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- Brown, Terrence, 1962-
(author)
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An Evaluation of Crowdsourcing as a Tool for Marketing Activities
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Advances in technology and social media have facilitated the rapid development of crowdsourcing as an innovative tool within the field of marketing. This has driven researchers to investigate more deeply the phenomenon of crowdsourcing as a marketing innovation. The overall purpose of this thesis is expressed as: To explore and describe the use of crowdsourcing within the field of marketing. More specifically, the primary purpose of the thesis is to understand better - How crowdsourcing can be used as a marketing tool. This thesis aims to illuminate the gap in the extant marketing literature by reviewing current academic knowledge surrounding crowdsourcing and marketing. The use of the crowd as a marketing tool is growing primarily because of the advent of the Internet; however, as technology continues to advance the possibilities, challenges and side effects of crowdsourcing also change. These also need to be investigated continually. More specifically as digital marketing moves from a Web 2.0 environment to a Web 3.0 environment there will be new opportunities as well as pitfalls. As a result, new and relevant marketing problems exist at the nexus of crowdsourcing and marketing.The research problem is sub-divided into the following four research questions:RQ1: To what extent are crowdfunding platforms accessible to organizations as a marketing channel and, if so, what role can these platforms play?RQ2: How will the shift from Web 2.0 (and active-user input) to Web 3.0(and passive-data/sensor–based input) impact the new opportunities/product development process?RQ3: How can user-generated content help firms make strategic decisions about new business opportunities? RQ4: How is the evolution of crowdsourcing impacting information externalities and consumer privacy and how is this impacting marketing? This research is further divided into two sections. The first part investigates marketing activities specifically new opportunities/product development, advertising and promotion, and marketing research. The second section focuses on one of the possible repercussions of crowdsourcing in the marketing process. Most research on crowdsourcing focuses on the first section (i.e., the marketing activities) and how crowdsourcing is a positive marketing tool. Much less research aims its attention on the consequences and/or potential negative aspects of crowdsourcing.This thesis consists of two published papers and two studies. Each project handles one of research questions. The first two papers and the first study focus on three marketing activities (i.e., advertising, promotion and sales, new product and service development, and market research). The second study focuses on one of the possible consequences of the growth of crowdsourcing as a tool in the marketing process.While each paper and study has its own individual contributions, the overall contribution of this study is multi-fold. First, it develops a definition of crowdsourcing as: a tool or process by which the firm can increase or expand the resources to which it has access to by using the collective effort of a group of individuals or organizations. Second, as a result of these four research projects, crowdsourcing can further be seen as a situational, contextual and flexible tool that can be used in many different organizational contexts. The specific context for this thesis is marketing and as a result, crowdsourcing can play a wide variety of marketing roles.
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| 2. |
- Deraz, Hossam, 1971-
(author)
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Social Networking Sites – Consumers’ assessment of the value of advertisements (Extended Model)
- 2018
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In light of the identified shortcomings in the earlier studies of consumers’ assessment of advertisement value on social networking sites, and the relative importance of explaining advertisement value, the overall purpose of this dissertation is to develop and empirically test a conceptual framework that can advance knowledge and increase our understanding of how online consumers assess the value of advertisements on social networking sites. In reference to this purpose, this doctoral dissertation has sought to answer the following overarching research question: What are the relevant variables that predict online consumers’ assessment of advertisement value on social networking sites, and how do these variables affect their assessment?To achieve the purpose of this study and to answer its overarching research question, a mixed method approach was used, adapting both quantitative and qualitative methods. A sequential explanatory strategy using mixed methods was the primary approach used to explain and interpret the quantitative results, by collecting and analyzing follow-up qualitative data. Consequently, this study started by doing a systematic literature review to identify the related factors, followed by a conceptual study to provide an extended conceptual framework that connected consumer beliefs to their sources of gratifications from using SNSs. That conceptual framework was partially examined in three survey papers to test the effects of its five belief factors (information value, entertainment value, irritation value, interactivity value, and credibility value) on assesments of advertisement value on SNSs. The three survey papers found that these five belief factors have significant effects on assessments of advertisement value on social networking sites. However, those effects varied according to consumers’ cultural backgrounds. The three survey papers were then followed by a qualitative focus group study to give a deeper explanation, and to discover the underlying reasons behind consumers’ assessment of advertisement value. That focus group study confirmed the role of culture in assessing the value of advertisements, and it gave deeper explanations behind the reasons for that variance in assessments of advertisement value within the context of social networking sites from one research population to another. In general, this study contributes to the understanding of consumers’ assessments of advertisements on social networking sites. It offers a new approach by connecting consumers’ gratifications from using social networking sites to their assessment of advertisement value. In turn, it helps to reflect a number of valuable insights that can be utilized by both researchers and marketers in order to understand how the addressed factors enhance consumers’ assessments by testing the contribution of credibility, interactivity value, social influence, pre-purchase search motivation, and cultural backgrounds, in addition to previously tested variables: information value, entertainment value, and irritation value.
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