Category: Uncategorized

A sad story of social networking

On 25 March 2010, a 15-year-old schoolboy was murdered in a busy London railway station. It was a brutal attack, played out in public, in broad daylight. Now that the trials have taken place, leading on twenty teenagers being charged with murder, details are starting to emerge about the days and hours leading up to … Continue reading A sad story of social networking

Product testing the Valium way

An opinion piece on the New York Times earlier this month described how marketers helped popularise the use of psychoactive drugs in 1960s’ America. Robin M Henig wrote: "How did Roche convince physicians that it was O.K. to offer their patients a bottled form of serenity? How did the physicians persuade their patients? And how … Continue reading Product testing the Valium way

Book review: Marketing Accountability by McDonald and Mouncey

In my job, I often need to review books. As the focus of this blog is on the practical application of marketing theory, I thought that it would be a useful addition to the blog if I distilled the messages of some of those books here, too. Hence, I am starting a new rubric: short … Continue reading Book review: Marketing Accountability by McDonald and Mouncey

Invitation to participate in MSc research: social engagement and loyalty in fashion retail

Mia Bruce is one of my bright students, soon to graduate from the MSc eMarketing at Oxford Brookes University. She is, now, working on her dissertation, looking at the relationship between social engagement and loyalty in the fashion retail industry. Can you help her?   If you ‘liked’ the Facebook pages for H&M or Zara, … Continue reading Invitation to participate in MSc research: social engagement and loyalty in fashion retail

Research project “Taking Liberties” – practitioner reports available

For the past couple of years I have been working with colleagues from the Open University on a research project looking at the uses of commercial data for national security purposes. The project was sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust and was motivated by the observation that, increasingly, commercial organisations are asked to act on behalf … Continue reading Research project “Taking Liberties” – practitioner reports available

Emerging applications of social media in customer management

This week takes place the International Colloquium on Relationship Marketing (ICRM 2012), now in its 12th edition. Moira Clark, Paul Fennemore and I have a paper at this colloquium. It reports on our investigation of organisation’s emergent use of social media in customer management. We conducted 28 interviews with senior marketing executives in a broad range … Continue reading Emerging applications of social media in customer management

I am going back to school

That’s right. I am going back to the ‘learner’s seat’. I joined a course on Social Network Analysis at Coursera.   I am familiar with Social Network Theory and even used it in the past, but I don’t really know how to model social networks. So, this will be a very important addition to my … Continue reading I am going back to school