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The data portability provisions of the new European Data Protection Regulations have the potential to turn data relationships between customers and companies upside down as customers learn to move their data to those providers adding most value to it from the customer’s point of view. Companies need to look at customer data through a new lens: the value it can generate for customers as well as the company.

We introduce the application of sociophysics to illuminate the analysis of the comic relief supporter database. This approach allows the analysis to consistently handle the implications that arise from three levels of marketing influence, audience, individual and social. As a result, we identify the characteristics of a phase transition from an individual to a collective type of behaviour. The transition identified occurs at a low level of supporter penetration around 1%. Previous work in other fields links this characteristic to information about the thresholds of connectivity between supporters, and we offer suggestions for the marketing strategies that might be adopted within this regime.

Customer co-creation is a hot topic among companies as well as customers and, thorough communication between customers and companies, is believed to be central to the success of an existing/new product or service. Research has endorsed the importance of co-creation via customer participation. Social media platforms and company websites have encouraged the creation of user-generated content in this era of consumer sovereignty. This article illustrates customer co-creation through social media with the help of a recent case of ‘Crash the Pepsi IPL’ — an advertisement co-creation campaign by PepsiCo in India. This case is evidence of a paradigm shift in power from companies to consumers. It also elucidates the role of digital marketing/social media in front-end innovation. This is believed to be the first article on customer co-creation in advertising through social media in India.

The growth of computerised government administrative files provides new opportunities for creating analytical value for a wide range of topics. The adoption of address postcodes, when linked to grid references, enables the creation of small area statistics, and also facilitates the mapping of results, which has been further encouraged by the Office for National Statistics’ adoption of postcode-based Output Areas as a standard statistical geography. Postcodes also provide a vital key when seeking to match individual records from different sources. Administrative records have obvious attractions: they often cover very nearly 100% of the relevant population; information is also gathered using the same methods across England (and sometimes Great Britain or the United Kingdom as a whole) and, unlike the Census, are updated frequently; they also include hot topics, such as Income. This paper illustrates some of the possible census-like topics that could be available from government files. It then reviews the patchy progress over recent decades, before giving recent examples of the increasing pressure to make more use of government administrative files, and the possibility of now making a long-awaited breakthrough.

Vast amounts of consumer-related data are generated each day. The Consumer Data Research Centre (CDRC), funded by the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), seeks to facilitate access for academic and research communities to mine, analyse and synthesise the data and make it available to a range of users through our data store. A three-tier access to data hosted by the CDRC is explained – open, safeguarded and controlled – which details the measures in place to ensure consumer related datasets are hosted within a safe and secure environment which does not compromise data security and allows for innovative research to be carried out that can provide fresh perspectives on the dynamics of everyday life along with a better understanding of issues of economic well-being and social interactions in cities. It is identified that whilst there are currently challenges present in using consumer-related data to convey a wholesome picture of society, the insights gained can provide a more coherent idea of what underpins consumer-related behaviour across the UK and how this impacts society as a whole.

Every year, as gardening brands start building their marketing plans, they face an important question: does Spring start at different times in different UK regions? We leveraged the transactional information available on the Abacus Alliance to analyse purchasing patterns in the January to May period of 2013, 2014 and 2015. Our examination shows that there is not a substantial North/South divide in when consumers start buying gardening products. However, there is difference between urban and rural areas, with customers living in or around major UK cities purchasing later in the season. It is possible that this “urban delay” is linked to urban customers preferring ready-to-plant products to seeds and bulbs.

The aim of the paper is to follow long-term tracking of the characteristics and behaviours of survey respondents who claim to participate in online surveys. This report outlines the different ways in which this segment of the population differs from the remainder of the population who are active online. We demonstrate that there are some differences in the demographic profiles and these are routinely accounted for when weighting results derived online. However, we demonstrate the much wider differences in behaviour and attitude that remain after accounting for demographics. As a result, we propose some approaches that might be used to mitigate the inherent dangers involved in relying on online research information when seeking to estimate the overall scale of a market opportunity.

This paper investigates the impact of social media practices on wine sales in US wineries as perceived by winery owners and general managers. An online survey research methodology involving a sample of 375 US wineries was used to gather data. MS Excel software was used to analyze data, including descriptive statistics and ANOVAs. Results illustrate that 87 per cent of wineries in the sample report a perceived increase in wine sales due to social media practices. Using multiple social media platforms, rather than just a couple, is statistically significant with reported increases in wine sales. Wine marketers in the United States would benefit from adopting social media into their marketing mix, especially smaller wineries. The results suggest to start with Facebook and to ensure the winery owner responds to consumer comments on TripAdvisor and Yelp.

