Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- Creators: Department of Economics
For decades, the music industry followed a structured business model that relied on the sale of albums in order for musicians and record labels to see revenues. Due to the rise of streaming services and changes in consumer behavior, this is no longer the case. Aldo Cundari argues that because of these changes, we are in the Customer Era of marketing, where marketers must use customer-centricity in order to drive consumers to want to engage with brands, as we now face informed and empowered consumers. Taking this theory and Vargo and Lusch’s argument that marketing is now service-centered—where consumers should be a part of the production process through co-creation of value, relationships, and customization of offerings—requires an analysis of the drivers of digital streaming and approaching them through a value-adding approach, finding the right channel of distribution, determining potential brand advocates, and assessing their preferences and behavior.
This paper first examines the history of music consumption, assesses today’s consumption, the shift from buying to streaming, and uncovers the indirect relationship between music and social media. I find that millennials and Generation Z are the drivers behind streaming, so primary research via a questionnaire is conducted to further evaluate their preferences and what they value in order to recommend customer-centric marketing strategies for music marketing. It was found that today’s consumer is a heavy social media user, integrates his/her social media and music consumption, and that the best channel of distribution is Instagram. To allow the consumer to co-create value, I found that the use of brand advocates and organic influencer marketing (through playlists and sponsored posts) is needed in the dynamic of today’s music industry.