Paula C. Peter

Transforming Consumer Health

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is intended to transform the U.S. health care system. Its success will require the transformation of consumers’ views about health and their willingness to participate in healthful behaviors. Focusing on three barriers to consumers’ engagement in healthful behaviors, the authors review the research literature and suggest opportunities for further research. Using a social marketing perspective, they suggest actions for health care providers, marketers, and policy makers to help overcome these barriers.

Targeting Social Messages with Emotions of Change: The Call for Optimism

With the goal to improve the effectiveness and impact of communication messages delivered by social marketers, this research focuses on understanding variables that may be relevant in developing effective social marketing messages for the substantive domain of disposable plastic bottled water consumption. The authors examine the affective states associated with different stages of consumer change related to wasteful repetitive consumption behavior (i.e., disposable plastic bottled water consumption). With two empirical studies, the authors identify guilt, hope, pride, and optimism as relevant triggers of increased intent to manage personal consumption in pursuit of a desirable social outcome (i.e., reduction of disposable plastic bottled water consumption). While guilt, hope, and pride are relevant self-referential emotions to initial stages of change (Study 1), optimism is a principal construct in motivating people to adopt and maintain the behavior over time (Study 2). These results have valuable theoretical and practical implications for social marketers and public policy makers.

Evidence Items as Signals of Marketing Competencies and Workplace Readiness: A Practitioner Perspective:

Although past research has spent considerable effort identifying competencies and academic activities that are associated with workplace readiness, the literature is largely silent regarding what might best serve as evidence to employers that a graduate possesses specific marketing competencies. In the current research, we develop a comprehensive set of evidence items that serve as potential signals of specific macro and micro competencies demanded for marketing graduates’ employability. Specifically, we first systematically compile a list of evidence items and then explore what employers perceive to be compelling evidence of graduates’ competencies. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to capture and compare multiple evidence items related to academic curriculum, standardized measures, experience-based indicators, and the social-collaborative media environment and connect them to specific competencies as signals of workplace readiness. This research provides insights regarding how marketing curriculum should be leveraged in terms of assessments and deliverables that could be used by students to signal workplace readiness to employers.

RESEARCH NOTE: THE ROLE OF SMART VERSUS TRADITIONAL CLASSROOMS ON STUDENTS’ ENGAGEMENT

This research note examines whether a smart classroom (technology-enhanced learning space) has a positive or negative impact on students’ engagement in the learning process; that is, whether it generates positive engagement toward the course and group work. It presents results from a preliminary study comparing two marketing courses taught by the same instructor in a traditional (low-tech) versus a smart (high-tech) classroom space. Interestingly, the findings suggest that traditional classrooms might be more conducive toward students’ engagement and group work than smart classrooms; also, engagement toward instructors appears to be higher in traditional classrooms. Possible reasons and implications are discussed in light of the demand for universities to engage students through smart classrooms.