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- All Subjects: Marketing
- Creators: Giles, Charles
This interview-style podcast highlights the history of marketing and advertising, social media and its effects on users, and social media influencers and their roles in consumers’ lives. Furthermore, expert opinions from faculty at Arizona State University will help answer the question: do influencers have an adverse effect on mental health?
Professor Naomi Mandel, a consumer behavior professor at the W. P. Carey School of Business, and Dr. Mary Ingram-Waters, an Honors Faculty Fellow at Barrett, The Honors College, provide insight on the topic of social media influencers. The full interviews are found in the podcast. Professor Naomi Mandel’s interview is found at 29:45, and Dr. Mary Ingram-Waters’ interview is found at 46:00.
Through research from case studies and professional interviews, it can be shown that those who fail and become victim to the e-commerce giants are those who do not allocate enough budget and resources to allow e-commerce to succeed; they do not correctly utilize data throughout the creation of their e-commerce site nor their marketing, have a vast lack of knowledge, and ultimately do not adapt to trends in e-commerce.
E-commerce giants are those who lead in the world-wide e-commerce revolution. They have entered a market and have caused/are continuing to cause instability for those who have not adapted or changed. These e-commerce giants do not have to be “giant” in size; rather, they are making giant changes that allow them to be successful within the industry. They are the prime examples of how e-commerce and data-driven marketing can be successful.
My research shows in order to successfully practice e-commerce, companies must adapt the best practices shown by these giants: owning your data, developing a strong budget for data-driven marketing, investing in the technology and people needed to implement a sound strategy, training employees in basic data, utilizing data in all aspects of marketing, creating an easy online experience that using AB Testing, hosting post mortem meetings to identify successes and failures, understanding your customers, creating the appropriate customer segmentation, nixing the “one fits all” strategy, and never getting too comfortable. If a company is stagnant, they are behind.
We conducted a survey to test consumer's perception and understanding of advertisements promoting financial instruments to see if advertisements that have run without contest from the Federal Trade Commission still have the ability to be deceptive or lack disclosure. We provided a variety of advertisements for markets such as automobiles and rent-to-own businesses. Each one of these advertisements dealt with a different financial instrument so that we could accurately test the knowledge of respondents. We collected 95 complete responses and 23 partial responses from our distribution of this survey.
Advertisements for financial instruments such as car loans, title loans, and rental agreements create the complex problem of presenting substantial loan agreement terms while also keeping an advertisement light and inviting. There are two main types of rules concerning how these advertisers can promote their products: regulation and guidance. Regulation is the official set of laws governing what can or must be said in an advertisement. Guidance is official suggestions of proper advertising practices that is not tied to written laws. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) controls regulation for the required disclosure in these advertisements and requires all material loan terms to be stated “clearly and conspicuously; however, advertisers still put important loan information in hard to see fine print, making it difficult for the consumer to understand the advertisement. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is in charge of creating guidance, enforcing advertising regulation and preventing advertisements from becoming deceptive, but, due to the ambiguous nature of disclosure formatting requirements, many transgressions go uninhibited.
We conducted a survey to test consumer's perception and understanding of advertisements promoting financial instruments to see if advertisements that have run without contest from the Federal Trade Commission still have the ability to be deceptive or lack disclosure. We provided a variety of advertisements for markets such as automobiles and rent-to-own businesses. Each one of these advertisements dealt with a different financial instrument so that we could accurately test the knowledge of respondents. We collected 95 complete responses and 23 partial responses from our distribution of this survey.
The results show that the average consumer does not have a complete understanding of financial instruments in the context of these advertisements. These results also demonstrated that consumers are not completely comprehending the information provided to them by these advertisements. We found that in some cases, it was the way that information was provided to the consumer that was causing them to have misconceptions about the information presented. We concluded that there were enough respondents that did not correctly interpret these advertisements to support that there is some misleading and deception by these advertisements despite the lack of context by the FTC. As such, we suggest that current federal guidance be made into official regulation to further prevent these transgressions and further attempts be made to locate and prevent deceptive advertisements.
