This research addresses financial market communication of marketing information (i.e., information related to firms’ organic growth opportunities) through depth interviews (Study 1) and quantitative data on conference calls and stock market reactions (Study 2). The investigation (1) reveals that marketing, despite high potential relevance for financial markets, often plays only a marginal role in firms’ financial market communication and (2) develops a framework for effectively communicating marketing to financial markets.

This study examines the relationship between the internal communication and nine dimensions of Internal Marketing and their interconnection to shape the conditions for the job satisfaction. The paper utilizes the mixed method. Data were collected from six Public Universities in Greece and in Cyprus. Findings are presented and results are discussed.

The study finds placing informational message first generates increased brand attitude for female consumers, while males prefer informational message placed last. High construal level leads to increased brand attitude for both males and females, low construal level consumers do not differ significantly in brand attitude across information order or gender.

Introduction The fashion business is known as one of the major industries that is suffering from rising concerns about the consumption of its product, which led to a reorganization of the fashion supply chain to become more sustainable three decades ago. The interest in the concept of sustainability and demand for sustainable marketing activities is gradually growing in the fashion industry due to the negative image and press it receives. Within the luxury fashion segment, the three main themes that are recognized to contribute to sustainability are exclusivity, craftmanship and limited production. However, luxury brands are increasingly shifting their attention and commitment towards environmental and social issues to be incorporated in the concept of sustainability. Yet, the majority of consumers has little understanding or misunderstands the concept of sustainable fashion and marketing, which leads to a gap between attitudes towards sustainability and actual behavior. As a result, fashion brands are trying to leverage their brand by making sustainability a key marketing strategy to raise awareness about social, environmental, economic and cultural issues. Extant research has not explored this recent trend to understand how consumers evaluate fashion brands with a sustainable marketing communication, especially in the context of luxury brands. This study investigates how luxury and mass fashion brands can utilize sustainable marketing contents in social media communication to reach their target group and enhance their equity with sustainability associations. Theoretical Development Associative network models of memory have served as a fundamental framework for a wide range of studies related to the formation and transfer of associations. According to associative network theory, brand knowledge is represented in form of an associative network of memory nodes connected to each other. Nodes are activated when cues, such as advertising, are presented. Mere exposure to cues was shown to be sufficient to active associations and facilitate association transfer. While brands are continuously attempting to make use of associative power to leverage brand equity, extant research has provided compelling reasons to accept that association transfer can also result in brand dilution when a retrieval of conflicting or negative associations occurs. Especially in the context of luxury brands consisting of very unique associations and being different from mass brands in many regards, managing the brand’s associative network is a crucial task in order to send the right signals to consumers and maintain exclusivity. This study investigates how social media communication of different sustainability dimensions affects brand attitude and how it ultimately impacts behavioral outcomes in an attempt to build brand equity for mass and luxury fashion brands. Method and Data The hypotheses are tested with 273 respondents who participated in an online experiment. They were first asked to state their involvement with the category fashion. Subsequently, subjects were presented with a brand post either for the mass or luxury brand including claims related to one of the four sustainability dimensions or no claims for the control group respectively. The experiment consisted of a 2 (brand: mass or luxury) x 5 (sustainability dimensions: none, cultural, economic, environmental, social) factorial design. The measures that followed included attitudinal as well as behavioral constructs related to the brand, sustainability as well as social media use. Analysis of covariance is applied to test for main effects and interaction effects. Summary of Findings This study provides evidence that social media communication of a sustainable brand affects the purchase intention of consumers. The findings indicate a significant difference between the mass and the luxury brand used for this study. The mass brand exhibits the potential to leverage associations with cultural, economic, and environmental sustainability. However, the results only reveal a marginally significant higher purchase intention when cultural sustainability is communicated compared to when the brand does not provide any sustainable associations. In contrast, the luxury brand suffers from significant brand dilution across all four sustainability dimensions resulting in a decline in purchase intention. Key Contributions The findings reveal that sustainability communication exerts a diverging influence depending on the type of brand that is involved. This study suggests that mass brands are able to benefit from sustainability communication in an attempt to leverage brand equity. However, for a luxury brand this type of associations rather presents a liability that might dilute the brand. The findings of this study provide important insights for brand managers. Since mass brands are currently increasing efforts into sustainable communication in the fashion industry, the results suggest that this might be a promising investment. However, luxury brands are advised to carefully manage the communication of salient content related to sustainability as it might harm the invaluable and unique associations inherent in a luxury brand.