The purpose of the article is to explore one of the Cental and East European media markets to determine whether different audience profiles reflect the various industry structures of the commercials aired. The article is based on data from a complete television (TV) commercials data set (n=2,303,435) from 2013. The results indicate that there are only minor differences between TV channels while audience targeting is only implemented by a very few thematic channels. The article contributes to media marketing management research by showing that the differences in the distribution of commercials among different TV channels are smaller than expected.

This paper traces the journey of the marketing mix paradigm from its inception through continuous debate and discussion over the years. It traces the evolution of marketing mix components and the transformation of the marketing paradigm as society, technology, media, information and money have changed. A significant evolution of technology has changed the face of marketing. The paper uses inputs from marketing experts to trace the all-encompassing and unstoppable expansion of cyberspace that is changing every single dimension of consumers’ lifestyles. The paper outlines the acceleration of the information revolution with the advent of the ‘Read-Write Web’ or ‘Web 2.0’. Within this emergent virtual domain, corporate blogs, online communities, social networks and wikis have redefined the routine lives of individuals and changed the way people relate to information, brands, other people and even themselves. The discussion further proceeds to address three important issues facing the world of marketing today: the implications of today’s technologically inspired environment for marketing in the twenty-first century, the conceptualization of a customer mix as a pre-requisite for the marketing mix and, in conclusion, finally proposes an update to the marketing mix itself. In addition to this, the paper also traces the incorporation of the concepts of relationship marketing, customer relationship management, co-creation, salesforce automation and digital marketing in current-day marketing environments.

The existing literature shows that there is a negative relationship between irritation and consumers’ attitudes towards mobile advertising. In spite of this, little attempt has been made to reduce this effect. Thus, this study examines the moderating effect of personal innovativeness on the relationship between irritation and attitudes towards mobile advertising. The authors found a negative relationship between irritation and attitudes towards mobile advertising. It also was noted that there is a positive relationship between personal innovativeness and attitudes towards mobile advertising. Additionally, the study found that personal innovativeness moderates the relationship between irritation and attitudes towards mobile advertising. The findings imply that targeting individuals who are innovative has the potential for reducing the negative effect of irritation on attitudes towards mobile advertising.

The DMA with its insight partner Beautiful Insights and sponsor dotmailer has published the latest results of its email tracking research series. The results are from the seventh wave of the email tracking survey that explores consumer attitudes and trends for email marketing in the United Kingdom. This article covers findings from the new questions that were added in the most recent offering of the survey and highlights some important trends across the averages reported year-on-year.

The DMA has researched consumer attitudes towards permission marketing and data collection in both 2015 and 2014. It has also surveyed marketers about the way they collect personal information, deploy it in their marketing and follow the correct data protection processes. This article reports on the findings from the most recent research and contrasts them with the previous year to highlight trends in behaviour and attitudes.

This article explains the need for a storytelling approach in customer insight management. It outlines a useful training methodology to help customer insight specialists improve how they explain insights to colleagues and how they can support colleagues who need to use storytelling.

With the explosion of the mobile web, companies and brands are relying more and more on inbound marketing, focusing on generating dialogues and providing customers with more relevant and customized ad content. Interruptions, which were often used as attention-grabbing tactics, seem to be obsolete with rising privacy concerns. However, in this era of permission and relevance-based marketing, the authors conducted an SMS marketing field experiment with fast food brands to demonstrate how message design and targeting can drive interruptions via mobile devices to generate more awareness, redemptions and future purchase intentions of the brand.

Marketers in the United Kingdom and the United States need to be aware of the provisions being considered as part of the European General Data Protection Regulation. As soon as it is agreed and becomes law, many current practices will cease to be legal. This article outlines what marketers need to be doing in 2015 in order to be ready for this major change in data protection law.

