribution, discuss SOCIALISERS: for enjoyment, more for fun, more active, socialisers on second place, 25 per cent of users are socialisers according to Brandtzaeg and Heim (2011) use social media to see if somebody has contact them, write messages ACTIVES: around 18% of online users; the most active users. use internet to kill time, connect with others, profile surfing, write letters/messages, see others videos / photos, see if somebody has contact them, publish or share photos, read new contributors, look for a friend,

Answer 99

The 4 Cs●Cognize●Congruity●Curate●Chase Kietzmann, J. H., Hermkens, K., McCarthy, I. P., & Silvestre, B. S. (2011). Social media? Get serious! Understandingthe functionalbuildingblocks ofsocial media.Business horizons,54(3), 241-251. Honeycomb article

Answer 100

Cognize: For companies to recognizeand understand itssocial media landscape:–What is the social media landscape the company is in?–In which social media are people talking about us?–Who are important social media influencers that concerns us? Kietzmann et al., 2021 example: As wehavesuggestedbefore, not onlydidthe Obama ‘08 campaignhavea presenceon thesesocial media, theydevelopedstrategiesfor usingthemto theirfull potential. Oneofthe strategiesofthe campaignwasto personalizethe candidateand the campaign, to embraceindividualsupporters usingthe same technologies, and to make themfeela part ofthe campaign. The campaignusedFacebook to organize, Twitter to sendnews, and YouTube to communicate. At onepointduringthe campaign, thenSenator Obama hadthe largestnumberoffollowersofanyoneon Twitter (Rainieand Smith2008). In addition, Obama ‘08 alsousedadditionalWeb 2.0 toolslike Flickr feedsto keepsupporters updatedwithphotosfrom the campaign. Thesetoolswereableto alsohelpthe campaignto segment outitssupporters and to providetargetedmessagesto uniqueand narrowconstituenciesand slices oftheiractivistbase. Mealy(2009) has shownthatthisstrategywasparticularlyeffectivein itsoutreachto ethniccommunities(e.g., AfricanAmericans, Latinos, Asians) butalsoto class-basedand otheraffinitygroups(e.g., Te ach e r sfor Obama, Lawyersfor Obama).

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2. Congruity-Develop strategies for the different social media that are congruent to (suited with) the different social media functions of the specific social media (compare with the honeycomb model).-How do you measure performance on each social media? (Remember customers are in control)-E.g. How well customer issues are solved-Make sure your social media is found! Kietzmann et al., 2021 HONEYCOMB ARTICLE (four c's ) CONGRUITY INCLUDES how you measure you digital marketing strategy :)

Answer 102

Murdough, C. (2009). Social media measurement: It’snot impossible.Journal ofInteractiveAdvertising,10(1), 94-99. BY establishing GOALS, objectives, and METRICS: such as KPIs A goal can be: deepen relationship with customers Objective: Encourage ongoing interaction with the brand, and Achieve a critical mass of audience through social media Metrics: #of advocates (Fans Followers, authors) and #of comments posted

Answer 103

the pillars of social media measurement accordingly to Murdough, C. (2009): REACH (quantity; quality), DISCUSSIONS (Topics; sentiments), OUTCOMES (site traffic; purchase intent) Social media measurement: It’snot impossible.Journal ofInteractiveAdvertising,10(1), 94-99. ? (by thinking of CONGRUITY KIETZMANN ET AL., 2021? )

Answer 104

3. Curate: Develop a strategy for how often and when the company should interact on social media-Who should represent you and create content?-What content? For instance through: Social media governanceFrequency& Process for UpdatesBrandingGuidelinesTraining& EducationApprovalProcesses& ContinuityPlanningSocial media governanceis the collectionofpolicies, proceduresand toolsemployedby an organizationto ensurethatassets aresecured, risks areminimizedand compliancemaintained. For instance a company may want to have core values, such as protecting customers privacy, respect copyrights For instance, Dell had a flowchart which helped them how to handle crisis management.

Answer 105

4. Chase●Chase what happens on social media! You and competitors (the four C's Kietzmann et al., 2021)

Answer 106

Figure 4 illustrates the type of performance data ecosystem available to social media marketers. As mentioned previously, holistic social media measurement includes both qualitative and quantitative performance sources. The providers indicated in each of the four categories are intended to be a sampling of available tools, not an endorsement of one provider over another: Let's examine each data source to provide some context for the unique insight each brings to the evaluation of social media programs: 1. Enterprise listening platforms (ELP). Most of these tools provide some work flow management capabilities, but primarily, they centralize all publicly accessible discussions across the social Web, made available for reporting and synthesis. With regard to the analysis construct, these platforms provide the data necessary to inform a large portion of the reach and discussions performance insight components. 2. Text mining partners. Manually reviewing every social comment that includes a brand is not only physically impractical, but it would also introduce human interpretation bias. So these particular solutions help social practitioners semi-automate the process of deciphering the meaning of social comments, specifically by pulling out topic categories and sentiment. Natural language processing is really challenging because of the large portfolio of exceptions inherent to the English language and people's usage of it. Therefore, nothingautomated will be 100% accurate; however, it helps tremendously to gauge the primary themes of discussions efficiently, especially when this automatic effort gets supplemented with ongoing sampling and manual review of comments to ensure updates to any keyword tuning. 3. Platform API (application programming interface) tools. This portfolio of niche social measurement tools gives access to key social insight activities not readily available in the mainstream ELPs (i.e., Facebook Insights for private-access profiles; Visible Measures for video clip distribution, usage measurement, and propagation accounting). They are used on a case-by-case basis for social programs. 4. Site analytics solutions (such as google analytics) . These tools provide insight into a brand's Web site visitor behavior and, in the case of social media measurement, act as the primary source of a brand's outcome activities that are part of the analysis construct. Referrals from social media venues, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and discussion forums, demonstrate what sort of high-value behaviors occur once social audiences reach the brand's site, including leads, transactions, and priority content consumption. With the right set up of referral domain categorization and campaign tracking code utilization, tying site activities back to direct social media efforts is possible.

Answer 107

A social media listening tool is a software that monitors and analyzes online conversations about your brand, a specific topic, your competitors or anything else that's relevant to your company. It pulls in mentions of specified keywords and helps marketers analyze these mentions. So first, what is social listening? A social media listening tool is a software that monitors and analyzes online conversations about your brand, a specific topic, your competitors or anything else that's relevant to your company.

Answer 108

Social media listeningplatformscentralizeall publiclyaccessiblediscussionsacrossthe social Web, madeavailablefor reportingand synthesis●https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSss4YHXsfQ such as Hootsuite Insights is one of the best Social media listening tool. HOOTSUITE ACADEMY!! I CAN LEARN IT AND ADD ON cv/linkedin Text mining in social media: using machinge learning or linguistics analysis to large samples of social media data to gain insihgts ‘: for companies & researchers What they did in thesis they downloaded millions of tweets from twitter and did text mining!!! And should how it could be applied to great insights

Answer 109

Thomaz, G. M., Biz, A. A., Bettoni, E. M., Mendes-Filho, L., & Buhalis, D. (2017). Contentmining frameworkin social media: A FIFA worldcup 2014 caseanalysis.Information & Management,54(6), 786-80 Te x t m i n i n g i n social media:Using machine learning or linguistics analysis to large samples of social media data to gain insights.For companies and researchers The two major ongoing challenges for any brand are: Understanding their customers’ needs and motivations Keeping track of their changing requirements and expectations over time. Social media data provides the solution to both challenges. Locked within online conversations are the diamonds that brands are looking for – detailed and timely insights into customers’ experience of their brand, product or service. Social media text mining is nothing new, but the technologies used to mine and analyse text are rapidly evolving. The latest and most technology-forward social listening tools are combining more traditional linguistic rules with machine learning-based analysis to uncover more hidden insights locked into social media conversations. What is text mining? Text mining, also referred to as text data mining and similar to text analysis, is the process of extracting meaningful patterns and insights from unstructured text. Most textual data (around 80% of all data in the world) is unstructured – that is to say, it isn’t standardised into a tabular format (rows and columns). Social media comments, product reviews, forum posts, customer service transcripts, all of these sources are written organically and are historically more difficult for a computer to categorise and make sense of. Language is as complex and varied as the people who use it. Nuance, subjectivity and idiosyncrasies all play their part. What makes it more complex still is the rate at which language evolves – intergenerational communication is a constant source of confusion and bemusment, further exacerbated by online communication in forums and on social media. Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques enable us to make sense of unstructured qualitative data and machine learning helps computers to adapt to the nuances and changes to language. Humans are still more capable of understanding language, but this new technology allows vast amounts of unstructured textual data to be processed at scale, enabling organisations to improve their decision making and business outcomes. Uses of social media text mining Text mining social media data can help brands to better understand their customers and their customers’ experience of their brand, products and services. Here are some of the applications: Identify topics and subtopics Find out what is driving conversation on social media, what portion of your audience is talking about any particular topic, and how conversation changes with time. What’s dominating the conversation? Find out what portion of online conversation is around a specific product, service or topic. Measure sentiment and emotion Discover how customers feel about your brand in general or in relation to a specific topic, product or service. Are they positive or negative? What emotions do they express? E.g. anger, joy, frustration, etc. Psychographic profiling Some text mining tools have the capacity to extract complex information from text such as the key personality traits and communication style preferences of the authors of the texts. This information enables you to hone your marketing messaging and communication style to suit your audience and target specific customers. Competitor analysis The majority of social media text data is freely and publicly available and provides a perfect opportunity to suss out your competition. Find out what your competitors’ customer pain points are, what share of voice you and each of your competitors have, and how it has changed over time.

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Te x t miningto... -predict disease outbreaks-Stock market fluctuations-Understand criticism towards companies, services, products-Identify influential users Thomaz, G. M., Biz, A. A., Bettoni, E. M., Mendes-Filho, L., & Buhalis, D. (2017). Contentmining frameworkin social media: A FIFA worldcup 2014 caseanalysis.Information & Management,54(6), 786-801 Thomaz et al., 2017 Benefits you can get from text mining is: creating a competitor analysis, customer analysis, engagement, sentiment analysis, knowledge discovery, consumer knowledge, which helps: decision making, creation and innovation, predictions of scenarios and trends LEADING to helping to create a digital marketing strategy!

Answer 111

Before a crisis●Be prepared–Identify potential crisis●Build a social media crisis team–Strategists–Analysts following social media–Content creator●Haveyourvaluesdefined

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●Pause social media activities●Informemployees●Publishan officialstatement●Be transparent

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Desirable lifestyleArtsySexHumorPersonalEtc. Kendall Jenner 2017 best nine on instagram Bianca Ingrosso accused for sexistic commercial. Daniel Wellington getting micro influencers leading to great growth for the company

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ANGENCIES THAT CONNECTS influencers with companies. such as IMA and the Hivency platform

Answer 115

“What’sreallygreatabout(influencers) is thatnot onlydo youget the engagementfrom fans whoareexcitedto seetheirfavoritecelebrityin a post, butthenyouget thesepeoplewithall thesesocial media followers, so all theyhaveto do is retweetit. That’swherethe reachcomesin and that’swhyreachis so importantwhengagingthe performanceofa campaignand seeinghowmanypeoplesawit” (Participant#1).●“(Whenchoosingan influencer) the mostimportantpart is just makingsure thateverythingthattheyputontosocial alignswithwhatyouaresaying, becausethereis a risk whenyouareworkingwithinfluencers. There’salwaysthe risk theyaregoing to saysomethingor do somethingthatwouldn’tworkwithwhatyouaretryingto promote” (Participant#1).

Answer 116

“What’sreallygreatabout(influencers) is thatnot onlydo youget the engagementfrom fans whoareexcitedto seetheirfavoritecelebrityin a post, butthenyouget thesepeoplewithall thesesocial media followers, so all theyhaveto do is retweetit. That’swherethe reachcomesin and that’swhyreachis so importantwhengagingthe performanceofa campaignand seeinghowmanypeoplesawit” (Participant#1).●“(Whenchoosingan influencer) the mostimportantpart is just makingsure thateverythingthattheyputontosocial alignswithwhatyouaresaying, becausethereis a risk whenyouareworkingwithinfluencers. There’salwaysthe risk theyaregoing to saysomethingor do somethingthatwouldn’tworkwithwhatyouaretryingto promote” (Participant#1).

Answer 117

Virtual influencers : the y can behave as we want. , they can do less mistakes. : they don’t have too sleep, have to be clever when being a human but a irtual reality is controlled by others.!!! More women than men are popular as influecers? MIQUELA the robot: Instagram TIKTOK , SPOTIFY. YOUTUBE :O, s

Answer 118

-destroyanythingthatmightbe usefulto the enemywhenretreatingfrom a position. -BuildAircraft manufacturingcapacity-Attack from South, North Africa, Greece, Italy-Set upcodehackingcapabilities Honory, digital, mention:Alan Turing. Crackedthe Enigmaencryption.Helpedwinthe war.Instrumental in invention ofthe computer Tacticsin World War2:–Createconfusionofdate and locationofD-day–Disruptingcommunications–Motti: Encerclingthe enemy

Answer 119

”The mainthesisofbothourpaper and the overall special issueon "Digital Business Strategy: To warda New Generation ofInsights" is thatthe timeis right to shiftourthinkingaboutIT, not as a functional-levelresponse, butas a fundamental driver ofbusiness valuecreationand capture. Digital technologiesshapethe new business infrastructureand influencethe new organizationallogicand patternsofcoordinationwithinand acrossfirms.” Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O. A., Pavlou, P. A., & Venkatraman, N. V. (2013). Digital business strategy: towarda nextgeneration ofinsights. MIS Quarterly37(2)

Answer 120

●The position and long-term direction of the organization ●Levels of strategy –Corporate level (purpose and scope of a corporation, how to add value to business units) –Business level (How to compete on a given market) –Operational strategy(people, processes, resources in different parts of organization)

Answer 121

Corporate level (purpose and scope of a corporation, how to add value to business units)

Answer 122

Business level strategy: (How to compete on a given market)

Answer 123

Operational strategy (people, processes, resources in different parts of organization)

Answer 124

”organizational strategy formulated and executed by leveraging digital resources to create differential value” (Differential value is the economic expression of what makes your value proposition unique compared to your competition.) Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O. A., Pavlou, P. A., & Venkatraman, N. V. (2013). Digital business strategy: towarda nextgeneration ofinsights. MIS Quarterly37(2) Bharadwaj et al., 2013

Answer 125

The portfolio of businesses, products , and activities carried out within a firm’s management control Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O. A., Pavlou, P. A., & Venkatraman, N. V. (2013). Digital business strategy: towarda nextgeneration ofinsights. MIS Quarterly37(2) Bharadwaj et al., 2013