A conceptual paper is developed in regards to the influences of institutional research, word-of-mouth (via internal students and faculties), quality signaling (to external prospect students and stakeholders as potential customers), and customer relationship management, on student recruitment performance as a special form of customer decision. Grounded on the marketing communication perspective, we propose that the student recruitment performance is largely affected by word-of-mouth, quality signaling, and customer relationship management as strategic marketing communications, which are facilitated by institutional research. Institutional research is interpreted as a strategic marketing tool that can help identify, communicate, and visualize the strengths of a university. The conceptual model contributes to the search for marketing mechanisms through which institutional research can generate impact to external stakeholders. Formal propositions and their implications for future, larger-scaled surveys were discussed. From a non-profit organization’s marketing perspective, higher education institutions (HEIs) promote itself by actively communicating the strengths, features, unique positions, and so forth, to its internal and external “customers,” including existing and prospect students and parents, the surrounding community, and governmental units (Kotler, 1982; Licata & Frankwick, 1996). For example, the decision making of that a prospect student in determining if s/he is attending a college can be treated as a cognitive psychological process involving the interaction between a college’s quality signaling and a customer’s evaluation of that signaled quality. Put differently, the “customer decisions” of whether accepting services sold from an university can depend on the result of university-stakeholders communications. With the extant progress in educational theory and practices by adopting a marketing perspective, there are significant unresolved issues in research and practices that warrant more systematic investigation. Knowing the importance of marketing communication, for example, what is the foundation for universities to communicate with internal and external stakeholders? Through what mechanisms and occasions can universities communicate with and signal to stakeholders? To respond to such gaps in the literature, WE propose that institutional research of a university (Knight et al., 1997; Jedamus & Peterson, 1980) plays a role of strategic communication in facilitating internal and external stakeholder communication, engagement, and cognition building. Overall, the propositions include the following. Proposition 1. Institutional research outcomes (i.e., created knowledge) generates significant impacts on students recruitment performance Proposition 2. The impacts of institutional research on student recruitment performance is mediated by strategic marketing mechanisms, including quality signaling, word-of-mouth, and customer relationship management Proposition 3. Quality signaling, word-of-mouth, and customer relationship management intervene interactively on the effects of institutional research on student recruitment

This study confirms that the shopping experiential values perceived by Chinese tourists affect their product and store attitudes through the emotions of entertainment and escapism. It is particularly notable that this study verifies diverse roles of different emotions such as entertainment and escapism in the context of tourist shopping. This study employs empirical analysis on tourists, and provides practical implications including the importance of shopping experiential values for developing retail strategies. The summary of the main results is as follows. First, the results of image attribute on each cultural marketing communication pattern, uniqueness on cultural communication and public interest on cultural sponsorship had the most positive responses. Second, the analysis on the relationship among brand attitude, artist attitude and purchase intention showed that aesthetics and communicativeness positively influenced both brand attitude and artist attitude. Also, both brand attitude and artist attitude had a positive effects on purchase intention. Third, the differences between lifestyle brand and high, low fit artist, aesthetics and public interest showed positive effective relationship toward brand attitude while nobility and communicativeness showed positive effective relationship toward artist attitude as far as artist fit is high. The notable result of the analysis on relationship among the cultural arts lifestyle groups are as follows. Aesthetics to artist attitude, uniqueness to brand attitude were found to have highest response from mass culture enjoyers group, while proponents of high culture group showed greatest response to nobility toward artist attitude. The analysis of the relationship differences in patterns, the effect on nobility to artist attitude, brand attitude to purchase intention for cultural communication displayed highest. For cultural sponsorship, communicativeness to brand attitude, brand attitude to artist attitude to purchase intention showed the most positive effect, while, in cultural corporate image pattern exhibited a great response aesthetics toward brand attitude and communicativeness toward artist attitude, the second strongest effect on brand attitude to artist attitude to purchase intention. The implication of the study is that it demonstrates the relationship of image attribute specifying each pattern from the previous studies and investigates the difference in the relationship of brand attitude, artist attitude and purchase intention among image attribute. In addition, by demonstrating the difference in the relationship among the cultural arts lifestyle groups, as well as the high and low fit between lifestyle brand and artist, the study provides an insight and a specified path for marketers as they plan out ways to utilize cultural marketing communications. Finally, by verifying the relationship among patterns, our study offers useful points of reference also for artists or art foundations who plan it with lifestyle brands using strategic approach to consumers by specified means.

