The goal of this research study is to examine the nature and effects of social media marketing and the role it has played towards driving Gen Z into the luxury fashion industry. In addition, qualitative exploration focused on uncovering the reason behind why this market chooses to purchase luxury products and investigated the relationship between social media influencers, luxury brands, and their consumers.
Through 12 qualitative research interviews, five key insights were suggested from the results of the study: people buy luxury to fit in or stand out in social groups, social media marketing portrays a false reality, social media has contributed to the rise of Gen Z consumers in luxury fashion, social media has normalized owning luxury products, and social media has caused lowered self esteem and social pressure amongst Gen Z. These insights can be explained through a triangular framework, making up a marketing ecosystem involving the brand, the social media influencer, and the consumer. These three roles work together to buy and sell goods from one another. If one of the players fails to do their role, the relationships fall apart.
Given phones and apps are highly personal items often only used by one individual, understanding and comparing the ads and images one user is exposed to versus another can be very tricky. Recently, the Federal Trade Commission has increased regulations over native advertisements when viewers became unable to decipher ad from reality. Gen Z’s may inadvertently compare themselves to influencers, ultimately causing lowered self esteem when they cannot possess or achieve the lifestyle of these individuals. These insights are important to help understand how to negate the negative effects of social media marketing and propel companies to be more transparent in their marketing initiatives to reduce social pressure and poor mental health amongst Gen Z. Luxury brands could utilize more explicit differentiators on paid advertisements compared to editorial material to make audiences more knowledgeable of the type of content they are viewing. In addition, society should change the way people perceive online content and have more open discussions surrounding the ethics of native advertising and decipection social media posts may cause. The way young users interact and process social media posts is very complex. Investigating this topic is important to prevent the possible underlying repercussions of social media and help marketers best cater toward this market in an open, ethical fashion.
This study concludes with managerial applications and directions for further research. Businesses should prepare to face increasing guidelines regarding native advertising. These guidelines may include requirements to have explicit markings on branded content and binding contracts with social media influencers. To work around these restrictions, the future of luxury fashion indicates that direct to consumer strategies are on the rise. Video livestream retail and social commerce are already taking the Chinese market by storm and it's only a matter of time before American brands will be forced to adapt to keep up with changing trends in the marketplace. DTC brands benefit from having a direct channel to the consumer without interpretation or the need for intermediaries. Given this research primarily focuses on the links between the brand to influencer and influencer to consumer, future exploration could focus on the channel between the brand and consumer through direct selling. Going forward, brands may prefer to interact with their customers directly, without the use of an influencer, to help establish a close relationship with their audience through a seamless customer journey.

Today’s consumers desire brands that are purpose-driven, stand for something bigger than the products they sell, and leave a lasting impact on their customers and community. Using this idea of brand meaningfulness as part of the larger concept of brand purpose, “The Importance of Brand Meaningfulness: An Analysis of the American Girl Brand” questions whether a brand perceived as meaningful to consumers is actually a meaningful brand and identifies what it should be doing to become a meaningful brand. This thesis analyzes the concept and effectiveness of brand meaningfulness through an analysis of the American Girl brand, a brand that is personally meaningful to the thesis author, among many other consumers. Using data from over 200 survey respondents and 7 interpersonal interviews, an observational analysis, and insight from personal experiences working for the brand, this thesis provides recommendations to increase brand meaningfulness, complete with visual prototypes.

Okami was released by CAPCOM for the PS2 in 2006. It received critical acclaim, as seemingly everyone who played the game loved it. This culminated in Okami winning Game of the Year in 2006. It's financial success was an inevitability, until it wasn't. Okami failed to sell nearly as many copies as it had hoped, leaving Guinness World Records to give it the "award" of Least Commercially Successful Winner of a Game of the Year Award. My research goes into how this could have happened. I wanted to look at why Okami failed, including specifically the game's flaws and CAPCOM's marketing. I then devised my own marketing plan for a hypothesized relaunch of Okami.

My research aimed to examine the marketing strategy of the popular K-Pop group BTS and how they've managed to globalize their music over the past few years. The analysis focuses on the 7 P's of marketing, and how their strategy has evolved over time. My research is in the form of a video and serves as a creative documentary analyzing their marketing strategy. The link to the creative project can be found in the appendix of the research paper.