Answer 126

``` Four themes in digital business strategy (DBS): ●Scope of digital business strategy ●Scale of digital business strategy ●Speed of decision making ●Sources of value creation ``` Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O. A., Pavlou, P. A., & Venkatraman, N. V. (2013). Digital business strategy: towarda nextgeneration ofinsights. MIS Quarterly37(2) Bharadwaj et al., 2013

Answer 127

Scope of Digital business strategy Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O. A., Pavlou, P. A., & Venkatraman, N. V. (2013). Digital business strategy: towarda nextgeneration ofinsights. MIS Quarterly37(2) Bharadwaj et al., 2013 What the corporate scope of a business is, is a fundamental question for a business strategy:–What the company should do (e.g. sell non-alcoholic drinks)●The scope of digital business strategy–The portfolioof businesses, products , and activities carried out within a firm’s management control–Diversifying or consolidating?–DBS transcends boundaries; it is transfunctional●Capitalizing on digital resources (big data elicited from social media, cloud computing, and mobile phones)●A digital business strategy enables firms to expand the scope beyond firm boundaries, and supply chains, crossing traditional industry boundaries ”Over time, as firmsand industriesbecomemoredigital and relyon information, communication, and connectivityfunctionality, weenvisionthatdigital business strategywillbe the business strategy.

Answer 128

IncludesDigitizationofProducts and Services and the InformationAroundThem For instance: ●Consider AMAZON’s Web Services on the cloud–E-retailing and Web Services may be viewed as unrelated under traditional strategy conceptualizations! (Googles, Netflix, Microsoft, etc.,)–The same technologies, infrastructure, people, suppliers, and data are useful in many business cases. Amazon has successfully used their resources, through an effective DBS. Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O. A., Pavlou, P. A., & Venkatraman, N. V. (2013). Digital business strategy: towarda nextgeneration ofinsights. MIS Quarterly37(2) Bharadwaj et al., 2013 Howit usedto be: an IT-strategyseparatefrom the rest

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Scale: Traditionally geographic and physical (scale effects). E.g. Coca Cola –low costs due to scale, geographically everywhere makes it possible to get return on large scale brand development.●Rapid Digital ScaleUp/Down as StrategicDynamicCapability–Increased availability of an reliance on cloud computing services provides enables firms to scale up or down their infrastructure●NetworkEffectsWithinMultisidedPlatformsCreateRapid ScalePotential–As moreproductsand services becomedigital and connected, networkeffectsbecomethe keydifferentiatorand driver ofvalue. Examplesduringcovid?●ScaleThroughAlliances and Partnerships–The way to scale is often through alliances and partnerships.–Digital assets can be combined.–Systems easy to integrate.–Examplses` Such as Star Alliance :) SAS , Swiss air, and others --> Collaboration, data exchangeofcustomersetc, makes it possibleto winon scalethroughcollaborationallowedfor by digital data. Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O. A., Pavlou, P. A., & Venkatraman, N. V. (2013). Digital business strategy: towarda nextgeneration ofinsights. MIS Quarterly37(2) Bharadwaj et al., 2013

Answer 130

●Speed of product innovation and launches–Purely digital companies are often very quick to launch innovations. Hybrid companies (physical and digital) pushed to keep up–Withincreaseddigitization, productlaunchesneedto be coordinatedin networkswithcomplementaryproductsand services●Speed of decision making (requires new forms of organizing)●“As companiesmake investmentsto process increasedamountsofdata, wefindthatfewhavemadecorrespondinginvestmentsin the organizationalpro-cessesto drive business valuefrom data and information.“●Speed of supply chains orchestration –Made possible thanks to new software such as Enterprise systems such as SAP and Oracle–The speed of a supply chain (how quickly the supply chain can react to new volumes, new products etc) is a competitive advantage●Speed of network formation and adaptation–Requires new organizational capabilities to design structure and manage networks●Present capabilities are often misaligned with these demands ”the valuelies not in investingin technologybutin howincreasedaccess to information drives faster and moreeffectivedecisions” Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O. A., Pavlou, P. A., & Venkatraman, N. V. (2013). Digital business strategy: towarda nextgeneration ofinsights. MIS Quarterly37(2) Bharadwaj et al., 2013

Answer 131

Sources of business value creation Increased value from information –(Google, Facebook, eBay)–Many business models based in information have emerged in areas such as healthcare and energy–Internet of things (IOT) still emerging●Value creation from multisided business models–Such business models connects two or more distinct user groups that provide benefit to each other.–What examples can you think of?●Value co-creation through coordinated business models in networks–Various offerings need to be integrated so as to add value to customers●ValueAppropriationthroughControl ofDigital Industry Architecture–Example: Apple can control both suppliers and vendors, and in doing so provide a (perhaps) better user experience. Market share apple, vs profit apple? Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O. A., Pavlou, P. A., & Venkatraman, N. V. (2013). Digital business strategy: towarda nextgeneration ofinsights. MIS Quarterly37(2) Bharadwaj et al., 2013

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``` Drivers passengers Creators Audience Users, developers OEMs Sellers Buyers Users, Fin A/C Portals, sellers Renters Travellers ```

Answer 133

H&M lost profits, in comparison with Zara, since H&M kept open H&M physical stores instead of utilising e-commerce.

Answer 134

●The firstobjectiveofthisarticleis to diagnosethe growinggap betweenthe demandsofthe market and the capacityoforganizations ●The second objectiveis to specifynextpracticesfor narrowingthegap and stayingaheadofrivals Day, George S. "Closing the marketing capabilities gap." Journal of marketing 75.4 (2011): 183-195

Answer 135

As we have seen, many new strategic opportunities ●New wayscommunication●Newways of gleaning feedback from customers●Abundanceof information from innumerable channels●There is agap between the acceleration and complexity of markets and the capacity of most organizations tocope with this complexity●Marketing capabilitiesneed gobeyond the narrow confines of the marketing mix●What are the causes of this gap? day (2011) showcases that there is a gap between what companies have for resources available versus resources required. :)

Answer 136

(Day, 2011) ●Organizational rigidities –path-dependency (Path dependency is a phenomenon whereby history matters; what has occurred in the past persists because of resistance to change) and cognitive lock-in (not open to learn from experiences, keeping it as it is) –Inertia and complacency –Structural insularity (narrow-minded, prejudiced, not opento new ideas) silos –Lagging reactions: it takes time to absorb new information, interpret its meaning, and then to mobilize a condition to action (business divisions that operate independently and avoid sharing information)

Answer 137

● Orientation: Inside out or outside in. Is strategy built on company’s –capabilities and resources(inside out) or –external demands and opportunities (outside in)? ● Exploitation: “exploitation of old certainties” , exploit and use old resources? (Innovation that emerges from existing assets of the organization and improves them through innovation) ● Exploration: “exploration of new possibilities” (This kind of innovation is relatively moderate, focused mainly on enhancement and efficiency — most managers of organizations feel comfortable with it. It deals with questions familiar to them: improving existing products, improving the product for a proximate market, etc. They know the customers and their expectations and thus find it relatively easy to address the challenge of exploiting.) 'Day 2011

Answer 138

Inside-out + exploiting is called the Resource-based view of the firm. :) by using inner and current capabilities to keep improving on them. The resource-based view (Penrose 1956; Barney 1991 and Amit and Schoemaker1993) ●Bundles of resources that are deployed●Valuable, inimitable and unique●Routines as the organisational memory

Answer 139

A static image of organizational capabilities!Missing is a mechanism for explaining renewal and adaptation, adapting to the market (and explore) consequently, Dynamic capabilities theory (Inside outand exploring ) was formulated to address this limitation For instance, it is believed that H&M had a resource based view by exploiting they current capabilities by open new stores, instead of Exploring and having a dynamic capabilities approach and use their own capabilities to explore (inside-out and explore). that is why they got fewer sales than Zara and Primark.

Answer 140

Yes Outside-in and exploitive (Day, 2011) is a Market driven organization ●market orientation —using a market information processing perspective ●Adapts to customer needs, but within existing boundaries listen to customers so that the company can keep exploiting existing resources. they are good at adapting to competitors such as Zara and Telia, but, they are lacking to be more explorative?

Answer 141

day 2011: Inside out and explorative Dynamic capability is: how firms acquire and deploy their resources to better match the demands of the market environment ●Dynamic capability is "the capacity of an organization to purposefully create, extend, or modify the resource base" (Helfat2007, p. 5) ●A DC has three functions: –(1) sensing environmental changes –(2) responding to the changes –(3) selecting the organizational configuration and business model

Answer 142

●The familiar capabilities of the marketing mix formulation are almost entirely static (Dutta, Zbaracki, and Bergen 2003; Vorhiesand Morgan 2005).–New product development capability –The standard processes for market strategy development –Strategic market planning●Still Inside-out perspective! Day 2011 howthey can use their current resources by having sensed the market, and how they can continue their product development.

Answer 143

●vigilant market learning–deepmarket insightswithan advancewarningsystem to anticipatemarket changesand unmetneeds,●adaptive experimentation–Learnfrom experiments●“open” marketing thatmobilizesdispersedand flexible partner resources–mobilizesthe skillsofcurrentpartners .Day 2011

Answer 144

1) Static: capabilities are stable, process activities are routinised. - Focus: inside-out, internal efficiency, replicability of processes (includes the resource-based view of the firm) 2) Dynamic (systematic sensing and scanning): capabilities can be augmented and reconfigured , new capabilities can be added to pursue new opportunities - Focus: inside-out, fitness, effectiveness. Includes (dynamic capabilities) in between i would argue we have Capabilities of market-driven organizations 3) Adaptive (Experimental learning): Capabilities enable anticipation (prediction?), Process activities can be rapidly reconfigured as needed. Focus: outside-in, anticipate and respond. Includes (adaptive marketing capabilities)

Answer 145

–1. a willingness to be immersed in the lives of current, prospective, and past customers and observe –2. an open-minded approach to latent needs–3. an ability to sense and act on weak signals –4. Decisions are driven by current customer and signals about their changing needs

Answer 146

Adaptive market capabilities: experimentation (day 2011) ●Three conditions must be satisfied: –First, nurture (care and protect) an experimental mind-set (curiosity) –Second, codify and share insights and best practices (though with caution) –Third, explore new paths (such as weak ties)! –March’s (1991) strategies of exploitation and exploration

Answer 147

Yes ”Ratherthanask whatwearegoodat and whatelsecanwedo withthatskill, youask, whoareourcustomers? Whatdo theyneed? And thenyousaywe’regoing to givethatto themregardlessofwhetherwehavethe skillsto do so, and wewilllearntheseskillsno matterhowlong it takes...Thereis a tendencyI thinkfor executivesto thinkthatthe right courseofaction is to stick to the knitting—stick withwhatyouaregoodat. Thatmaybe a generallygoodrule, butthe problem is the worldchangesoutfrom under youifyouarenot constantlyaddingto yourskillset.”-Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon

Answer 148

●Forge relationships with use leaders●Transcendorganizational boundaries●Ta p i n t o e x t e r n a lexpertise●Gain access to a deeper set of resources and specialized skillsthat do not exist in narrow nexus of relationships Day 2011

Answer 149

could connect with: viral consultants, text miners, advertising agency, focal marketing, market research suppliers, data base analytics, adaptive experiments, and search engine optimisers.

Answer 150

Assumptions, and think what are our drivers? where will our momentum (power/strenght) take us? To diagnose the gap: assess current capabilities: build adaptive capabilities: and think if we will be superior to rivals, accept accountability (responsibility), implement and learn from Feedback from how it has went, keep implementing and learn by having programs, objectives and metrics, resources, then monitor and calibrate the gap doing all these mentioned steps is called the Capability Development Process

Answer 151

"Wedon'twantto be the cool companyin the techsector," MrNadellahas previouslysaid."Wewantto be the companythatmakes otherpeoplecool." "In 2014, wecancelledourcompanymeeting where ourleaderswouldtellemployeeswhatwasimportant, in favour of having a hackathon that lets our employees tell our leaders what's important," Sony and Microsoft unite Microsoft have adaptive marketing capabilities, which is the same with FACEBOOk, apple, alphabet, amazon? as they have a great increase in sales!:))

Answer 152

The transformation of industries over the last 15 years is significant 1. Media - books, music, TV and movies 2. Advertising - a new oligopoly 3. Telecoms - a utility 4. Retail - brutal, finally omnichannel Happening Now 1.Automotive - Electric wave, car sharing 2.Energy - Decentralisation, resilience 3.Health - Help me now, stop cost explosion 4.Finance - Stop ripping me off

Answer 153

Broader trends now have a more significant role for companies and citizens•Pandemics!•Sustainability•Ethics•PoliticsIt’s much harder to raise financing if you are not relevant in the world

Answer 154

The Battlefield is ExperienceIf you don’t want to compete on tradition or price... If you don’t want to compete on tradition (ice cream truck music it works is expensive ; covid get more sellingn) or price (is always effective) … the battledield is the customer experience. (which includes value)

Answer 155

Customer: customer orientation, product/service design, brand and marketing, sales and go to market businesss orientation: you need people that understand design. Product (start ups are more geared at the product and focused at the problem and a prdoduct that addresses the need): iterative development, platform expertise, suppliers & manufacturing The Team: skills, communication, partnership Business: strong value porpositon, creation, and plan, and financing,

Answer 156

The Double Diamond approach - created by the British Design Council and endlessly iterated Discover , define , develop , deliver Research (Interviews, observations, trends), Synthesis (themes, journey, opportunities), Ideas (create, prototype, critique), Construct (build, test, refine) You dobt have ti wait ti deliver Grocery e-commerce Axfood owns willys and hemköp Food is pherisable, Discover! Biggest challenge is Co-creation with users & stakeholders Need to interview people in a relaxed way, inderstaning customers needs, and business needs, customers support line knew what was going on!!

Answer 157

Discover: Mapping the as-iS EXPERIENCE USING A JOURNEY MAP: raise traise the discussion to the entire customer journey Define, it was not the shopping experience itself; it was the for and after, the beauty if a journey map is it helps you look broader. https://www.ocadogroup.com/

Answer 158

Discover! Co-creation with users & stakeholdersBuilding insights with diverse stakeholders on•Customer needs•Business Needs •Industry trends and developments•Specific perspectives and ideas from across an organisation as well as on the customer sideShould we sell groceries online?Most products become mediocre when people don’t dare to speak to real users or dare to dig deep enough Biggest challenge is Co-creation with users & stakeholders Need to interview people in a relaxed way, inderstaning customers needs, and business needs, customers support line knew what was going on!!

Answer 159

Raise the discussion to the entire customer journeyIdentifying gaps and pains in the overall flow and spot high impact opportunity areas for actionVisualise and illustrate data and insights from customer interviews to raise the impact of research and conclusions

Answer 160

Workshop with all stakeholdersActivitiesFocused and energetic idea generation work session during which participants develop a wealth of tangible, breakthrough ideas that can be used as the basis of further work. The session is also great for team building but individual idea creation is massively important!This is where you can get buy-in from decision makers by getting them involved! SynthesisActivitiesThe define phase is where it all comes together using journeys and narratives as a framework.Using the wealth of material captured during the research phase (videos, notes, quotes, and other insights), you analyze and sort through what has been heard, to understand the key customer and stakeholder challenges. One can see themes emerge, and phrase them into actionable opportunities and concept ideas.Sorting out the crap happens here! Map the To-Be, Opportunities and PrioritiesActivities och skriv ut alla sreg, hur vi ska locka kunder, how everything is when they are shopping online, when they get the confirmation, invoice, get delivers etc, for instance for shopping a goal can be to inspire the customers with relevant foods, and helping the customer finding what they want easily and smoothly, like look at all steps and say what we should do double diamond: Fight! What will we move forward with?Business interestsCustomer interestsTechnology capabilitiesBudgetTiming - How do we balance customer wants with the real world? What makes sense from what is possible from technology and what our bidget is and the timing.pay ful in the startup; problems is whn this decision s not anqoured and not made. I First build trust and can spend years building trust with the company , AND then I can take a bigger trunk; it is not easy.

Answer 161

Experience prototypingExperience prototyping is a way to create and test high level concepts.We use experience prototyping to create and test high level concepts to get direct feedback from end users and stakeholders.We may use video as a tool to generate stories to visualise possible solution improvements with interviewees and stakeholders. We may also create rapid prototypes and mockups to test specific interactions with users.Activities CHALLENGE:THE HIGH QUANTITYIN EACH PURCHASE08 / 20 Interaction DesignActivitiesDefine the architecture of the experienceInteraction design focuses on the overall architecture, navigation, orientation, target platform and function of a service or productA typical output from this sort of design activity is a strong complement to functional specifications but focuses on the user at the centre and optimises the experience to deliver a strong experience whilst satisfying business goalsSample output: Navigation specificationInformation architectureWireframe specifications

Answer 162

Branding in digital: ActivitiesMany brands have the majority of their orientation in physical channelsOften, their design tools and libraries are not suited to the digital world. Branding in digital: ActivitiesDevelop directions for a digital visual language, copy-writing style, and overall product look and feel and define one direction to scale to the product.•Explore visual design directions•Create visual standards for a digital product•Define a system of patterns and resources to apply to the product Design & Develop: Complete the experienceOne development and design team working as one to maintain consistency and enable making informed and vetted adjustments as the development process continues.•Ensure features map to insights, even when scope slightly changes•Continuously updating mocks and documentation, ensuring a match between written/visual specs and technical needs random last words: Branding in digital; pgysical branding? Land a concept and as developers work sprint you will do the detail design  Double diamond can be applied to a lot of things Concept and focus on solutions!!!

Answer 163

Discover The start of a project is marked by an initial idea or inspiration, often sourced from the Discover phase. The 'double diamond' design process model The double diamond diagram was developed through in-house research at the Design Council in 2005 as a simple graphical way of describing the design process. Divided into four distinct phases, Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver, it maps the divergent and convergent stages of the design process, showing the different modes of thinking that designers use. The process: using the Double Diamond Design Council’s Double Diamond clearly conveys a design process to designers and non-designers alike. The two diamonds represent a process of exploring an issue more widely or deeply (divergent thinking) and then taking focused action (convergent thinking). Discover. The first diamond helps people understand, rather than simply assume, what the problem is. It involves speaking to and spending time with people who are affected by the issues.Define. The insight gathered from the discovery phase can help you to define the challenge in a different way.Develop. The second diamond encourages people to give different answers to the clearly defined problem, seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people. Deliver. Delivery involves testing out different solutions at small-scale, rejecting those that will not work and improving the ones that will. The design principles The framework for innovation outlines four core principles for problem-solvers to adopt so that they can work as effectively as possible. Put people first. Start with an understanding of the people using a service, their needs, strengths and aspirations. Communicate visually and inclusively. Help people gain a shared understanding of the problem and ideas. Collaborate and co-create. Work together and get inspired by what others are doing.Iterate, iterate, iterate. Do this to spot errors early, avoid risk and build confidence in your ideas. Explore: challenges, needs and opportunitiesShape: prototypes, insights and visionsBuild: ideas, plans and expertise Creating a culture of success The problems we face today require more than one idea, they require working with other organisations and supporting people to be part of the solution. As important as the process and principles organisations we adopt, is the culture of an organisation and how it connects with citizens and partners. Leadership is needed to encourage innovation, build skills and capability, provide permission for experimentation and learning. Strong leadership also allows projects to be open and agile, showing results along the way and being able to change. Engagement is needed with people who are delivering the ideas and receiving them, but also with other partners who might have other ideas. Developing connections and building relationships is as important as creating ideas.

Answer 164

Kritzinger, W.T. and Weideman, M. (2013), “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 273–286. Kritzinger and Weideman (2013) Any e-commerce venture using a website as the main shop front should invest in marketing its website. In this study, the relationship between website owners having invested in search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC), respectively, is investigated. The design used in this research involves an empirical field experimental approach in which implementation of both SEO and PPC are considered, with subsequent comparison of results. Data were gathered from Google search results after performing both Fat Head and Long Tail keyphrase searches based in various categories. Websites that were listed among the top 10 in the sponsored section of search results were recorded. These websites were then checked to see if they also had an SEO ranking within the top 100 for both the Fat Head and Long Tail key-phrases. It is found that website owners seldom invest in SEO as part of a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign. This seems to confirm some of the findings by other authors. This research has important implications for SEO and PPC practitioners, and for website owners. It should influence the way budgets on search engine marketing are applied. Finally, it could be used by marketing managers in better utilizing their limited SEM dollars. No evidence could be found that this kind of empirical research has been done, hence the results are considered to be unique.

Answer 165

PPC can ensure a website being listed immediately and, furthermore, can ensure high rankings, assuming a high bid price and quality score (advantage). ``` One disadvantage is that PPC can be costly, especially with the growing competition for popular keywords. SEO, on the other hand, cannot ensure top rankings (Visser and Weideman 2011), but could be cheaper to implement (advantage). ``` Furthermore, it can take time to experience ranking increases as a result of SEO implementation on a website (Zuze 2011). The main hurdle to implementing an effective SEO program is the fact that each search engine has its own requirements, which means that a website optimized for one search engine is not necessarily optimized for the others (Sen 2005). A further complexity is that search engines also continuously change their ranking algorithms in order to prevent search engine spamdexing. Due to this factor, websites need to be constantly updating their SEO strategy, which can become costly. SEO also has advantages, the biggest being that SEO listings occupy the main area of a search engine’s result page, and thus search engine users cannot easily ignore them (Neethling 2008)

Answer 166

To target long-tail keywords, you’ll need to find out what problems and related searches bring people to your site. Your site’s analytics software (Google Analytics, Clicky, etc.) can tell you this. If you don’t have this data, you can look at competitors’ sites for long-tail keywords. See what landing pages they’ve created and what keywords they feature. You can also check Alexa’s search rankings—if a site has a high percentage of visitors from search, they probably have an SEO strategy in place. You’ll need to create content that will show up for these long-tail searches, and the content must be high-quality. If you’re not a great writer, don’t worry. You can create low-cost content by hiring budget freelancers to write content for specific keywords. Or, use content that you already have within your company. What information, data, or insights do you have that could be useful for your target customer? Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Wikipedia grew by leveraging their contributor community to create long-tail content. Each restaurant page or wiki becomes a target for long-tail keywords, with little to no effort by the company itself. The SEO strategy is literally built into the product.

Answer 167

Kritzinger, W.T. and Weideman, M. (2013), “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 273–286. Kritzinger and Weideman (2013) SEO basics The secret to a higher search ranking is getting high-quality links to your page or site. For more information on improving your rankings, read Moz’s Beginner Guide to SEO, which outlines the basics. SEO strategies are divided into two categories: Fat-head strategies Long-tail strategies Fat-head vs. long-tail strategies The “fat head” keywords are those super-popular keywords that get the highest search volume. These are words that directly describe your company, like “sporting goods” or “children’s toys.” If you make a bar graph of all of the keywords that lead to a particular site (listed from highest to lowest search volume), these few keywords would create a “fat head” on the bar graph. Fat-head keywords make up about 30% of overall searches. These keywords are difficult to rank for, since so many sites are competing for the same words. “Long-tail” keywords, on the other hand, are longer and more specific. These are keywords that don’t directly describe the company but are related in some way, like “durable basketball shoes” or “hidden chemicals in children’s toys.” Each keyword doesn’t receive many searches, but as a group, long-tail keywords make up 70% of overall searches. They make up the “long tail” of the bar graph. These keywords are easier to rank for, since you can choose unique keywords that your competitors aren’t targeting. However, in order to capture enough traffic to make a difference in your bottom line, you’ll need to target a large number of related long-tail keywords.

Answer 168

Search engines Kritzinger, W.T. and Weideman, M. (2013), “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 273–286. Kritzinger and Weideman (2013) Search engines are the primary search tools used for information retrieval on the Web (Spink and Xu 2000). It has been estimated that around 80% of Web users employ search engines to obtain information from the Web (Thelwall 2001). This highlights the fundamental importance of webpages being listed with search engines. An important strategy for any website owner is planning how visitors can find their way to their particular website (Thelwall 2001). According to Flosi (2011) the search engine companies that generate the most searches on the Web are Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask and AOL (see Figure 1). The data were taken from the ComScore Media Metrix qSearch service, which measures search-specific traffic on the Web. Data are gathered by monitoring the Web activities in the United States (Flosi 2011). Each of the search engine companies listed in Figure 1 consists of different sites whose results were combined into one overall figure for the company’s entire network. Most people use the search engine Google, by 66%

Answer 169

The term SEM was introduced by Sullivan (2001a) to refer to a variety of activities involved in performing SEO, managing PPC listings, submitting websites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals. Further, Sullivan (2010) defined SEM as a form of Web marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs). Methods include SEO, PPC, contextual advertising, digital asset optimization, and paid inclusion (PI). Moreover, Curran (2004) observed that: Some companies are budgeting enough for payment to search engines and they have to. Deciding not to, is a bit like launching a media campaign and deciding to ignore one whole media, like TV.

Answer 170

A search engine results page, or SERP, is the page you see after entering a query into Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine. Each search engine's SERP design is different, but since Google is the most popular—holding over 80% of the market share—we'll focus on their features and algorithms. Kritzinger, W.T. and Weideman, M. (2013), “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 273–286. Kritzinger and Weideman (2013)

Answer 171

Kritzinger, W.T. and Weideman, M. (2013), “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 273–286. Kritzinger and Weideman (2013) Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing product where the search engine company charges fees related to inclusion of websites in their search index. The use of paid inclusion is controversial and paid inclusion's popularity has decreased over time among search engines. Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing model in which a website pays a fee to a search engine that guarantees that the site will be displayed in the returned search results for specifically named search terms. PI is a SEM strategy that ensures inclusion in a search engine’s index normally in exchange for a once-off payment (Sullivan 2001b). Furthermore, PI ensures that changes made to a website will be updated in the search engine index more quickly, as websites using PI will be visited more regularly. However, PI also varies from one search engine to the next. Some search engines (e.g., Yahoo!) offer a PI service for payment, whereas others (e.g., Google) do not (Neethling 2008). However, PI cannot guarantee high rankings in search results. In fact, PI does not even guarantee placement in search engine results (Sullivan 2001b), although websites that SEARCH ENGINE MARKETING STRATEGIES 277 do invest this way are likely to receive more traffic than websites that do not. This is due to the fact that a website can wait for weeks, or even months, for a search engine crawler to index it, whereas websites using PI may see results within days (Zuze 2011).

Answer 172

Kritzinger, W.T. and Weideman, M. (2013), “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 273–286. Kritzinger and Weideman (2013) Two types of marketing activities can be performed through search engines in an e-commerce setting (Dou et al. 2010). First, companies pay to have links to their websites displayed in the sponsored section of a search engine results page. This is referred to as PPC. Second, using SEO, companies strive to push the ranking of their websites higher in the organic results of search engines through the implementation of a variety of techniques. In this case, no payment is made to search engines. To ensure top rankings, a website owner could invest in either one or both of these two SEM strategies (Neethling 2008)

Answer 173

Kritzinger, W.T. and Weideman, M. (2013), “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 273–286. Kritzinger and Weideman (2013)' PPC was designed as a method of creating revenue for search engines. Over the past 15 years, users have become accustomed to search engines offering free services for which they are not prepared to pay (Moxley, Blake, and Maze 2004; Henshaw 2001). Search engines go through a number of steps to review, index, and generate listings. Although there are a number of ways to complete these steps, all of them are costly (Wittenberg 2004). PPC or Pay for Placement is used to describe a variety of overlapping practices that in essence refer to linking individual websites to specific keywords for payment (Moxley et al. 2004). As a result, potential clients are immediately taken to a website by selecting keywords that their specific target market will use in a search (Curran 2004). It is also important for a webmaster to research the possible keywords that may be used in a search for their specific product or service (Curran 2004). PPC could become costly as advertisers are locked in an ongoing competition for popular keywords (Sullivan 2003). As PPC suggests, advertisers also have to pay for every click they receive via that sponsored link (Jansen and Schuster 2011). As noted previously, search engine sponsors need some sort of income to cover expenses. If the user is unwilling to pay for basic search results, they have to look elsewhere for income. As a result, search engines take advantage of advertisers’ need to be visible and visited. Having the advantage of creating the largest amount of Web traffic and of generating ranking results, they offer services that appeal to the advertiser. Specifically, they address these advertisers’ eagerness for more visibility, enthusiasm for being placed on the first page of returned search results, and impatience for waiting to be reviewed and indexed (Thelwall 2001). Most search engines offer PPC services in order to generate revenue (Neethling 2008). Google manages Google AdWords, Yahoo! has Yahoo! Search Marketing, while Bing runs Microsoft AdCentre. Companies can place bids for search terms at their preferred PPC search engine. When a user now enters this search term, the search engine will display the companies’ website links in a given order that equals their rank for that specific term. The ranking sequence is determined by the customer bid price times the (Google) quality score for that page. The bid represents the amount of money the company is prepared to pay the search engine every time a user clicks on the link to its website on the SERP (Neethling 2008).

Answer 174

Kritzinger, W.T. and Weideman, M. (2013), “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 273–286. Kritzinger and Weideman (2013) SEO Search engine optimisation The process of improving website visibility is referred to as SEO, which involves designing or modifying websites in order to improve SERP ranking (George 2005). SEO 278 KRITZINGER AND WEIDEMAN can also be described as the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results for targeted keywords (Anonymous 2008). Usually, the earlier a website is presented in the search results or the higher it “ranks,” the more searchers will visit that website. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. Within this context, according to Zhang and Dimitroff (2004): Every Web publisher wants good Web page visibility in search engine results so as to increase accessibility of their Web pages. Unfortunately, many websites have poor visibility in search engine rankings or may not be listed at all due to various reasons. There are many techniques available to achieve the visibility goal, and many of them result from the way search engine algorithms operate. First, the SEO professional will develop a list of keywords and/or phrases (Malaga 2008). The competitiveness of each term is also determined, as well as how often each of the terms is used in search engines. The second step is to get the website into the search engine index as quickly as possible. This can be achieved by manually submitting the URLs to the search engines for consideration (Weideman 2012). During the third step, the SEO professional manipulates the on-page elements (such as metatags, page content, and site navigation) to make the website more attractive to search engine crawlers (Malaga 2008). The importance of ranking well in a SERP for queries on specific terms is undeniable (Clay 2006a). Recent research on user behavior shows that 91% of users ultimately view results only within the first three pages, and 67% of searchers look only at the first page of search results (Weideman 2009). All this means that if a website is not on the first SERP, only one third of viewers will continue viewing other pages. If the website is not in the top 30, it has almost no chance of being read by a user (Clay 2006a). Organic SEO is still the most popular form of SEM according to SEMPO’s annual State of Search Engine Marketing survey (Sherman 2007). Organic search listings outperform PPC listings three to one in click-through and are also known to achieve higher conversion rates (Clay 2006b). Weideman (2009) used three academic SEO models, namely the Binnedel, Chambers, and Visser models, and combined them plus industry views to form the Weideman model. This model ranks the elements that contribute to website visibility (both positive and negative) according to a scoring scheme based on the four contributing factors (see Figure 2).

Answer 175

Kritzinger, W.T. and Weideman, M. (2013), “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 273–286. Kritzinger and Weideman (2013) Fat Head, Chunky Middle, and Long Tail Popular search terms (those that experience at least 500 to 5000 searches per day) make up less than 30% of the overall searches performed on the Web (see Figure 3). The 18.5% of searchers with the highest occurrence is known as the Fat Head. The next 11.5% is termed the Chunky Middle, while the rightmost 70% is called the Long Tail, made up from hundreds of millions of unique searches that might be performed on any given day (Anonymous 2011). The long tail satisfies the majority of the world’s demand for information through search engines. These search queries normally consist of four or more keywords per search phrase (Anonymous 2011).

Answer 176

The Weideman model: Relative magnitude of positive elements’ scores (Weideman 2009) This model ranks the elements that contribute to website visibility (both positive and negative) Kritzinger, W.T. and Weideman, M. (2013), “Search Engine Optimization and Pay-per-Click Marketing Strategies”, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 273–286. Kritzinger and Weideman (2013) Weideman (2009) used three academic SEO models, namely the Binnedel, Chambers, and Visser models, and combined them plus industry views to form the Weideman model. This model ranks the elements that contribute to website visibility (both positive and negative) according to a scoring scheme based on the four contributing factors search engine marketing strategies that the weideman model lists are: inlinks (a link from one part of your website to another (this is also called a backlink. That being said, “backlinks” usually refer to links from other websites). You’ll also see people refer to this as internal linking, inlinks, or interlinking.) (highest score), body keywords (second highest score), hypertexts/anchor texts (third place), metatags, (etc),

Answer 177

is a figure showing fat head, chunky middle, and long tail words :) ' Kritzinger and Weideman 2013

Answer 178

