Beedie School of Business News

The latest ScienceDirect ranking of business, management and accounting research sees Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business leading the field in social media research.

The ranking lists the 25 Hottest Articles in business, management and accounting, and includes two research articles from Beedie School of Business faculty, both of which focus on the topic of social media.

Ranked in the top three three in the list is the article, “Social Media? Get Serious! Understanding the Functional Building Blocks of Social Media”. The research states that understanding social media is becoming an increasing priority for managers, and was authored by the Beedie team of Jan Kietzmann, Ian McCarthy, Kristopher Hermkens and Bruno Silvestre.

Meanwhile, at number 16 in the rankings is the article, “Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy”. The article was authored by Leyland Pitt, Kirk Plangger and Daniel Shapiro from the Beedie School of Business, and Pierre Berthon from Bentley University’s McCallum Graduate School of Management, and reveals how international marketers can harness social media in today’s evolving marketing landscape. Keep reading…

Tags: 25 Hottest Articles, accounting, Beedie School of Business, Bruno Silvestre, business, Business Insider, Daniel Shapiro, engagement, Ian McCarthy, Jan Kietzmann, Kirk Plangger, Klout, Kristopher Hermkens, Leyland Pitt, management, McCallum Graduate School of Management, Pierre Berthon, Research, ScienceDirect, sfu, social media

A teaching forum hosted by the Beedie School of Business this past fall for faculty demonstrated once again why Beedie is recognized as one of Canada’s leading institutions not only in the realm of academic research but also for teaching and learning.

Held on November 2, 2012, the second annual Teaching and Learning Luncheon offered the school’s faculty members an opportunity to come together in a supportive and collegial environment to engage in learning and dialogue around compelling and forward-thinking approaches to management education.

The event was inspired in part by several professional development workshops attended by SFU educational consultant David Rubeli and Beedie School lecturer Shauna Jones at the Academy of Management’s annual conference held in Boston.

A morning keynote by Beedie Dean Daniel Shapiro underscored the importance of teaching in an international context. Globalization, maintained Shapiro, is an increasingly integral component to management education in terms of programming, content and delivery. Also, according to Shapiro, a major opportunity and challenge for organizations generally and educators specifically is understanding the linguistic implications of a global world. Keep reading…

Tags: Academy of Management, Carolyn Egri, Daniel Shapiro, David Dunne, David Rubeli, Jan Kietzmann, katherine burke, Leyland Pitt, shauna jones, Stephanie Bertels, teaching and learning luncheon

In March of 2011, in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan, Atlanta-based insurance giant Aflac Inc. was forced to confront a marketing fiasco with global implications. The voice of their famous Aflac duck, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, had used his Twitter account to make tasteless jokes about the natural disaster that wiped out entire cities on Japan’s northeast coast.

The online backlash against Gottfried’s social media outburst – and ultimately Aflac – was swift and forceful in the United States, but the repercussions were even greater in Japan, where the company insures one in four households.

To the company’s credit, a well-crafted public relations and social media response – along with the swift firing of Gottfried – quelled what could have been an overseas marketing (and financial) disaster – one that was triggered by poor comedic taste and the power of social media. Keep reading…

Tags: Aflac Inc., Beedie School of Business, Business Horizons, creative consumers, Daniel Shapiro, digital media, Facebook, Gilbert Gottfried, global marketing, globalization, Google, GREE, international marketing, Kirk Plangger, Leyland Pitt, LinkedIn, marketing strategy, mixi, Pierre Berthon, Research, sfu, social media, Twitter, Web 2.0

At the popular seafood restaurant Coast, just a few blocks from SFU’s Segal Graduate School campus in downtown Vancouver, the lunch crowd is filing in. Diners line the big circular bar, working away at outsized platters of Atlantic lobster, Alaskan crab legs, sashimi and oysters. But for environmentally conscious consumers, the savory scene presents a thorny dilemma: How do you know today’s catch won’t be tomorrow’s endangered species?

“Most people would like to know that they’re not eating the last bluefin tuna in the world,” says Beedie marketing professor Leyland Pitt, co-author of a pioneering recent study with profound eco-implications.

