Shannon B. Rinaldo

Learning by Tweeting: Using Twitter as a Pedagogical Tool

Marketing professionals use Twitter extensively for communicating with and monitoring customers, for observing competitors, and for analyzing chatter concerning brands, products, and company image. Can professors use Twitter to engage students in conversation about a marketing course? The authors argue that Twitter has many benefits for marketing educators who are interested in engaging students in experiential learning. In a real-time environment for student learning, professors may use Twitter for direct communication with students to generate discussion and interest in the course topics and examples. Just as marketers use Twitter to generate interest, discussion, and brand image, educators can use Twitter to generate this interest in a course through social media. Furthermore, Twitter is a fast, easy method for making announcements, solving student issues, and performing course-related administrative duties. In three studies, both quantitative and qualitative data suggest that when students engage in Twitter use with the professor, students feel better prepared for future careers. In addition, students indicate that Twitter facilitates achieving traditional educational goals. The qualitative data offer insights into potential problems. Suggestions for educators interested in using Twitter are offered.

Half Full or Half Empty The Role of Optimism in Boundary-Spanning Positions

Previous research demonstrates the dysfunctional consequences of high levels of role stressors (role ambiguity and role conflict) in boundary-spanning positions. These consequences include higher levels of burnout and lower levels of satisfaction and performance. Although marketing researchers have investigated external mechanisms for coping with role stressors, research to date has not investigated the inherent capability of boundary spanners to cope with role stressors. This research examines optimism as an internal characteristic that facilitates coping with role stressors in boundary-spanning positions. The research findings reveal that optimists are able to anticipate and respond proactively to stressors, resulting in less burnout and higher levels of performance and satisfaction.

Evaluating tastes and aromas of wine: a peek inside the “black box”

Purpose – Wine tasting is an integral method for engaging consumers. Producers go to great lengths to educate consumers on evaluating quality based on taste and aroma. Understanding the sensory and perceptual processes of wine tasting may offer insight into how consumers at different levels of wine expertise use their senses to evaluate wine. Design/methodology/approach – This study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to examine processing in the frontal lobe of the brain during wine tasting and aroma evaluation. Sixty subjects evaluated the tastes and aromas of wine samples with various levels of sweetness, whereas 16 defined areas of their frontal lobes were measured with functional near infrared measurement. Findings – The subjects’ orbitofrontal cortices were activated during both olfaction (smelling) and tasting. Further, larger areas of the frontal lobes showed significant activation during the olfaction task than during the tasting task. The level of the subjects’ wine knowledge did not pred...

Brand choice via incidental social media exposure

Purpose The paper seeks to establish the effectiveness of social media advertising and participation by brands through incidental exposure. Using experimental design, in a social media environment, this paper aims to extend incidental exposure research in the context of social media. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses an experimental design with controlled image durations using MediaLab and DirectRT, allowing for precise image display times and randomization of screens. Participants were split between high-involvement and low-involvement product categories, and the brand choice exercise was administered in an on-screen experiment. Findings The paper provides support that incidental exposure influences brand choice. Further, it indicates that for low-involvement product categories, the type of social media exposure does not influence brand choice significantly between types. For high-involvement product categories, ads perform better than sponsored story executions; consumer-generated brand messages perform better than brand-generated messages; and the influence of reference group affects brand choice. Research limitations/implications This paper tests one social media environment using a desktop Web environment. Additional studies would be needed to test other social media environments and mobile technology. Practical implications The paper provides evidence that brands benefit by simply participating and advertising in social media, but the execution style matters to a greater extent for high-involvement product categories in influencing brand choice. Social implications Mere exposure to a brand message may influence consumers unknowingly. Repeated exposure as short as 5 s per viewing is related to increases in brand choice. Originality/value This paper extends research on incidental exposure and establishes a key positive brand outcome for practice and research, and it provides the first exploration on the outcome of incident exposure to brand messages in social media. The results suggest that social media and advertising by brands have positive impacts beyond traditional measures of success online.