With increasing use of the Web as a marketing tool, business owners are trying to come to grips with new strategies to gain market share within the online environment. Many of these business owners are not well versed with Web marketing tactics. Because of this, it is difficult to choose the best strategy for their business growth. SEO is very seldom part of an SEM campaign (Sen 2005). Even when assuming that the implementation of SEO costs the same as investing in PPC, and the benefits include the assurance of always being part of a user’s consideration set, SEO is still not the optimal SEM strategy for website marketers. A possible explanation for this situation is provided by Sen (2005). When the probability of being listed in the main results of a search engine is high, any investment in SEO is redundant—high ranking will most likely be achieved without it. On the other hand, there could be a low probability of ranking well in the organic results. In this case, users could visit the sponsored links for this website. Investing in PPC could therefore make economic sense. In addition, if it is assumed that SEO costs more than PPC (Jarboe 2005, as cited by Sen 2005), then PPC becomes much more attractive than SEO. Therefore, it should not be surprising that SEO is not a part of a company’s SEM strategy. This outcome is supported by the distribution of SEM dollars, which is biased toward PPC investments, and by the fact that the websites of fewer than 10% of the Fortune Magazine top 100 companies use SEO as part of their SEM strategy (Anonymous 2004, as cited by Sen 2005). One of the major reasons for the quick adoption of the PPC strategy is that it is very similar to a traditional paid advertisement strategy and business owners can manage such campaigns on their own. SEO on the other hand requires a prerequisite set of skills to ensure a website places within the top rankings on search engine results through various on-site optimizations and off-site organic SEO strategies (Waltzer 2008). Another reason why businesses may prefer PPC is that they have better control over the entire program and they know exactly how and where their investment is spent. Results can easily be viewed through PPC campaign reports. They also do not have to change their tactics each time the search engines change their algorithms, which can prove to be a problem, especially for those who are only interested in quick, short-term results. Organic SEO might seem like too much effort, with no guaranteed results for short-term goal seekers (Waltzer 2008). Organic SEO, as a Web marketing strategy, requires patience. However, the rewards are there. Organic optimization is not the first choice for many (depending on the brand and business model), but it does have inherent benefits that are unparalleled by sponsored or paid advertising tactics. The benefits and results last for longer periods than for PPC (Waltzer 2008). While a PPC campaign can deliver leads with relative ease, it can be a money drain and has no longevity—once the online marketer stops investing in PPC, the resulting website traffic disappears. SEO and link building require much more creative effort, but can have more sustainable results. It also allows a business to target a larger base of users, as most studies reveal that 75%–80% of searchers click on organic listings as opposed to paid listings (Waltzer 2008). In the past, Web surfers did not understand the difference between sponsored and organic results. Over time, as Web surfers have become more Web literate, a growing number of users click on organic links on the first page of results. This is attributed to their argument that if a website makes it into the top 10 without paying for it, it should be one of the best websites available to match the original search query (Waltzer 2008).

Answer 179

They found that : From Table 2, it is clear that for all the websites with both PPC and SEO, the results are better for Long Tail key-phrases. other comments are: Results show that, for both Fat Head and Long Tail key-phrases, very few websites that invest in PPC have organic listings within the top 100. This finding confirms the statement by Sen (2005) that online marketers very seldom use SEO as part of a SEM campaign. Even when assuming that the implementation of SEO costs the same as investing in PPC, and the benefits include the assurance of always being part of a user’s consideration set, THEY chose to have ppc even if SEO has been found in the study to be a great strategy also d. One of the major reasons for quick adoption of the PPC strategy is that it is very similar to traditional paid advertisement strategies and business owners or marketing managers can manage such campaigns on their own.

Answer 180

Many of the companies that invest in PPC do not necessarily have the skill/training to implement SEO on their own. They must outsource this to SEM companies that do this on their behalf. Some website owners have heard of SEO before, but do not know what it is or what benefits it could have for their websites. Until they do, the logical way for them to get traffic to their website quickly and effectively will remain traditional advertising methods like radio, newspaper, fliers, and brochures, plus PPC. This study contributes to the existing body of knowledge in the field of SEM by providing evidence that SEM expenditure in an unbalanced way seems to be the norm. It then confirms that both SEO and PPC are required for maximum website exposure. THE STUDY SAYS THAT BOTH SEO AND PPC ARE IMPORTANT FOR BUSINESSES TO GET A GREAT MAXIMYM WEBSITE EXPOSURE.

Answer 181

The target cost of a product is the expected selling price of the product minus the desired profit from selling it. In other words, target cost is really a measure of how low costs need to be to make a certain profit. Hence, the Goldfarb (2004) says that there is a great reduction cost when using online marketing instead of marketing offline!! In this review, I have emphasized a reduction in the cost of targeting as the dominant theme in the online advertising literature, just as reduced search and travel costs are the dominant themes in the more mature literature on ecommerce (e.g. Bakos 1997; Balasubramanian 1998; Brynjolfsson and Smith 2000; Ellison and Ellison 2009; For- man et al. 2009). Of course, there are some parts of the literature on online advertising that do not readily fit into the lens of targeting, such as research on standards (Gold- farb and Tucker 2012c) and user actions to avoid seeing ads such as pop-up blockers (Anderson and Gans 201 1). Nevertheless, this review has demonstrated that understanding how changes in the cost of targeting affect consumer and firm behavior is key to understanding the online advertising market Drawing on the literature on online advertising, I argue that the fundamental economic difference between online and offline advertising is a substantial reduction in the cost of targeting. This cost reduction informs what I view as the main themes in the online advertising literature: understanding advertising effectiveness, auctions, privacy, and antitrust Goldfarb, A. (2014). What is different about online advertising? Review of Industrial Organization, 44(2), 115-129

Answer 182

Goldfarb, A. (2014). What is different about online advertising? Review of Industrial Organization, 44(2), 115-129 While the rapid growth of online advertising initially led to calls for understanding a new paradigm (Hoffman and Novak 1997; Pavlou and Stewart 2000), companies use online advertising for the same reasons they deploy other kinds of advertising: As Bagwell (2007) notes, advertising can be persuasive, altering consumer tastes. It can be informative, reducing the cost of information acquisition by cons

Answer 183

search advertising: such as PPC (Goldfarb, 2014), and SEO (Weideman & Kritzinger, 2013). In Internet marketing, search advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on web pages that show results from search engine queries. Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published content. Search advertisements are targeted to match key search terms (called keywords) entered on search engines. This targeting ability has contributed to the attractiveness of search advertising for advertisers. Consumers will often use a search engine to identify and compare purchasing options immediately before making a purchasing decision. The opportunity to present consumers with advertisements tailored to their immediate buying interests encourages consumers to click on search ads instead of unpaid search results, which are often less relevant. For the online user, Sponsored Search Advertisement offers highly relevant search results which are based on the consumer’s own queries and, thus, they are considered less intrusive than banner advertisements or pop-ups advertising. In addition, Sponsored Search Advertisement reduces online user search costs and increases the accessibility to useful information within a limited time frame. Consequently, Sponsored Search Advertisement has become an important element of online users browsing and information searching experiences on the Web. Search advertising is an alternative to SEO and SEM.

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Classified advertising is advertising that appears on websites that do not provide other media content or algorithmic search. Craigslist is the largest of these websites and has been credited with the decline of offline classified ads in local newspapers across the US (Seamans and Zhu 2012). Online jobs sites and (to some extent) online dating sites also fit into this category. Classified advertising is advertising that appears on websites that do not provide other media content or algorithmic search. Craigslist is the largest of these websites and has been credited with the decline of offline classified ads in local newspapers across the US (Seamans and Zhu 2012). Online jobs sites and (to some extent) online dating sites also fit into this category: so these sites are a for of classified advertising:). Goldfarb, A. (2014). Classified advertising is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals, e.g. free ads papers or Pennysavers. Classified advertising allows private individuals (not simply companies or corporate entities) to try to sell products or services. so i''d say it is a website where you can find things in different categories, such as at craigslist you can find various jobs, restaurants, and living places.

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ting sites also fit into this category. Display advertising is the main revenue generator for online media that are not search engines. It includes simple banner ads, plain text ads (such as Google's AdSense), media-rich ads, video ads, and the typical ads that are shown on social media websites such as Facebook. Display advertising is priced with a variety of mechanisms, depending on the website. Some are priced using specialized auctions similar to search advertising; some are priced based on negotiated purchases similar to network television; and some have a fixed price and can be purchased online or through a sales force. Typically, companies pay per view, and prices are communi- cated as cost per thousand impressions (or CPM). Some display advertising is priced per click rather than per impression, and a handful of companies have experimented with a hybrid auction that allows advertisers to choose whether to pay based on cost per impression or cost per click (Zhu and Wilbur 201 1 ). Display advertising offers a variety of opportunities to target advertising. In the 1990s, online display advertising was mainly targeted (and priced) based on user demographics, in a manner similar to television. Specifically, advertisers would place their ads on websites with the appropriate demographic audience: makeup ads on women.com and beer ads on espn.com. Over time, demographic targeting has become more sophisticated. Advertisers can target specific demographic groups (married women living in Iowa aged 60-64), based on information that users provide online. For example, if a user has provided detailed demographic information elsewhere (say to Google or Microsoft because of their email account), then that information might be used for targeting (for example in ads managed by Google or Microsoft, including many non-Google and non-Microsoft websites). A many non-Google and non-Microsoft websites). Another form of targeting is called contextual targeting. In contextual targeting, ads match the context of the website. Search engine advertising is a form of contextual targeting in which advertisers match their ads to the content of the search. Contextual targeting is also common in display advertising: cars are advertised on cars.com, diapers are advertised on babycenter.com, and electronic gadgets are advertised on techcrunch.com. Finally, advertisers can use data based on past online behavior to target ads. This is called "behavioral targeting" in the industry. Typically, it involves the use of prior clickstream data to determine whether a particular customer is a good match for an ad. â Springer This content downloaded from 130.237.165.40 on Sat, 08 Jan 2022 14:26:14 UTC All use subject to http 118 A. Goldfarb A form of behavioral targeting, called "retargeting," involves showing an ad to a user who searched for (or saw) a particular kind of content. For example, if a user searched for the term "flower store," then ads for flowers may appear as they browse the web. Similarly, if a user viewed a particular item of clothing at an online retailer, a similar item may appear in ads as she browses the web. Next, I discuss the literature that has directly focused on targeting in online adver- tising.

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Goldfarb 2014 In contrast, the literature that measures online ad effectiveness is thriving. One important reason is that online advertising is relatively easy to measure. The direct two-way nature of Internet communication means that households that see ads are readily identified. Some responses, such as clickthroughs, are immediate and easily measured. In addition, by using a variety of tracking technologies, advertisers can see whether those same consumers actually buy a product. Furthermore, because each end user's computer sends a specific request to the website's server and the server responds to each with a separate data packet, experiments are relatively easy online. Most of the literature has combined experiments with some tracking technology to compare advertising views with outcomes. The ability to show randomized ads to viewers at the individual level is a direct consequence of the reduced cost of targeting. Instead of running different ads in dif- ferent cities or on different television programs, the Internet enables randomization at the end user level. Furthermore, the ability to observe which users view an ad and how they respond is also a consequence of the reduced cost of targeting through direct two-way co

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Despite these advantages, and before proceeding to the results of papers on mea- suring online advertising, it is important to recognize that there remain significant challenges in measuring online advertising. First, Lewis et al. (2011) demonstrate that studies that correlate user response and online advertising are likely to overstate the effectiveness of advertising because of a particular type of selection bias, which they label "activity bias": the observation that users tend to do many activities each time they are online, including search for items, buy items, and see advertisements. Thus they emphasize that field experiments are necessary to measure the effects of online advertising. However, in a separate paper (Lewis and Rao 2012), two of these authors show that even experiments typically lack sufficient power to demonstrate a link between online ads and actual sales. In particular, they demonstrate that the low probability that seeing one banner ad will generate a purchase combined with the high volatility in individual-level sales yields a requirement of millions of observations to generate

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goldfarb 2014 Advertisers bid (Online auction bid) on each ad impression as it is served. The impression goes to the highest bidder and their ad is served on the page. The bidding happens autonomously and advertisers set maximum bids and budgets for an advertising campaign. The first company to implement auctions that priced keyword-specific advertising in search engines was goto.com. Later renamed Overture, and eventually purchased by Yahoo!, goto.com implemented a straight auction in which advertisers would bid per click, and the advertiser with the highest bid would appear first in the search results. The properties of these auctions (called generalized second-price auctions) were explored by Varian (2007) and Edelman et al. (2007) wow so Pay per click is a sort of action In this section, I have argued that the rise of auctions as a pricing mechanism for advertising is a consequence of the ability to target through Internet technology. Instead of providing a comprehensive assessment of this large literature, I emphasize a small number of key papers that, in my view, demonstrate the link between the auction mechanism and targeting. s. The properties of these auctions (called generalized second-price auctions) were explored by Varian (2007) and Edelman et al. (2007). This literature has been extended to incorporate reserve prices (Edelman and Schwarz 20 1 0), click weights (Liu and Chen 2006), and the incorporation of consumer choices into the model (Athey and Ellison 2009; Chen and He 2011). Agarwal et al. (2009) explore differences between auctions in which bidders pay per click (i.e., each time their ad is clicked by a user) or pay per action (i.e., each time a user buys something from their web- site). Katona and Sarvary (2010) explore the interaction between paid search results (the advertisements) and the algorithmic (organic) search results. Implicit in many of these models are heterogeneous bidders and the desire on the part of the search engines to pri dvertisers. A handful of empirical papers have explored these models, again often demonstrat- ing the roles of heterogeneous consumers, heterogeneous advertisers, and the targeting of advertising prices. Specifically, Yao and Mela (201 1) show that improving the abil- ity of advertisers to target searchers would improve search engine revenue. Athey and Nekipelov (201 1 ) use a structural model of search engine advertising based on hetero- geneous advertiser quality to demonstrate that bidders may have incentives to reduce their demand for advertising. In an empirical study of display advertising prices across websites, Wu (2012) compares the generalized second-price auction mechanism that is used by Google's display advertising network to the list price mechanism used by China's Taobao. He shows that the choice of mechanism is driven by the need for, and benefits of, price discrimination

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goldfarb 2014: One feature of Internet technology that facilitates targeting is the easy collection and storage of data about customers. As discussed above, these data make it easier to target ads, to measure the effectiveness of ads, and to sell ads to the advertiser that values them the most. The collection and use of these data have also given rise to concerns about consumer privacy. In particular, privacy concerns appear to have increased since the widespread diffusion of the Internet. Goldfarb and Tucker (2012a) document this increase in underlying concerns about privacy and demonstrate that this is partly driven by an increase in the number of contexts in which consumers perceive privacy concerns to be relevant. Specifically, using millions of responses to an online survey from 2001 to 2008, we demonstrate that people provided less information about themselves in the later years of the survey. Importantly, this trend was strongest when the survey topic was relatively innocuous. There is no trend toward increased privacy for surveys on personal topics such as health and financial information. Instead the trend is driven by surveys about movies and consumer package goods. Likely motivated by this trend toward increasing concern for privacy, a growing literature has examined the meaning of privacy, the role of privacy in advertising effectiveness, and tradeoffs between privacy and innovation. The new literature on privacy builds on a small earlier wave of work on the law and economics of privacy that culminated in a 1980 special issue of the Journal of Legal Studies with papers by Posner ( 1 980), Becker ( 1 980), Stigler ( 1 980), and a number of other prominent economics and legal scholars. That stream of work emphasized the challenges in understanding reasons to regulate privacy when information flows should create efficiencies. More recently, a number of theory papers (e.g., Hermalin and Katz 2006; Taylor 2004) have demonstrated in a variety of ways that price discrimination can lead to something like Akerlof s (1970) lemons problem when firms can readily share information. The market unravels because lower types are hesitant to provide information and may not transact if transactions lead to information sharing. Hui and Png (2006) review and summarize this literature. More recently, Daughety and Reinganum (2010) demonstrate another possible source of privacy concerns: social preferences. If people care how they are perceived by others, then, under certain conditions, people may act in a way that reduces total surplus because their behavior changes how others perceive them. A handful of papers have documented the role of privacy concerns in influencing the effectiveness of advertising. As mentioned above, Goldfarb and Tucker (201 Id) showed that privacy-focused consumers react negatively to advertisements that are both targeted and obtrusive. Laboratory studies and surveys, such Malheiros et al. (2012), Tsai et al. (201 1), and Turow et al. (2009), have documented consumer dis- comfort with targeted advertising. Tucker (2011) demonstrated a related result for advertising on social networks. Despite these results, in her review of the literature, Tucker (2012) argues that although privacy concerns can reduce the effectiveness of certain ads, on balance the use of data substantially increases the effectiveness of online advertising. This argument is based on two papers: First, Goldfarb and Tucker (201 la) demonstrated that European privacy regulations (implemented in 2004) substantially reduced the effectiveness of online advertising; second, Goldfarb and Tucker (2012b) combine the results of that first paper with other papers in the literature to argue that privacy regulation hurts innovation in industries that use information technology heavily. More broadly, privacy regulation reduces innovation in general and the produc- tivity of online advertising in particular because it inhibits the ability of firms to target the right information to the right customer. Data enable targeting. Privacy con- cerns are concerns about the use of data. Therefore, regulatory action on privacy is likely to reduce the effectiveness of online advertising given the latter's reliance on targeting.

Answer 190

antitrust can be an issue online as companies can get a barrier to post their products As online advertising continues its rapid growth, online ad revenues become an ever more important opportunity (and/ or threat) for many TMT businesses. How these growing markets are treated by antitrust agencies can be critical to strategy – either in terms of M&A or defending business models from the actions of other market participants. The online advertising industry has also received regulatory attention due to antitrust concerns. While advertising-supported Internet markets were relatively unstructured in the first decade after the Internet privatized in the early 1990s (Goldfarb 2004), more recently antitrust authorities have paid close attention to this industry. Google in particular has been the subject of antitrust investigations in both the United States and Europe. In 2008, Google's merger with DoubleClick received considerable scrutiny by both the European Commission (2008) and the Federal Trade Commission (2008). Heyer et al. (2009) discuss some of the economics behind the Department of Justice's deliberations. Broadly, Google has received antitrust scrutiny because it has a large share of the important market for consumer searches. Whether it violates antitrust law, however, is tricky. Perhaps most importantly, in the market that it most dominates (consumer search), it gives away its product for free. Therefore, it is hard to generate a legal argu- ment for consumer harm through monopoly pricing of search. Therefore, regulators have focused on the source of Google's revenue: advertising. However, Google is not dominant in the overall advertising market. Thus, an antitrust case against Google based on advertising must rely on a narrower definition of Google's competition (Ratliff and Rubinfeld 2010). So far, there has been little published empirical work on defining relevant advertising markets, though, as a legal matter, the European Commission did declare that online and offline adver- tising are different markets (European Commission 2010, paragraph 61). In contrast, based on related empirical work (Goldfarb and Tucker 201 lb, c), Goldfarb and Tucker (201 le) argue that there is clear evidence that online and offline advertising markets are substitutes, though the precise degree of cross-elasticity is unclear. This emphasis on market definition can be seen as an acknowledgment of differ- ences between online and offline advertising. As discussed above, the key difference is that the cost of targeting online is different than the cost of targeting offline. This means that online advertisements in general, and search advertisements in particular, are especially valuable to smaller advertisers that are looking for niche customers. Thus, one argument for antitrust scrutiny in online advertising (that contradicts the somewhat limited evidence in Goldfarb and Tucker 201 1 b) is that these smaller adver- tisers do not have choices outside of the online advertising market and they therefore may face anticompetitive price Research on antitrust in the online advertising industry has appeared much more in the law literature than in the economics literature.2 For example, Manne and Wright (2011) present "The case against the case against Google" in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy , emphasizing the challenges of antitrust policy in innovation-intensive industries. Goldman (2005) notes that biases in search results against competitors could also lead to antitrust concerns for Google, even in the pres- ence of substantial competition in the advertising market. The law literature has also discussed the possibility that Facebook might soon be subject to antitrust scrutiny (Waller 2012). The scale of the data that have been collected by the large online advertising com- panies such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook suggests a potential link between privacy, targeting, and antitrust. Edwards (2008) argued that privacy considerations, independent of direct antitrust concerns, should be part of the (then-current) delib- erations on the Google-Doubleclick merger. Heyer et al. (2009) note that large data bases can lead to natural economies of scale and network effects, which potentially generate market power. In particular, if quality relies on the ability effectively to tar- get content to users and advertisers, then quality improves with the amount of data collected. This means that companies with larger (and unique) customer bases will increase their advantage over time without any new innovations beyond effective use of an increasingly larger database, though this increase will likely have diminishing value as the size of the database grows. In contrast, Campbell et al. (2012) note that the regulation of data can create a barrier to entry because opt-in approvals at the company level generate economies of scope. Overall, advertising-supported websites are becoming subject to more antitrust scrutiny. The arguments for this regulatory attention depend on the use of data and the nature of targeting on the advertising-supported internet. file:///Users/fredrikaholm/Downloads/ihl237_p103104_briefings_shearman%204.pdf

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Duffy, D. L. (2005). Affiliate marketing and its impact on e-commerce. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 22(3), 161-163 For every order the affiliate generates it earns a commission (at a rate defined by you. This is, in essence, affiliate marketing Thousands of affiliates build and manage websites or offer access to existing websites to sell the products of thousands of “advertisers” (the term advertiser is used to represent the party on the other side of this transaction who seeks to sell the product). Affiliates place a variety of different kinds of ads on their websites (banners, text ads, even product links) that motivate consumers (website visitors) to take an action to review and potentially buy a product or service from the advertiser. When it works, the affiliate gets paid a commission. vThere are thousands of advertisers participating in affiliate marketing programs and there are thousands of affiliates, working for many different advertisers simultaneously, driving incremental traffic and sales in exchange for commission Purpose – This article seeks to explore the inner workings of affiliate marketing. Design/methodology/approach – Defines the affiliate marketing marketplace including some of the participants and explores the characteristics of a successful long-term relationship. Findings – The key to successful affiliate marketing lies in the construction of a win-win relationship between the advertiser and the affiliate. Affiliate marketing is likely to become the principal mainstream marketing strategy for e-commerce businesses in the future. Originality/value – Looks at the inner workings of affiliate marketing, defines the affiliate marketing marketplace including some of the participants and explores the characteristics of a successful long-term relationship Affiliates apply to and become members of various advertiser programs and begin to promote the advertiser’s goods and services in exchange for commissions of consummated sales. Affiliates do this in a variety of ways. Certain large-scale affiliates (companies like uPromise, My Points, iGive, Net Flip and eBates) have a certain following among a large population of consumers. In many cases the following is linked to added-value that consumers receive for shopping through these sites. In the case of uPromise, consumers receive a percentage of their shopping dollars deposited in an account to pay for future college tuition. In the case of iGive, a portion of the dollars spent may be deposited in an account that is ultimately disbursed to the consumer’s non-profit organization of choice.

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Duffy 2005 The key to a successful affiliate-advertiser partnership in an affiliate marketing relationship is a positive outcome for both parties. Affiliate marketing by nature represents a potential win-win situation for both parties involved. Advertisers realize the benefit of a purely commissioned sales force and have a marketing cost that is predictable. Affiliates have the opportunity to create a revenue stream without investments in inventory and infrastructure. All that is required is the ability to create websites with adequate appeal to attract enough customers that are interested in the products and services that are sold by the affiliate’s advertisers. The win-win can breakdown if the advertiser’s value proposition is inadequate. Affiliates conduct their business assuming that each advertiser will generate a return that is somewhat predictable over time. The variables that factor into this predictability are the conversion rate (percentage of time that a customer buys after clicking on an advertiser’s link) and the average commission (the average transaction size for a particular advertiser multiplied by the commission percentage). If the value proposition is inadequate for affiliates, it is typically because the advertiser offers a commission percentage that is too low or the conversion rate for customers once they have been directed to the advertiser’s website is too low. Low conversion rates occur for a variety of reasons, but at the top of the list are characteristics such as difficulty navigating the site, poor product images (if you can not easily make out the visual characteristics of a product you are less likely to buy it), poor product descriptions and uncompetitive shipping policies (free shipping, even if offered based on a minimum purchase amount, is a key contributor to conversion rate in e-commerce).

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Duffy 2005 Affiliate marketing is an emerging marketing strategy in the e-commerce marketplace that appears to have more durable potential than previous on-line marketing activities. It represents something of an open marketplace in which innovative internet marketers can generate revenue by acting as free agent salespeople for thousands on on-line brands. Advertisers achieve the benefit of a predictable marketing cost as a percentage of sales. The key to successful affiliate marketing lies in the construction of a win-win relationship between the advertiser and the affiliate. As more advertisers launch affiliate marketing programmers and more affiliates participate in the marketplace, affiliate marketing is likely to become the principle mainstream marketing strategy for e-commerce businesses in the future.

Answer 194

Fong, N. M., Fang, Z., & Luo, X. (2015). Geo-conquesting: Competitive locational targeting of mobile promotions. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(5), 726-735. As consumers spend an increasing amount of time on their mobile devices, marketers are increasingly able to target them on the basis of their locations in real time. Mobile promotions can now reach consumers when and where they are most receptive. While a retailer has clear reasons to consider promoting to consumers near its own location, because these consumers would incur low travel costs to take advantage of offers, mobile promotions also have enormous potential as competitive weapons. No longer limited by physical location, mobile technologies give an offline retailer the capability to maintain a presence anywhere— including on a competitor’s doorstep.

Answer 195

Fong et al., 2015: Fong, N. M., Fang, Z., & Luo, X. (2015). Geo-conquesting: Competitive locational targeting of mobile promotions. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(5), 726-735. Among practitioners, the locational targeting of customers within certain designated areas (typically near a firm’s own location) is referred to as “geo-fencing.” When applied to competitors’ locations, the tactic is referred to as “geo-conquesting.” Practitioners have claimed higher response rates through this competitive locational targeting approach compared with own-location targeting but have also stressed the desire to validate these approaches (Walsh 2013). Thus, we aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of how competitive locational targeting should be used. Competitive locational targeting has intuitive appeal: a consumer’s proximity to a competitor’s location indicates potential interest in a product or service category. However, in the absence of strong marketing interventions, locational switching costs heavily favor the competitor. The ability to reach individual consumers located near a competitor suggests that marketers could use promotions to appeal to customers who would not otherwise purchase from the focal retailer. To our knowledge, prior research has not adequately quantified the effectiveness of competitive locational targeting. With the cooperation of a mobile service provider, we conducted a randomized field experiment designed specifically to estimate the causal effects of locational targeting. We use a multipronged approach to identify locational targeting effects. First, we sampled customers from several locations: promotional offers were sent to mobile users located near a focal retailer’s own location, a competitor’s location, and a benchmark location. The three locations were similarly trafficked outdoor shopping areas. The focal retailer was a mainstream movie theater at the designated focal location, and a competing movie theater was located at the competitive location. The third location was a shopping area with no movie theater, located an equal distance from the other two locations; it serves as a quasiexperimental control (referred to as the “benchmark location”). This enabled us to evaluate the effectiveness of targeting a retailer’s own location and a competitive location relative to the benchmark location. We randomly assigned discount depth for the promotional offer so that we could estimate customer sensitivity to promotional prices at each location. Finally, we randomly varied the timing of the promotions, sending half in real time and half exactly one week later. The timing manipulation provided a measure of baseline purchasing rates for each location.1

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Fong et al., 2015: Fong, N. M., Fang, Z., & Luo, X. (2015). Geo-conquesting: Competitive locational targeting of mobile promotions. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(5), 726-735.

Answer 197

Fong et al., 2015: Fong, N. M., Fang, Z., & Luo, X. (2015). Geo-conquesting: Competitive locational targeting of mobile promotions. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(5), 726-735. As consumers spend more time on their mobile devices, a focal retailer's natural approach is to target potential customers in close proximity to its own location. ... This study demonstrates the effectiveness of competitive locational targeting, the practice of promoting to consumers near a competitor's location. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of competitive locational targeting using a randomized field experiment, in which SMS promotions were sent to mobile users in several locations. We found that competitive locational targeting can increase purchasing response. We attribute this increased purchasing to a locational targeting effect by varying both the location and the timing of the targeted promotion Our randomized field experiment provides causal estimates of locational targeting effects from mobile promotions in a retailer’s own location and competitors’ locations. We attribute a large fraction of the promotional response to the real-time targeting feature of the promotion. The optimal discount depth varies in each location, creating an incentive for third-degree price discrimination. Although these results should generalize to restaurants and retail, we recommend that marketers use similarly careful designs to optimize their own mobile promotions. As the availability and precision of these tools increases in the long run, locational targeting has the potential to intensify competition; at present, we find that they provide a substantial tactical advantage to a savvy marketer.

Answer 198

Fong et al., 2015: Fong, N. M., Fang, Z., & Luo, X. (2015). Geo-conquesting: Competitive locational targeting of mobile promotions. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(5), 726-735. Competitive locational targeting may be more valuable than focal locational targeting for several reasons. First, the convex response to discount depth implies that discounting to customers near a competitor is less likely to cannibalize short-term sales. Second, a retailer may have fewer ways of reaching customers located near its competitors. Near its own locations, a store can display signs, or an idle employee can distribute flyers nearby. These tactics would be costlier in competitive locations, may not allow for price discrimination, and would invite retaliation. For a retailer trying to extend its reach, competitive locations provide more potential targets than its own locations. Furthermore, nearby customers are more likely to be aware of the focal retailer, so targeting competitive locations provides the means to increase awareness. Because competitive targeting may require deep discounts, it could benefit the retailer more if used as an intermittent acquisition tool rather than a uniform policy

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Targeted communications that are relevant and useful can create lasting customer loyalty and drive revenue growth of 10 to 30 percent. 1. Give me relevant recommendations I wouldn’t have thought of myself. One of the most popular personalization techniques is to remind shoppers of items they browsed but didn’t purchase. Using a common digital-marketing feature called retargeting, these reminders appear as ads on other websites the shopper visits or are delivered via email. Although an established technique, it is one with great potential for missteps and can easily come off as creepy or annoying if not executed thoughtfully. Shoppers don’t want to be constantly reminded of products they’ve already bought or searched for, especially if the ads appear either too soon, too frequently, or too late in the process What shoppers really want from personalized marketing, McKinsey Quarterly boudet et al., 2017To provide something a customer might be interested in, companies need to use more sophisticated recommendation algorithms to offer complementary products or services instead of just the things the shopper has already browsed or bought. This might entail, for instance, suggesting a cocktail dress for someone who has just bought or searched for stiletto heels. Customers who browse at Nordstrom.com often get product recommendations for similar items in different product categories the next time they visit Facebook. Another effective tactic is communicating in a way that people actually talk to each other. The e-commerce clothing retailer Revolve, for instance, nudges shoppers this way: If you can’t stop thinking about it, buy it <3. Finally, with any retargeting message, it’s important to observe who responds and who doesn’t, adjust the frequency accordingly, and cap the number of impressions for everyone, especially those who never respond—continuing to retarget these shoppers will only be annoying.

Answer 200

