Marketing Research Areas

Quite sometime back, a colleague once asked (jokingly, I should add), why does marketing have so many modules? All you need is one Marketing module.

I didn't know whether to laugh or to be annoyed. However, I later found out that despite it's importance, marketing is often looked down by academics in other fields. The problem is that they associate marketing with only one thing - selling/ promotion/ advertising.

In fact, we are probably the only discipline which links directly to the most important factor in business - the customer.

That's why I always joke (though it is the reality): you can have a great engineering team, a great HR team, the best accountants and finance people, the best managers. However, if you don't have a good marketing team, you are done for because no customers means no jobs, no accounting, and of course no managers.

Anyway, if you have always wondered what Marketing is all about, take a look at the various tracks at the UK's Academy of Marketing Conference 2018.

1. Arts and Heritage
2. B2B Marketing
3. Brand, Identity and Corporate Reputation
4. Consumer Psychology and Cross-Cultural Research
5. Consumer Behaviour
6. Consumer Culture Theory
7. Critical Marketing
8. Entrepreneurial and Small Business Marketing
9. E-Marketing and Digital Marketing
10. Ethics and Marketing
11. Fashion Marketing and Consumption
12. International Marketing
13. Marketing Case Studies
14. Marketing Communications
15. Marketing Education
16. Marketing of Higher Education
17. Marketing Research and Methodology
18. Marketing Segmentation and Target Marketing Strategy
19. Non-Profit and Social Marketing
20. Place Marketing and Branding
21. Political Marketing
22. Retail Marketing
23. Services and Customer Relationship Marketing
24. Sports and Events Marketing
25. Strategic Marketing
26. Sustainability
27. Tourism Marketing

Yes, that's a total of 27 different tracks. 

Virtual worlds, social media gaming, celebrity branding and personal branding

I recently attended the ANZMAC (The Australian and New Zealand Marketing Academy) 2015 conference which was hosted by the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. It ran from the 30th of November to the 2nd of December.

I presented a paper titled "Lady Gaga goes virtual: Social network gaming communities’ response towards virtual branding efforts" which I co-wrote with Dr. Ezlika Ghazali, The University of Malaya and Dr. Bang Nguyen, East China University of Science and Technology.

Here is the abstract of the paper:

"This study examines community members' response towards a one-off online personal branding campaign of Lady Gaga. Using a qualitative content analysis approach, the study critically examines forum messages from the official Zynga forums of the social game, Farmville. The findings reveal that in the context of social network games, the marketers' role is, to some extent, reduced, while the roles of consumers, especially opinion leaders, become paramount. Theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed."

The background of how I thought about doing a research on this topic is quite interesting (at least to me). While doing my PhD a few years back, I was introduced to Farmville, a game on Facebook. I think that this game as well as other social games helped me through some of the most stressful times during my PhD journey. It was around the time I was writing up my thesis that American
singer and songwriter Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, who brands herself as Lady Gaga, partnered with Zynga, the creators of Farmville to launch and promote her album 'Born this way'. As far as I know, she was the first artist to ever launch an album on a social media game.

I did a bit of preliminary research and realised that this campaign presented several research opportunities to examine the response of members of an online community towards a branding campaign.

Most studies on virtual worlds have focused on World of Warcraft and Second Life and no one has actually looked at games on Facebook. The gaming communities are different from the Brand communities on Facebook and present a totally different context. I also discovered that studies on celebrity branding mostly examined their role as a brand ambassador and specifically how the brand image fits with the personality of the celebrity. There was a lack of studies on the celebrity as a brand - which I feel is linked to concept of personal branding. To my surprise, when I looked at pesonal branding literature and how I could link to celebrity branding, I discovered that most of the papers were in human resource journals and linked to personal development.

There is of course the question of methodology. I could have used the increasingly popular Netnographic techniques made popular by Robert Kozinets. However, in the end I used content analysis method for this research.

I would love to hear from and to collaborate with other researchers who are researching in any of the areas listed here.

Paper presented at Academy of Marketing Conference 2014

Attended the Academy of marketing conference 2014 which was hosted by the University of Bournemouth. The venue was the Bournemouth Highcliffe Marriott - with lovely views of the coast.

I had a minor hiccup during registration- I will not go into the details but really happy that the organisers were extremely helpful.

