Yioula Melanthiou

Social Media: Marketing Public Relations’ New Best Friend

The organizational long term success of promotional campaigns and the integration of marketing communications are affected by the effective use of information communication technologies, including the use of the Internet. Today, the Internet implementation in the marketing process is inexpensive, delivers instant international reach, offers great real time feedback, and reaches millions of people for whom the web is the center of virtually all communications. With social media on a rise, some may say that traditional marketing practices as we know it is phasing out. However, it may also be assumed that they are not necessarily phasing out, but are rather supported by a stronger sibling—that of social media. The aim of this research is to identify and discuss the growing popularity of social media and explore its potential impact on marketing practices and especially marketing public relations.

The Use of Social Network Sites as an E-Recruitment Tool

The purpose of this article is to present an initial exploratory investigation on e-recruiting and the role of social network sites (hereafter SNSs) during the process. Particularly, the aim is to identify if companies use social media during their recruitment processes to attract and screen applicants. Three critical elements guided the research: the use of social media to attract and screen applicants; the legal implication of e-recruitment and social network screening; and the possibility of using e-recruitment as the main hiring strategy. Beyond the information generated through the literature review, primary data were collected from Cypriot organizations. The findings of this research endeavor indicate that the online recruitment method has a lot of benefits but also pitfalls of which recruiters should be aware. Furthermore, it seems that the contemporary practice of employee screening through social media can highly affect the hiring decision and legal implications are likely to arise with the wrong use of information. On the contrary, a well-designed system and strategic utilization of available information about potential candidates may significantly assist the recruitment of employees with the most suitable skills and competencies.

Website Design and Development as an Effective and Efficient Promotional Tool: A Case Study in the Hotel Industry in Cyprus.

ABSTRACT The organizational long-term success of promotional campaigns and the integration of marketing communications (IMC) are affected by the effective use of information communication technologies (ICT). E-content that combines all media, visual, text, sound, video and animation represents the base knowledge. Internet technology, as a source of communication, has become an important and exploring tool for marketers in the past. Today, the internet implementation in the marketing process is inexpensive, delivers instant international reach, offers great real time feedback and reaches millions of people for whom the web is the centre of virtually all communications. This research is based on two survey questionnaires that were analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The results of this research identify that successful web-based marketing can indeed be achieved by defining a websites main objectives, designing a website through applying principles of best practice usability, tracking website vi...

Corporate Reputation Through Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Insights From Service Industry Companies

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained global awareness in recent years. The proponents of CSR state that a good corporate reputation may be beneficial to an organization. This research paper reviews the theoretical basis of CSR, and by adopting a qualitative methodology examines the characteristics of CSR strategies and CSR communication tactics of eight companies in Cyprus market through personal in-depth interviews. Results reveal that CSR has a positive impact on the companys employees, the environment, stakeholders and the general public, and highlight that CSR is an important ingredient for the success of the organizations in the Cyprus market.

Consumer preference, satisfaction, and intentional behavior: Investigating consumer attitudes for branded or unbranded products

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to investigate if and how the perception of a product and the evaluation of the experience of consumption can change depending on the consumers propensity to purchase branded or unbranded products. Data for this study is drawn from a choice experiment conducted with consumers purchasing Italian jeans. The results highlight the fact that attributes and benefits have the same role in the processes of consumer choice. The regression analysis carried out revealed a greater importance of the observed variables by brand loyals. Conversely, there are different variables that generate satisfaction for the two categories of consumers; also different is the contribution of the same satisfaction in later behavior. This study provides value to managers of branded and unbranded products, identifies the different reasons for the choice, and the satisfaction of the two types of consumers.

Success Through Innovation, Reputation, and Location

Traditional communication methods are increasingly more expensive and more complex, and make it harder to reach target audiences. Companies are now requiring more value out of their promotional efforts steering the way for new methods to take center stage. Promotion using social media has come a long way and has now become an established option. The articles put together for this special issue mainly deal with matters relating to social media. Specifically, three papers discuss cultural impact and social networks, social network management, and web atmospherics. One of the papers also investigates the importance of company reputation and another reviews how success may be the outcome of a careful site location. The first paper by Shneor and Efrat examines the influence of national culture on national averages of time spent (ATS) visiting the largest Social Networking Sites (SNSs): Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. The analysis used cultural dimensions adopted from both the works of Hofstede and Schwartz, while controlling for country e-readiness and median population age. The findings suggest that culture’s influence may be moderated by the media richness and type of network focus of each SNS. In the next article, the research carried out by Becker and Nobre explored the assumption that if managing social networks is not without cost then larger companies would have better defined strategies than smaller ones. The study offers an integrity management model, based on 189 different size companies taken from the three major world stock markets representing North America and Asia. Results supported the notion that larger companies are slightly more responsive but smaller firms seem to respond more quickly. In the third article, Loureiro and Ribeiro investigated the effect of virtual atmospheric cues on emotions and word-of-mouth and analyzed the differences between the perceptions of male and female participants relative to the online environment. The main findings suggest that pleasure is the most effective emotion to lead to a positive word-of-mouth for both genders. Women are more willing to say positive words to others than men and women are also more influenced by the delight and pleasure, while men are influenced only by pleasure.

