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

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

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

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