Marketing: Customer Relationships, Social Responsibility, Networks, Internal Branding, Word of Mouth

How do you effectively manage relationships between customers and organisations in offline and online environments?  How can you identify the right customers and manage your relationships with them in the best possible way? How do you manage your internal relationships to ensure employees engage with and support your brand? What decisions should organisational leaders make and what practices must they adopt so their market entry strategies have useful business outcomes? This research area focuses on how organisations can foster relationships with all stakeholders to successfully market products and services through engaged communication across multiple networks and environments. 

Research Streams

Relationships in Marketing

As with all human activity, marketing occurs within the context of social relationships. These relationships have a direct and indirect impact on how people work, interact and react as leaders, employees and customers.

This stream of research investigates the impact of organisational relationships on customers, how strong relationships are created and affect customer behaviour, and the importance of these relationships to an organisation’s bottom line.

Research collaborations in this area span the tourism, allied health and retail sectors. Results clearly demonstrate that employees who have a strong relationship with the organisation they work for are more positive towards, committed to and engaged with their role, employer and customers. These results also illustrate that relational leadership styles, ethical cultures and internal marketing efforts are strong enablers of an organisation’s ability to develop strong relationships with all stakeholders.

Social Customer Relationship Management

This stream of research investigates the impact of social CRM tools and techniques, such as Web 2.0 Facebook, Twitter and viral marketing, and examines developing social media trends and issues.

Corporate Brand Strategy and Social Responsibility

This stream of research examines how corporate social responsibility relates to corporate and brand strategy, and product development. It emphasises how corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives are perceived within organisations and how these perceptions may differ for external stakeholders, such as customers, distributors and investors. 

The practices an organisation requires to implement, develop, manage and sustain socially responsible and green marketing strategies, such as marketing and encouraging continued investment into green energy solutions, are also examined.  

Social Network Perspective in Marketing

This stream of research focuses on understanding the causes, types and consequences of social interactions in marketplaces and how firms can actively manage these.

To clarify the complexity of social interaction, the research integrates theories from a wide range of disciplines including sociology, social-psychology, consumer behaviour, epidemiology, and social network theory. 

Sound theoretical frameworks enable thorough analysis of current market challenges and innovative solutions that contribute to marketing theory and best practice to be developed.

Industry collaborations driven by this research include an intervention measuring the reach and impact of word of mouth marketing campaigns, an online referral project that optimised the acquisition and retention efforts of a social commerce entity, and a project that analysed the corporate and individual use of social media during emergency and crisis situations.

International Market Entry Strategies

This stream of research examines how organisational leaders and managers make decisions when developing and implementing entry strategies in the international market. 

It examines how organisations can ensure an entry strategy matures into a sustainable set of practices that support successful and innovative business outcomes across a complex, multicultural and uncertain landscape. 

 

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