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.

Presentation on teaching with blogs

Finally put up the video of my Presentation on teaching with blogs on YouTube. The clip is quite long (1 hours 1 minute and 42 secs).

Presentation on teaching with blogs

This Wednesday, I delivered a presentation on 'Teaching with blogs' along with Peter Kirwan from the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, University of Warwick. This presentation was part of the Window on Teaching sessions at the University of Warwick.

While Peter talked about his experiences on teaching using blogs, I talked about increasing the interactivity of the blogs and integrating with social networks.

For more information and to watch a video of the presentation click this link 'Teaching With Blogs'.

Update:  My Powerpoint slides on Social Media