When new tools of technology meet the rich resources of marketing research, brand stewards have the chance to rethink the ways they connect with their key customers. Our special package, “How Consumer Engagement is Reshaping Marketing”—an anchor to this first edition in our 56th year of publication—offers a full variety of perspectives on how academic thought leadership can enhance the practice of advertising and marketing.
In “How to Capture Consumer Experiences: A Context-Specific Approach to Measuring Engagement: Predicting Consumer Behavior across Qualitatively Different Experiences” (please see page 39), Northwestern University's Bobby J. Calder and Edward C. Malthouse join Mathew S. Isaac (Seattle University) to propose a new approach to measuring engagement that would be flexible enough to accommodate context-specific indicators of experiences without altering the higher order meaning of the engagement construct.
Engagement, they caution, is a multi-level construct that emerges from the thoughts and feelings about one or more rich experiences involved in reaching a personal goal. Given this definition, the three authors contend that any measure that seeks to truly measure engagement must attempt to capture these important goal-relevant experiences in a context-specific way.
Stockholm School of Economics' Karina T. Liljedal, in “The Effects of Advertising Consumer Co-Created New Products: A Brand-Alliance Framework Model Can Predict Perceptions about Co-Created Brands and Their Creators” (please see page 53), explores another aspect of consumer engagement with her study of what happens when co-created products are communicated through advertising to observing consumers—those who do not participate in the new-product co-creation. With lessons from the likes of Dell, Lego, McDonald's, Nike, and the Japanese consumer goods company Muji, Liljedal finds that brands can involve consumers in co-creation as a way of improving the success rate of new products. “In such cases,” she writes, “consumers participate in a collaborative new product-development activity in which they actively contribute and select the content of a new product offering.”
But the success rate may depend on the customer's experience with the product or service: “The effects of this advertising largely are due to how non-participating consumers perceive the co-creating consumers' ability to co-create the new product…. Advertising that includes information on both a co-creating product brand and its co-creating consumers will affect perceptions of the firm's innovation ability, attitudes toward the brand and the product, and purchase intentions.”
“Measuring Consumers' Engagement with Brand-Related Social-Media Content: Development and Validation of a Scale That Identifies Levels of Social-Media Engagement with Brands” (please see page 64), draws the fine line between measuring engagement with brand-related social-media content rather than engagement with the brand per se and, as such, defines and measures “engagement” as a behavioral construct rather than an affective/cognitive and behavioral one.
Authors Bruno Schivinski (Nottingham Trent University), George Christodoulides (Birkbeck/University Of London), and Dariusz Dabrowski (Gdansk University of Technology) introduce a “Consumers' Engagement with Brand-Related Social-Media Content” scale that, they offer, provides “clear guidance” on the consuming, contributing, and creating dimensions of social media—or, in other words, a new means for auditing and tracking the effectiveness of social-media marketing.
The Internet has enabled a variety of engagement tools in recent years, such as crowdsourcing and crowdfunding among them. At California State University/Fullerton, Steven Chen, Sunil Thomas, and Chiranjeev Kohli have examined the latter with a regression-based study of a stratified random sample of 200 campaigns on Kickstarter.com. “What Really Makes a Promotional Campaign Succeed on a Crowdfunding Platform? Guilt, Utilitarian Products, Rewards, Emotional Messaging, and Fewer but Meaningful Rewards Drive Donations” (please see page 81) offers the results of their research.
The three authors write, “Marketers and advertisers who use crowdfunding as a means to develop (and promote) new products may benefit from a framework that helps them achieve their funding goals. Crowdfunding allows donors to engage in the early development of a business venture. Donors may feel like they are part of the bigger picture and may encourage others to participate through word-of-mouth and online sharing.”
The Journal of Advertising Research relies on the wisdom of a very select crowd. As John B. Ford, one of our two executive editors (whose day job is serving as eminent scholar/professor of marketing and international business at Old Dominion University's Strome College of Business), explains, “There is always a need for qualified reviewers, and we periodically ask researchers who are publishing their work in the field and practitioners that we know are working in promising areas of advertising to act as ‘Ad Hoc’ reviewers to give them a chance to review articles.”
Adds Jenni Romaniuk (our other executive editor who also serves as associate director [international] at the University of South Australia's Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science), “Our many ad hoc reviewers contribute by filling the knowledge and availability gaps in our Editorial Review Board. These reviewers often become future Editorial Review Board members, in recognition of their continued service.”
In truth, it's most often a thankless and usually anonymous task. But, as the Journal continues to look for ways to bring our readers the content they deserve, the Ad Hoc team, in Dr. Romaniuk's words, “provides an excellent way for new advertising researchers/practitioners to build experience in providing constructive, critical reviews and to get early exposure to some of the latest advances in academic research.”
To take some of the anonymity out of the process and honor the current Ad Hoc reviewers, we all thank:
Robert Jonathan Angell, Cardiff University; Paulo Mora Avila, Royal Holloway University of London; Jose Luis Ayala, University of Puerto Rico; Jennifer Lee Burton, High Point University; Danielle Chmielewski-Raimondo, University of Melbourne; Polymeros Chrysochou, Aarhus University; Marcel Corstjens, INSEAD; Frank Cotignola, News America Marketing; Esmeralda Crespo-Almendros, University of Granada; Micael Dahlén, Stockholm School of Economics; Robert East, Kingston Business School, London, and Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, UNISA; Troy Elias, University of Florida; Nicole Hartnett, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science; Hongwei He, University of Strathclyde; Jisu Huh, University of Minnesota; Yongick Jeong, Louisiana State University.
Thanks also to: Kiran Karande, Old Dominion University; Yeuseung Kim, DePaul University; Jin-Woo Kim, Georgia Southern University; Karen King; Michael S. LaTour, Ithaca College; Karina T. Liljedal, Stockholm School of Economics; Yuping Liu-Thompkins, Old Dominion University; Karen L. Mallia, University of South Carolina; Thomas Maronick, Towson University; Daniel McDuff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Adam J. Mills, Simon Fraser University; Magda Nenycz-Thiel, University of South Australia; Greg Nyilasy, University of Melbourne; Jim Nyce; Steve Oakes; Kathrynn Pounders, University of Texas at Austin; Melvin Prince, Southern Connecticut State University; Karen Robson, Simon Fraser University; Sara Rosengren, Stockholm School of Economics; Angeline Close Scheinbaum, University of Texas at Austin; Jaywant Singh, Kingston University; Harlan E. Spotts, Western New England University; Philip Stern, Loughborough University; David Strutton, University of North Texas; Leona Tam, University of Wollongong; Chuanyi Tang, Old Dominion University; Jacquie Tye; Daryl Weber, Consultant; Elaine Wallace, National University of Ireland, Galway; Sam Wright; Tien Ee Dominic Yeo, Hong Kong Baptist University; Moti Zviling, Netanya Academic College.
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Vol 56 Issue 1