What shoppers really want from personalized marketing, McKinsey Quarterly boudet et al., 2017 2. Talk to me when I’m in shopping mode. When to send a message is just as important as what it says. Figuring that out requires taking a close look at behaviors, patterns, and habits. A clothing retailer found that shoppers who visited one of their physical stores or the online store were more likely to open and respond to messages that were delivered either later on that same day or exactly a week later. Sending messages at those particular times meant the company was reaching people when they were either still thinking about shopping, or at a time when shopping for clothes made the most sense for their particular schedule. Previous order data can provide useful cues about activities such as ordering a gift for someone’s birthday or anniversary. Getting the timing wrong virtually eliminates the chance for a purchase while potentially annoying the customer. For example, an Internet service provider figured out that a consumer had moved. But the company waited too long to reach out. It’s now been a month since I moved, so obviously I already have my Internet service hooked up, the customer said.' 3. Remind me of things I want to know but might not be keeping track of. A highly effective way to become relevant to shoppers is through tracking specific events and circumstances they are likely to want to know about. This might take the form of a reminder when someone may be running out of an item purchased earlier, when a desired item is back in stock or on sale, or when a new style is launched for a product or category the shopper has repeatedly bought. 4. Know me no matter where I interact with you. Consumers expect retailers to connect digital messages with their offline experiences. For many organizations, this is particularly challenging, because it requires collaboration between disparate areas of the organization, such as store operations, event managers, PR, digital marketing, and analytics. Yet if done effectively, communications that seamlessly straddle both online and offline experiences—and provide real value—can make a customer feel a retailer really knows them.What shoppers really want from personalized marketing, McKinsey Quarterly boudet et al., 2017 vWhen cross-channel communication involves using information that customers have not actively provided, retailers should try to supply information that consumers will find truly valuable. Starbucks, which uses location information from customers’ mobile phones, asks people who are about to place an order at a store that’s an hour away from their current location if they really want to place their order now, since the order will be ready (and getting cold) well before they arrive at the store. Most customers do not object to such location tracking because it offers them information they are likely to find helpful.

Answer 201

What shoppers really want from personalized marketing, McKinsey Quarterly boudet et al., 2017 5. Share the value in a way that’s meaningful to me. Loyalty programs and direct-purchase information can tell retailers what types of products an individual customer buys, how often he or she buys them, when they buy, and what product categories they never purchase. Many companies, however, fail to take full advantage of this information to personalize their discounts and communications to their loyal customers. Customer offers are an important way to build customer loyalty and prevent churn. Personalizing them (and often gamifying the experience) is a highly effective way to not only inspire purchases but also encourage new buying behaviors. Starbucks’ bonus star challenge is one such example. The company selects three particular items for loyalty customers to buy within a given week in order to qualify for bonus points that equal a free drink. These items are carefully chosen for each individual customer: two products they purchase frequently and one that leads them into a new, high-value category. If a customer, for instance, frequently purchases breakfast items, their discovery product might be a lunch item. If they tend toward healthier selections, the new item might be a salad.

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What shoppers really want from personalized marketing, McKinsey Quarterly boudet et al., 2017'' Customers see value as a function of how relevant and timely a message is in relation to how much it costs, meaning how much personal information has to be shared and how much personal effort it takes to get it. Importantly, trust in the brand will boost overall value, though that can grow or recede over time, depending on the customer’s satisfaction with various interactions with the brand.

Answer 203

What shoppers really want from personalized marketing, McKinsey Quarterly boudet et al., 2017 To truly build empathy for customers, companies must understand their diverse attitudes, shopping occasions, and need states and build them into an attitudinal segmentation. Such attitudinal segmentation then needs to be layered onto the customer database in order for companies to be able to act on it to deliver on relevant and personalized messaging. This is a step many marketers miss. Additionally, companies should be crafting their customer analytics and communications based on the customer’s journey (the set of interactions a customer has with a brand to accomplish a task). We’ve found that focusing on the satisfaction customers have with their journeys overall drives far more growth than customer satisfaction with individual touchpoints. the customer journey is important and how the consumer is satisfied during the journey, and not by focusing on individual touch points but on the jiurney

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What shoppers really want from personalized marketing, McKinsey Quarterly boudet et al., 2017'' Leaders in personalization are constantly testing and learning to improve their communication and engagement with customers and to identify potential issues early. They do this by digging into both upstream (likes, opens, clicks) and downstream (conversions, unsubscribes, ROI) engagement metrics. They use this information to get a better understanding of the value of the customer, for instance, how much the customer will spend relative to the cost of moving them from less engaged to more engaged. On the flip side, they can also evaluate the economic impact that negative activity, such as unsubscribes and app notification blocks, has on a customer’s lifetime value. This allows them to more accurately appraise campaigns. For example, if one particular communication brings in twice the revenue but also elicits twice the unsubscribe rate as another communication, they will be able to determine which one is more valuable. While data and advanced analytics play a crucial role in understanding shopper behavior, qualitative listening tools are also critical. Regular engagement with an ongoing shopper panel, for example, and ethnographic research and observation can offer valuable, in-depth, attitudinal feedback on the impact of personalized communications. Close monitoring of social media helps with the quick identification and resolution of potential problem areas. There’s no question that doing effective personalized marketing at scale is a sizable challenge. Companies that deliver customers timely, relevant, and truly personal messages, however, can build lasting bonds that drive growth.

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With the challenges presented by new media, shifting media patterns, and divided consumer attention, the optimal integration of marketing communications takes on increasing importance. Drawing on a review of relevant academic research and guided by managerial priorities, the authors offer insights and advice as to how traditional and new media such as search, display, mobile, TV, and social media interact to affect consumer decision making. With an enhanced understanding of the consumer decision journey and how consumers process communications, the authors outline a comprehensive framework featuring two models designed to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of integrated marketing communication programs: a “bottom-up” communications matching model and a “top-down” communications optimization model. The authors conclude by suggesting important future research priorities. Keywords: marketing communications,

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Batra, R., & Keller, K. L. (2016). Integrating marketing communications: New findings, new lessons, and new ideas. Journal of Marketing, 80(6), 122-145. In designing integrated marketing communication (IMC) programs, marketers face many challenges as a result of the fact that consumers, brands, and the media are fundamentally changing in profound ways. With the explosion of new media, consumers are dramatically shifting both their media usage patterns and how they utilize different media sources to get the information they seek, which thus influences when, where, and how they choose brands.1 Perhaps more than ever, their attention is divided, often due to multitasking, and they are seemingly in a perpetual state of partial attention. The consumer “path to purchase” is also fundamentally different today—often shorter in length, less hierarchical, and more complex (Court et al. 2009). Consumers do not necessarily passively receive brand information strictly through legacy mass media such as print or TV and store it in memory for later use. Rather, they now actively seek it when needed, through search engines, mobile browsers, blogs, and brand websites. Much more consumer-to-firm, consumer-to-consumer, and consumer-aboutfirm communication exists. Because of increased social influences on purchase, word of mouth (WOM) and advocacy have become especially important; brand messaging is even less under the marketer’s control.

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batra and keller 2016 Consumer Decision Journey or Path to Purchase In working to understand how different messages and media can be optimally combined and sequenced, it is first necessary to develop a model of the different stages or steps consumers might go through in their evolving relationships with a particular brand—before, during, and after purchase. The stages in such a model can help suggest different communication objectives and metrics depending on what stage the consumer is in and, thus, which combination of media and messages might be most appropriate there. Building on classic early models from social and cognitive psychology (McGuire 1978), many marketers have found it useful to portray the different stages involved in consumer decision making in terms of the well-known “purchase funnel.” A simple version of the funnel is the classic “hierarchy-of-effects” models (Wijaya 2012; e.g., AIDA [Awareness, Interest, Desire, and Action]). In today’s rich communication environments, these more traditional funnels, however, no longer adequately capture the different stages involved in consumer decision making and the more complex, nonlinear paths to purchase that consumers might follow when choosing among multiple options. Recently, researchers from McKinsey & Company (Court et al. 2009) have suggested a “consumer decision journey circle,” in which consumers begin by considering a preliminary set of brands to form an initial consideration set, modify this consideration set (often adding more brands) as they gather and evaluate more brand information, select a brand (at the moment of purchase), and then utilize their postpurchase experiences to shape their next decision. Consistent with that reasoning, “attribution modeling” of actual consumer paths to purchase has shown that consumers often go through complex, long, and interacting steps before conversion and purchase, with organic and paid search, retargeted display and banner ads, price comparisons and e-mails, and visits to marketer websites and physical stores all playing a part in getting consumers from their initial starting points to the point of conversion (Anderl et al. 2014; Smith, Gopalakrishna, and Chatterjee 2006).

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Batra and keller 2016 Although consumers today interact with many more media types, and do so in more nonlinear and circular ways, it seems reasonable that consumers still go through a sequence of steps or stages as they engage with a particular brand. For instance, consumers can go through a series of stages such as those in Appendix B: they (1) feel a need or want for the overall category of which the brand is a part; (2) recall the brands they associate with meeting that category-level need; (3) further evaluate a smaller subset of those brands not only with respect to performance quality but also about their trustworthiness; (4) develop a preference and make a tentative choice; (5) decide how much they are willing to pay for the preferred brand; (6) take the action step of trial or purchase; (7) form an assessment of postconsumption satisfaction with the brand, which determines repurchase intentions and loyalty; and hopefully, over time, (8) increase their usage amount or purchase frequency; (9) engage in postpurchase interactions with the brand; and (10) become a loyal and willing advocate for it.

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Batra and keller 2016 Because each of these steps is probabilistic, a successful consumer decision journey for a brand can be derailed by failure at any stage (e.g., ignorance of the existence of the brand, a negative product experience at trial). Across brands and for any one brand, consumers may backtrack, skip steps, or implicitly or explicitly choose to reject the brand. Figure 1 displays the dynamics involved in a consumer decision journey with multiple stages and the potential to move forward or backward across stages or drop out of the decision process altogether. Each of these steps puts the consumer in a particular information-processing state of mind, which makes any one media type more or less appropriate for deployment by the brand to satisfy that consumer’s information needs and ensure movement to the next stage. Subsequently, we elaborate on these likely “states of mind” and their IMC implications. First, we review some of the relevant research on main (direct) as well as interactive (indirect) effects across different media.

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batra and keller 2016 By identifying various factors that moderate advertising effectiveness, this prior research also offers relevant insights into how older and newer media interact with each other. Advertising effects certainly vary by medium. For example, consumers process broadcast (TV and radio) advertising differently from print (newspapers and magazines) advertising. Because of its pervasiveness and expressive nature, TV advertising is highly effective at creating awareness, interest, and consideration—the front end of the funnel or consumer decision journey. In contrast, print advertising allows for detailed exposition and is well-suited for midfunnel information provision (see, e.g., classic comparisons of the “information content” of different media by Stern and Resnick [1991] and Abernathy [1992]). Newer online media. A company chooses which forms of online communications will be most cost effective in achieving sales and brand equity objectives (Katona, Zubcsek, and Sarvary 2011; Risselada, Verhoef, and Bijmolt 2014). The wide variety of available online communication options means companies can offer tailored information or send messages that engage consumers by reflecting their special interests and behavior. We next highlight six key online communication options that are receiving increased research attention and some illustrative research findings that have emerged for each.

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batra and keller 2016 • Search ads (Berman and Katona 2013; Jerath, Ma, and Park 2014; Rutz and Bucklin 2011; Rutz, Bucklin, and Sonnier 2012). Because consumers who search for less popular keywords expend more effort in their search for information and are closer to a purchase, they can be more easily targeted through sponsored search advertising. Higher positions of paid search ads can increase both the click-through rates and, especially, the conversion rates. • Display ads (Danaher, Lee, and Kerbache 2010; Hoban and Bucklin 2015; Manchanda et al. 2006). Display advertising can positively affect visitation to a firm’s website for users in most stages of the purchase funnel but may not do so for those who previously visited the site without creating an account. In one application, expected visits increased by almost 10% when display ad impressions were partially reallocated from nonvisitors and visitors to authenticated users. • Websites (Danaher, Mullarkey, and Essegaier 2006; Hauser et al. 2009; Steenkamp and Geyskens 2006). Websites can be better liked and can increase sales if their characteristics (e.g., more-detailed data) match customers’ cognitive styles (e.g., more analytic). Differences in consumers’ age, gender, and geographical location can also affect successful website characteristics. • E-mail (Aufreiter, Boudet, and Weng 2014; Li and Kannan 2014). The rate at which e-mails prompt purchases has been estimated to be at least three times that of social media, and the average order value has been estimated to be 17% higher. E-mail effectiveness has been shown to improve with personalized emails—though, even then, repeated e-mails can backfire—as well as with customized landing pages when someone clicks. • Social media (Kumar et al. 2016; Naylor, Lamberton, and West 2012; Schweidel and Moe 2014). Three key characteristics of firm-generated content—valence, receptivity, and customer susceptibility—have been shown to positively affect customer spending, cross-buying, and profitability, though the effect of receptivity was shown to be the largest. Approaches to monitoring social media that ignore the multiple social media venues that exist for the brand and either focus on a single venue or ignore differences across venues have been shown to produce misleading brand sentiment metrics. • Mobile (Bell 2014; Fang, Luo, and Keith 2014; Hwang, McInerney, and Shin 2015). When and where consumers use a mobile phone to shop has been shown to have important implications for how they shop (e.g., proximity to physical stores for a brand, physical presence of other brand users). Mobile consumers have been shown to be more likely to go directly to a retailer’s site or app than to use a search engine; moreover, they deliberate less and make purchases more by impulse than by product features. Research has found mobile ads and coupons to be more effective when customized (to reflect, e.g., a person’s tastes, geographic location, time of day)

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Marketers can trace the effects of online marketing communications in various ways (Bonfrer and Dreze 2009), such as ` by noting how many unique visitors click on a page or ad, how long they spend with it, what they do on it, and where they go afterward. Although some traditional media also allow for placement (e.g., newspaper sections, special interest magazines), online media offers even more targeted placement, through the placement of ads on sites related to a company’s offerings and the ability to place ads on the basis of search engine keywords, to reach people who have started the buying process. Marketers can also emphasize certain types of newer media to signal that the firm has a particular competence or personality, making the choice of medium itself the message (McLuhan 2001; e.g., a firm such as Delta Airlines may use Twitter for customer service in part to signal its utmost responsiveness to immediately solving customer problems).

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Marketers can trace the effects of online marketing communications in various ways (Bonfrer and Dreze 2009), such as ` by noting how many unique visitors click on a page or ad, how long they spend with it, what they do on it, and where they go afterward. Although some traditional media also allow for placement (e.g., newspaper sections, special interest magazines), online media offers even more targeted placement, through the placement of ads on sites related to a company’s offerings and the ability to place ads on the basis of search engine keywords, to reach people who have started the buying process. Marketers can also emphasize certain types of newer media to signal that the firm has a particular competence or personality, making the choice of medium itself the message (McLuhan 2001; e.g., a firm such as Delta Airlines may use Twitter for customer service in part to signal its utmost responsiveness to immediately solving customer problems).

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Understanding Consumer Processing of Communications To develop a fully integrated marketing communication program, it is first necessary to understand how communications “work” over a consumer’s decision journey—specifically, the resources and mindsets a consumer brings to the reception and processing of different messages, as well as the outcomes these messages can lead to in terms of consumer knowledge, attitudes, and action tendencies. Figure 2 organizes the key factors that interact to determine these outcomes into consumer characteristics, (message reception) context, and content of the communication itself. Figure 2 also makes clear that the outcomes of interest are many (Keller 2003), ranging from creating awareness, to conveying information or emotion and building trust, to taking action and even engaging in brand advocacy. The extent to which each of these outcomes occurs will depend on the interactive effect of the consumer characteristics, processing context, and message content factors, some which we highlight in the following subsections

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Consumer Characteristics Much research has shown how consumer motivation, ability, and opportunity to process a communication determine the intensity and direction of that processing and the resulting outcomes that occur (Batra and Ray 1986; MacInnis and Jaworski 1989; MacInnis, Moorman, and Jaworski 1991; Petty, Cacioppo, and Schumann 1983). If motivation, ability, or opportunity are lacking for any reason, consumer processing of a communication will be impaired or may not even occur. While motivation and ability to process information are consumer-level factors, the opportunity to do so is determined in large part by the nature of the medium itself, as well as the processing conditions (context) under which the message is received (which we discuss separately in a following subsection). The motivation, or desire, to process incoming information varies with the extent to which the consumer views it as potentially helping with the brand choice task at hand. This increases with the level of perceived risk (Cox 1967; Loewenstein et al. 2001; Mitchell 1999) and the degree to which the category-level need is salient or pressing—such as the geo-location of the consumer (affecting the processing of mobile messages) or the degree to which the consumer is in the search process (affecting the processing of retargeted online advertising). Situational factors may also matter in their potential to affect consumers’ emotional state/mood and willingness or desire to seek information. The consumer ability to process information depends, among other factors, on the amount of prior familiarity and knowledge with the brand and category. Thus, consumers at the earliest stages of category search might not be able to process in-depth attribute-level brand comparison information (Alba and Hutchinson 1987), though they should still be able to understand which brands are more versus less relevant for their brand choice decisions (Court et al. 2009). Interactions across motivation, ability, and opportunity factors can have important implications for IMC planning. For example, mobile brand messages may tap into highmotivation processing situations but be low in processing opportunity; alternatively, social media messaging from trusted peers might be very high in credibility but low in its ability to convey detailed information.

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motivation from customers is important to process information (batra and keller 2016 Interactions across motivation, ability, and opportunity factors can have important implications for IMC planning. For example, mobile brand messages may tap into highmotivation processing situations but be low in processing opportunity; alternatively, social media messaging from trusted peers might be very high in credibility but low in its ability to convey detailed information. The nature of the medium can itself affect opportunity to process: the smaller screen size of a mobile message can limit processing depth, while detailed information can be provided on a website that permits extensive brand-related processing by consumers, assuming that they are attracted to the website to begin with. Yet this detailed information may lack credibility and may not motivate consumers unless it is attributed to a trustworthy message source (McGuire 1978).

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batra and keller 2016 • Create awareness and salience. The foundation of all brand and marketing efforts is creating awareness and ensuring that the brand is sufficiently salient and thought of in the right way at the right times and right places. Salience occurs when the brand is associated with a wide variety of cues—categories, situations, need states, and so on—such that the brand is recalled easily and often (Keller 2001a). In some cases (e.g., with really new products), awareness of both an unmet need and the brand to satisfy that need may be required. • Convey detailed information. After creating that basic awareness, marketers must convince consumers of the advantages of choosing the actual products or services identified with the brand. Persuading consumers about brand performance requires that they appreciate the benefits of the products or services and understand why the brand is able to better deliver those benefits in terms of supporting product attributes, features, or characteristics that function as “proof points.” In today’s crowded, limited-attention-span communication environment, effectively conveying such detailed information to consumers is more and more challenging. • Create imagery and personality. Most successful brands have a duality—what they offer in terms of tangible and intangible benefits. All kinds of user and usage imagery may be created in terms of the type of person who uses the brand, when and where the brand could be used, and so on. Brand personality reflects the human-like traits consumers attribute to a brand (e.g., sincerity, competence, excitement; Aaker 1997) and influences how consumers view themselves (Park and John 2010) and the brand relationships/bonds that consumers form (Batra, Ahuvia, and Bagozzi 2012; Fournier 1997; Swaminathan, Stilley, Ahluwalia 2009). • Build trust. Even when the consumer receives and processes the information in the message, (s)he might not use it in judgment and decision making if it is not sufficiently credible and trustworthy or “diagnostic” (Lynch, Marmorstein, and Weigold 1988). There is a vast stream of literature on “source effects” (Janis and Hovland 1959; Ohanian 1990), which has highlighted the important role of source credibility, expertise, likability, and similarity in facilitating the acceptance of messages. Consumers are increasingly knowledgeable and skeptical about marketer influence attempts (Campbell and Kirmani 2008; Friestad and Wright 1994), and there is an increasing desire for product and message “authenticity” (Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry 2003). The increasing usage of social media communications from friends and peers is indicative of the greater importance of messages that come from similar and trusted, rather than distant and motivated, sources. • Elicit emotions. The importance of emotional, social, and symbolic benefits and purchase motivations for branded products has been known for decades (Batra and Ahtola 1990; Belk 1988; Holbrook and Hirschman 1982; Levy 1959). Brands can increase their total perceived value by adding such benefits to the usual functional/utilitarian ones. Brand messages can increase these perceived “added value” benefits, for example, through mechanisms such as the transfer of cultural meaning (Batra and Homer 2004; McCracken 1989; Torelli et al. 2012). A broad array of benefits also helps elicit different types of emotions that affect consumer decision making (Edell and Burke 1987; Holbrook and Batra 1987; Olney, Holbrook, and Batra 1991; Richins 1997; Westbrook and Oliver 1991). Verb. 1. elicit - call forth (emotions, feelings, and responses); "arouse pity"; "raise a smile"; "evoke sympathy" arouse, evoke, provoke, enkindle, kindle, fire, raise. create, make - make or cause to be or to become; "make a mess in one's office"; "create a furor"

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• Inspire action. Brand message information that is received, processed, and accepted may shape brand preference and choice but still not lead to action and behavior because of the inherent disconnect that can occur between cognition, affect, and behavior (Bagozzi and Dholakia 1999; Johnson, Chang, and Lord 2006). Therefore, particular kinds of messaging are often required when the goal is the inducement of action and behavior from consumers who are already favorably predisposed to the brand. • Instill loyalty. After actual consumption, consumers form an assessment of how satisfied they are, in which their expectations are compared with their interpreted consumption experience, with the latter itself being potentially influenced by marketing communications (Bloemer and Kasper 1995; Chaudhuri and Holbrook 2001; Hoch and Ha 1986; Oliver 2014). Shaping satisfaction is part of a larger objective of reinforcing loyalty and avoiding customer defections (Brakus, Schmitt, and Zarantonello 2009; Johnson, Hermann, and Huber 2006; Park et al. 2010). • Connect people. High consumption satisfaction should lead to brand repurchase behavior and loyalty, but this may not, by itself, create brand advocacy. Such brand advocacy and WOM are especially important for service brands, for which the consumer cannot otherwise obtain tangible and credible evidence of product quality and trustworthiness (Berry 2000). For WOM and advocacy to occur, the consumer might need to engage and interact frequently with the brand and develop a sense of “brand love” (Batra, Ahuvia, and Bagozzi 2012), arising in part from the brand becoming meaningful in a symbolic and emotional (not just functional) manner. Furthermore, the brand might need to send consumers the types of brand messages that would motivate them to pass these messages along to others (Berger 2014; Brown and Reingen 1987; Chevalier and Mayzlin 2004; Godes and Mayzlin 2004).

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In developing an IMC program, the implication of the previous discussion is that marketers should be “media neutral” and evaluate all communication options on the basis of effectiveness (How many desired effects does a communication create?) and efficiency (At what cost are those outcomes created?). In other words, marketers ultimately only care about achieving their communication goals and moving consumers along in their decision journey—any means of communications that would facilitate those goals should be considered. For example, whether a consumer has a strong, favorable, and unique brand association of Subaru with “outdoors,” “active,” or “rugged” because of a TV ad that shows the car driving over rough terrain or because Subaru sponsors ski, kayak, and mountain bike events, the impact in terms of Subaru’s brand equity should be similar unless the associations created are materially different in some ways. Research has shown that “direct experience” communications (e.g., event-created ones) can create stronger associations than can mass-mediated communications (e.g., through TV commercials) (Smith and Swinyard 1983). This kind of analysis is facilitated by our communications matching model, a “bottom-up” approach to choosing communications according to their effectiveness in achieving the right communication effects at different stages of the consumer decision journey. After reviewing that model, we then present our communications optimization model, which takes more of a “top-down” view of the communications program as a whole to consider how efficiently it has been assembled and how well it has been integrated overall.

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batra aand keller 2016 Communications Matching Model The communications matching model matches the expected main and interactive effects of different media options with the communications objectives for a brand, sequencing the former to best match the dominant need at different stages along the consumer decision journey. The communication matching model thus considers the needs/gaps in consumer knowledge and behaviors in terms of where different targeted consumer segments are versus where they need to be, relative to the brand’s needs, and then suggests the most appropriate media combinations that should best meet these needs/gaps at each stage along the journey. When combined with prior research on media strengths, our description of consumer processing factors (Figure 2) suggests the kinds of processing effects or outcomes that would likely be created by different types of communications (see Table 1). To develop the communications matching model, it is also necessary to identify the communication outcomes marketers actually desire at different stages of the consumer decision journey. Table 2 offers such a characterization on the basis of the likely communication needs and objectives along the consumer path to purchase. By knowing both (1) the kinds of outcomes that different communications create and (2) the kinds of outcomes that marketers want at different stages of the consumer decision journey, it is possible to derive the kinds of communications that would be most helpful to marketers as consumers move through their decision journey. Applying the logic and analysis from Tables 1 and 2 thus suggests the communications that might be needed at different stages, as we summarize in Table 3 (see also Young 2010). Many of the linkages shown in these tables have not been empirically established by academic research; they should therefore be viewed as research propositions in need of empirical testing. In particular, within the category of “new media,” additional research is required to confirm that (1) search advertising and display ads are the vehicles best suited to raising brand awareness and salience; (2) own websites are best for communicating brand benefits and features; (3) social media is best for creating preference and, later, loyalty; and (4) mobile is best for pushing persuaded consumers to action Although these strengths seem intuitively plausible, and some are suggested in the research reviewed in the previous section (e.g., Naylor, Lamberton, and West 2012), these are important model assumptions that clearly require testing, especially because the nature of the message and creative can also shape the nature of these relationships. To illustrate how such a model can operate, we next examine several of the possible steps along the consumer decision journey (see Appendix B). We discuss some of the likely needs/gaps in consumer knowledge and behaviors at each stage (combining a few) and propose media combinations that might therefore be most useful as part of an IMC plan for that stage.

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Stage 1: The Consumer Recognizes That (S)he Has an Unmet Need or Want and Begins to Think About What Kinds of Products or Services Might Satisfy It One communications implication is that larger-share brands ought to consider the enhancement of overall category demand as a possible communications objective. Appropriate media to utilize might be location-targeted mobile apps and ads, paid search ads triggered by proximate search keywords, or third-party website and blog native content promoting generic category demand. Appropriate messaging could make the category-level need conscious by showing how it could solve a problem or increase quality of life. Such messaging should then generate within the consumer the logical desire to figure out which brands best satisfy the now-recognized need. For example, the obstaclecourse brand “Tough Mudder” targeted Facebook ads to consumers who were already into extreme sports, making them aware that this kind of product could meet their need for extreme sports.

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batra and keller 2016 Research Propositions Concerning Possible Communication Needs and Objectives at Different Stages of the Consumer Decision Journey Communication Needs and Objectives: - Awareness Information Imagery Trust Emotion Action Loyalty Connect ``` Decision Journey Stage: Needs +++ +++ + ++ ++ + + + Is aware +++ +++ + + + + + + Considers +++ +++ +++ ++ + + + + Learns +++ +++ +++ +++ + + + + Likes ++ +++ +++ +++ +++ + + + Will pay ++ +++ +++ +++ +++ + + + Commits ++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ + + Consumes + ++ +++ +++ ++ +++ + + Is satisfied + ++ +++ +++ ++ ++ +++ + Is loyal + + + ++ ++ +++ +++ ++ Engages + + + ++ ++ +++ +++ +++ Advocates + + + ++ ++ +++ +++ +++ ``` Notes: +++ = greatest influence; ++ = medium influence; + = least influence - Communication Options: TV Promos Events PR Social Media Website Search Display Mobile Direct Selling - Decision Journey Stage: Needs 111 1 1 11 11 1 111 111 11 111 111 Is aware 111 11 111 11 11 111 111 111 1 111 111 Examines 11 11 1 1 11 111 111 111 11 111 111 Learns 11 11 1 1 11 111 111 11 111 111 111 Likes 111 11 111 11 111 111 1 1 111 11 11 Will pay 1 11 1 11 1 11 1 1 11 111 111 Commits 1 111 1 1 1 11 1 1 111 111 111 Consumes 1 111 1 1 11 1 1 1 11 1 1 Is satisfied 11 11 1 11 11 11 1 1 11 1 1 Is loyal 11 111 111 1 111 11 1 1 111 111 111 Engages 1 111 111 111 111 111 1 1 111 111 1 Advocates 1 1 111 11 111 111 1 1 111 1 1

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Stage 2: The Consumer Then Begins to Consider Which Specific Possible Brands Might Best Satisfy That Need or Want At this stage, the consumer is probably high on motivation and desire, but not on cognitive ability. Thus, the consumer will not be in a position to conduct extensive research but will simply be identifying the best few brands for further investigation.2 During this initial brand consideration process, the marketer’s key communication tasks would logically be to increase the accessibility and salience of the brand’s existence and its key reason for consideration. The marketer must thus ensure that the brand is highly visible through organic search and paid search ads, retargeted display and banner ads, targeted Facebook posts and paid ads, (re)tweets, location-targeted mobile apps and ads, high share of voice in targeted traditional advertising media, targeted events and sponsorships, high presence in high-traffic third-party websites (e.g., via “native content”), high and positive user-generated-content presence (e.g., in blogs and reviews), the creation and awareness-building of “thought leadership”–owned websites, and so on. An example is a campaign by Papa John’s Pizza, in which the company sent tweets with coupons to Twitter users who were tweeting about pizza (“conquesting”), thus making the brand more salient among consumers demonstrating a high level of category need.

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Stages 3 and 4: The Consumer Will Next Try to Actively Learn More About the Various Brand Options That Seem Capable of Satisfying the Category-Level Need or Want The consumer’s ability to process information will probably increase over this stage of the decision journey, so that the (s)he is likely to seek out more detailed and granular information and rely less on heuristics and peripheral cues such as endorsers or source/execution likability (Alba and Hutchinson 1987). Such information search could include visits to brand or third-party websites (e.g., Consumer Reports, the automotive website Edmunds.com), search engine queries (used to drive consumers to the brand’s owned informative website), online and offline inquiries to friends and acquaintances, visits to dealer and retailer outlets to inspect options and talk to salespeople, and so on. Marketers could also use persuasive content in informative longlength TV ads or YouTube videos, informative online and offline WOM and viral content, and placement of key brand information on blogs and third-party websites. For example, Lysol got mothers on Facebook to pass on information to their networks about how they could take care of cleaning tasks by using the Lysol brand instead of harsh chemicals; Dollar Shave Club has used detailed YouTube videos, and various law firms employ “thought leader” blogs. During this information search process (which may be quick and iterative), other brands may be added to the initial consideration set (Court et al. 2009), leading to a fresh cycle of information gathering.

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Stage 5: The Consumer Then Decides Which Pieces of Information Are Both Credible and Diagnostic and, Thus, Relevant to Choice In cases in which brands make specific performance claims, the information-searching consumer may be looking for credible evidence to substantiate the brand’s claims (i.e., “reasons to believe”). These could be in the form of objective, third-party testing or endorsements and testimonials from current and past customers (as in published reviews), friends (via Facebook posts, e-mails, or personal conversations), or perceived experts or celebrities (via ads, blog posts, tweets, or in-store conversations with salespeople). Integrated marketing communication plans also need to be in place to solicit credible and positive reviews and ratings, endorsements, and testimonials in the brand’s owned media as well as earned and shared media (Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006; Trusov, Bodapati, and Bucklin 2010). Communications from a brand at this journey stage should also engender a feeling of overall trust and confidence in the brand and the organization and employees behind it. More credible information helps reduce purchase anxiety and build trust and confidence in the provider for service brands in particular (Berry 2000). Credibility can be signaled through the heightened prominence of the brand in the media, positive and public reviews and ratings, publicized awards, linkages with other trusted and high-quality brands and organizations, and so on.

