Rohan Miller

The Stochastic Nature of Purchasing a State's Lottery Products

Abstract Legal State Lotteries have significant effects on those states revenues, their residents’ behaviours and their ultimate welfare. Reported Lottery product purchase appears to reflect patterns that suggest high levels of habitual behaviour. Analysis of a US States Lottery data found that this pattern was exhibited early in a games introduction, and was evident in three apparently different product offerings: six-number and three-number Lotto, and Instant (scratch-off) games. These findings have important implications for understanding gambling behaviour, lottery marketing and gambling regulation.

#A little bird told me : birdcaging the message during the BP disaster

The purpose of crisis planning is to prepare for the inevitable. This paper examines BPs crisis response following the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion and the subsequent environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. This event severely damaged BPs corporate standing, and the companys response and management of the crisis and cleanup exacerbated the damage to BPs reputation. The companys crisis communication strategies failed amid an onslaught of online and social media commentary from traditionally passive stakeholders and activists. The resultant damage to the companys reputation saw

Sales effects of in-store radio advertising

95B wiped off the companys equity value and the CEO forced to resign. It is shown that crisis planning needs to be continually reviewed to take account of the evolving nature of social media during a crisis; in this instance, the use of Twitter proved particularly damaging to BP. Rolling crisis plans that encompass all media are required to provide the conclusive and swift action necessary to minimise the impact of a crisis.

Social Media and its implications for Viral Marketing

A field experiment involving 95 variety discount chain stores was conducted in which in-store radio ads were run in different formats and schedules, across different blocks of stores, over a 4-week period. The test products were advertised on in-store radio either (a) at their regular price, (b) at a discounted price or (c) at a discounted price that was also advertised in mail circulars. The resulting weekly sales data indicated that in-store radio advertising had little or no effect on sales of regularly priced products and discounted products also featured in the mail circulars, and increased sales of only one discounted product not featured in mail circulars. By contrast, the mail circular advertising resulted in consistent increases in sales of the test products.