Understanding how consumers use mobile devices and mobile applications to support their eating behaviour, such as creating grocery lists, gathering meal ideas and ordering food from restaurants, is important for business, marketing and health professionals who seek to reach consumers through mobile technology. This study identified segments of users and non-users of food-related technology and described differences in their demographic characteristics, food-related app use and interest in food-related app functionality. Results revealed that 22 per cent of participants were highly engaged with technology and food, while just 12 per cent were disengaged from both. The remaining two-thirds of participants were evenly split between those who were engaged with technology and food generally but were ambivalent about food-related apps, and those who were utilitarian in their approach to food and disengaged from food-related apps. There were segment differences based on age such that younger adults (ages 18–34) were more likely to be engaged with technology and food than older adults (ages 55+). Technology and food-engaged segments reported the highest levels of use of select food-related apps, but even well-known apps were not highly used, indicating room for market expansion. Findings are discussed in the context of app development, digital advertising and nutritional health interventions.

It is very difficult to measure the effectiveness of social media marketing, and such measurement has not been done in any systematic way. This study shows how to develop a measurement instrument to evaluate consumer comments made on a social media community site to test their influence on consumer purchasing decisions. Comments on a Samsung Mobile Thailand Facebook fan page were categorized and recorded on a daily basis for a period of 5 months. A model was developed and tested using confirmatory factor analysis to determine how comments representing four variables affected purchasing decisions. The study found that the most influential comments focused on the following: usage experience issues, information requests, business practice issues and comments about product launches and developments. These four variables can be indicator variables for consumer purchasing decisions in social media marketing. Marketers can apply these four key indicator variables to evaluate social media marketing.

Much research on internet marketing and e-commerce shares a great interest in a key performance metric for e-tailer success online: the shopper’s time spent on the web site, commonly known as ‘web site visit duration’. Visit duration has been used as a useful proxy to measure web‘stickiness’ because it enhances visitor-to-buyer conversion rate and often leads to online loyalty. The motivation of this study is the recognition of web site visit duration as an important metric to e-commerce success, and also the relative paucity of research on theoretical frameworks that explain visit duration. This study draws on the two-stage choice model literature and posits that shopper visitation to an e-commerce web site is a function of the choice decision processes. We construct a model to decompose online shoppers’ decision for visit duration into two choice stages. In Stage 1, shoppers are explorative with less effortful visitation behaviour (eg using search engine to reach a site). In Stage 2, shoppers engage in more effortful and depth visitation activities (eg viewing more Web pages). We empirically test our model using observed web analytics data from 94 UK e-stores to unveil the decision process mechanism for Stage 1 and Stage 2, respectively, and also the transition between the two stages (eg bounce from the web site), which is lacking in extant literature because of its unobservable nature.

Mobile is creating both new approaches and new insights for researchers. This paper explores the impact of the growing importance of the mobile channel and the proliferation of mobile devices, identifying the benefits and opportunities it brings to research. The paper is focused on using mobile to conduct research, not on research about the use of mobile.

The Direct Marketing Association has researched consumer attitudes towards privacy, data protection and data exchange in 2012 and 2015. This article presents findings from the most recent research wave, together with trend analysis comparing the current with the previous report. It finds that consumers show a growing acceptance of the need to exchange their personal information in return for access to services.

This article explores the applicability of some ideas from the world of competitive information and strategy to direct and digital marketing. It is based on the writer’s experience of working in both areas, particularly in customer insight. It first explores some of the key ideas of competitive strategy, including those derived from learning about national challenges (the case of Japan Inc. v USA Inc.) and warfare, and then considers how the resulting ideas might be applied to the winning of new customers and defence of existing customers in the digital marketing world.

Studies over the years have shown that business-to-business (B2B) software (and to some extent websites) does not deliver the same experience as its business-to-consumer (B2C) counterparts. This piece addresses the need to consider UX more in the process of creation in B2B, some of the inherent problems in B2B UX, followed by some practical solutions.

The success of marketing automation investments depends on information technology (IT) delivery possibilities being effectively linked to marketing business needs. Innovators, however, have run into problems with collaboration between marketing and IT, which has impacted the effectiveness of the delivery of these IT-enabled projects. Addressing these problems has provided the impetus for this study, which has made use of established frameworks. However, instead of focusing on new product development in large manufacturing firms — the typical context for previous research — this study has explored the business context of marketing innovations, considering projects that are IT-based services, rather than the physical products considered in previous research. Exploratory research of eleven firms consistently found problems with collaboration between marketing and IT departments, with subsequent impacts on the delivery of IT-enabled innovations. All the firms acknowledged interpretative barriers to collaboration and employed a variety of different tactics to overcome them. The key implication of the study’s findings is that the success of marketing automation projects can be improved by dealing explicitly with interpretative barriers to collaboration. This paper offers suggestions for a framework to describe the barriers, possible mitigation tactics and direction for further research.