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Stage 6: The Consumer Next Has to Decide How Much the Preferred Brand Is Worth to Decide on the Extent of His or Her Willingness to Pay the Asked-For Price batra and keller 2016 Any brand communications for consumers at this stage needs to communicate that the price being charged by the brand is “fair,” competitively reasonable, and indeed perhaps less than the actual “value” being delivered by the brand to its purchaser, relative to competing brands. Conventional media campaigns could do this (e.g., Jim Beam Black “8 Years Changes Everything” campaign). It is also likely that at this willingness-to-pay assessment stage, the perceived value of the brand is influenced by its perceived emotional benefits and social appeal. Associating the brand with desired feelings and values through “meaning transfer” and creating desired social image value and social currency are thus important objectives for a brand at this stage. Media that are stronger in their ability to “transfer in” targeted brand associations, cultural meaning, and emotions could include long-form TV ads, associated high-prestige events, celebrity (re)tweets, YouTube brand videos (e.g., those that were used by Dove), Facebook pages or posts (e.g., Procter & Gamble’s Cover Girl pages with Ellen DeGeneres), and blogs (e.g., Iams).

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Stage 7: Even if a Favorable Willingness-to-Pay Judgment Is Rendered, Consumers Still Have to Follow Through and Make the Purchase Brand communications at this stage need to explicitly impel action, letting ready-to-buy consumers know where the product can be purchased conveniently, at an acceptable price, and with confidence. A preference, or the intention to choose a brand, does not automatically and immediately lead to a trial or purchase action. Delay is possible, sometimes because the purchase step is considered inconvenient or untrustworthy or because it is not available at the best price; such delay can reduce the extent to which brand purchases actually take place. Messages about retail or e-shopping locations, bolstered by reassurances about guarantees/warranties and return policies, can be combined with “actual prices paid” data that show that the price the consumer pays will indeed be “a good deal.” “Limited-time” promotions and deals could be offered to close the sale. These messages might need to be delivered through paid media, owned media (e.g., brand websites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, location-triggered mobile apps), and/or earned media (e.g., third-party sites offering shopping advice, coupons, price comparison smartphone apps), as well as through the message modalities of distribution (trade) partners, possibly utilizing co-op advertising and linked-to-retailer websites. Examples of campaigns incentivizing quick action include the use of Groupon and videos on YouTube and on brand websites that reduce barriers to action, using client case studies and brand specifics.

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batra and keller 2016 Stages 9 and 10: A Consumer Then Has to Weigh Whether (S)he Wants to Repurchase the Brand over Time Because repeat purchases (increasing the lifetime value of the customer) only occur if the consumer feels highly satisfied with the product or service and his or her initial decision to purchase it, the brand’s ongoing communications need to convince the buyer that the brand is, in fact, performing well when compared with “reasonable” expectations. To increase this real and perceived customer satisfaction, companies can also use many of the newer media for internal employee communications that improve the quality of their customer interactions, such as internal YouTube channels (e.g., Best Buy’s “Blue Shirt Nation”). Appropriate media at this stage for “purchase reinforcement” messaging might be postpurchase direct mail, e-mail, and outbound telemarketing; targeted traditional media ads and even retargeted banner and display ads; social media reinforcement; Facebook pages and Twitter direct communications for customer service support (e.g., as with Zappos, Delta, and UPS); and online sentiment and review tracking. Brands can also increase the frequency and amount of consumption, as well as cross-selling and up-selling, through targeted discount offers to existing customers from their loyalty program communications.

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Stages 11 and 12: Some Consumers May Then Choose to Engage in Positive WOM for the Brand or Even Become Brand “Advocates” and “Missionaries” for It Here, brands need to make it easy to get their consumers to recommend the brand to others, through Facebook likes, (re)tweets, viral branded content, Instagram comments, and so on (e.g., Duane Reade got its loyal followers to retweet its women’s hosiery stories using the hashtag #DRLegwear). Through such media tactics, a brand not only can reach many more potential consumers but also can do so in credible, low-key ways that are less likely to evoke hostility and skepticism. Consumers are more likely to take advantage of these WOM opportunities if they genuinely love the brand—that is, believe that the brand reflects their deeply held life values and helps them communicate “who they are” and “who they want to be,” among many other things. Brand communications are therefore needed that touch consumers in deeply meaningful ways and make the brand symbolic of the targeted consumers’ life values, identities, and aspirations (Batra, Ahuvia, and Bagozzi 2012). Creating such communications requires the utilization of emotional, cultural, and symbolic cues—delivered through “authentic” messages and “close-to-consumer” media (e.g., Four Seasons tweeted about wine tastings to some of its top customers). To facilitate brand love, marketers also need to create easy and attractive ways for consumers to engage and interact with the brand in multiple and frequent ways, through Twitter hashtag events, Facebook pages, online and offline brand communities, the presence of helpful and inspiring native content on websites and blogs, and voting-type contests (e.g., Electronic Arts asked fans to pick a player for the cover of a game; American Express had members vote on charitable projects it should support).

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batra and keller 2016 Summary Utilizing the previous analysis and other research inputs, Table 3 offers an illustration of how different types of media vary in their effectiveness at different stages of the consumer decision journey. A brand thus needs to form an overall or segment-level assessment of where its target consumers are on this decision journey. It needs to quickly and automatically aggregate data from various sources to decide how its media dollars should be allocated at that moment, what kinds of messages and tonality should be used, and at which locations and times these messages should be sent. After these decisions have been made and a communication plan has been tentatively developed, the communication optimization model provides a top-down evaluation of the proposed communication program in terms of how efficiently it maximizes main and interaction effects. It helps finetune the communication program to ensure optimal integration by helping marketers answer the question: “How do I know if I have a fully integrated marketing communications program?”

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Coverage Coverage is the proportion of the target audience reached by each communication option employed, as well as the amount of overlap among those options. In other words, to what extent do different communication options reach the designated target market and the same versus different consumers who make up that market? Cost Marketers must evaluate marketing communications on all these criteria against their cost to arrive at the most effective and most efficient communications program. To increase the cost efficiency of an IMC program, marketers can conduct A/B split (multivariate design) field experiments, using tracking metrics on business metrics that feed into return-oninvestment assessments. For instance, do those customers who are fans on a firm’s Facebook page or followers of its Twitter account have a sufficiently higher purchase frequency? Do they spend more, with fewer discounts? Ideally, such tests would use a randomized test versus control design to obviate issues of causality (e.g., Facebook page/Twitter followers could otherwise be consumers who already feel high brand affinity). There are several brands that already conduct such tests. U.K. retailer Marks & Spencer found that its YouTube channel video watchers (vs. nonwatchers) had a 25% higher basket size, had higher conversion rates, had fewer returns, and spent twice as much time on the company website, which they visited twice as often. Volvo compared the percentage of times that it was in people’s consideration set of prospects in areas where it ran (vs. did not run) a Facebook campaign, with controlled equality in the other-media campaigns in both areas. he media plan to cost effectively reach the right consumers (Lin, Venkataraman, and Jap 2013). The next five criteria home in on the success that the IMC program has in actually influencing those consumers along their decision journey to drive sales in the short run and build brand equity in the long run. Contribution Contribution reflects direct “main effects” and the inherent ability of a marketing communication to create the desired response and communication effects from consumers in the absence of exposure to any other communication option. How much does a communication—by itself—affect consumer processing and build awareness, enhance image, elicit responses, induce sales, or affect any other stage along the consumer journey? Commonality Commonality is the extent to which common associations are reinforced across communication options; that is, the extent to which different communication options share the same meaning. Information processing research has found that a repeated message is more effective when it is presented in two different modes rather than in one (Unnava and Burnkrant 1991; Young and Bellezza 1982). McGrath (2005) empirically shows how communication programs with a common theme executed across multiple media in a visually consistent manner can induce stronger attitudes toward the brand than the same executions with less visual consistency. Complementarity As noted in previous sections, communication options are more effective when used in tandem, ideally in the most appropriate sequence. Complementarity is the extent to which different associations and linkages are emphasized across communication options. For effective competitive positioning, brands typically need to establish multiple brand associations. Different marketing communication options may be better suited to establishing a particular brand association (e.g., sponsorship of a cause may improve perceptions of a brand’s trust and credibility, but TV and print advertising may be needed to communicate its performance advantages). Cross-Effects Communications used in tandem are more powerful when they interact and create synergistic cross-effects with other communications through proper sequencing. Our review has illustrated many such effects within and between online and offline media. For example, promotions and online solicitations can be more effective when combined with advertising (Neslin 2002).The awareness and attitudes created by advertising campaigns can increase the success of more direct sales pitches. Advertising can convey the positioning of a brand and benefit from online display advertising or search engine marketing that sends a stronger call to action (Pfeiffer and Zinnbauer 2010). Conformability In any IMC program, consumers will encounter communications in different orders or sequences, or perhaps not at all. Any particular message may be new to some consumers, but not to others, and, for any one consumer, it may be preceded or followed by a completely different set or sequence of communications from the brand. Conformability refers to communication versatility and the extent to which a particular marketing communication “works” for many target consumers in many times and places. In other words, how well does the communication conform to the different characteristics and communication needs of different consumers? The ability to work at two levels—effectively communicating to consumers who have or have not seen a communication and will or will not see other communications—is critically important. A highly conformable or versatile communication achieves its communication goals regardless of the communications path consumers have been on or will be on. Note that one of the benefits of new media and programmatic advertising efforts is that there may be a more accurate record of prior communication exposures for consumers and, thus, greater ability to adapt a communication accordingly. A fully integrated communications program should perform well on each of these seven integration criteria (coverage, cost, contribution, commonality, complementarity, cross-effects, and conformability). Several points about the specific criteria are worth noting. First, there are not necessarily inherent differences across communication types for contribution and complementarity because, in theory, any communication, if properly designed, can play a critical and unique role in achieving certain communication objectives. Communication types vary, however, in their breadth and depth of audience coverage and in terms of commonality and conformability according to the number of modalities they employ: the more modalities available with a communication type, the greater its potential commonality and conformability. In other words, the more a communication employs multiple modalities (e.g., audio, video, images), the more opportunities there are to match that communication with another communication and to appeal to different audiences.

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Integrated marketing communications are the coordinated, consistent means by which firms attempt to inform, incent, persuade, and remind consumers—directly or indirectly— about the products and brands they sell. Technological advances and other factors have transformed the marketing communications environment and present new challenges and opportunities to marketers. Digital media, in particular, offertremendous potential through their greater versatility and precision, but they also create greater integration challenges. To capitalize on these new media opportunities, marketers need new tools and ways of thinking that can provide structure to an increasingly complex communications environment. To better understand how to develop and deliver fully integrated communication programs in today’s changing marketing world, we reviewed academic research and substantive findings to date. Appendix C displays five main themes that emerged from this review. batra and keller 2016

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batra and keller 2016 • Building on an understanding of the consumer, contextual, and content factors that shape communication outcomes, the communications matching model considers the specific objectives and desired outcomes at different stages of the consumer decision journey and the characteristics of different media types to recommend the best-aligned media and messaging options. • The communication optimization model evaluates all proposed communication options for effectiveness and efficiency to ensure that maximal collective effects result.

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Top-Down Communications Optimization Model: Major Communication Platforms: such as personal selling, television, social media marketing Middle: Communication Outcomes and Objectives : such as elicit emotions, enstil loyalty, propensity to connect people, propensity to inspire action etc Bottom-Up Communications Matching Model: Stages of Consumer Decision Journey: Needs/ Wants Knows Considers Searches/ Learns Likes/ Trusts WTP Commits Consumes Satisfied Loyal Engages Advocates and then how all these are related :) By considering communication matching and integration in detail, the two communications models offer a comprehensive top-to-bottom view of marketing communications, helping address some of MSI’s research priorities in this IMC domain. By virtue of its broad nature and media neutrality, the framework we offer can help guide managerial thinking and academic research in several specific areas, such as in understanding online versus offline, marketer-controlled versus consumer-driven, and digital versus nondigital differences.

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Opreana, A., & Vinerean, S. (2015). A new development in online marketing: Introducing digital inbound marketing. Expert Journal of Marketing, 3(1). Particularly in online settings, marketing is undergoing a transformation. Online business can no longer rely on traditional marketing tactics and campaigns to attract, retain and expand consumers because there is a transformation in how people interact with brands and companies, how they shop and buy in online and offline settings. Traditional marketing is no longer a viable option because it focuses on pushing a message out. In online business framework, a new marketing development has arisen, namely digital inbound marketing. This new marketing type is focused on attracting valuable consumers (potential, existing, or aspirational) that choose to interact with a particular company that provides them with something useful. In this paper, we propose a definition for digital inbound marketing and examine the online strategies associated with this concept: brand-focused marketing communications, content marketing, social media marketing, and search engine optimization. Now, there is search engine marketing, email marketing, blog marketing, viral marketing, content marketing, social media marketing and so many more. These, however, can be encompassed under one concept – digital inbound marketing. however ppc is not digital inbound marketing :) However, used alongside a wider inbound campaign that includes the use of social media, blogs, videos, infographics, email, SEO, gated content and more, PPC can have a fantastic impact on the results your tech company manages to generate.

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Digital Inbound Marketing represents the process of reaching and converting qualified consumers by creating and pursuing organic tactics in online settings. This marketing development and evolution of this business area is mainly focused on attracting people in a manner that showcases understanding of people’s problems and provision of timely solutions. In this sense, relationship marketing tactics are more easily implemented using technology. For instance, this new approach of marketing is prioritizing the attraction of potential customers with quality, search-friendly content, such as videos, still images or GIFs, and stories that get traction if they fulfill the usefulness or emotional criteria (or the utilitarian or hedonic dimension of consumer behavior). Moreover, this content is syndicated on various social media outlets that have to be relevant to the brand and its overall integrated communications. Particularly in times of crises and increased competition, organizations focus on how to maximize their available marketing budget. The easiest ways to reach consumers with a lower marketing budget is by implementing digital inbound marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization, social media, online brands, and content creation to get found in organic search results and draw interested prospects to websites. An internet marketing company observed this consumer trend early on, and started an online marketing platform based on the idea of inbound marketing (Hubspot.com, 2015).

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opreana & vinerean 2015 ``` Digital Inbound Marketing: Organic Getting found by potential, existing and aspirational consumers Creating long lasting relationships by reaching and converting qualified consumers target: Interested prospects Tactics: Blogs, Ebooks, White papers Videos on Youtube, vimeo, etc. Search engine optimization tactics Infographics Webinars Feeds, RSS Social media marketing tactics ``` ``` traditional marketing - basis: interruption - focus : Finding customers - aim: Increased sales - target: large audiences - tactics: Print advertisements TV advertisements Outdoors advertising Cold calling Trade shows Email lists ```

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Edelman (2010) focused on the main aspects of focus of digital marketers in creating and sustaining value through their marketing strategies. He identified four sources of value. Firstly, digital marketers focus on coordinating their activities to create consumer engagement throughout the digital purchase funnel. Secondly, they use brands in online settings to create consumer empowerment in the co-creation of products, services, and strategies and in supporting the brand as an ambassador or advocate. Thirdly, marketers act like publishers of different forms of content to support products, segments, channels, and promotions. Fourthly, Opreana, A. and Vinerean, S., 2015. A New Development in Online Marketing: Introducing Digital Inbound Marketing. Expert Journal of Marketing, 3(1), pp. 29-34 31 they gather, establish and use a plethora of digital data to learn more about consumers and the next directions of their marketing efforts. Thus, digital inbound marketing is one of the most advanced fields today when it comes to big data. Major ad space sellers leverage highly sophisticated algorithms to process customer profiles and identify the most suitable type of banner advertising. In addition, automated ROI data is available for search engine keywords, making it possible to optimize marketing budget in real time

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Components of Digital Inbound Marketing opreana and vinerean 2015 SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Brand-Focused Marketing Communications.

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(Components of Digital Inbound Marketing opreana and vinerean 2015) Brand-Focused Marketing Brand-focused marketing communications in the online environment have a special impact on the capitalization of the company. Marketing communications are the means by which companies try to inform consumers, to convince them and remind them - directly or indirectly - about the products and brands they sell. In a sense, marketing communications represent the "voice" of the brand and represent tools that can start a dialogue and can build relationships with consumers (Kotler et al, 2012). Although marketing communications play several crucial roles for any brand in a business context, they must deal with increasingly more difficult situations. Technology and other factors have profoundly changed the way consumers process information and even if they reach the stage of information processing. Therefore, marketing communications should be integrated to deliver a consistent message and to achieve strategic positioning in all relevant communications mediums. Online brands appear as a result of advances in information and communication technologies. In a sense, an online brand is just a brand that includes a name or a symbol, a set of products and service features that are associated with a certain name (Morgan-Thomas, Veloutsou 2011, p.21). Like its offline counterpart, an online brand, is an augmented and identifiable product so that customers or users perceive it as valuable and distinct from other competitive products. Subjective perceptions of an integrated package of information and experiences in the mind of a consumer evokes a certain presence of personality (Okazaki, 2006, 280.) and performance (Parasuraman et al., 2005, p.217). Most brands now interact with consumers both through their own branded online website and on multiple platforms. In the context of DIM, marketers have to focus their branding efforts on developing an authentic and relevant brand to their main consumer segments or personas. The brands most likely to convert digitally jaded consumers into purchasers offer the strongest array of digital experiences. These successful players seem to be pulling away from less robust digital brands and gaining further momentum as they build up positive word of mouth on social media (Bughin, 2015). Online brands that have moved swiftly to master digital channels - gaining a deep understanding of customer preferences, crafting digital experiences, and improving offerings via social feedback - are establishing a competitive advantage that may be difficult to beat. These experiences should make brands more relevant, distinctive, and credible to customers, and as a result marketers should develop strategies to differentiate brands through superior positioning relative to competitors. This frequently means repositioning established brands to better meet customer needs.

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(Components of Digital Inbound Marketing opreana and vinerean 2015) 3.3.Social Media Marketing Indeed, online social networks have profoundly changed the propagation of information by making it incredibly easy to share and digest information on the internet. Social media amplifies the impact of an organization’s content. A business can both distribute content across various social networks and consolidate its brand by creating its business page on such networks. Sharing content across social networks makes it appear authentic, while creating business pages offers a business more opportunities to make its content known. Social interaction in the digital world in which consumers communicate and interact in real time, can be used to create connections with clients in order to provide and receive information from prospects (Tikkanen et al., 2009, p .1357). Communication on organizations’ pages on various social networks occurs through a process of communication between customers (C2C), but also through a process that facilitates customers and company representatives (B2C or C2B) communication. Peer communication through social media, a new form of consumer socialization, has profound impacts on consumer decision making and thus marketing strategies. Social media, especially social networking sites, provide a virtual space for people to communicate through the Internet, which also might be an important agent of consumer socialization. Moreover, social media marketing represents such a major cost effective opportunity for marketers who wish to start a dialogue with their customers and get an insight into their likes and dislikes. Social network services such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter, just to name a few, aggregate an abundance of information. This information has a great potential for marketers and online marketing campaigns. Also, the most important aspect of social media and its impac on marketing is the possibility to collaborate and co-create products and campaigns with consumers. By reaching engaged consumers, online Opreana, A. and Vinerean, S., 2015. A New Development in Online Marketing: Introducing Digital Inbound Marketing. Expert Journal of Marketing, 3(1), pp. 29-34 32 marketers can significantly improve an organization’s profitability, revenue streams, and increase the loyalty of customers who may become brand advocates in online settings.

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Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a well-known online marketing tool that refers to building a website and inbound links to a particular website to optimize the position in search engine results’ pages. This tool makes it easier for prospects to find an organization’s content. Also, it represents a key element after content marketing that helps increase the visibility and discoverability of content on search engines. Nowadays, customers begin their buying process in online settings, usually by using a search engine to find answers to specific questions. Therefore, a company should ensure that it appears and is visible when customers are searching for it. To achieve this, organizations need to choose keywords, optimize pages, create content and build links around the keywords that buyer are looking for. Search engines reward in the form of a better search result placement the companies that publish quality and consistent content.

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Content Marketing (Components of Digital Inbound Marketing opreana and vinerean 2015) Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and maintain a clearly defined audience and, ultimately, to result in an profitable action of the client for the business (Content Marketing Institute, 2015). Content is the corner stone of digital inbound marketing. Using content as an online marketing strategy, organizations can attract potential customers, retain existing once, and transform aspirational consumers in advocates by developing various forms of content that prospects consider valuable and will use the created content in order to access a website to learn more or come into contact with a marketing offer. The purpose of content marketing is to attract and retain customers by constantly creating relevant and valuable content with the intent to change or reinforce consumer behavior. This is an ongoing process that is best integrated into the overall marketing strategy and focuses on media ownership, not media lending (Flanagan, 2015). There are various forms of content, from the basic ones, such as video, image, text, to the more specific ones, such as: blogs, ebooks, infographics, slideshow presentations, interactive content, etc.

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4. Measuring Digital Inbound Marketing Measurement is what makes marketing a science, rather than a simple tool. To measure the effectiveness of a campaign of digital inbound marketing (DIM), an organization needs to monitor different types of web analytics. For a successful online marketing campaign, it is necessary to study which tactics work and which need adjustments in order to create relevant content that is syndicated on various outlets, including the organization’s website. The main objective is to yield results of attracting more leads or converting leads into customers. However, DIM tactics have a long term perspective and results may not always occur overnight. Nonetheless, any tactic needs to be measured to examine opportunities of improvement or establish the programs to drive business growth. In relation to Digital Inbound Marketing, there are four elements that can be measured to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of an online marketing campaign: 1. Website Activity. This aspect is related to the website traffic (unique visitors + repeat visitors), such as page views and popularity, new or recurring visitors, etc. 2. Source of Traffic. This aspect presents which search terms or keywords, languages, regions or countries, mediums, email marketing, paid search, social media gather the most traffic for a website or marketing campaign. From this category the most important metric is the channelspecific traffic which can be direct traffic (how many people visit a site directly), referrals (external links from other sites), organic (visitors who found a website after performing a search query), and social (visitors who reached a website from a social platform). Opreana, A. and Vinerean, S., 2015. A New Development in Online Marketing: Introducing Digital Inbound Marketing. Expert Journal of Marketing, 3(1), pp. 29-34 33 3. Nature of Website Activity. In this category, the metrics that should be considered are entry pages, exit pages, browsers, platforms, click-throughs, inbound links, average time per page, bounce rate, etc. 4. Responses and Outcomes. In this area, digital marketers focus on lead generation (or users’ optin), most requested pages, number of downloads, requests for more information, orders, incremental sales, return-on-investment (ROI), brand awareness, content downloads, consumer engagement, social media reach, subscribers (blog, email, newsletter, etc.). 5. Integrated Marketing Metrics. In this category, online companies with digital inbound marketing campaigns monitor metrics, such as cost of customer acquisition (COCA), customer lifetime value (CLV), retention rates, lead-to-sale conversion rates, Net Promoter Score (NPS), referrals, profitability, revenue growth

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5.1.Theoretical Contributions One of the advantages of internet is that it enables businesses to reach a worldwide customer population, so that customers can survey, select, and purchase products and services from businesses around the world. In this paper, we propose a new area of research in marketing literature that should focus on the four aspects associated with digital inbound marketing, namely content marketing, search engine optimization and social media marketing. Further, we have established a definition which should serve as a starting point for this concept. Moreover, by the metrics examined in this article, we contribute to the study of marketing accountability in online settings. 5.2.Managerial Implications For online businesses, traditional marketing is both ineffective and expensive, and to achieve powerful business results new and effective internet marketing strategies have to be employed. The concept of digital inbound marketing might seem difficult and daunting. But by tackling each internet marketing tactic step by step, businesses can make internet marketing more manageable and start generating results. In digital inbound marketing, measuring marketing’s effectiveness and efficiency is both necessary and manageable. Online companies can obtain a holistic understanding of its online marketing performance by measuring every tactic, program, activity, and technique it implements at every step in their sales cycles. Further, using this information, organizations can make more informed decisions that can eventually drive growth and overall success. The four components of Digital Inbound Marketing (content creation, search engine optimization, social media marketing, brand-focused marketing communications) incur low to no cost in addition to employees who develop and implement these strategies. Nonetheless, an online business’s employees have to create text, video, and image types of content, promote this content on various social media outlets, and optimize the website for search engines. However, the time spent on these online marketing strategies is comparable to the time spent on developing and planning large-scale marketing campaigns. Considering the low cost of the tools it uses, digital inbound marketing implies lower budgets and costs than traditional marketing campaigns. 5.3.Future Research Directions This theoretical article can be extended to encompass a thorough investigation of the metrics associated with digital inbound marketing. By extending digital inbound marketing from a practical perspective, future research should involve a study of an online company and its marketing activity to better understand the challenges in the digital business environment and propose applicative solutions

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Social media governance Social Media Governance is about understanding the risks which social media poses to your organisation and having confidence that you are appropriately managing them. Use of social media by people and organisations is increasing rapidly and the potential benefits of a successful social media strategy are significant. Social Media Governance is about understanding the risks which social media poses to your organisation and having confidence that you are appropriately managing them. Use of social media by people and organisations is increasing rapidly and the potential benefits of a successful social media strategy are significant. But, providing the freedom of a social media experience within sensible and easy to understand boundaries is the new challenge. Social Media Governance is less about systems and platforms and more about people, risk and strategy. A well implemented Social Media Governance strategy should make sure that you are managing the risks of social media while at the same time getting the benefits, through a proper scheme of guidance, training and monitoring.[1] Elements of Social Media Governance Model[2] Here are the 5 key elements of a solid social media governance model: Definition of Scope: This sounds so basic but it is critical that you define what is and isn't covered by your governance model. Be sure to call out the specific social channels along with the policies and guidelines that relate to each of them. Depending on business and organizational needs, some companies may decide to have a common governance model for their internal and external customer-facing communities, while others may decide to keep the two separate. So it's essential to call out which ones are included to provide clarity to your employees. Frequency & Process for Updates: Given that social media is evolving at the pace of light, your governance model will need regular review and update. Make sure you define the frequency of updates and the process for those updates. This will ensure that your governance model is not outdated and provides clarity on how the updates are made. If you want employee participation in the review (highly recommended), make sure you call it out along with details on when and how to provide input. Branding Guidelines: For a large company, the broad variety of social media channels makes it imperative to clearly call out the branding guidelines for your external channels. The same principles that govern the design of all your external-facing communications such as website, collateral, etc. should be applied to official social channels. This would include, but not limited to, branded templates for your social channels like Twitter, social sharing & follow icons, as well as the use of company logo and related elements on external-facing channels. Training & Education: A solid governance model should have plenty of educational resources for employees. This should include training on responding to customer feedback, both positive and negative. Typically, it's the customer support and PR organizations that are tasked with the responsibility of responding to customer feedback. However, social media is breaking down the traditional boundaries and depending on your company's social media engagement policy, it could be a marketing or salesperson who is having to respond to a customer query. So it's essential to have training as a cornerstone of your social media governance model. Approval Processes & Continuity Planning: Your governance model should clearly call out what approval processes are in place for employees to engage in social media. It should answer questions such as: Can everyone participate (highly recommended) or only members of certain external-facing groups can engage via your company's social channels? What is the process for getting approval for an official account?§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§§W 3. Curate: Develop a strategy for how often and when the company should interact on social media-Who should represent you and create content?-What content? For instance through: Social media governance that includes: Frequency& Process for UpdatesBrandingGuidelinesTraining& EducationApprovalProcesses& ContinuityPlanningSocial media governanceis the collectionofpolicies, proceduresand toolsemployedby an organizationto ensurethatassets aresecured, risks areminimizedand compliancemaintained. For instance a company may want to have core values, such as protecting customers privacy, respect copyrights For instance, Dell had a flowchart which helped them how to handle crisis management. Social media governanceis the collectionofpolicies, proceduresand toolsemployedby an organizationto ensurethatassets aresecured, risks areminimizedand compliancemaintained.

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Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101. The article says one should focus on the long taiil Ticoll (1999) suggests that for many consumers the choice between buying from large v. many small companies is determined by transaction cost – continuously driven down by the decrease in costs associated with the internet and competing value chain service providers. A focus on transaction cost alone will therefore inevitably lead to the consolidation and eventual monopolisation of delivery services, pushing out smaller operations. At the same time, Anderson’s “long tail” in Figures 5 and 6 – associated with increasing concentration on the larger number of niche and bespoke consumer needs – suggests an increasingly significant role for “on demand” production and supply technologies, and for those e-operations that bring virtual communities together, enable self-nicheing, identify needs and opportunities and facilitate access to goods and services which satisfy these. An analysis of Porter’s (1979) “five forces” in the context of the “long tail” explains the range of new markets and potential offerings made possible by the reach and logistical capabilities afforded by the internet. Whilst this approach is sustainable, it is not sufficiently efficient to warrant significant investment or stimulate high levels of growth. The latter is based on developing high visibility models, which demonstrate the mobbing effects shown in Figure 5. However, it is critical to recognise that such lifecycles are typically short and that the continuous evolution of user experience and innovation in the delivery of this are key factors

Answer 248

