Relationship marketing

An estimated 90% of U.S. companies including Tesla, 3M, McDonald’s, and UnitedHealth Group use social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat to connect with consumers and form community around their brands; yet little is known about the effects of different social media structures on consumer-brand relationships. The purpose of this research is to understand the unique nature of firm-hosted online brand communities on social networking sites and how they can be used to retain customers.
We review the literature on online brand communities as a tool for building relationships and apply network theory to understanding firm-hosted online brand communities on social networking sites. Relationship marketing provides a framework for how consumer-brand relationships are developed, built, and maintained. Network theory explains how different network structures interact with network processes to produce specific outcomes for individuals and groups.

Personalized advertising represents an emerging trend in online advertising. Using
enhanced data collection techniques, marketers can craft seemingly made to order
advertisements tailored to specific individuals. In turn, this should lead to advertisements
that are more relevant for consumers and more effective for marketers. Therefore,
personalized advertising has the potential to benefit both consumers and firms alike.
However, consumer acceptance of the technique remains a huge hurdle, as many
consumers seem uncomfortable with the practice due in part to privacy concerns over the
vast amounts of data collected and analyzed when generating personalized
advertisements. Therefore, it is critical to garner a better understanding of consumers’
attitudes towards personalized advertising in order to be able to use those insights to
alleviate consumer privacy concerns. The purpose of this research is to work towards developing a more thorough understanding of consumers’ attitudes towards personalized advertising by exploring the antecedents and outcomes of those attitudes. In particular, we examine what factors
determine whether personalized advertising is perceived favorably vs. invasively by
consumers and what effects those perceptions have on consumers’ attitudes and
intentions. The research lends contributions to academicians, marketing practitioners, and
consumers by helping to achieve an increased understanding of personalized
advertising’s impact on consumers’ perceptions. The empirical study employed in this research utilizes a conceptual framework that integrates privacy calculus theory with previous research on invasiveness, advertising acceptance, and innovation adoption. In addition, this research contributes to the marketing and information privacy literatures by making a theoretical connection between perceived invasiveness and its relationship with privacy concerns, as well as its impact on consumers’ attitudes and behavioral intentions. The results from the empirical
research reveal that a number of constructs, such as perceived invasiveness, privacy
concerns, perceived usefulness, and consumer innovativeness demonstrate significant
relationships with consumers attitudes and behavioral intentions in the context of
personalized advertising. Implications for managers, researchers, and consumers are
discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on viral advertising and study the conditions under which ads become viral, how they are intentionally transmitted by consumers to their social network and their relationship with classical advertising variables, such as attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand and purchase intention of the consumer. We first analyze studies focusing on different aspects of the viral communication, "electronic word-of-mouth", "word-of-mouse", "viral marketing" and "buzz" in order to clarify the concept of viral advertising. After clarifying the viral advertising concept, the project analyzes the viral process and its main antecedents and influencers, by taking into consideration emotional and ad appeals theories. The results show that ad appeals influence attitude toward the ad and viral intentions, with humor being the most significant appeal in the context of viral advertising. The study also focuses on the social aspects of advertising and consumption , including influential differences related to the source of the message, social influencers analyzed in the socialization literature, such as family and peers, the tie strength element from the social network theory and consumer market maven traits. The findings show the significance of family communication and market maven characteristics in relation to consumers' viral intentions. We then integrate our key variable, viral intentions, in a classical advertising framework based on attitudes theory and their influence on behavioral intentions. The results confirm previously studied relationships between attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand and purchase intentions.

The ability to understand the individuals that we deal with on a daily basis can give anyone who focuses on this knowledge a competitive advantage in today's business world. In today's fast paced and globally expanding business world, it is critical to explore innovative approaches that will facilitate the process and time it typically takes to establish business relationships. When it is imperative to quickly create a business relationship between individuals that are unknown to each other, identifying the city or region of the individual with whom a relationship is being formed and understanding that culture will help build a common ground which will facilitate and enhance the newly established working relationship. This paper shows how this can be achieved.