Jane McKay-Nesbitt

Social marketing communication messages

Purpose – This paper examines how social marketing communication messages influence physical activity attitudes when a health organization is revealed as the message source. Design/methodology/approach – This paper examines how social marketing communication messages influence physical activity attitudes when a health organization is revealed as the message source. Findings – Results from three studies using experimentally manipulated messages (Studies 1 and 3) and real TV commercials (Study 2) suggest that work-framed social marketing communication messages may be more effective than fun-framed messages when the sponsoring health organization is disclosed, versus not disclosed in the ad. Research limitations/implications – This research extends the literature on source-effects on message effectiveness by suggesting that the type of message sponsor (i.e. a health organization) may influence attitudes toward the physical activity promoted in the message content. Practical implications – The results suggest...

Integrating Business Disciplines using a Team-Based Approach

This chapter reports on the pilot of an innovative approach to business education that was instituted at a small university in the United States. In the program, students were divided into three learning cohorts. Each group was encouraged to learn as a community while taking three integrated classes. Teams competed within their cohort and cohorts competed against other cohorts. Students took introductory managerial accounting, introductory computer information systems and introductory management in the first semester and financial management, operations management and an introductory marketing course in the second semester. The program was designed to bridge the gap between theory and practice by helping students gain a better appreciation of how business functions are integrated. After the first semester, an anonymous survey revealed some useful insights that could be incorporated to enhance such programs. The structure of the program, its benefits, limitations and insights from the survey are reported in this chapter.

Integrative Business Education Focused on the Environment: A Description of the Sophomore Scholars Program, Its Effects on Academic Performance, and the Regulatory Focus of Its Participants

In keeping with business education trends (Miles 1985; Aurand et al., 2001; Bridges & Wilhelm 2008) the Sophomore Scholars Program (SSP), an integrative program for business sophomores, was implemented at a Northeastern US university. The SSP afforded students the opportunity to learn principles of three core business disciplines (i.e., finance, marketing, operations management) and apply them in group projects that focused on the environment. Learning objectives for the SSP were: i) enhancement of academic performance, ii) development of team participation and leadership skills, and iii) advancement of oral and written communication skills. Identifying characteristics (i.e., regulatory focus; Higgins 1987) of students who successfully participate in programs like the SSP was another program objective.

Incorporating Social Marketing into an Introductory Marketing Course Curriculum: An Interdisciplinary Case Study

Today there is general agreement that social marketing aims to benefit society by changing the behavior of individuals through the application of traditional marketing principles (Kotler & Lee, 2008; Andreasen, 2002). Social marketing attempts to improve society by focusing on behaviors that protect i) the health and safety of individuals (e.g., smoking cessation), ii) the environment (e.g., water conservation), or iii) community well-being (e.g., literacy). Social marketing encompasses all of the activities central to commercial marketing, for example, market segmentation, consideration of environmental forces, and strategies centered on the 4Ps (Andreasen, 2002). It differs from commercial marketing, however, by focusing on social rather than financial gain, and on behavior change rather than goods and services. In social marketing, competition arises from competing behaviors rather than from providers of similar goods and services. Social marketing also requires different skill sets. Because social marketing often attempts to promote behavior that individuals do not want to perform (e.g., reducing water use), long-term effort and special levels of commitment are required to achieve social marketing goals. These important differences suggest that marketing students need to understand social marketing to appreciate the full scope of marketing. Incorporating social marketing into core marketing curricula provides students with a more complete understanding of the breadth of marketing. It also affords students a unique opportunity to wed interests in business with concerns for society.

Knowledge Transfer from Experts to Novices: A Causal Attribution Approach

This paper explores how novices’ (e.g., sales representative’s) attributions about causes of experts’ (e.g., sales manager’s) success, influence emotions and formation of behavioral intentions. This research draws on Wiener’s Attribution Theory (WAT) (Weiner, 1986), Role Congruity Theory (RCT) (Eagly & Karau, 2002), and the sales management and knowledge transfer literatures to explore processes underlying novices’ willingness to form behavioral intentions. It shows that novice attributions about causes of expert success, and by extension sales person’s attributions about causes of sales manager success, have the potential to impede or enhance training efforts of experts (e.g., sales managers).

Effects of a Client Sponsored Project on Student Attitudes Toward Client Sponsors and Learning

One of the ways that marketing educators provide realistic, experiential learning for their students is by incorporating client-sponsored projects (CSPs) into the educational curriculum (Strauss 2011). While most literature focuses on the effects of CSPs that are incorporated in upper-level marketing courses, this paper explores the effects of incorporating a CSP into an introductory marketing course. Furthermore, this paper investigates a CSP’s effect on student attitudes toward client sponsors and on student perceptions of learning. It also explores the effects of i) student attitudes toward competition, ii) perceptions of instructor helpfulness, and iii) perceptions of team functioning on students’ views about the learning that takes place by participating in a CSP.

Social Marketing and Social Media: Helping Students Discern the Difference

Although there is agreement that social marketing can be defined as “the “application of commercial marketing principles to influence behavior for the benefit of individuals or wider society” (Wood 2012, p. 96), there is still considerable confusion regarding the nature of social marketing (Wood 2012). The burgeoning use of social media and the resultant attention it is given by the popular press has only added to this confusion as social media is often confused with social media (Wood 2012). Regrettably, undergraduate students who have extensive experience with social media and limited exposure to social marketing concepts in marketing course work may also confuse social marketing with social media.