``` Social networks (69 per cent) provide self-segmenting niches with high aggregation and appeal to differing social groups. This can result in what Silver (2007) refers to as a “mobbing” effect, where significant numbers of users are drawn to a site. Such behaviour provides an ideal opportunity to license databases of such subscribers to content/network providers – adding significantly to the value of the proposition – particularly where these reflect new and emergent consumer groups. It has been Infrastructure development Timeline Revenue (growth) Path of minimum sustainable growth Path of maximum supportable growth Conception Launch Marketing Effectiveness 100% 60% 20% High float Low float High investment Zone of high effectiveness Untenable zone Unfeasible zone Zone of low effectiveness Order fulfilment Figure 6. A “S” curve of growth 95 E-business models referred to the use of post-filters to overcome the high levels of noise associated with such phenomenon including the use of hit rates, reviews and ratings. ``` This paper sets out to identify key success criteria for e-business and consider emergent models which integrate the most value-adding characteristics in response to the requirements of both consumers and business organisations.

Answer 249

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 - more and more generations and countries are accessing the web. - As highlighted in “Literature review”, the need for continuous differentiation and innovation is key to success. Silver (2007), for example, points to three factors, which include problem size (the number of potential consumers multiplied by the price they are prepared to pay), elegance (proprietary, difficult to replicate and first-to-market) and experience (previous management of launches and business operation) as key determinants.

Answer 250

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 E-stalls/e-stores: (16-27 per cent) provide scaleable online shop-based services, either as an individual store or clustered mall with common transaction processes. Whilst offering increased virtual footfall, competition is also greater and is no longer proximity based. Higher stock turnaround can lead to reduced inventory holding, particularly where larger sites can hold out for 60-day payment terms, thus easing cashflow and float. However, many stores, including supermarkets, run virtual and physical stores in parallel and are reliant on dedicated order “picking and packing” operations for e-customers which add cost. This is particularly true for multiple low value products such as fresh food, which is uneconomic to ship directly, and must therefore be picked at store from stock. Here, forecast variation has a considerable impact, resulting in either stock-outs or wastage, and loss of profit margin. E-stores are also highly reliant on trust services, particularly in credit transactions, and the activities value chain service providers, which reduce margins still further. Successful stores are therefore likely to be confined to either specialist outlets capable of charging a premium, and thus operating in the long tail of the inverse Pareto model in Figure 4. Competition comes from both high street retailers focusing on one-to-one customer experience, and from e-catalogues offering discount pricing, the latter preventing e-stores from moving up the long tail. Particular barriers to entry relate to site hosting and maintenance, and perhaps more critically, market visibility

Answer 251

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Value chain providers (20 per cent) typified by courier services and marketing activities, but with the exception of e-payment services – specialise in supplying a particular function within the value chain on a fee basis. Such services are reliant on providing both geographic infrastructure and/or access to partner networks, and service innovation, particularly in terms of delivery, traceability and monitoring. As quality is key, profit margins are likely to be reinvested in developing additional services (see value chain integrators).