Fashion brands are influenced by multiple identities. Even though, for example, the brand name might still be associated with one or more creative founders (Gucci, Prada, Chanel, Hermès, Adidas, Joop) the brand image, and moreover the overall brand reputation are influenced by many different identities. For instance, a specific product identity (e.g., Gucci’s Bamboo Bag), the identity of the city or country of origin (Florence, Italy), the identities of well-known key customers as brand ambassadors (Sophia Loren, Vanessa Redgrave, Lady Diana, Naomi Watts etc.). Of course, also fashion brands who are not directly associated with the name of creative founders are composed of the effects of several identities. In the case of e.g. Nike especially successful athletes (Steve Prefontaine, Michael Jordan etc.), specific sports and sport events, and product lines tailor-made for them did help to build a strong brand reputation. All in all, it seems to be expedient to understand fashion brands as more of less complex systems composed of several identities. To deal in more detail with such “brand systems” is becoming particularly important against the background of several strategic challenges – e.g., when fashion brands are growing older and the creative founders lose their specific gravitational power, when in the process of internationalization new countries gain more and more importance who’s citizens might not have a strong access to the existing brand reputation drivers, or simply when in the context of the growing global competition the fashion brand needs to be “refreshed”. Against the background of cultural differences, or even - as within countries - lifestyle differences between different groups of customers, it can also be quite possibly that very different reputation drivers account for the success of a brand. Thus, it is necessary to identify, in different contexts, the relevant reputation drivers, and to analyze which interplay of those drivers might be particularly promising. Is it the creative founder, the corporate heritage, the country and/or city of origin, a special designer, a specific corporate culture, an outstanding product design, attractive key customers etc.? Which combination of such identity factors leads to what kind of success (e.g., brand loyalty, brand trust, price premium)? Will, for instance, heritage especially lead to brand trust, whereas an outstanding product design and specifically attractive key customers create the readiness for a higher price premium? And, is it necessary to create sub-brands to especially highlight specific identities in the process of building a brand system (e.g., the sub-branding of a Michael Jordan product line in the case of Nike)? Or is sufficient to only communicate an alignment with the brand (e.g., ads showing Naomi Watts wearing a Gucci Bamboo Handbag)? In other words, which kind of brand system, and which kind of brand communications has to be designed to attract specific target groups and to sustain competitive advantages? The present contribution aims to present a conceptual framework for analyzing “brand systems” in the fashion industry. Concomitantly, an approach of measuring such brand systems will be presented. Furthermore, a concept for analyzing the impact of several sub-identities on the development of the overall brand reputation and brand success against the background of existing contingencies will be outlined. With the introduction and discussion of such a conceptual framework it especially is intended to initiate the launching of an international research project which attempts to find an answer basically to the following question: Which via an integrated branding and brand systems communication carefully crafted composition of sub-identities might be how successful under what kind of situational conditions?

The research examines the role of social media as a part of marketing communications strategy in the fashion industry. The aim is to develop a conceptual framework for marketing communications in the digital age, given the rise in importance of social media and the decline of traditional print media in terms of fashion influence.

Launched in 2008 and 2010 respectively, Instagram and Pinterest are two of the fasted growing social media platforms with 220 million users combined (Leverage 2014, Techcrunch 2014, Loren & Swiderski 2012). Their success is due to their simplicity and a focus on visuals rather than text, furthermore they are described as platforms with strategic potential for fashion brands (Wired 2012). Despite this, many fashion brands have been slow to engage with them. However the Huffington Post (2012) suggests that the visual social media has a wide appeal with respect to both brand positioning and increasing awareness. Recent research by Mashable (2014) highlights that referral traffic and spend is higher from Pinterest users than Facebook users, and this contributes to the rationale for study. The aim of this reseach is twofold, firstly it is to explore the reasons for the utilisation of visual social media platforms within a fashion brands marketing planning cycle, and second it seeks to identify the strategic and operational ways in which fashion brands can use them. For the purpose of this paper only Instagram and Pinterest are investigated. Using a qualitative and inductive approach, the study will use in-depth elite interviews with 6 UK fashion brands (2 Luxury, 2 mid-market, 2 value) alongside content analysis of their platforms. This will enable the research to also consider how each platform can be harnessed at different levels of the market therefore contributing to the lack of empirical applied research in this area.

To clarify the nature of the effect of collaborative communication on marketing performance, this study draws on the opportunism theory in order to develop a conceptual framework for investigating how a marketer’s opportunism moderates the relationship between collaborative communication and marketing performance. Empirical findings indicate that a marketer’s opportunism negatively moderates the relationship between collaborative communication and customer cooperation performance, whereas it positively moderates the relationship between collaborative communication and financial performance.

The purpose of this study was to analyze methods and contents of global Korean food marketing. In-depth interviews were conducted from July to October in 2010 using a qualitative research approach. Government agencies and restaurant companies emphasized well-being and healthy aspects as a Korean food identity. Regarding the marketing contents, government agencies commonly included standard loanword orthography and recipes. On the other hand, restaurant companies contained their own contents differentiated from other brands. Government agencies used CF, video, book and newspaper as communication channels but restaurant companies did not have systematic communication channels. Government agencies attempted to use holding, supporting and participating expositions as communication methods, whereas restaurant companies mainly used sales promotion and point-of-purchase as communication methods.

This study aims to present explicit findings from an internal perspective, namely the interaction patterns of marketing communication between pentahelix elements and testing the expectations of tourists towards tourism activities through a simulation model between variables. This study is divided into two methods of analysis, namely qualitative explorative, where the study aims to invest in communication patterns and patterns of interaction between pentahelix stakeholders in Sitiwinangun Tourism Village, West Java, Indonesia with involve 17 informants who came from pentahelix elements (Government, academics, community, business and media). Second, quantitative method to measure the extent of effectiveness rather than collaboration activities and the role of marketing communication to tourist satisfaction is done by an analytical approach involving 30 tourists through customer satisfaction surveys. The results of this study illustrate that the involvement of each pentahelix element has not been maximized. The pattern of interaction and communication between elements also shows the gap between interests, expectations, and reality. This study provides a real picture that to realize a tourism program that is profitable, holistic, and sustainable requires collaboration that is wrapped with transparent and interactive communication patterns. The marketing communication concept approach combined with collaboration theory between stakeholders can be useful for sustainable tourism.