Capstone Blog Post (2/2)

Potential Capstone Project Subject

The potential topic that I would like to use for my capstone assignment is the effect that the digital world has had on the branding and marketing efforts for certain companies and people.  I would like to narrow my final subjects down to 4-5 different subjects.  I was hoping to use one to two musicians, one restaurant chain, one sports team and and one other actor or political figure as the topics of my assignment.  Since I am trying to get into the field digital business development and marketing, I wanted to take this opportunity to really dig into specific instances of digital branding. Looking to learn more about business tactics implemented in the digital space and how they impact both brand awareness as well as the company or subjects success.

The question I want to hopefully find the answer to in my research is “How can the digital space effect brands reputation and how this can also translates to overall “business” performance”  While the wording of the question may need some tweaking, my main goal here is to attempt to see how a brand/artist/company can be affected from a business standpoint (either positively or negatively) from their presence in the digital space.  The idea might need some tweaking also, but I am hoping to keep the project along these lines.  I think it is quite interesting how a movement behind a certain brand or person can gain or lose so much from what they do in a digital space.  I want to see what has worked best in the past and what hasn’t.  Since I want to try to go into the field I think it would be valuable to get a sense for the different tactics.  In addition to that, being able to learn more about how to measure the effectiveness of the subject’s digital strategy efforts I also think will help me in the future.

The tricky part now becomes how exactly I plan on doing this.  There are so many different options in terms of subjects that I can use in order to get the best information possible but I have already started narrowing my choices down.  For the one to two musicians that I wanted to use, I am considering using record labels rather than individual artists.  I chose to do this just because it will most likely be easier to measure their performance from a business perspective but I am also still considering using specific artists (maybe one whose digital efforts have led success and one whose efforts have not) for my capstone project.  As for the restaurant chain that I wanted to use, I was leaning towards Taco Bell.  I chose Taco Bell simply because I see their  digital efforts all the time and I think they do a great job harnessing their digital presence into positive relationships with their consumers. Lastly, for the political figure I would like to use, I would want to track back to President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.  Looking back on it now this campaign heavily utilized the digital space as a platform to spread the message for President Obama.  I would really like to try and compare the “digital stats” to those of John McCain and possibly translate to how much of a difference it made in the final decision.  Although I’m considering dropping this one because it isn’t very business related.

Hopefully, as the class moves along the topic I want to research as well as how to go about doing the research will smooth itself out.  I am really hoping to use this project in the future as a part of my professional portfolio or even just as a jumping off point to really diving deep into this subject.  In the mean time, I will continue to figure out how I want this project to go and what other questions I want to ask.

My 3 Google Scholar Articles

Article 1 – Branding In The Digital Age, By David C. Edelman

http://saberfazermarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Branding-in-the-Digital-Age.pdf

The keyword for this article is “digital branding”.  The question that is being asked is “How do you best establish your brand in the digital world”  while also identifying where certain brands are lacking in the digital world.  The methods that they used varied throughout the article, and unfortunately it seemed to be more of a guide rather than offering any real numerical findings.  Still, I think that that it provides some good insight into what strategies you can implement in order to create a solid digital branding campaign.  I hope to use this for both my future potential career as a digital strategist, as well as a baseline for techniques to use for comparison to the campaigns I plan on analyze for the final project.

Article 2 – Market Share, Profit Margin, and Marketing Efficiency of early movers, bricks & clicks and specialists in e-commerce.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.315.345&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The keywords for this article were “Ecommerce”, “Branding”, and “Profit”  The research addresses 3 different strategic marketing issues in e-commerce they are:

1. Whether there are early mover advantages in the e-commerce context
2. How “Bricks + Clicks” combinations perform in Internet commerce as compared with “pure-plays”
3. Do specialist perform better than generalists in an e-commerce setting.

In order to answer these questions the authors have analyzed data from 42 major public online retailers and created a multilevel repeated-measures model to calculate the results.  In regards to the first question, from the results we can conclude that early movers do not have have a significant advantage in market share.  For the second question, bricks and clicks do in fact possess a higher market share as well as a higher marketing efficiency compared to pure plays.  Lastly, for the third question, the study concluded specialists can become just as successful as generalists in an e-commerce setting.  As for my project, this may be harder to work in just because it seems to focus more on profit rather than branding and its efforts to lead to this profit.  None the less, it still has some useful information I can use to further my professional knowledge.

Article 3 – E-Business Development For Competitive Advantages – A Case Study

http://staffweb.hkbu.edu.hk/vwschow/Case-study.pdf

The keywords for this article were “Digital” and “Business Development” . Much like the first article, this article also does not ask a specific question, but rather analyzes the potential growth of e-commerce platforms while also explaining the importance of innovation and gaining a competitive advantage. To determine what works best in regards to competitive advantage.  In the end the author concludes that best way to get a competitive advantage requires an effectively planned and executed strategy. With this, it will be much easier for one to gain a competitive advantage in the e-commerce space.  Once again, this might be a little hard to work into my project as well, but it did provide with me some useful information that can be applied in my line of work in the future.