I had two papers this time - one titled 'Consumer Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility: Study of An Oil and Gas Company in Nigeria', which I co-authored with Ikechukwu Obialor (my ex student) and Ezlika Ghazali. I presented this paper on the 9th and had some great feedback and comments. Thinking of taking this paper further and proceed to submit to a journal and maybe expanding the research with a funding application.

Here is the abstract:

"This paper presents the results of an exploratory study into the the perceptions and feelings of consumers towards the corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts of an American oil and gas MNC in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. It examines the concerns and some of the links between ethics and CSR. Some managerial implications and recommendations for further study are presented."

The second paper was presented by my colleague, Hsiao‐Pei Yang (Sophie) and the paper was titled The Impact of Internal Information on EWOM in Online Forums for University Selection: A Study of Taiwanese Students. She presented this paper on the 10th. I was unable to attend the session as I had to leave early.

Here is the abstract of this paper:

"This study compares two student groups to examine the impact of internal information on the use of electronic word‐of‐mouth (eWOM) from online forums.
The data of this study reported findings from 34 in‐depth interviews and reveals how potential students, as opinion seekers and receivers of eWOM, use online forums to reduce perceived risks in university selection. The findings compared the similarities and differences between the use of eWOM of two student groups, suggesting that due to the limited internal information and higher perceived risks associated with studying overseas, participants who are international students value reviewers' expertise more and rely more on eWOM from online forums than their counterparts who are home‐based students. Participants from both groups evaluate reviewers' comments on courses by filtering overly positive or negative reviews and examining valence and volume of eWOM for judging teaching quality of preferred universities." 

Only found out later that they were giving away electronic versions of the proceedings in smart drives on the 10th. I wish they have it up on a site like the ACR conferences.

Anyway, one of the highlights of the conference was the "Meeting the editors" session. Learnt a few new things on getting papers accepted and I do need to get some papers out in high raking journals.

Also met some old friends which I have not seen for years and also made a few new friends as well.

This was my 4th AM conference and it definitely was the best so far.

Presentation at the Academy of Marketing Conference 2013

Just got back from Cardiff where I had gone to present a paper at the Academy of Marketing Annual Conference 2013. This year it was hosted by the University of South Wales in Cardiff. The venue of the conference was the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. The weather was really nice - warm and sunny. At first I did not notice anybody familiar but gradually over the day, got to meet some old friends and made some new ones as well.



The key note was delivered by Prof. Kozinets from York University in Canada and one of the leading experts on social media marketing. He is well known for Netnography, the research methodology which he developed. I found his key note address on marketing relevance really interesting and he highlighted the need for us, academics to engage with different audiences besides other academics, via social media and other resources. He also mentioned academics love of using jargon in our writings (which not a lot of people understand) and the need to be accessible. It's hard to change your ways but I sincerely hope that academics who are in love with what they think is "proper academic language", think and reflect on this.

I only attended for a day but there were some really interesting papers in the sessions which I attended. I wish I could have stayed for the whole duration of the conference but had prior engagements.

I was the first presenter in my session: 'Brand, Identity and Corporate Reputation 2', on Tuesday 9 July 2013 from 15.45 - 17.15 in the Rowe-Beddoe Studio. I was a bit nervous but the presentation went better than expected. There was some differences of opinion about the methodology, several questions and suggestions for further improvement.

Here is some information about the paper I presented. Click the title to download the whole paper.

0189: Brand Personality Dimensions and Traits in Malaysia

Mozard Mohtar 1, Azni Zarina Taha 1, Dilip Mutum 2, Ezlika Ghazali 1
1University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2 Coventry University, Coventry, West Midlands, UK

Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to investigate the dimensions and traits of brand personality scale in Malaysia. We also tested the generalizability of the new Brand Personality scale of Geuens et al., (2009), which consisted of 12-item scale used for cross-cultural studies. Using etic and emic approaches, items generated were cross-referenced with unique items from 10 published scales in top ranking journals. A total of 96 items were available for Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA).Principal Axis Factoring with Oblimin rotation revealed that there 12 factor structures existed in Malaysia. All factors showed strong Cronbach a values and corresponded more to Aaker’s (1997) western Brand Personality scale rather than those of Geuens’ et al. (2009).

NOTE: Noticed that there was a typo on the last line of the 3rd para. It should be "20 minutes" instead of 220 minutes.

If you are working on brand personality, I would love to hear your thoughts on our paper.