Answer 252

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Third-party marketplaces (20 per cent) provide comparison and brokerage services matching requirements to capabilities and capacities, and to some extent may aggregate demand (although this model is evaluated separately). The range of possible revenues is broader – covering transaction fees, supplier memberships and advertising – but margins modest as there is significant competition within the sector (or “over-grazing”) and few barriers to entry. Consumers also tend to be price-driven and as such are fickle, and wary of levels of potential “insider trading” associated with some sites

Answer 253

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 ``` Value chain integrators (24 per cent) enable the integration of business operations – providing for example: network hosting, e-marketing and warehousing and logistical Sales Products Hits Democratisation of production – digital reproduction and short-run rapid prototyping Democratisation of distribution – increasing access and aggregation of demand Economy of scale Cost reduction Volume sales Bespoke needs Custom offerings Niches Low diversity High diversity High sales Low sales Figure 4. The “long tail” 100% Ideal 98% Games network (virtual environment) 78% Auction engine 73% Information service provider (search engine) 69% Social network 47% Trust services 47% E-catalogue 44% E-catalogue (digital download site) 33% Third-party procurer (aggregator) 33% Virtual community 29% Gambling site 27% E-shop (large retailer) 24% E-mall/portal 24% Value chain integrator 20% Third-party marketplace (sourcing) 20% E-shop (medium retailer) 20% Value chain provider 16% E-shop (stall) 0% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Notes: >40% high effectiveness; <40% low effectiveness Figure 3. Ranking in order of commercial effectiveness 93 E-business models management. As with value chain providers, much of their competitive advantage is based on the level of infrastructure offered, and its leverage across the supply sequence. Whilst it is possible to develop highly efficient services, much of this activity conforms to more traditional business models, and as such, the potential for innovation and leverage is not present, such models scoring poorly on protectability/replicability, tolerance of premium prices, capital requirements (and lack of float generation). ```

Answer 254

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Gambling sites (29 per cent) claim in many instances to be social networks, but in reality companies adopting this model are extending their physical business processes – be the betting or social games such as “bingo”. Whilst the lack of premises reduces costs considerably, marketing expenditure is considerably higher, offsetting physical proximity with brand value. As with e-supermarkets, there are high levels of competition, forcing sites to adjust their payout balances. Tighter regulation is likely to reduce margins further, forcing such models to increase their reliance on cross-sales and the development of ever more elaborate games, which offer greater rewards.

Answer 255

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Virtual communities (33 per cent) cater for community interest groups. They provide highly focused niche user information, but tend to be of limited use to users outside of these sub-groups. Content is largely user generated and freely shared within the group, aggregating over time. There is no guarantee of accuracy and, as with sites such as “Wikipedia” coverage is preferred over reliability, and are self-regulating, typically filtered by user reviews (Tapscott and Williams, 2007). However, as they lack dedicated administration, sites may be abused, and piracy and viruses are commonplace. Such sites also lack a clear business model or means of exploiting this content, particularly as users respond negatively to inappropriate advertising. As the niches tend to be small – tending to the right-hand side of Figure 4 – user details and consumption behaviours are of little use to other content or network providers

Answer 256

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Third-party procurers/e-aggregators (33 per cent) undertake buying on behalf of communities, sourcing products and aggregating demand to secure economies of scale from suppliers. The model applies “power of the buyer” in negotiating a purchase discount, the level of which is dependent on the size of the order placed; this in turn is dependent on how long customers are prepared to wait as order levels ramp up. Choice is also limited to the most requested items, restricting the variety of goods/brands on offer, and effectively pushing demand to the left of the “long tail” in Figures 5 and 6. The model is potentially powerful, as the virtual footfall offered by the internet significantly increases the numbers of customers available. However, all users of such sites are price-driven and therefore lack loyalty, especially given increasing levels of competition from other e-procurers, and from e-catalogues and discount wholesalers who offer such goods for immediate delivery. The model also offers lower profit margins per item than other models, and therefore increases the necessity of larger orders.

Answer 257

E-catalogues (47 per cent) offer more diverse ranges than e-aggregators and provide greater integration of purchasing logistics. The scale of catalogue operations enables direct shipment from suppliers to customers, and therefore offers zero inventory. In terms of digital content, publishing and short-run products, this also suggests the use of “production on demand” and access to niche suppliers. There are, however, significant levels of competition, forcing e-catalogues into one of the two strategies – commoditisation or niche satisfaction (i.e. economies of scale or bespoke offerings). Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101

Answer 258

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Trust services (47 per cent) offer a range of secure transactions, typified by Paypal and its debit transfer service. This capitalises on significant levels of concern regarding, for example, internet fraud, and offers considerable scope for extension into credit facilities. Such services offer the opportunity to charge higher margins than conventional debit services, whilst simultaneously generating a substantial database of online consumer purchasing behaviours. There are few negatives; however, the model can be replicated by the larger banks with strong brand profiles, although “Paypal”, for example, has achieved a brand omnipresence that may be difficult to surpass. In addition, this model focuses on a single element of the e-value chain and therefore cannot achieve the leverage possible in others.

Answer 259

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Social networks (69 per cent) provide self-segmenting niches with high aggregation and appeal to differing social groups. This can result in what Silver (2007) refers to as a “mobbing” effect, where significant numbers of users are drawn to a site. Such behaviour provides an ideal opportunity to license databases of such subscribers to content/network providers – adding significantly to the value of the proposition – particularly where these reflect new and emergent consumer groups. It has been referred to the use of post-filters to overcome the high levels of noise associated with such phenomenon including the use of hit rates, reviews and ratings. Despite some strong subscription models – such as Facebook – many are weaker, with revenue streams unclear in many cases, with a reliance on membership fees, cross-selling and advertising. However, a key asset is consumer generated content, particularly where this is traded for personal exposure, as in YouTube broadcasts. This interaction can be fuelled by downloadable open source tools and environments, which may themselves become income generating commodities (see games networks). However, such sites are reliant on good reputation management (see also auction sites) and subject to regulation, particularly where content censorship is an issue

Answer 260

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Search engines (73 per cent) to some extent also exhibit “mobbing” effects – evident in Google – fuelled by “word-of-mouth” perceptions as to which are the most effective search tool. Income streams are more diverse, particularly in terms of the compilation and licensing of subscriber databases to third-party content and network providers. Other incomes include advertising and the influencing of search rankings; however, such bias in results can have negative drawbacks in user perceptions of effectiveness, and there is considerable growth potential in the development of more efficient search algorithms, which provide more accurately targeted results.

Answer 261

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Directory services whilst strictly third-party marketplaces, could also come under this heading. A key opportunity here is a development of a model, which provides realtime brokerage, matching requirements to capabilities and availability, particularly if this were to include user content such as recommendations (e.g. Hotelconnect.co.uk). Such a site ideally caters for as diverse a range of services as possible, typically with small scale/local suppliers, exploiting the longer end of the Pareto tail in Figure 4.

Answer 262

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Online auction sites (78 per cent) (eBay; tradera) again exploit product diversity, particularly where scarcity is transformed into premium value. A “mobbing” effect is also evident in a number of these sites, fed by the potentially addictive nature of much of this activity. Again, revenue streams are multiple, ranging from listing fees and commissions on sales through to the licensing of subscriber details to content/network providers. As with other models, trust is a key issue, particularly where the buyer has no knowledge of the seller or prior inspection of the goods, and where there is no means of recompensing payment. Here, the use of secure payment transactions is key (notably eBay now owns Paypal) as is reputation management (where trust is assured by feedback on the seller’s reputation).

Answer 263

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 Games networks (98 per cent) – exemplified by Second World – yet again demonstrate strong mobbing effects as per social networks. Here, the potential for licensing subscriber details to content/network providers represents perhaps greatest asset value. Nonetheless, access to user generated content and perhaps the highest levels of e-participation, provide major revenue streams, particularly when coupled with possibilities for social bridging. As with online auctioning, many of the activities – such as game play – offer immediate gratification and are potentially addictive. However, as with auctioned items, there is an expectation of a constant turnaround in games and environments, and success is therefore dependent on continuous innovation.

Answer 264

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 findings: From Figure 5, it is clear that particular attributes associated with the right hand side of the “long tail” include diverse custom market with high margins/commission; exploits access to self-nicheing subscribers, enhanced by social bridging; reliance on user generated content; sale of subscriber details to content/network providers; and high self-regulation. Similarly, consideration of the growth S-curve in Figure 6 suggests that higher value models (“high effectiveness” in the figure) are likely to occur where mobbing behaviour is evident, bringing with it high value subscriber bases, which may be sold on to potential content/network providers. Higher value models are likely to be identified where asset value is greater than transaction value; and where high demand value and visibility enable the setting of de facto standard and hence higher attraction/ retention rates. These models necessitate high word-of-mouth and viral marketing, and continuous development to enhance experience. Assuming a brand lifespan two to three years, successful models are therefore likely to be subject to high levels of imitation and work-around

Answer 265

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 At the other extreme (the “low effectiveness” region in Figure 6) – characterised perhaps by e-shops, e-supermarkets, gambling sites and third-party aggregators – low growth is likely to result in lower value subscriber bases, which have little intrinsic value. Other traits include low visibility; transaction value being greater than asset value; returns exceeding 30 per cent per annum to support venture capital investment; and brand lifespan of more than three years to enable breakeven. Silver’s focus, and that of many other authors, e.g. Porter (1979), is on first-to-market, high value e-enterprises which demonstrate the “mobbing” effect, as shown as the upper left adoption curve in Figure 6. In reality, the vast majority of B2Cs operate against the lower right “S” curve (i.e. at o40 per cent effectiveness against Silver’s success criteria); this applies particularly to those with little USP, single revenue streams, limited funding availability and more cautious take-up or lower growth aspirations. How might these firms define defensible niches and sustain their operations?

Answer 266

Zhang, X., Williams, A., & Polychronakis, Y. E. (2012). A comparison of e-business models from a value chain perspective. EuroMed Journal of Business, 7(1), 83-101 (1) a diverse custom market with high margins/commission; (2) access to self-nicheing subscribers, enhanced by social bridging; (3) high word-of-mouth and viral marketing; (4) high growth (mobbing effect) resulting in a higher value subscriber base attractive to potential content/network providers; (5) high demand value and visibility, leading to the establishment of a de facto standard and hence higher attraction/retention rates; (6) the sale of subscriber details to content/network providers; (7) high float generation (level of upfront payment) minimising capital requirements; (8) user generated content; (9) a strong value chain proposition; /10) the ability to produce on demand; (11) an asset value greater than transaction value; (12) continuous development to enhance experience; (13) high self-regulation; and (14) a brand lifespan of at least two to three years, with early-stage protection to limit imitation and work-around.

Answer 267

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Social media allows people to freely interact with others and offers multiple ways for marketers to reach and engage with consumers. Considering the numerous ways social media affects individuals and businesses alike, in this article, the authors focus on where they believe the future of social media lies when considering marketing-related topics and issues. Drawing on academic research, discussions with industry leaders, and popular discourse, the authors identify nine themes, organized by predicted imminence (i.e., the immediate, near, and far futures), that they believe will meaningfully shape the future of social media through three lenses: consumer, industry, and public policy. Within each theme, the authors describe the digital landscape, present, and discuss their predictions, and identify relevant future research directions for academics and practitioners.

Answer 268

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Despite what academics and practitioners have studied and learned over the last 15–20 years on this topic, due to the fast-paced and ever-changing nature of social media—and how consumers use it—the future of social media in marketing might not be merely a continuation of what we have already seen. Therefore, we ask a pertinent question, what is the future of social media in marketing?

Answer 269

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Definitionally, social media can be thought of in a few different ways. In a practical sense, it is a collection of softwarebased digital technologies—usually presented as apps and websites—that provide users with digital environments in which they can send and receive digital content or information over some type of online social network. In this sense, we can think of social media as the major platforms and their features, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We can also in practical terms of social media as another type of digital marketing channel that marketers can use to communicate with It has evolved from being simply an online instantiation of WOM behaviors and content/information creation and sharing. It is pervasive across societies (and geographic borders) and culturally prominent at both local and global levels. consumers through advertising. But we can also think of social media more broadly, seeing it less as digital media and specific technology services, and more as digital places where people conduct significant parts of their lives. From this perspective, it means that social media becomes less about the specific technologies or platforms, and more about what people do in these environments. To date, this has tended to be largely about information sharing, and, in marketing, often thought of as a form of (online) word of mouth (WOM). Building on these definitional perspectives, and thinking about the future, we consider social media to be a technology-centric—but not entirely technological—ecosystem in which a diverse and complex set of behaviors, interactions, and exchanges involving various kinds of interconnected actors (individuals and firms, organizations, and institutions) can occur. Social media is pervasive, widely used, and culturally relevant. This definitional perspective is deliberately broad because we believe that social media has essentially become almost anything—content, information, behaviors, people, organizations, institutions—that can exist in an interconnected, networked digital environment where interactivity is possible.

Answer 270

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing The rise of social media, and the manner in which it has impacted both consumer behavior and marketing practice, has largely been driven by the platforms themselves. Some readers might recall the Bearly days^ of social media where social networking sites such as MySpace and Friendster were popular. These sites were precursors to Facebook and everything else that has developed over the last decade. Alongside these platforms, we continue to have other forms of social media such as messaging (which started with basic Internet Relay Chat services in the 1990s and the SMS text messaging built into early digital mobile telephone standards in the 2000s), and asynchronous online conversations arranged around specific topics of interest (e.g., threaded discussion forums, subreddits on Reddit). More recently, we have seen the rise of social media platforms where images and videos replace text, such as Instagram and Snapchat. Across platforms, historically and to the present day, the dominant business model has involved monetization of users (audiences) by offering advertising services to anyone wishing to reach those audiences with digital content and marketing communications. Prior research has examined the usefulness of social media (in its various forms) for marketing purposes. For example, work by Trusov et al. (2009) and Stephen and Galak (2012) demonstrated that certain kinds of social interactions that now happen on social media (e.g., Brefer a friend^ features and discussions in online communities) can positively affect important marketing outcomes such as new customer acquisition and sales.

Answer 271

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Presently, people around the world use social media in its various forms (e.g., news feeds on Facebook and Twitter, private messaging on WhatsApp and WeChat, and discussion forums on Reddit) for a number of purposes. These can generally be categorized as (1) digitally communicating and socializing with known others, such as family and friends, (2) doing the same but with unknown others but who share common interests, and (3) accessing and contributing to digital content such as news, gossip, and user-generated product reviews

Answer 272

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing These themes—omni-social presence, the rise of influencers, and trust and privacy concerns—reflect the ever-changing digital and social media landscape that we presently face. We believe that these different areas will influence a number of stakeholders such as individual social media users, firms and brands that utilize social media, and public policymakers (e.g., governments, regulators).

Answer 273

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing From a marketing perspective, the Bomni-social^ nature of the present environment suggests that virtually every part of a consumer’s decision-making process is prone to social media influence. Need recognition might be activated when a consumer watches their favorite beauty influencer trying a new product on YouTube. A consumer shopping for a car might search for information by asking their Facebook friends what models they recommend. A hungry employee might sift through Yelp reviews to evaluate different lunch options. A traveler might use Airbnb to book future accommodation. Finally, a highly dissatisfied (or delighted) airline passenger might rant (rave) about their experience on Twitter. While the decision-making funnel is arguably growing flatter than the aforementioned examples would imply (Cortizo-Burgess 2014), these independent scenarios illustrate that social media has the propensity to influence the entire consumer-decision making process, from beginning to end. Finally, perhaps the greatest indication of an Bomni-social^ phenomenon is the manner in which social media appears to be shaping culture itself. YouTube influencers are now cultural icons, with their own TV shows (Comm 2016) and product lines (McClure 2015). Creative content in television and movies is often deliberately designed to be Bgifable^ and meme-friendly (Bereznak 2018). BMade-for-Instagram museums^ are encouraging artistic content and experiences that are optimized for selfie-taking and posting (Pardes 2017). These examples suggest that social media’s influence is hardly restricted to the Bonline^ world (we discuss the potential obsolescence of this term later in this paper), but is rather consistently shaping cultural artifacts (television, film, the arts) that transcend its traditional boundaries. We believe this trend will continue to manifest, perhaps making the term Bsocial media^ itself out-of-date, as it’s omni-presence will be the default assumption for consumers, businesses, and artists in various domains. This omni-social trend generates many questions to probe in future research. For example, how will social interactivity influence consumer behavior in areas that had traditionally been non-social? From a practitioner lens, it might also be interesting to explore how marketers can strategically address the flatter decision-making funnel that social media has enabled, and to examine how service providers can best alter experiential consumption when anticipating social media sharing behavior.

Answer 274

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing The idea of using celebrities (in consumer markets) or wellknown opinion leaders (in business markets), who have a high social value, to influence others is a well-known marketing strategy (Knoll and Matthes 2017). However, the omnipresence of social media has tremendously increased the accessibility and appeal of this approach. For example, Selena Gomez has over 144 million followers on Instagram that she engages with each of her posts. In 2018, the exposure of a single photo shared by her was valued at $3.4 million (Maxim 2018). However, she comes at a high price: one post that Selena sponsors for a brand can cost upwards of $800,000 (Mejia 2018). However, putting high valuations on mere online exposures or collecting Blikes^ for specific posts can be somewhat speculative, as academic research shows that acquiring Blikes^ on social media might have no effect on consumers’ attitudes or behaviors (John et al. 2017; Mochon et al. 2017). Moreover, Hennig-Thurau et al. (2015), show that while garnering positive WOM has little to no effect on consumer preferences, negative WOM can have a negative effect on consumer preferences. While celebrities like Selena Gomez are possible influencers for major brands, these traditional celebrities are so expensive that smaller brands have begun, and will continue to, capitalize on the popularity and success of what are referred to as Bmicro-influencers,^ representing a new form of influencers. Micro-influencers are influencers who are not as well-known as celebrities, but who have strong and 82 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2020) 48:79–95 enthusiastic followings that are usually more targeted, amounting anywhere between a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of followers (Main 2017). In general, these types of influencers are considered to be more trustworthy and authentic than traditional celebrities, which is a major reason influencer marketing has grown increasingly appealing to brands (Enberg 2018). These individuals are often seen as credible Bexperts^ in what they post about, encouraging others to want to view the content they create and engage with them. Furthermore, using these influencers allows the brand via first person narration (compared to ads), which is considered warmer and more personal, and was shown to be more effective in engaging consumers (Chang et al. 2019). - Virtual influencers (i.e., BCGI^ influencers that look human but are not), on the other hand, have no such limitations. They never get tired or sick, they do not even eat (unless it is needed for a campaign). Some brands have started exploring the use of virtual influencers (Nolan 2018), and we believe that in coming years, along with stronger computing power and artificial intelligence algorithms, virtual influencers will become much more prominent on social media, being able to invariably represent and act on brand values and engage with followers anytime. VIRTUAL INFLUENCERS

Answer 275

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing For example, research has focused on the connections between personalization and privacy (e.g., Aguirre et al. 2015; White et al. 2008), the relationship of privacy as it relates to consumer trust and firm performance (e.g., Martin 2018; Martin et al. 2017), and the legal and ethical aspects of data and digital privacy (e.g., Culnan and Williams 2009; Nill and Aalberts 2014). Despite this topic not seeming novel, the way consumers, brands, policy makers, and social media platforms are all adjusting and adapting to these concerns are still in flux and without clear resolution. For example, while research has shown benefits to personalization tactics (e.g., Chung et al. 2016), with eroding trust in social platforms and brands that advertise through them, many consumers would rather not share data and privacy for a more personalized experiences, are uncomfortable with their purchases being tracked and think it should be illegal for brands to be able to buy their data (Edelman 2018). These recent findings seem to be in conflict with previously established work on consumer privacy expectations In line with rising privacy concerns, the way consumers view brands and social media is becoming increasingly negative. Consumers are deleting their social media presence, where research has shown that nearly 40% of digitally connected individuals admitted to deleting at least one social J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2020) 48:79–95 83 media account due to fears of their personal data being mishandled (Edelman 2018). This is a negative trend not only for social media platforms, but for the brands and advertisers who have grown dependent on these avenues for reaching consumers. Edelman found that nearly half of the surveyed consumers believed brands to be complicit in negative aspects of content on social media such as hate speech, inappropriate content, or fake news (Edelman 2018).

Answer 276

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing The near future Combatting loneliness and isolation, Integrated customer care, Social media as a political tool

Answer 277

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing The near future Combatting loneliness and isolation people can feel lonely when using social media

Answer 278

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing'' Integrated customer care To date, many brands have used social media platforms as a place for providing customer care, addressing customers’ specific questions, and fixing problems. In the future, social media-based customer care is expected to become even more customized, personalized, and ubiquitous. Even today, we observe the benefits that companies gain from connecting with customers on social media for serviceor care-related purposes. Customer care is implemented in dedicated smartphone apps and via direct messaging on social media platforms. However, it appears that firms want to make it even easier for customers to connect with them whenever and wherever they might need. Requiring a customer to download a brand specific app or to search through various social media platforms to connect with firms through the right branded account on a platform can be a cumbersome process. In those cases, customers might instead churn or engage in negative WOM, instead of connecting with the firm to bring up any troubles they might have. The near future of customer care on social media appears to be more efficient and far-reaching. In a recent review on the future of customer relationship management, Haenlein (2017) describes Binvisible CRM^ as future systems that will make customer engagement simple and accessible for customers. New platforms have emerged to make the connection between customer and firm effortless. Much of this is via instant messaging applications for businesses, which several leading technology companies have recently launched as business-related features in existing platforms (e.g., contact business features in Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp or Apple’s Business Chat). We believe that in the future, companies will be able recognize early indications of problems within customer chatter, behavior, or even physiological data (e.g., monitoring the sensors in our smart watches) before customers themselves even realize they are experiencing a problem. For example, WeWork, the shared workspace company, collects data on how workers move and act in a workspace, building highly personalized workspaces based on trends in the data. Taking this type of approach to customer care will enable Bseamless service,^ where companies would be able to identify and address consumer problems when they are still small and scattered, and while only a small number of customers are experiencing problems. Customer healthcare is a pioneer in this area, where using twitter and review sites were shown to predict poor healthcare quality (Greaves et al. 2013), listen to patients to analyze trending terms (Baktha et al. 2017; Padrez et al. 2016), or even predict disease outbreaks (Schmidt 2012). For marketers, this will reduce the need for call centers and agents, reducing points of friction in service and increasing the convenience for customers (Kaplan and Haenlein 2019). However, some raise the question that the increased dependence on automation may result in a loss of compassion and empathy. In a recent study, Force (2018) shows that interacting with brands on social media lowered people’s empathy. In response to such concerns, and to educate and incentivize people to interact with machines in a similar way they do with people, Google programmed their AI assistant to respond in a nicer way if you use a polite, rather than a commanding approach (Kumparak 2018). While this might help, more research is needed to understand the effect of an AI rich world on human behavior. As well, future research can examine how consumer generated data can help companies preemptively predict consumer distress. Another interesting path for research would be to better understand the difference in consumer engagement between the various platforms, and the long-term effects of service communications with non-human AI and IoT

Answer 279

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing'' Social media as a political tool Famously, President Barack Obama’s victory in the 2008 election was partially attributed to his ability to drive and engage voters on social media (Carr 2008). While social media is not new to politics, we believe that social media is transitioning to take a much larger role as a political tool in the intermediate future. First evidence for this could be seen in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as social media took on a different shape, with many purported attempts to influence voter’s opinions, thoughts, and actions. This is especially true for then-candidate and now-President Donald Trump. His use of Twitter attracted a lot of attention during the campaign and has continued to do so during his term in office. Yet, he is not alone, and many politicians changed the way they work and interact with constituents, with a recent example of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that even ran a workshop for fellow congress members on social media (Dwyer 2019). - people also use it to spread fake-news

Answer 280

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing'' The far future - Increased sensory richness - Online/offline integration and complete convergence - Social media by non-humans

Answer 281

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing'' The far future - Increased sensory richness One notable technology that has already started infiltrating social media is augmented reality (AR). Perhaps the most recognizable examples of this are Snapchat’s filters, which use a device’s camera to superimpose real-time visual and/or video overlays on people’s faces (including features such as makeup, dog ears, etc.). The company has even launched filters to specifically be used on users’ cats (Ritschel 2018). Other social media players quickly joined the AR bandwagon, including Instagram’s recent adoption of AR filters (Rao 2017) and Apple’s Memoji messaging (Tillman 2018). This likely represents only the tip of the iceberg, particularly given that Facebook, one of the industry’s largest investors in AR technology, has confirmed it is working on AR glasses (Constine 2018). Notably, the company plans to launch a developer platform, so that people can build augmented-reality features that live inside Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Whatsapp (Wagner 2017). These developments are supported by academic research suggesting that AR often provides more authentic (and hence positive) situated experiences (Hilken et al. 2017). Accordingly, whether viewed through glasses or through traditional mobile and tablet devices, the future of social media is likely to look much more visually augmented. While AR allows users to interact within their current environments, virtual reality (VR) immerses the user in other places, and this technology is also likely to increasingly permeate social media interactions. While the Facebook-owned company Oculus VR has mostly been focusing on the areas of immersive gaming and film, the company recently announced the launch of Oculus Rooms where users can spend time with other users in a virtual world (playing games together, watching media together, or just chatting; Wagner 2018). Concurrently, Facebook Spaces allows friends to meet online in virtual reality and similarly engage with one another, with the added ability to share content (e.g., photos) from their Facebook profiles (Whigham 2018). In both cases, avatars are customized to represent users within the VR-created space. As VR technology is becoming more affordable and mainstream (Colville 2018) we believe social media will inevitably play a role in the technology’s increasing usage. Given that podcasts are more popular than ever before (Bhaskar 2018) and voicebased search queries are the fastest-growing mobile search type (Robbio 2018), it seems likely that this communication modality will accordingly show up more on social media use going forward. Finally, there are early indications that social media might literally feel different in the future. As mobile phones are held in one’s hands and wearable technology is strapped onto one’s skin, companies and brands are exploring opportunities to communicate to users through touch. Indeed, haptic feedback (technology that recreates the sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, or motions to the user; Brave et al. 2001) is increasingly being integrated into interfaces and applications, with purposes that go beyond mere call or message notifications.

