2020 Faculty Research Poster Session and Research Fair
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Browsing 2020 Faculty Research Poster Session and Research Fair by Author "Brooks, Mary E."
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Item Advercasting: The Effectiveness of Podcast Ads(WTAMU Cornette Library, 2020-03-05) Brooks, Mary E.Podcast listeners are on the upswing as our podcast series options. Today’s American listeners equal approximately 90 million monthly listeners (Midroll, 2019) who can choose amongst 750,000 shows and more than 30 million episodes (Winn, 2019). One reason for the large variety of podcast content is due to the lack of broadcasting regulations that are not mandated for podcasters (Henning, 2017). Moreover, the majority of podcasts are free of cost, portable, convenient, entertaining, educational, and have a storytelling quality that listeners crave. Henning (2017) states that podcasts also serve as a new business model for various organizations due to the prevalency of advertisers clamoring to get their messages into podcasts. This growth in podcast popularity has numerous implications for advertisers. Midroll conducted a survey about podcast listening habits where more than 150,000 active podcast listeners answered questions about their advertising preferences, regardless of medium. Results indicated that more than 50% of survey participants either sometimes or always avoided ads on television, billboards, radio and digital yet, 81% of participants revealed they are sometimes or always attentive to podcast ads (Midroll, 2019). What’s more, is that a majority of these listeners purchased a product due to an ad they heard on a favorite podcast. This study aims to extend the research on podcasting and advertising by exploring how advertising is perceived by listeners in terms of how they interact with ads, their advertising preferences, and their feelings of relatability between ad messaging and specific podcast content. Thus, the following research questions are posed: RQ1: How do listeners respond to advertising in podcasts (skip, watch, support, call-to-action variables)? RQ2: Where do listeners prefer advertising in a podcast (beginning, middle, end)? RQ3: What type of promotional messages do podcast listeners prefer? RQ4: How do listeners feel about advertising message congruency within podcast content? Previous research has been conducted about podcasts with advertising as a key ingredient in the articles, including advantages of podcast advertising for brands (Brands, 2005), more active listeners who are more likely to support brands that engage in podcast advertising (McClung & Johnson, 2010), and how independent podcasters use advertising for financial gain (Markman & Sawyer, 2014). This study differs in that its goal is to unveil the effectiveness of podcast advertising. While advertising industry publications, like AdWeek and AdAge, overflow with podcast advertising musings, this article will add to the academic literature within advertising and broadcasting, which is just beginning to expand.Item Framing Multilevel Marketing on Corporate Websites and Consultants' Instagram Posts(WTAMU Cornette Library, 2020-03-05) Huntington, Heidi; Brooks, Mary E.The rise of smartphone applications and related internet-based technologies has been accompanied by an increased interest in the so-called “gig economy” in which workers labor in one-off arrangements with no guarantee of continued employment. Some workers seek these arrangements for their flexibility or as a “side hustle,” while others may struggle to find other types of work (Abraham, Haltiwanger, Sandusky & Spletzer, 2018). At the same time, these and similar forms of creative labor via social media are valorized as being entrepreneurial (Duffy & Wissinger, 2017). Such digital entrepreneurship is often positioned as a way for women to “have it all” and balance work with traditional family life (Duffy & Hund, 2015). In recent years the networked aspects of social media have intersected with societal trends toward a gig economy to produce a rise in multilevel marketing companies (MLMs) that rely heavily on the internet to recruit and sell. Multilevel marketing is a subset of direct selling or network marketing approaches to doing business that relies on recruiting new participants in a complex system of uplines and downlines to move product. MLMs have existed for decades, and like current discourse around creative work on social media, have often used a rhetoric of entrepreneurship to attract participants and project legitimacy (Carl, 2004). Many of the most well-known MLMs, such as Avon and Mary Kay cosmetics, are targeted toward women and are sometimes framed as home-based businesses (Amundson, 2008). MLMs and related direct selling schemes are big business, generating over $35 billion in retail sales in 2018, with 6.2 million people acting as direct sellers, 75% of whom were women (Direct Selling Association, 2019). To date, there is limited research on the intersection of multilevel marketing, social media, and digital entrepreneurship. Given existing research that demonstrates the centrality of entrepreneurialism to MLMs’ framing of their legitimacy in order to attract potential independent consultants or sellers (Carl, 2004), the present study examines the websites of 10 active MLM companies to qualitatively identify and assess themes that emerge regarding how participation in the MLM is framed for potential sellers. Additionally, the study examines 200 public Instagram posts made by MLM consultants (sellers) in order to assess how these sellers frame their participation in the MLM for others, including whether and how these posts reflect similar or different themes, or frames, from those presented by the MLMs themselves. Doing so will help us to better understand the role of MLMs within the current media and economic environment. This study may also provide insight into gendered aspects of such digital entrepreneurialism. The following research questions are posed: RQ1: What themes emerge in how MLM companies use their websites to frame participation in the MLM for potential sellers as entrepreneurialism? RQ2: What themes emerge in how MLM consultants use their Instagram posts to frame their participation in the MLM as a form of entrepreneurialism?