The rise of social media influencers (SMIs) across sectors and interest categories is ubiquitous. This is particularly true for lifestyle blogging linking to increased materialism and impact on consumption of fashion products and leisure services. SMIs are mostly defined by academic literature as opinion leaders who are "frequently able to influence others' attitudes or behaviors" (Tuten and Solomon, 2014). However, SMIs, as opposed to celebrities, journalists and politicians, are ordinary people who have managed to cultivate a following base on a social media platform as a result of knowledge, skill or expertise, or simply passion for certain subjects of interest. Not all SMIs but quite few today (numbers continue growing) are tuning passion for content creation and sharing into profit-making business. SMIs are therefore, entrepreneurial individuals who utlise social media to build a business. In branding literature SMIs are and have been studied as intermediary between audience and brands. However, to our knowledge no studies capture SMIs as business perspective. Hence, in this paper we aim to address this research gap by developing a substantive theory of curatorial logic. This working paper adopts a hybrid exploratory research methodology. Data analysis and discussion represent a work-in-progress phase of this study.
Brand alliances between the brands from different categories are increasingly becoming popular (Smarandescu, Rose and Wedell, 2013). This is particular relevant to the emerging countries context where multinational brands due to strong impact of cultural and country-specific political and economic governance policies are establishing cross-category brand alliances with local brands to gain brand success and customer loyalty. Existing studies investigated cross-category brand alliances according to the aspects of brand order, consumer ethnocentrism, the country of origin and brand familiarity. However, these studies primarily incorporate end-user impact factors in measuring and understanding the cross-category brand alliances performance. Brands as business perspective is required to understand the impacts of brand resources and attributes on the cross-category brand alliance. This study focuses on the cross-category brand alliances and attempts to develop a framework to measure the performance of cross-category brand alliances. The framework constructs are derived from Associative Network Memory (ANM) Model and Resource Based View (RBV) theories. The framework is developed by evaluating the interviews with the marketing managers of brands in the brand alliance case studies from an emerging country, Turkey.
PurposeMobile social media (MSM), an interaction, exchange of information and creation of user-generated content, mediated by mobile devices, is becoming the locomotive that drives forward evolution of the online world. Fewer academic studies have touched upon the MSM subject, with all the papers being of a conceptual nature to provide recommendations to business-to-business (B2B) firms. This paper aims to explore how B2B firms use MSM in reality.Design/methodology/approachThis paper adopts the grounded theory approach to analyse interviews conducted in 26 B2B firms representing the UK advertising and marketing sector. Interviewees represent key decision-makers who understand the aspects of mobile technology use in their firms. Eighteen firms stressed the importance of social media as a trigger to adopt mobile devices. Follow-up data collection in these 18 firms focus on strategic orientation, processes, routines and skills required for using MSM.FindingsThis paper found that marketing and advertising firms use MSM for branding, sensing market, managing relationships and developing content. MSM is treated by businesses as a strategic firm-specific capability that drives firms' competitiveness, where imitation of such capability by competitors is limited because MSM skills are specific to individuals within organisations and MSM routines are manifested as a result of firm-specific MSM skills' interactions.Originality/valueThis study is amongst the first to provide insights into B2B firms' practices of using MSM. Additionally, the research is novel because it discovers that MSM capability is developed as a result of the overlap between individuals' and organisational knowledge and memory, contradicting existing theory on the subject.
The democratisation made possible by social media presents leadership studies with an opportunity to re-evaluate the often-neglected role of power in leader–follower dynamics. Drawing on Critical Leadership Studies and using a hybrid qualitative methodology, we discover that relationships between social media leaders and followers are co-produced and largely accompanied by continuous shifts and re-negotiation of power between social media leaders and social media followers. We show that social media platforms and their metrics play an important role in such power shifts by granting equal access to communication whilst potentially tilting information asymmetries in favour of the follower. The study also shows how these relationships can affect and even pervert the leaders' problematic search for a 'true self'. From this observation we draw attention to wider challenges in the social media context, which poses important questions for the leadership field.
