Wondwesen Tafesse

Content strategies and audience response on Facebook brand pages

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse Facebook brand posts along dimensions of vividness, interactivity, novelty, brand consistency and content type and tests how these characteristics influence audience response in terms of liking and sharing brand posts. Design/methodology/approach – The sample comprised 191 brand posts sourced from the Facebook brand pages of five top selling automotive brands in the UK. Audience response was operationalised using brand post likes and brand post shares, while brand post characteristics were operationalised according to relevant theory. Poisson regression models were tested to measure the effect of brand post characteristics on audience response. Findings – The findings indicate that brand post vividness has a significant positive effect on brand post shares, but not on brand post likes. Brand post interactivity has a significant negative effect on both brand post likes and brand post shares. Brand post novelty and brand post consistency have a significant p...

An experiential model of consumer engagement in social media

Purpose This study aims to propose an experiential model of consumer engagement focusing on Facebook brand pages. Building on the brand experience literature, the study synthesizes the experiential affordances of Facebook brand pages along perceptual, social, epistemic and embodied dimensions and tests their impact on consumer engagement. Design/methodology/approach The study operationalized key variables of the proposed model at the brand page level and assembled pertinent data, using systematic content analysis, on a sample of Facebook brand pages (n = 85). Poisson regression tested the proposed model. Findings The findings indicate that brands that facilitate greater number of experiential affordances on their Facebook brand pages generated higher levels of consumer engagement. For both brand post likes and brand post shares, the contributions of experiential affordances were significant and positive. Practical implications The findings offer actionable managerial insights for brands seeking to implement an experiential model of consumer engagement on their fan pages. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature by proposing and testing an experiential model of consumer engagement in the context of Facebook brand pages. To date, the experiential value of Facebook brand pages has rarely, if at all, been tested in an empirical study.

The dimensionality of trade show performance in an emerging market

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the underlying dimensions of trade show performance in an emerging market context. Firms in industrial and emerging markets typically differ in terms of access to firm level resource endowments. Such differences make attempts to generalize the trade show performance dimensions proposed for industrialized country exhibitors to emerging market exhibitors problematic. This motivates the need for understanding the dimensionality of trade show performance in an emerging market context.Design/methodology/approach – Data obtained from firms that partake in an emerging market trade show that takes place in an emerging market are used to investigate the dimensionality of trade show performance. By subjecting several trade show performance items into principal component analysis, a multidimensional performance construct, applicable to emerging market exhibitors, is introduced.Findings – The empirical findings show that trade show performance, in an emerging mark...

Understanding how resource deployment strategies influence trade show organizers’ performance effectiveness

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to examine how the deployment of market-based resources influence trade show (TS) organizers’ performance effectiveness as measured with exhibitor and visitor attendance levels. To this end, the study synthesizes several market-based resources including TS longevity, TS webpage interactivity, industry association support, exhibition duration and exhibition area, and investigates how their deployments affect TS attendance levels. Design/methodology/approach – A cross-sectional dataset was compiled on 79 TSs by searching a variety of online sources. Organizers’ performance effectiveness was measured using TS attendance levels. The extent to which organizers deployed market-based resources was likewise quantified using hard data. A series of regression models was estimated to isolate the effect of the market-based resources on TS attendance levels. Findings – The results demonstrate the existence of positive relationships between market-based resources and TS attendance...

Examining the effect of using multiple media tools on the marketing performance of organizations in a trade campaign environment

The idea that integrated marketing communications (IMC) can lead to higher levels of marketing performance has gained widespread recognition in the marketing communication literature. Despite this, concrete empirical evidences demonstrating the contribution of implementing IMC to organization- and campaign-level marketing performance are still limited. In an effort to make a contribution to this area, this paper examines whether using multiple media tools, at multiple customer touch points, leads to higher levels of marketing performance in a trade show campaign environment. Data were collected using questionnaire from organizations that exhibited at a large international trade show. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to test the propositions of the study. Consistent with our expectation, the regression results indicated that using multiple media tools for the trade show campaign purposes led to higher levels of marketing performance. Based on the results, a host of practical insights for marketing campaign strategists are developed.

Importance Performance Analysis as a Trade Show Performance Evaluation and Benchmarking Tool

The purpose of this study is to introduce importance performance analysis as a trade show performance evaluation and benchmarking tool. Importance performance analysis considers exhibitors’ performance expectation and perceived performance in unison to evaluate and benchmark trade show performance. The present study uses data obtained from exhibitors of an international trade show to demonstrate how importance performance analysis can be used to evaluate and benchmark trade show performance. The study discusses the normative and the theoretical implications of the proposed method.

Managing Trade Show Campaigns: Why Managerial Responsibilities Matter?

This article examined the relationship between managerial responsibilities for important trade show tasks and the marketing performance of exhibiting firms. Drawing theoretical insights from the functionalist perspective of managerial roles and organizational role theory, this article proposed and validated theory based, multiple, task-managerial responsibility linkages using a large international b2b trade show as a context. The empirical results indicated that the marketing performance of exhibiting firms was enhanced when (a) middle managers were assigned the trade show objective setting task, (b) lower and middle managers were involved in the trade show selection decision and (c) lower managers executed the booth management task. The paper concluded by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

IMC – an integrative review

This paper reviews and integrates extant work in the integrated marketing communication (IMC) literature. With this in mind, three alternative and widely disseminated conceptual frameworks proposed in the IMC literature are employed as a starting point. The review locates important points of theoretical intersection among these three frameworks, and drawing on the wider literature, develops and cross-fertilizes them into IMC constructs. The review then combines the constructs into an integrative framework by proposing theory-driven relationships and formalizing them using testable propositions. The final outcome offers a clearer synthesis and re-conceptualization of IMC.

Towards an exchange view of trade fairs

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to integrate divergent discussions located within the marketing, economic geography and economic sociology literature about trade fairs and their functions, around an exchange-based view of trade fairs. Design/methodology/approach – Following an integrative review approach and drawing on thematic discussions found in social exchange theory, a large corpus of research articles on trade fairs was systematically reviewed and integrated. Findings – Trade fairs facilitate five major exchange functions: transactional, informational, social, symbolic and cultural. Each of these functions is characterized by a distinctive combination of exchange structures, exchange rules, exchange resources and organizational outcomes. Practical implications – The study offers practical guidelines regarding how exhibitors, visitors and organizers can develop and benefit from an exchange-based view of trade fairs. Originality/value – The current study integrates three divergent literature st...

A framework for categorizing social media posts

Abstract Brand posts are concise and recurrent updates created by brands and sent out to their followers on social media. Brand posts play a crucial linking role by connecting brands to their customers and fans on a daily basis. Brand posts represent a rich form of communication that convey various brand meaning and experiences using multiple media formats. Despite this, however, brand posts have not been subjected to formalized analyses in the literature. Accordingly, the purpose of this study is to conduct a formalized analysis of brand posts and propose a systematic framework to categorize them. With this aim, the study performed qualitative content analysis involving three interrelated coding procedures. First, the study reviewed the relevant literature to identify pre-existing coding categories (deductive coding). Second, the study drew together systematic inferences from a purposive sample of brand posts (n = 371) to derive new coding categories (inductive coding). Finally, the study implemented a double-coding procedure on a probabilistic sample of brand posts (n = 249) to validate the initial coding categories (validation coding). Together, the three coding procedures produced 12 exhaustive and mutually exclusive categories of brand posts. The proposed categorization offers a comprehensive framework to think about brand posts. For marketers, it provides guidance to create the stream of content necessary to stimulate daily customer interaction on social media. For researchers, it offers a solid conceptual foundation to categorize, code and model brand posts.