Influencer marketing is when individuals with dedicated social media followings are sought out by brands to utilize their position on certain platforms to endorse a brand’s products and be compensated through payment or merchandise. I will be looking at the concept of trust when it comes to influencer marketing alongside the Fogg Behavior Model. Used to evaluate an individual’s behavior in the decisions making process, The Fogg Behavior Model bases itself in a persuasive environment by focusing on three key elements: motivation, ability, and trigger. When utilized in collaboration with influencer marketing, these elements together could have a strong effect on driving consumer behaviors. I utilized one of the most recent and popular social media platforms, TikTok, known for its short-form mobile videos, to explore these behavioral elements in action. Like any other media platform, TikTok influencer marketing requires a high amount of trust between the consumer and influencer to be successful and efficiently persuade the target market. I collected primary research by surveying opinions on trust and buying behaviors based on three different videos. One video had a hidden partnership disclosure in the caption, the second had a plainly visible partnership disclosure, and the third had a plainly visible partnership disclosure and verbally disclosed the relationship between the brand and the influencer. The analysis showed that participants felt a higher degree of trust towards the video which contained a verbal disclosure of the influencer’s partnership with the brand. The results lacked specificity on whether this perception of trust would successfully lead to a purchase, which could be adjusted for in future research; however, it did show there was motivation through the Fogg Model to look further into the product presented. I recommend influencers be as transparent and genuine as possible to earn the trust or their followers, as well as ensure all three factors of Fogg are present to increase their persuasive abilities over consumers completing a purchase.
Influencer marketing is when individuals with dedicated social media followings are sought out by brands to utilize their position on certain platforms to endorse a brand’s products and be compensated through payment or merchandise. I will be looking at the concept of trust when it comes to influencer marketing alongside the Fogg Behavior Model. Used to evaluate an individual’s behavior in the decisions making process, The Fogg Behavior Model bases itself in a persuasive environment by focusing on three key elements: motivation, ability, and trigger. When utilized in collaboration with influencer marketing, these elements together could have a strong effect on driving consumer behaviors. I utilized one of the most recent and popular social media platforms, TikTok, known for its short-form mobile videos, to explore these behavioral elements in action. Like any other media platform, TikTok influencer marketing requires a high amount of trust between the consumer and influencer to be successful and efficiently persuade the target market. I collected primary research by surveying opinions on trust and buying behaviors based on three different videos. One video had a hidden partnership disclosure in the caption, the second had a plainly visible partnership disclosure, and the third had a plainly visible partnership disclosure and verbally disclosed the relationship between the brand and the influencer. The analysis showed that participants felt a higher degree of trust towards the video which contained a verbal disclosure of the influencer’s partnership with the brand. The results lacked specificity on whether this perception of trust would successfully lead to a purchase, which could be adjusted for in future research; however, it did show there was motivation through the Fogg Model to look further into the product presented. I recommend influencers be as transparent and genuine as possible to earn the trust or their followers, as well as ensure all three factors of Fogg are present to increase their persuasive abilities over consumers completing a purchase.
This thesis analyzes the evolution of social media and video marketing, as well as offers advice on how local restaurants can capitalize their marketing efforts on social media platforms using video. Due to the ever-changing social media trends and algorithms, it is vital for a local restaurant to understand the channels in which consumers are getting information, the influencing factors of the varying algorithms for each social media platform, and the topics consumers would like to hear about in order to market effectively. In order to test the research I have collected, I have produced four high-quality videos, which can be found in Appendix A, of menu items from the local restaurant Ingo’s Tasty Food and posted them on the restaurant’s Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok accounts. These videos range from 15 seconds to one minute and have been posted on different days of the week. My findings determined that the quality and length of a video does not have consistent effects on the engagement received on these three platforms, nor does the day of the week in which these videos are posted. Based on these results, I recommend that a restaurant focus on the content of its videos, rather than the quality, length, and day of the week posted.