Enter the smartphone. At Coast, diners with Vancouver Aquarium’s Ocean Wise mobile app can instantly access a database listing sustainable species, as well as nearby restaurants that serve them and user recommendations. Coast – and all its fare – proves comfortingly ocean-friendly. Keep reading…

Tags: Android, Anthony Chan, Apple, Coast, consumer behaviour research, e-commerce, environment, Google, iPhone, Iris A. Junglas, Leyland Pitt, Michael Parent, Ocean Wise, Research, Segal Graduate School, Smartphone, Stavroula Spyropoulou, sustainability, Vancouver Aquarium

Olympic sponsors should watch out for the inhabitants of picturesque English villages - they’re the most dangerous and ruthless ambushers of them all.

The following article was published by Forbes on June 14, 2012.

Former Intel CEO Andy Grove claimed that only the paranoid survive. So should the mighty Olympic Committee watch out for the villagers in the picturesque village of Wye, 35 minutes from the site of the upcoming London Olympics?

Undetered by the heavy-handed restrictions that prevent UK citizens from using the Olympic logo to celebrate the world’s largest sporting event, the local church group has just staged a flower festival with displays that capture many of the sporting events in a dazzling array of colour and perfume. To avoid any legal wrangling they called the event “The Games 2012″.

Elsewhere, Twitter has cracked down over online infringement of the Olympic logo after the Games’ organisers, Locog, complained that an activist groups were using the trademark 2012 image to parody the London sporting festival. And local authorities have been bemused by the bewildering array of restrictions that prevent them from referring to anything remotely “Olympic” when describing the torch that’s being carried through their streets.

What is intended to be a national celebration has turned into a battle of trademarks, and protection of the official Olympic sponsors, who have admittedly paid out large sums of money to appear alongside the iconic 5 rings. Keep reading…

Tags: ambush marketing, Beedie School of Business, Leyland Pitt, Li Ning affair, Marketing, Michael Parent, Olympics, Research, sfu, SFU Beedie, Simon Fraser University, Summer Olympics

For the second year in a row, SFU’s Beedie School of Business is enjoying some serious Klout on social media.

Tweeting since early 2010, Simon Fraser University’s business school (@SFUBeedie) has been rated as the most influential Canadian business school by a prominent social media metric known as Klout. The metric website measures influence by using data from selected media channels, such as Twitter followers and unique mentions and Facebook comments and likes.

With a Klout score of 46, the Beedie School has edged out business schools at the University of Toronto (44), University of Western Ontario (43), and Concordia University (41).

The Beedie School has used Twitter, Facebook, and other social media as a means to stay connected with the Beedie community—including current students, faculty, staff, alumni, industry and community partners, university partners, and employers. It has used Twitter specifically to follow and learn what they are up to, to disseminate school news and research, and to further communicate with its community.

The school’s social media strategy benefits from a number of influential users from the Beedie community. They include dean Daniel Shapiro (@SFUBeedieDean), Canada’s first business school dean to be on Twitter, who shares business and economic research and opinions via the medium.

Another prominent faculty tweeter is Ian McCarthy (@Toffeemen68), Professor and Canada Research Chair in Technology and Operations Management at SFU. McCarthy, who has over 10,200 Twitter followers, was recently named to OnlineMBA’s international list of the “50 Business Professors You Should Follow on Twitter.”

The school’s burgeoning social media environment also benefits from award-winning faculty research.

New marketing research from marketing professor Leyland Pitt, focused on the relationship between luxury wine branding and social media, has been awarded the Outstanding Paper prize for 2012 by the Emerald Literati Network.

The article, entitled “Luxury wine brand visibility in social media:  An exploratory study” and published in International Journal of Wine Business Research, garnered the top billing as part of the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012.

Last fall, the management journal Business Horizons and Elsevier awarded Beedie School researchers Jan Kietzmann, Kristopher Hermkens, Ian McCarthy, and Bruno Silvestre with the Best Article Award for 2011 for their paper, “Social media? Get serious! Understanding the functional building blocks of social media.”

This past year, the Beedie School also launched the popular undergraduate class Social Media and Business at the SFU Surrey campus – taught by Assistant Professor Kietzmann and instructor Ashish Gurung.