Marketing departments have been faced with an explosion in the number of technology solutions on offer to support their activities. This article offers practical lessons on what to consider before and during the adoption of marketing automation solutions.

Most business-to-business marketers rely on email as a core channel in their campaigns. With a high degree of clutter, ensuring your message gets delivered, opened and acted on is critical. This article offers some practical advice on techniques that can improve the effectiveness of email.

Marketing is constantly challenged by sales to generate high-quality leads. This can turn into a focus on internal needs and processes, such as new marketing automation solutions, rather than understanding what prospects need and how this can be used to turn them into customers. This article discusses the role that technology can play in business transformation and concludes with an interview with a client, Sophos, that has successfully introduced marketing automation while keeping its eye on the marketplace.

Progress is being made on the proposed European General Data Protection Regulation, which is now expected to come into force in 2017/18. This article considers the issues that remain to be resolved and offers ten top tips for marketers to prepare for the new legal framework.

Marketers have been focusing on outputs that deliver an immediate impact, such as content and creative. But if marketing wants to take its rightful place at the boardroom table, it needs to look seriously at the impact it can have on the organization’s technology. This article considers where the focus for marketers should be placed within the realm of IT.

With the emergence of the interactive web (or Web 2.0), social media applications gained enormous popularity among internet users, forcing businesses to adapt their marketing strategies and engage with social media as part of their marketing toolbox. Social media has empowered the public and weakened the position of businesses by exposing them to negative publicity, customer attacks and reputation damage. This study analyses the threat of social media to corporate reputation, which can be damaged by three different actors: the customer, the employee and the corporation itself. We review the literature on the impact of each of these actors and assess the findings by means of real-life cases. On the basis of these findings, social media reputation threats are discussed in light of corporate response strategies. The results indicate that organizations need to develop a portfolio of response strategies with several approaches, specifically relating to each of the three actors of reputation damage — the best policy for businesses to successfully manage their reputation is to create an organization capable of managing the risks to corporate reputation arising from employees and the corporation itself. The real-life cases indicate a lack of organizational knowledge on how to manage social media risks effectively, highlighting the need for businesses to update their knowledge on using social media as part of their marketing toolbox. Finally, the various response strategies are classified according to the source of the reputation threat.

This article focuses on the competitiveness of the consumer telecommunications industry. It explains how the telecommunications industry has changed and how it is merging or intersecting with other industries, such as information technology, media and financial service; how differences between products have emerged; and the effect of these differences on competition. It shows how technological change creates benefits for consumers, but also opportunities for companies to reduce competition. It concludes with a discussion of why and how regulators act.

To help offset the costs brought on by insuring previously uninsurable consumers, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) needed adequate enrolments of millennials. To engage with this tech-savvy cohort, the Obama administration had to think outside traditional media and build a robust presence in social media. The present article provides a historical account of how the ACA was promoted to millennials using social media. In turn, it provides an example of how social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and strategies, including hashtag and virality campaigns, can be used to promote public policy adoption.

In recent years, various institutions have adopted the use of two-dimensional bar codes, also known as QR (quick response) codes, for encoding information such as URLs that can be read by smartphones, digital tablets and other electronic devices. These codes can serve as a vehicle to evoke a consumer response or some type of behaviour. Their main benefit is that users of smartphones are alleviated from the tedious task of typing and searching to access information. This paper provides the results of a survey study of college students’ awareness and use of QR codes. The findings indicate that the purpose of usage is significantly related to QR code usage rate. Practical users utilize QR codes more than experiential users and there is a positive relationship between electronic device ownership and QR code usage. Interestingly, being an early adopter has a negative relationship with QR code usage. Additionally, perceived usefulness of the QR code and up-to-date electronic device knowledge do not have significant relationships with QR code usage rate.

The DMA with its insight partner fast.MAP and sponsor dbsdata has published the latest results of its email tracking research series. The results are from the sixth wave of the email tracking survey, which explores consumer attitudes and trends for email marketing in the United Kingdom. This article covers findings from the new questions that were added in the most recent offering of the survey and highlights some important trends across the averages reported year-on-year.