A relationship between temperature and aggression in NFL football penalties

Background Increased ambient temperature has been implicated in increased physical aggression, which has important practical consequences. The present study investigates this established relationship between aggressive behavior and ambient temperature in the highly aggressive context of professional football in the National Football League (NFL). Methods Using a publicly available dataset, authors conducted multiple hierarchical regression analyses on game-level data (2326 games). Results The analysis revealed that temperature positively predicted aggressive penalties in football, and that this relationship was significant for teams playing at home but not for visiting teams. Conclusion These results indicate that even in the aggressive context of football, warmer weather contributes to increased violence. Further, the presence of the heat-aggression relationship for the home team suggests that the characteristics of interacting groups may influence whether heat would have an adverse effect on the outcome of those interactions.

Oxygenation of the prefrontal cortex during sequential planning in the Tower of London

To investigate the utility of neural theories for human planning, this study used near-infrared spectroscopy to investigate prefrontal (PFC) oxygenation for a well-established planning task: The Tower of London (TOL). Changes in prefrontal oxygenated hemoglobin from baseline were measured during task performance. Performing the Tower of London led to a significant increase in oxygenation in the left caudal region of the PFC in difficult trials moves relative to easier trials. The different degree of prefrontal oxygenation agrees with previous research and provides further evidence for a capacity utilization framework for measuring neurocognitive demand. Higher activity in the left rostral frontopolar region predicted better performance in the Tower of London, which agrees with a proposed rostral-caudal control hierarchy for the prefrontal cortex. Observed results support the feasibility of near-infrared spectroscopy to assess activity during tasks requiring planning ability and provide support for two neurocognitive models, capacity utilization and rostro-caudal control hierarchy.

Tasting & Evaluating Aroma of Wine: Frontal Lobe Measurement Using Near Infrared

Wine has proven itself a complex consumer product for researchers. Although a commonly consumed product, preference for wine depends on both intrinsic and extrinsic attributes (Espejel and Fandos 2009), providing researchers with a vast area of study. Consumers base wine choices and perceptions of wine quality on country of origin (Guidry, Babin, Graziano, and Schneider 2009), label information (Boudreaux and Palmer 2007), price (Lockshin and Rhodus 1993), and taste (Dodd 1995). Wine tasting is an integral method for engaging consumers, whether a sip in the retail store or a glass in the tasting room. Wine producers go to great lengths to educate consumers on evaluating wine quality based on taste and aroma but have no feasible method to test the effectiveness of this type of instruction. Understanding the sensory and perceptual processes of wine tasting may offer insight into how consumers at different levels of wine expertise use their senses to evaluate wine.

Fostering Brand Community Through Social Media: A New Relational Framework for Targeting Connected Consumers

Traditionally wine marketers have used advertising to inform and persuade. However, wine marketers are realizing that relational and experiential aspects of wine consumption are important to understand. One way to develop brand loyalty is by building brand community. Online communities, such as those facilitated via social media sites, are now used to build relationship though customer interactions. Online community members share product information, knowledge, product experience, and identity. We argue that the next step in this progression is the use of social media to build brand community. Despite the strong emphasis in the marketplace today on the importance of social media, there has not been an examination of how social media can be used to build brand community. This seems a logical progression, as social media is now as influential if not more influential, than conventional media. An emerging method to achieve the “Holy Grail of brand loyalty” is through the use of social media to build brand communities.

Getting Students to Buy what We Sell: Product Involvement, Customer Relationship Management, and Customer Satisfaction

The world of marketing provides a rich environment for analyzing interaction and exchange. Because the broader world in which we live and work is not divided into categories as precisely as academic topics, as professors we must attempt to teach marketing within the broader context of the real world and build a broad framework from which students can understand marketing.

Measuring Academic Emotions in Experiential Learning Using Qualitative and Physiological Data

A rich body of literature in educational psychology provides evidence for the critical role of emotions in learning. However studies that link emotions to learning largely examine only negative emotions in the test environment (Pekrun et al. 2002). While the scope of research on emotions and learning greatly expanded in the past decade, there are no studies that investigate the role of academic emotions in non-traditional learning environments. Marketing educators are increasingly extending learning beyond the traditional classroom environment by incorporating experiential learning activities into their courses such as class projects, service learning, and business simulations. These activities are believed to provide powerful learning opportunities. Yet the role of academic emotions in experiential learning is unexamined. This raises several key questions: How are academic emotions linked with the process of experiential learning? What are the effects of negative and positive emotions on the experiential learning process?