Answer 282

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing'' The far future -Online/offline integration and complete convergence A discussion occurring across industry and academia is on how marketers can appropriately integrate online and offline efforts (i.e., an omnichannel approach) Reports from industry sources have shown that consumers respond better to integrated marketing campaigns (e.g., a 73% boost over standard email campaigns; Safko 2010). In academia meanwhile, the majority of research considering online promotions and advertisements has typically focused on how consumers respond to these strategies through online only measures (e.g., Manchanda et al. 2006), though this has begun to change in recent years with more research examining offline consequences to omnichannel strategies (Lobschat et al. 2017; Kumar et al. 2017) Considering the interest in integrated marketing strategies over the last few years, numerous strategies have been utilized to follow online and offline promotions and their impacts on behavior such as the usage of hashtags to bring conversations online, call-to-actions, utilizing matching strategies on Btraditional^ avenues like television with social media. While there is currently online/offline integration strategies in marketing, we believe the future will go even further in blurring the lines between what is offline and online to not just increase the effectiveness of marketing promotions, but to completely change the way customers and companies interact with one another, and the way social media influences consumer behavior not only online, but offline. In addition, when considering digital selves, what does this mean for how consumers engage with brands and products? Currently, social media practice is one where brands encourage consumer engagement online (Chae et al. 2017; Godes and Mayzlin 2009), yet the implications for how these types of actions on the part of the brand to integrate online social media actions and real-life behavior play out are unclear. Research has begun to delve into the individual-level consequences of a consumer’s social media actions on marketing relevant outcomes (Grewal et al. 2019; John et al. 2017; Mochon et al. 2017; Zhang et al. 2017), however much is still unknown. As well, while there is recent work examining how the device used to create and view content online impacts consumer perceptions and behaviors (e.g., Grewal and Stephen 2019), to date research has not examined these questions in the context of social media. Therefore, future research could address how digital selves (both those held offline and those that only exist online), social media actions, and if the way consumers reach and use various platforms (i.e., device type, app vs. webpage, etc.) impact consumer behavior, interpersonal relationships, and brand-related measures (e.g., wellbeing, loyalty, purchase behaviors).

Answer 283

Appel, G., Grewal, L., Hadi, R., & Stephen, A. T. (2019) “The Future of Social Media in Marketing”, Journal of the Academy of Marketing'' The far future - Social media by non-humans bots can steal personal information and wrong information. bots provide a threat to the marketing algerhitm with fake likes and followers Similarly, when these bots act as Bfake followers,^ it can inflate the worth of influencers’ audiences (Bogost 2018). This can also be used nefariously by individuals and firms, as shown in a New York Times Magazine expose that documented the market used by some influencers to purchase such Bfake^ followers to inflate their social media reach (Confessore et al. 2018). As discussed above in relation to influencer marketing, where it has been commonplace for influencers to be paid for posts at rates proportionate to their follower counts, there have been perverse incentives to game the system by having non-human Bfake^ bot followers. This, however, erodes consumer trust in the social media ecosystem, which is a growing issue and a near-term problem for many firms using social media channels for marketing purposes.' However, there are instances when consumers do know they are interacting with bots, and do not seem to mind. For example, a number of virtual influencers (created with CGI, as mentioned earlier) seem to be garnering sizeable audiences, despite the fact they are clearly non-human (Walker 2018). One of the most popular of these virtual influencers, Lil Miquela, has over 1.5 million followers on Instagram despite openly confessing, BI am not a human being... I’m a robot^ (Yurieff 2018). Future research might try to understand the underlying appeal of these virtual influencers, and the potential boundary conditions of their success. Another category of social bots gaining increasing attention are therapy bots. These applications (e.g., BWoebot;^ Molteni 2017) aim to support the mental health of users by proactively checking in on them, Blistening^ and chatting to users at any time and recommending activities to improve users’ wellbeing (de Jesus 2018). Similar bots are being used to Bcoach^ users, and help them quit maladaptive behaviors, like smoking (e.g., QuitGenius; Crook 2018). Interestingly, by being explicitly non-human, these agents are perceived to be less judgmental, and might accordingly be easier for users to confide in. Finally, the Internet of Things revolution has ushered in with it the opportunity for a number of tangible products and interfaces to Bcommunicate^ via social media. For example, in what started as a design experiment, BBrad,^ a connected toaster, was given the ability to Bcommunicate^ with other connected toasters, and to tweet his Bfeelings^ when neglected or under-used (Vanhemert 2014). While this experiment was deliberately designed to raise questions about the future of consumer-product relationships (and product-product Brelationships^), the proliferation of autonomous tangible devices does suggest a future in which they have a Bvoice,^ even in the absence of humans (Hoffman and Novak 2018). Going forward, we believe the presence of bots on social media will be more normalized, but also more regulated (e.g., a recent law passed in California prevents bots from masquerading as humans; Smith 2018). Further, consumers and companies alike will be become increasingly interested in how bots communicate and interact with each other outside of human involvement. This brings up interesting potential research questions for academics and practitioners alike. How will the presence of non-humans change the nature of content creation and conversation in social media? And how should companies best account for the presence of nonhumans in their attribution models?

Answer 284

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) Across many firms spanning different industries and sectors, digital technologies (viewed as combinations of information, computing, communication, and connectivity technologies) are fundamentally transforming business strategies, business processes, firm capabilities, products and services, and key interfirm relationships in extended business networks. Accordingly, we argue that the time is right to rethink the role of IT strategy, from that of a functional-level strategy—aligned but essentially always subordinate to business strategy—to one that reflects a fusion between IT strategy and business strategy. This fusion is herein termed digital business strategy. We identify four key themes to guide our thinking on digital business strategy and help provide a framework to define the next generation of insights. The four themes are (1) the scope of digital business strategy, (2) the scale of digital business strategy, (3) the speed of digital business strategy, and (4) the sources of business value creation and capture in digital business strategy. After elaborating on each of these four themes, we discuss the success metrics and potential performance implications from pursuing a digital business strategy. We also show how the papers in the special issue shed light on digital strategies and offer directions to advance insights and shape future research.

Answer 285

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) Our working definition of digital business strategy is simply that of organizational strategy formulated and executed by leveraging digital resources to create differential value. This working definition highlights (1) going beyond the traditional view, thinking of IT strategy as a function within firms and recognizing the pervasiveness of digital resources in other functional areas such as operations, purchasing, supply chain, and marketing; (2) going beyond systems and technologies, which might have narrowed the traditional views of IT strategy to recognize digital resources, thereby being in line with the resource-based view of strategy (e.g., Barney 1991; Conner and Prahalad 1996; Wernerfelt 1984, 1995); (3) explicitly linking digital business strategy to creating differential business value, thereby elevating the performance implications of IT strategy beyond efficiency and productivity metrics to those that drive competitive advantage and strategic differentiation.

Answer 286

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) We have identified four key themes to guide our future thinking on digital business strategy and provide a framework to help define the next generation of insights. The four themes are (1) the scope of digital business strategy, (2) the scale of digital business strategy, (3) the speed of digital business strategy, and (4) the sources of business value creation and capture in digital business strategy. We believe that the proposed four key themes capture the key attributes of digital business strategy and help us to articulate its main nuances. We synthesize these four key themes with a discussion of success metrics (see Figure 1) that could serve as the starting point for developing a rich set of research questions to guide the debate and discussion within the broader academic community and for guiding practicing managers and executives.1

Answer 287

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) ``` Key Organizational Shifts: Limitations of Traditional Business Models • Trans-functional Role for IT • New Mandate for IT and the CIO • Increased Familiarity with IT ``` ``` Key External Digital Trends: Pervasive Connectivity • Information Abundance • Global Supply Chains • Improved Price/Performance of IT • Growth of Cloud Computing • Emergence of Big Data ``` ``` • Scope of Digital Business Strategy • Scale of Digital Business Strategy • Speed of Decision Making • Sources of Value Creation and Capture ``` ---> Performance

Answer 288

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) This opens up a whole new portfolio of digital business strategy approaches around the digitization of information for products and services. The importance of scope for products and services under digital conditions is relevant even beyond technology companies such as Microsoft, Google, and others. It also applies to GE as it seeks to find technology-based extensions in areas such as GE aircraft engines, medical devices, and services as well as transportation systems. It also applies equally well to Nike as it seeks to develop connectivity and informationbased metrics (Nike Fuel) to calibrate the use of its new products. What we need is an updated way to classify and categorize a firm’s foray into digital frontiers involving hardware, software, and services rather than treating the distance between physical and digital domains as large and unconnected. Simply put, we need a reconceptualization of the role of digital connections within a firm’s corporate portfolio of products and services (its scope) to better prescribe its digital business strategy under increased digital conditions.

Answer 289

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) In a digitally intensive world, firms operate in business ecosystems that are intricately intertwined such that digital business strategy cannot be conceived independently of the business ecosystem, alliances, partnerships, and competitors. Furthermore, the use of digital platforms enables firms to break traditional industry boundaries and to operate in new spaces and niches that were earlier only defined through those digital resources (e.g., D’Adherio 2001; Klein and Rai 2009; Rai et al. 2012; Saraf et al. 2007). Take, for example, how Apple has redefined the mobile entertainment ecosystem, or how Amazon has redefined the book-selling ecosystem. In these two cases, there is no meaningful distinction between business strategy and IT strategy, another example of digital business strategy

Answer 290

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) When the digital infrastructure and business strategy are fused, this rapid scaling ability becomes a strategic dynamic capability for the firm to adapt to the dynamic requirements of the digital marketplace. Major cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services, SalesForce.com, Rackspace, Joyent, Citrix, and VMware tout their pay-as-yougo elastic resources for software, infrastructure, and platforms that allow their customers to dynamically adjust their digital resources as competitive pressures may demand. Network Effects Within Multisided Platforms Create Rapid Scale Potential Network effects exist when the value of a good or a service increases as more consumers use them (examples are e-mail, social media, and buy–sell exchanges) or as more supply-side partners augment the service. As more products and services become digital and connected, network effects become the key differentiator and driver of value creation.

Answer 291

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) We are not only in a world of ubiquitous digital platforms with broadband networks, cloud computing, and billions of smart end-user devices; we are also in a world of amplified networks with an abundance of data, information, and knowledge. This combination of digital intensity, connectivity, and big data provides a context of networked abundance. This is being further amplified by the growth of what has been called the “Internet of Things” (OECD 2012), which includes not only an interconnection of things, but also an exploding digital network of people and data. Thus scaling with digital business strategy will require understanding how to develop the organizational capabilities to harness the huge quantities of heterogeneous data, information, and knowledge that is generated on a continuous basis. This “big data” includes the explosive chatter on social networks, crowdsourcing of ideas from the edges of networks, and the proliferation of billions of continuous machine-to-machine sensors in areas as diverse as energy, environment, transportation, shipping, and healthcare, to name a few.

Answer 292

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) While we already see such scaling strategies in settings such as travel and hospitality as they share reservation systems, loyalty programs, and online crossselling (e.g., Star Alliance, OneWorld), we will increasingly see companies rely on different firms to pull together the requisite scale in areas where they do not see competitive advantage. We expect that as firms continue to assess their unique drivers of advantage in digital settings, they would modularize their business processes and rely on plug-and-play capabilities for richly linking digital assets. We already see this with many new startups relying on linkages through application programming interfaces (APIs) and web services

Answer 293

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) Digital business strategy accelerates the speed of product launches. Pure-play digital companies such as Facebook, Google, and Amazon appreciate the importance of developing and launching a timed series of products that take advantage of improvements in computer hardware, software, and connectivity. The speed of product launches set by these companies now compels companies that are in the hybrid (digital + physical) space to also accelerate their product introductions. F he organizational ability to recognize and respond to the fast-paced nature of innovation and implementation with planned obsolescence is fundamental to a firm’s competitive success and survival under digital business conditions. The digital business context, however, brings an added dimension of coordination of product launches across firms in business networks. In traditional business strategy, the speed of launches is largely under the control of a single firm that launches standalone, autonomous products. In recent years, with increased digitization, product launches need to be coordinated in networks with complementary products and services. Amazon’s launch of the Kindle Tablet needs to be coordinated with the development of Android OS just as its original Kindle (e-book reader) needed to be timed with an adequate availability of e-books

Answer 294

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) Speed as a dimension becomes important in the context of responding to customer service requests in real-time through Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms. Slowness in response could mean customers moving away from companies perceived as being out of tune with the new reality. Thus, companies across a variety of organizations are experimenting with multifunctional, integrative command centers (e.g., Pepsi’s Mission Control for Gatorade and Dell’s Social Media Center) to organize information flows from within the company and outside to increase organizational ability to sense and respond faster than ever before.

Answer 295

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) The Speed of Supply Chain Orchestration End-to-end visibility and ERP deployments have allowed companies to be more efficient than before thanks to developments in software from companies such as SAP and Oracle. This, coupled with outsourcing of non-core activities to a network of partners, has allowed companies to optimize their supply chains in extended interfirm networks and enhance efficiency (e.g., Klein and Rai 2009; Rai et al. 2012; Saraf et al. 2007). The best in class in consumer electronics today are not traditional electronics companies such as Sony or Panasonic but Apple, which has achieved 74 inventoryturns in a year (average of 5 days of inventory in the supply chain)—supposedly at least twice faster than the industry average. Therefore, in industries marked by fast changes in technology functionality, competitive advantage lies not in just announcing new products (first-mover advantage) but in ensuring the availability of new products on a global basis to capture the fast-mover advantage. The speed of supply chain orchestration on a global basis is now becoming an important driver of competitive advantage. This is more than outsourcing of non-value activities, it is truly working in a collaborative fashion from conceptual design to recycling of the products. Orchestration of supply chain is not about managing today’s product portfolio but also innovating tomorrow’s product portfolio, which necessitates the need for dynamic realignment of partners and suppliers.

Answer 296

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2) Increased Value from Information While information-based businesses have existed for a long time (e.g., newspapers and magazines) in physical forms, the digital business context brings new opportunities to create value from information. As magazines abandon their physical formats (e.g., Newsweek), they need to fundamentally rethink their unique source of value through curating content and assess the balance between subscription and advertising. Google, Facebook, and eBay are just few examples of new value created from information that go beyond niche areas such as financial services whose business models rely on accurate, timely information. Moreover, many firms are able to fine-tune their actions and personalize their offerings based on information about customer preferences through Facebook, Twitter, and others. In addition, many business models based in information have emerged in areas such as healthcare and energy. Digital business strategy has also made possible the democratization of content as well as the subsequent sharing, remixing, redistribution, and resyndication of content in newer and more useful forms. These transformations have caused dramatic power shifts in market channels and disintermediations that disrupt traditional sources of economic profits while creating fundamentally new sources of value

Answer 297

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2)' Indeed, new leaders in the digital space (e.g., Google, Facebook, Twitter, and others) base their raison d’être on such models. These multisided business models are also multilayered where a company gives away certain products or services in one layer to capture value at a different layer. For example, Google’s entry into mobile phones is based on giving away the software (Android) free and monetizing it through its ability to influence and control advertising. Digital business strategy introduces more nuanced ways to conceptualize the drivers of value creation and capture by thinking about the multisided nature of interactions.

Answer 298

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2)' The complicating factor is that the business models are not independent but intersect and interoperate across these different players. So, we need richer models that delineate interdependent ecosystems that evolve more rapidly than what we have seen in traditional settings.

Answer 299

Bharadwaj, A., El Sawy, O., Pavlou, P., & Venkatraman, N. (2013). Digital business strategy: toward a next generation of insights. MIS Quarterly, 37(2)'

Answer 300

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review, Now, leveraging emerging technologies, processes, and organizational structures, companies are restoring the balance of power and creating new value for brands and buyers alike. Central to this shift is a fresh way of thinking: Rather than merely reacting to the journeys that consumers themselves devise, companies are shaping their paths, leading rather than following. Marketers are increasingly managing journeys as they would any product. Journeys are thus becoming central to the customer’s experience of a brand—and as important as the products themselves in providing competitive advantage. Consider how one company, Oakland-based Sungevity, competes on its ability to shape the journey. At first glance, Sungevity looks like a typical residential solar panel provider. But closer inspection reveals that the company’s business is to manage the end-to-end process of sales and custom installation, coordinating the work of an ecosystem of companies that supply, finance, install, and service the panels. Sungevity’s “product” is a seamless, personalized digital customer journey, based on innovative management of data about the solar potential of each home or business. Sungevity makes the journey so compelling that once customers encounter it, many never even consider competitors.

Answer 301

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review, ``` THE STRATEGY Superior journeys feature automation, personalization, context-based interaction, and ongoing innovation. To achieve all this, companies need to treat journeys like products, built and supported by a cross-functional team that’s led by a manager responsible for the journey’s business performance. ``` ``` THE PROBLEM Digital tools have put shoppers in the driver’s seat, allowing them to easily research and compare products, place orders, and get doorstep delivery of their items. Sellers have largely been reactive, scrambling to position themselves where customers will find them. ```

Answer 302

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review, Sungevity’s journey strategy is working. Sales have doubled in the past year to more than $65 million, exceeding growth targets and making Sungevity the fastestgrowing player in the residential solar business.

Answer 303

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review, We’re now seeing a significant shift in strategy, from primarily reactive to aggressively proactive. Across retail, banking, travel, home services, and other industries, companies are designing and refin‑ ing journeys to attract shoppers and keep them, cre‑ ating customized experiences so finely tuned that once consumers get on the path, they are irresist‑ ibly and permanently engaged. Unlike the coercive strategies companies used a decade ago to lock in customers (think cellular service contracts), cuttingedge journeys succeed because they create new value for customers: Customers stay because they benefit from the journey itself.

Answer 304

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business automation, proactive personalization, contextual interaction, and journey innovation. Companies building the most effective journeys master four interconnected capabilities: automation, proactive personalization, contextual interaction, and journey innovation. Each of these makes journeys “stickier”—more likely to draw in and permanently capture customers. And although the capabilities all rely on sophisticated IT (see the sidebar “New Journey Technologies”), they depend equally on creative design thinking and novel managerial approaches, as we’ll explore later.

Answer 305

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review,'' nto simple, engaging, increasingly app-based front-end experiences. Consider how Sonos, the intelligent connected music system, automates setup. The process used to involve threading wires throughout the house, hooking up speakers to a computer, and creating separate online accounts with music providers. Sonos streamlines setup with wireless speakers (just press a button to connect them) and an app that adds music-streaming sources with a few taps and allows users to select music, control volume, and choose what plays in which room—all from a mobile device.

Answer 306

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review,'' channels, blending data from multiple sources (such as transaction and browsing histories, customer service interactions, and product usage) to create a single view of what customers are doing and what happens as a result. This allows real-time insights about their behavior—in effect, isolating moments when the company can influence the journey—and permits customized messaging or functionality (for example, immediately putting a valued traveler on an upgrade list). The retailer Kenneth Cole reconfigures elements on its website according to a visitor’s interaction with the site over time: Some people see more product reviews, while others see more images, videos, or special offers. The company’s algorithm constantly learns which content and configuration work best for each visitor and renders the site accordingly, in real time.

Answer 307

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review,'' preferences, makes inferences based on similar customers’ choices, and tailors its responses. L’Oréal has created an enjoyable experience that quickly and seamlessly leads the customer along the path from consideration to purchase and, as the degree of personalization increases, into the loyalty loop (see the exhibit “L’Oréal App Keeps Customers Coming Back— and Buying”). With 14 million users already, the app has become a critical asset both as a branded channel for engaging with customers and as a fire hose of incoming information on how customers engage.

Answer 308

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review,''Contextual interaction. This may mean changing the look of a screen that follows a key step, or serving up a relevant message triggered by the customer’s current context. For example, an airline app may display your boarding pass as you enter the airport, or a retail site may tell you the status of your recent order the moment you land on the home page. More-sophisticated versions enable a series of interactions that further shape and strengthen the journey experience. Starwood Hotels, for example, is rolling out an app that texts a guest with her room number as she enters the hotel, checks her in with a thumbprint scan on her smartphone, and, as she approaches her room, turns her phone into a virtual key that opens the door. The app then sends well-timed and personalized recommendations for entertainment and dining.

Answer 309

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review,'' And they prototype new services and analyze the results, aiming not just to improve the existing journey but to expand it, adding useful steps or features. A journey innovation may be as simple as Starwood’s introducing a prompt for ordering room service after a guest uses a key, remembering previous orders and using those as the initial options. Or it may be more sophisticated, expanding a journey by integrating multiple services into a single straightthrough customer experience. Delta Air Lines’ mobile app, for example, has become a travel management tool for almost every aspect of an airplane trip, from booking and boarding to reviewing in-flight entertainment to ordering an Uber car upon landing. Kraft has expanded its recipe app to become a pantry management tool, generating a shopping list that seamlessly connects with the grocery delivery service Peapod. Key to these expanded journeys is often their integration with other service providers. Because this increases the value of the journey, carefully handing customers off to another firm can actually enhance the journey’s stickiness.

Answer 310

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review,' We have found that traditional companies are most successful when they focus on selected high-value journeys and create dedicated teams to support them, drawing from across the firm’s functions. While we’ve seen many different organizational models for product-managing journeys (and an array of titles for the executives involved), they generally have a similar structure (see the exhibit “The New Journey Management Organization”). Overseeing all of a firm’s interactions with customers is someone in the role of chief experience officer, a relatively new position in the C-suite. Chief digital officers are also starting to have this top-level responsibility. Typically reporting to this executive is a journey-focused strategist who helps guide decisions on which journey investments and customer segments to focus on; he or she prioritizes current journeys for digital development and spots opportunities for new ones.

Answer 311

Edelman, D. C., & Singer, M. (2015). Competing on Customer Journeys. Harvard Business Review,' move through the journey, to spot unusual customer behaviors (such as detouring or abandonment at a critical touchpoint), and to discern what attracts new customers—or dissuades them from engaging. To build successful journeys, these managers rely on “scrum teams” of specialists from across IT, analytics, operations, marketing, and other functions. The teams are execution-oriented, fast, and agile, constantly testing and iterating improvements. Collectively, the team members work to understand customers’ wants and needs at each step of the journey and make taking the next step worthwhile. They ask questions such as “What types of functionality, look and feel, and message will propel customers to the next step?” and “How does the timing of prompts affect customers’ responses?” Pursuing answers to questions like these, teams enter into rounds of development, piloting iterative digital-journey prototypes, analyzing operational and customer-use data, and then measuring the impact on customer behavior produced by each tweak to the journey.

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