Related articles:

1. Academic award toasts SFU branding research
2. The School of Social Media
3. Students engage community with social media
4. Beedie prof. selected to prestigious Twitter “must follow” list
5. Social media research wins 2011 Best Article Award
6. Vancouver Canucks give MBA social media project warm reception
7. AACSB BizEd Magazine profiles Beedie Mobile: What’s App-enin’ At B-Schools

Tags: Ashish Gurung, Beedie School of Business, Bruno Silvestre, communications, Daniel Shapiro, Facebook, Ian McCarthy, Jan Kietzmann, Klout, Kristopher Hermkens, Leyland Pitt, Research, sfu, SFU Beedie, SFU Surrey, Simon Fraser University, social media, Surrey, Twitter

On the eve of London’s Summer Olympic Games, a business study from Simon Fraser University shows that the persistent effectiveness of ambush marketers leaves Olympic sponsors and those of other major sporting events particularly vulnerable – costing them not only their financial investment, but ultimately their customers.

Professors Leyland Pitt and Michael Parent from SFU’s Beedie School of Business examined data from the 2008 “Li Ning affair”, which saw Olympic sponsor Adidas ambushed by lesser-known Chinese sportswear company Li Ning at the Beijing Summer Olympics.

The Chinese company’s namesake founder, Li Ning, was China’s most decorated Olympian and it was he who lit the Olympic flame at the 2008 opening ceremony.

Data collected after the closing of the Beijing Games isolated what the researchers called the “Li Ning effect” – which describes being incorrectly identified as an official sponsor, and the positive effects accrued to a company’s brand as a result.

In the footwear category at least, Li Ning was the clear brand winner of the 2008 Olympics, in spite of the millions spent by Adidas to secure a sponsorship.

“Amidst the background noise of multiple sponsorships,” said the researchers, “this highly poignant event stuck in people’s memory such that when they were asked to recall who the official sponsor of athletic footwear was for the Beijing Games, more of our respondents thought it was Li Ning than Adidas.”

The award-winning study, “Event sponsorship and ambush marketing: Lessons from the Beijing Olympics”, was published in the March 2010 issue of Business Horizons. Researchers offered important advice for marketers trying to see through successful sponsorship investments in future events, such as the London Summer Games.

“Don’t naively put yourself in a position to be ambushed; remember, large sporting events provide optimal venues and occasions for this to happen,” the authors suggest. “This does not mean that firms should abstain from sponsorship; large global events can provide superlative opportunities for marketing communication.

“However, walking into sponsorships and blithely ignoring the lessons from the Li Ning affair would be asking for trouble. If you do decide to sponsor a major event, anticipate and behave as though an ambush will happen.”

The study was co-authored with Pierre Berthon of Bentley University and Peter G. Steyn of Lulea University of Technology. Last year, it was the winner of the Business Horizons/Elsevier Publishing Award for Best Paper in Business Horizons for 2010.

Backgrounder: Study’s key lessons

Researchers offer several lessons regarding event sponsorship that marketers should remember:

• Expect the unexpected — ambush attacks won’t come in a form you anticipate.

• Event organizers won’t always keep their word.

• Don’t rely on governments to protect you — their own interests will always trump yours.

• Be constantly aware of the likelihood of an ambush.

• Remember that customers don’t care — they won’t share your moral indignation regarding an ambush event.

• Don’t overreact to an ambush — it will only compound the problem.

• Sponsorship is only the first stage of marketing in an event setting — a firm needs to be proactive in all marketing efforts and defensive in anticipating ambush.
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Contact: Derek Moscato, business, 778.782.5038; derek_moscato@sfu.ca

Tags: Adidas, ambush marketing, Beijing, Beijing Summer Olympics, Bentley University, Business Horizons, China, financial investment, guerrilla marketing, Leyland Pitt, Li Ning, London Summer Games, Lulea University of Technology, Michael Parent, Olympic sponsors, Olympics, Peter Steyn, Pierre Berthon, Research, sponsorship, study, Summer Olympics

New marketing research from SFU professor Leyland Pitt, focused on the relationship between luxury wine branding and social media, has been awarded the Outstanding Paper prize for 2012 by the Emerald Literati Network.

The article, entitled “Luxury wine brand visibility in social media:  An exploratory study” and published in International Journal of Wine Business Research, garnered the top billing as part of the Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012.

Pitt, a professor of marketing at SFU’s Beedie School of Business, co-authored the paper with Mignon Reynecke, a PhD student at the Lulea University of Technology in Sweden, and Pierre Berthon of Bentley University in Boston. The article was chosen following consultation amongst the journal’s editorial team, made up of eminent academics and industry leaders. According to Emerald Group Publishing, it was selected as “one of the most impressive pieces of work the team has seen throughout 2011.”