The purpose of this research is to create a model that will benefit this industry and the many changes to come. As of now, there are limited FTC guidelines which limit the protection of content creators, agencies, and brands. That is when I came up with the idea to develop a model to further improve efficiency of the influencer marketing industry, and to help the entrepreneurs who are leading it. This model provides the framework for a strong start in the influencer marketing industry. Through informational interviews, literary research, field studies, and surveys, the model was developed through the data analysis of each of these tools, based on common themes found within each. This research was conducted from a variety of perspectives, including consumers, brands, agencies, and content creators.

The purpose of this project is to analyze the marketing efforts of an adaptive sports organization and identify possible areas for improvement. We will be conducting this marketing analysis as developed by Jeremy Darlow. Once we complete an analysis, we can provide recommendations for future marketing efforts at Ability360, the organization of focus.

Through Zero Waste at ASU, the Villas & Vista del Sol Community Compost Program (VVDS CCP) has been in operation for three years. Programs such as this one have been identified as a priority by the university due to the significance of food waste in the waste stream ASU produces and the opportunity to reduce climate impact by diverting this waste from landfill. However, the CCP has struggled to reach its participation targets throughout its time in operation and therefore ASU requires better understanding of marketing strategies that will lead to program success before investing in additional residential compost programs. This thesis addresses the fundamental question: What marketing and operational strategies are most effective within a residential composting program at Arizona State University? Using a combination of literature review, qualitative primary research, and experimentation, this thesis provides an explanation of how the university can effectively implement and grow residential composting programs.

Marketers are constantly striving to discover strategies that promote the greatest amount of word of mouth (WOM) from their consumers. WOM is perceived as one of the most reputable forms of marketing by consumers due to the authenticity and sincerity that is associated with the strategy. With WOM being an organic and genuine response from consumers, marketers are often faced with difficulties or failure when explicitly requesting that consumers engage in positive WOM behaviors. However, there are certain practices that firms can implement to encourage WOM behaviors from their consumers. This study examines the effectiveness of two different freebie marketing methods and the impact that each method’s presentation has on a consumer’s willingness to participate in WOM. The results of this study will be used to provide companies with guidelines and recommendations to successfully create freebie marketing strategies that drive authentic WOM surrounding their brand and products.

Marketers are constantly striving to discover strategies that promote the greatest amount of word of mouth (WOM) from their consumers. WOM is perceived as one of the most reputable forms of marketing by consumers due to the authenticity and sincerity that is associated with the strategy. With WOM being an organic and genuine response from consumers, marketers are often faced with difficulties or failure when explicitly requesting that consumers engage in positive WOM behaviors. However, there are certain practices that firms can implement to encourage WOM behaviors from their consumers. This study examines the effectiveness of two different freebie marketing methods and the impact that each method’s presentation has on a consumer’s willingness to participate in WOM. The results of this study will be used to provide companies with guidelines and recommendations to successfully create freebie marketing strategies that drive authentic WOM surrounding their brand and products.

Basketball has evolved and is continuing to evolve in parallel with media and communication. The 21st century bears witness to the digitization of basketball, media, and communication with the advent of social media. Arguably the most esteemed professional basketball league in the world, the National Basketball Association (NBA) observes fans and players alike conversing about the game through social media platforms available across the world. One of the most popular platforms, Twitter, enables anyone with a computer to write a textual post known as a “tweet” that can be made viewable to the public. The Twitter landscape holds a trove of data and information including “sentiment” for NBA teams to analyze with the goal of improving the success of their team from a managerial perspective. Two aspects this paper will examine are fan engagement and revenue generation from the perspective of several franchises in the NBA. The purpose of this research is to explore and discover if key measures of performance including both the number of points scored in a game and the game outcome either being a win or a loss, and the location of a game being won either at home or away on the road influence fan Twitter sentiment and if there is a correlation between fan Twitter sentiment and game attendance. The statistical computing tool RStudio in combination with data compiled from online databases and websites including Basketball Reference, Wikipedia, ESPN, and Statista are employed to execute two t-tests, two analysis of variance (ANOVA) tests, and one correlation test. The results indicate there is a significant difference in fan Twitter sentiment between high-scoring games and low-scoring games, between game wins and losses, among games being won at home versus away on the road, and there is no conclusion that can be made regarding any existing correlation between fan Twitter sentiment and game attendance.