Using social networks as a promotional tool for higher education institutions

Looking beyond the basic use of a traditional website, this paper aims to address the proposition of how higher education institutions could use social networks as an effective promotional tool. Research which examined the relationship that students have with social networks was carried out, and some suggestions have been provided as to how higher education institutions can use social networks to communicate with prospective as well as existing students. Empirical data was collected through a quantitative (online questionnaire) study, with 100 prospective and existing higher education students. The results show that students are heavy users of social networks, with a preference towards the use of Facebook. Prospective students also look for information about universities on social networks. Moreover, prospective students appear to use social networks for different reasons than existing students.

Messages Not Getting Through: Societal Marketing to the Rescue

Advertising overload. Communication overload. Information overload. We are now in an era where companies are increasingly finding it hard to get messages through to target audiences. This overload of advertising, communication, and information makes it difficult for audiences to pay attention to all these messages—they are roughly all sending the same message. But what might make a company’s message stand out in this overload? Good companies; that is, companies that link up with good causes or promote sustainable products/services/ideas. The articles put together for this special issue mainly deal with matters relating to Societal Marketing, in industries varying from Tourism, to Sports, to Wine, and in an international context with research carried out in Thailand, Italy, Portugal, and Greece. The first article by Teerakapibal explores the causal relationship between tourism expansion and exports growth and sustainable tourism using Thai macroeconomic data and specifically utilized international tourist arrivals data published on the Thai Ministry of Tourism and Sports website. For this investigation the author estimated a series of bivariate Vector Autoregressive (VAR) models and conducted Granger causality tests in order to investigate the short-run equilibrium relationship between international tourist arrivals and export volume. The findings showed that tourism marketing programs can be used to induce international trade growth, but also that exports promotion programs are an alternative means to reinforce tourism industry development. The conceptual article presented by Susnien_ e and Zostautiene explores corporate social responsibility development opportunities from the marketing culture perspective with an aim to contribute to the understanding of the role of marketing culture elements. As corporate sustainability and social responsibility research highlight new challenges and opportunities for businesses, the research focuses on the company’s ability to practice socially responsible initiatives from a corporate and marketing culture perspective and create new opportunities for operations, management, and marketing. Their investigation resulted in a framework that suggests marketing culture is a precondition for CSR development. Loureiro and Kaufmann examine the antecedents and consequences of affective commitment toward recycling and environmental preservation. Their study hypothesized that individuals whose recycling and environmental preservation has great meaning for their inner self and a positive influence on the way others see

Promoting Higher Education Institutions Through Facebook

Looking beyond the basic use of a traditional website, this paper aims to address the proposition of how higher education institutions could use Facebook as an effective promotional tool. The results showed that students are heavy users of social networks, with a preference towards the use of Facebook.

Marketing Communication of Brands and Products in the New Era

Communicating with prospects and customers is becoming increasingly challenging . . . or is it? In the new era, marketing communication (MC) of brands and products may be becoming significantly easier, and in some instances cheaper, more targeted and more interactive. New forms of communication and new research into existing forms of communication may enable companies to more effectively and efficiently communicate with their audience. The articles put together in this special issue which deal with issues relating to sports marketing communications, communications via social media and branding communications have been chosen from accepted papers presented during the 4th Euromed Conference held in Crete in 2011. The first article by Thrassou, Vrontis, Kartakoullis, and Kriemadis, a largely conceptual paper, argues that although sports marketing communications theories have stemmed from orthodox marketing concepts they increasingly portray elements of stagnation. The sport core product is still being regarded as essentially on-location or media entertainment limiting researchers and practitioners to a correspondingly pre-defined MCs approach, that fails to incorporate the true spectrum of sport value offerings. This paper provides an innovative perspective on sports MCs, through an extensive review of classical theories and their infusion with contemporary consumerfocused MC research. The findings indicate a need for a more holistic and value-based approach to MCs, with an expanded range of both elements and processes. In the context of technological convergence between television and internet, users can access a multitude of audiovisual contents in television sets or by searching online. The second article by Arroyo-Cañada and GilLafuente, attempts to analyze advertising effectiveness in this new context.