In the paper, Pitt and his colleagues set out to address the visibility of luxury wine brands in the social media environment, in particular the Bordeaux first growth brands. They explained that the Bordeaux wines were used because, given their retail price, reputation and rarity, they “epitomize not only luxury wine brands, but also luxury brands in general… they are the kinds of brands that legends are made of.”

They gathered social media data on the five Bordeaux first growths from the website How Sociable, comparing overall visibility scores and  visibilities in 32 different forms of social media. Ultimately, they focused on the brands’ visibility and intersection with “the most important and most relevant social media” such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning and Digg.

Perhaps surprisingly, they found that that some of the luxury brands considered did not, at the time the data were gathered, have a clearly defined social media strategy.

That lack of focus in the social media environment may not last for long, however. According to the researchers, there are opportunities moving forward for luxury wine brand managers to use social media as a tool in their marketing strategies. They note that some threats may exist to these brands should they take a laissez faire approach to social media, particularly given the rise of social media’s influence and credibility among consumers.

“Social media are now as influential, if not more so than, conventional media,” they said. “This has a massive impact on brands.”

To this end, luxury marketers in the wine space will need to give serious consideration to every social media tool at their disposal.

“Astute wine brand managers will define the social media that they care most about,” say the researchers. “Brands can take directions in social media that would have been unlikely if not impossible just five years ago. Brand managers will not fully be able to control the destinies of these brands, but at least they should still be part of, and ideally, direct the conversations that occur around their brands.”

In addition to the Outstanding Paper Award, the article was also selected as the best paper of the year in International Journal of Wine Business Research.

Further information about the research can be viewed at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1912147

For more information about the Emerald Literati Network’s Awards for Excellence, visit www.emeraldinsight.com/literati

Tags: Bentley University, Bordeaux, branding, Digg, Emerald Group Publishing, Emerald Literati Network, Facebook, How Sociable, International Journal of Wine Business Research, Leyland Pitt, LinkedIn, Literati Network Awards for Excellence, Lulea University of Technology, luxury marketing, Marketing, Mignon Reynecki, Ning, Pierre Berthon, social media, Twitter, wine, wine research, YouTube

Students in SFU’s Full-Time MBA program at the Beedie School of Business have garnered real-world marketing lessons that have taken them from social agencies in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to a hospice society in Pitt Meadows to a seniors wellness centre in North Vancouver. In the process of helping these groups raise awareness or operating funds, they have enjoyed early-stage support from the likes of celebrated author Margaret Atwood and Vancouver hockey star Roberto Luongo.

The community interactions are part of the marketing class Business 702, taught by SFU marketing professor Leyland Pitt. Within the class, students are challenged to strategically design a social media marketing program for not-for-profit organizations in Metro Vancouver.

By working outside of the classroom with social agencies and community groups, the students have been able to broaden their perspective around business and society – and further integrate social entrepreneurship and sustainability into their marketing coursework.

A case in point is a group that worked with the Minerva Foundation for BC Women, which promotes community and workplace opportunities for women. The MBA students developed a successful “Leading by Tweeting” campaign – with the goal of raising awareness and support for the foundation via the microblogging medium of Twitter. They ultimately found online champions such as Patricia Graham (Editor, Vancouver Sun), Bridgitte Anderson (Vice-President, Edelman), and the aforementioned Margaret Atwood – and in the process guided executives at the foundation in the art of using Twitter and other social media channels. As MBA student Alice Longhurst noted, a retweet from Atwood helped put the organization’s message in front of over 280,000 Twitter users.

“As a business school, we believe that businesses can survive and indeed thrive by emphasizing sustainability and social responsibility,” said David Hannah, Academic Director of the SFU MBA program. “By involving our students in initiatives like this, we are preparing them to make this kind of impact.”

Another group of MBAs chose to support the Dugout, a local organization that provides daily meals and support services to Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside community. The organization, which positions itself as the “community living room” for people in that neighbourhood, has roots going back to the 1960s.

MBA student Colin Stansfield said his group was compelled to help the organization given that it is one of the longest-standing venues for Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Vancouver, and serves many clients who are either homeless or live in Single Room Occupancies.

To support the Dugout, the student group created a new website, along with Facebook and YouTube channels designed to enhance fundraising efforts. Along the way, they added some sporting sizzle to their campaign.

