Manisha Mathur, Assistant Professor of Marketing wins award

Manisha Mathur, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Marketing, attended the Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Conference.  Dr. Mathur received the “Thomas Ponzurick Top Paper in Conference Award” in addition to the “Best Paper in Track” award.

The Association of Marketing Theory and Practice is an international academic marketing conference that focuses on bringing together both academic theory and real world marketing practices. The authors of Best Papers are given special consideration for review in a refereed journal. Her paper titled, “Brand Promotions via Social Media Advocacy: Strategic Implications for Improving Brand Equity”, single author, received the 2017 Best Paper in Track: Promotion/Retailing.

Her paper examines that though tremendous opportunities through social media are alluring, businesses are still finding it hard to penetrate the clique of customer interactions that are largely personal in nature. The effective social media marketing strategy implementation depends on understanding customers and their behavior, and incorporating that information in marketing strategy formulation. This study takes a significant leap forward in this direction. Theoretically grounded in two different fields-the field of sociology in combination with the field of relationship marketing, this study develops a conceptual model of optimizing social media aspects of customers. The current study uses seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) statistical technique to demonstrate how a customer’s engagement and trust on social media, and perception of review helpfulness influence customer advocacy of brands, which ultimately influences a brand’s equity. This paper concludes with important implications for marketers.