Persuasive, immersive and attention-grabbing elements of technology and personalised marketing content are widely embedded in interactive online marketing to engage and persuade usersto engage in more online interaction and transactions. This has the potential to pose a risk of excessive and obsessive use of technology, leading to behavioural addiction. Similarly, Internet gambling enables 24/7 accessibility, personalised and persuasive elements for marketing purposes, the capability of immersive and rewarding betting experience, enhanced privacy to facilitate perceived escape from the real world, and ease of transactions, which may potentially create an environment where individuals are more likely to chase losses and lose control. Evidence suggests Internet gambling is associated with higher risk of problematic gambling and gambling-related harm compared to landbased gambling (Effertz et al., 2018; Kairouz et al., 2012; Papineau et al., 2018; Wu et al., 2014). Gambling operators and governments have developed and implemented programs and policies (e.g., age restriction policy, deposit limit tools, self-exclusion programs) designed to promote Responsible Gambling (RG) and minimise gambling-related harm. Responsible and safer gambling is naturally associated with transparency. Transparency, as defined in this review, involves providing a customer with explicit information about chance of winning as well as other types of information that is shared by gambling operators. At the heart of RG efforts is informed decision making. The principle is to help individuals make informed choice by providing them with transparency in games and promotion materials. However, there is a distinct lack of consensus on what transparency should involve in RG practices, and no prior research has aimed at reviewing transparency in RG practices systematically. Informed by our narrative review of transparency in persuasive technology, immersive technology and online marketing (Wang et al., 2021) all of which are closely associated with the online gambling world, we advocate that RG-driven transparency involves multiple aspects such as user autonomy, system explainability and transparency in advertising. We consider transparency and explainability (or accountability) as an indivisible whole that promotes RG by facilitating communication and understanding of information for individuals to make informed choices. In the present research, we conducted a systematic review of literature in the RG domain using narrative synthesis to examine evidence relating to transparency in current RG practices in the gambling industry. This review did not intend to examine the effectiveness of specific RG tools or strategies or provide prescriptive legislative and corporate guidelines; instead, we focused on the fundamental aspects of transparency that should be considered and practised by industry for the benefit of individuals who gamble. In this review, we found that transparency issues have rarely been explored. Using sources from database searching, handsearching and grey literature, we included all types of articles (i.e., qualitative studies, quantitative studies, literature review, and position articles) in this review. Most empirical studies were focused on effectiveness of a specific RG tool or intervention; most review or position articles did not directly explore transparency issues or only involved specific aspects of transparency; and no systematic or non-systematic reviews of transparency in RG practices were found. Through this review, we conceptualised RG-driven transparency by categorising it into seven themes involved in or implied by the existing literature for a better understanding of what constitutes RGdriven transparency in games and promotion materials. These themes are Transparency of Information and Education for Safer Gambling (including fairness of games and gamblers' fallacy, potential risks and negative consequences, safer gambling cognition and behaviour, boundary between gaming and gambling), Transparency of RG Tools (including availability and accessibility of RG tools, effectiveness of RG tools, personalisation of RG strategies), Transparency of Data-driven Approaches and Persuasive Technologies (including purposes and benefits of using personal data, data usage and privacy protection, individual autonomy, algorithmic transparency, trade-off determination), Transparency in Advertising, Transparency of Corporate Social Responsibility and Individual Responsibility (including division of responsibility, gambling policy and staff training, CSR reporting and assessment), Transparency of Research Evidence and Funding Sources, and Design Considerations for Improving Transparency. We provided stakeholders (including gambling operators, regulators, researchers and individuals who gamble) with a checklist of recommendations for best practices in RG-driven transparency according to this review. In practice, all stakeholders should collaborate to facilitate individuals to make informed choices and achieve the objectives of responsible and safer gambling, as improving transparency requires effort from multiple parties. For example, using online gambling behaviour data for the purpose of promoting safer gambling and minimising gambling-related harm is highly promising. In order to provide interpretable information about models and algorithms used for individuals who will be affected or benefit from them, the gambling industry needs transparency and explainability of these models and algorithms from professionals and researchers in the first place. Professionals from multidisciplinary backgrounds such as Psychology, Computer science and HCI should collaborate to design the online RG information, RG tools and interventions in a way that can facilitate long-term sustainable positive behaviour change. Persuasive technologies to benefit users' positive, heathy behaviour change are usually designed and implemented in a short time period, however, both iterative design methods and longitudinal studies are necessary to ensure such technologies with the intervention strategies are supported by psychological theories and empirical studies to have actual benefits with minimised risks such as privacy issues and behavioural addiction. Future research is required to empirically validate the checklist of recommendations for improving RG-driven transparency and to address the trade-off issues related to transparency (e.g., how to balance transparency with user experience requirements or the good intent of persuasive technologies and RG interventions). Furthermore, more practicalities and detailed guidelines for gambling operators on how to embed RG-driven transparency into games and promotion materials are required with efforts from multiple stakeholders in future.