Upon discovering that the Dugout has long welcomed locals into the facility to enjoy Vancouver Canucks hockey games – since the NHL franchise’s inception in 1970 – student Alannah Cervenko took the organization’s story to some of today’s players, including Roberto Luongo, Sami Salo and Kevin Bieksa at an official team function. The response from the Canucks players was very positive – with all of the Canucks canvassed signing a commemorative playoff towel geared to support the Dugout campaign.

Left to right: Vancouver Canuck Roberto Luongo, MBA student Alannah Cervenko and Canuck Sami Salo

Other student projects delivered social media marketing campaigns for organizations as the Greater Vancouver Firefighters, Ridge Meadows Hospice Society, Downtown Eastside Kitchen Tables Project, the North Shore Keep Well Society, Maplewood Farms and We Canada.

“Throughout this project, these students displayed a remarkable ability to leverage the power of social media to help these organizations achieve their marketing goals more completely – and by extension make a real difference in the community,” said Professor Leyland Pitt.

Though the marketing class concludes this December, many of the MBA students will carry on with their efforts with the organizations into the New Year and beyond.

Tags: Alannah Cervenko, Alice Longhurst, Business 702, Colin Stansfield, David Hannah, Downtown Eastside Kitchen Tables Project, Facebook, Greater Vancouver Firefighters, Leyland Pitt, Maplewood Farms, Margaret Atwood, MBA, Minerva Foundation, Patricia Graham, Ridge Meadows Hospice Society, Roberto Luongo, social entrepreneurship, sustainability, The Dugout, the North Shore Keep Well Society, Twitter, We Canada

Since its launch in 2010, the Apple iPad has garnered a global reputation for being among the most innovative consumer technology products. According to a new study from Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business, however, that reputation is equally deserved in business – especially as firms leverage the popular tablet and others like it to improve operations and boost sales or customer service.

The recent study, entitled “Deciding When to Use Tablets for Business Applications”, published in the most recent issue of MIS Quarterly Executive, is authored by professors Leyland Pitt from SFU and Pierre Berthon of Bentley University, with Beedie School of Business graduate student Karen Robson.

Their research argues that like many disruptive technologies, tablet computers such as the iPad are already changing the face of corporate computing, and will likely have an even greater impact in the future. Pitt and colleagues provide a set of frameworks that can be used to identify when and where a tablet computer device and its applications within can add value to an organization – whether it be in areas as disparate as health care delivery, hospitality, or automobile marketing.

“Computer tablets like the iPad are probably the world’s first truly ‘personal’ computers and are already changing the face of corporate computing,” write the researchers. “By being on a constant lookout for good examples of applications in a wide variety of settings, and asking questions such as “How would that work in our business?” and “Could we do something similar in our organization?”, organizations can identify how applications on table devices can shorten, short-circuit and shape business processes, and thus create business value.”

The researchers maintain that in identifying possible tablet applications, organizations would be wise to learn from the successes of like-minded firms.

“Decision makers seeking to introduce tablets into their own organizations could therefore benefit by identifying successful tablet applications in other organizations, and adapting them for their own use.”

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Recommendations for Using Tablets in Business

The researchers provide five actions that Information Systems organizations can take to ensure that the deployment of tablets provides business benefits:

1. Regularly scan relevant media for effecitve, creative use of tablets in a range of business settings, including some websites they have found particularly useful: Engadget, CultofMac, Mashable, Wired, AppleInsider, TechCruch, and MacWorld.
2. Consider the Inscriptive (input) Informative (output) functions of information systems, and the interaction between them, to envision how tablets might enable these activities to be performed more effectively.
3. Explore opportunities of moving applications that are purely Isolative into the Contextive and Contextual space to provide customers with superior service and improve the productivity of employees.
4. Compare the 3 C-Abilities (Configure-ability, Consume-ability and Context-ability) of tablets versus other mobile devices, recognizing that even small changes in the technological capabilities of these devices may require changes in how organizations think about using these devices.
5. Envision the needs of customers and employees using relevant strategic or business process models. For example, the application that permits boarding passes sent to smartphones for air travelers was developed by understanding that travelers might not have access to a printer to print a boarding pass prior check in.
6. Envision employees accessing the organization’s information systems via mobile devices.

Tags: apps, Blackberry, computers, iPad, iPhone, Karen Robson, Leyland Pitt, Marketing, mobile devices, Pierre Berthon, tablets, technology