Universities face a significant impact on their resources from unreturned books and unpaid library fines. Standard warning letters have proved ineffective at improving debt recovery. This case study outlines a copywriting test run by the Wales Centre for Behaviour Change for Bangor University Library and Archives Service that showed that a warmer tone of voice resulted in better debt recovery rates.

Marketing is operating within a complex and rapidly evolving ecosystem that combines internal and external resources. This article considers the elements that are in play and how they are affecting the way in which marketers themselves need to evolve.

The dawn of the age of Web 2.0 technologies has completely transformed interpersonal interactions and communications worldwide. Connectivity, convergence, collaboration and transparency provided by these socio-digital platforms has led to the burgeoning of virtual communities (VCs), the dynamic and vibrant online social universe according unprecedented opportunities for social interactions. Absence of any political, geographical and temporal boundaries has endeared these platforms to ‘netizens’ worldwide. Tremendous potential offered by Web 2.0 also lured marketers to these platforms where they are experimenting with great success. The increased usage of VCs by customers as well as marketers makes them a fit case to explore the dynamics underlying their adoption and to unearth the marketing implications of the same in Indian perspective. Applying convenience sampling techniques, primary data were collected from tourists visiting various well-known tourist attractions in Varanasi City, Uttar Pradesh, India. Using a survey, 104 responses were collected and subjected to exploratory factor analysis and five factors influencing the espousal of VCs in the Indian context were isolated. It is hoped that the research will be helpful to marketers as it provides insights into the adaptation of VCs as per the customers’ requirements and the effective integration of VCs into the marketing strategy. This in turn may help with enhanced customer attention, customer engagement and customer retention.

This article draws on interviews with influencers in the retail industry to look at how the next stage in the digital revolution is reshaping the future for retail leadership.

The DMA collects data on email marketing campaigns from email service providers to gain an insight into trends and usage types. This article looks at some of the key findings from the report, covering strategic intention, personalization and segmentation.

As mobile has become the first screen for so many consumers, marketers are asking how to obtain a better picture of the customer journey and what that might mean for their experience. This article reports on an international survey researching the power of voice in marketing, what data matters, how voice is valued by the consumer, and what marketers and brands can do to enhance the customer experience.

Customer insight is a widely used term — but also a misused one. This article considers the core components, both defining and technical, for a customer insight function that will lead to genuine business performance improvements.

When it comes to how best to spend a marketing budget, marketers are probably not short of advice. Agencies, media planners, product managers, finance directors and channel managers can all try to influence their decisions and, in some cases, dogmatically state what is the ‘right’ approach. The question, however, is whether they are giving marketers the best impartial and objective advice — and how to know whether they are right or wrong.

With the growth of big data, there is a risk of data management costs increasing before the business has seen any value from these new sources. This article outlines an approach to data management optimization that increases the volume of data being analysed, while raising the likelihood of realizing its value and reducing the risks of building a full-scale data warehouse.

The existence of choice overload in the behaviour of online consumers is investigated through an experimental product category (electronic pencil sharpeners) on a fully functional online retail website for office supplies that was created for the field experiment. Emails were sent to potential customers with an assortment of product descriptions and links that led to a product category landing page on the retail website where visitors were then presented with an assortment of products. We find that the likelihood of click-through (either in the email or on the landing page) at first increases with the number of choices presented and then decreases consistent with choice overload. However, we also find that click-through subsequently increases as the number of choices increases after overload occurs. This suggests that another effect is also at work in the choice situations. We provide an explanation and evidence for this post-decline increase in click-through — specifically, as the number of link choices increases, not only does choice overload increase, but also the promise of richer information, which can help resolve or reduce the overload for the mere ‘low cost’ of a click.

Publishers are responding to the challenges of the new digital platforms for content with an enhanced focused on data and data skills. This article reports on the results of the sixth annual survey of AOP members about their investment plans, pressures on their businesses and distribution strategies.

Twitter has become a favourite social media vehicle for sports organizations looking to connect with fans. Less is known, however, about the value of tweets for the fans themselves. This research is a preliminary investigation into assessing this value by attempting to classify sports tweets from the fan perspective, and determining whether there is a relationship between value and team identification (TI). Results revealed that TI significantly influences how much people value specific categories of sports tweets. Future avenues for research are suggested.

A dual market exists for training — digital marketers who need to grasp the full breadth of both online and offline activity and conventional marketers who need to skill-up for the digital realm. This article considers the differing needs of these groups and how well existing training resources are meeting them.