Marketing Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/8830

Browse

Browsing Marketing Theses and Dissertations by Author "Beck, Joshua"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Consumer Engagement in the Digital Era
    (University of Oregon, 2024-01-10) Tran, Chi; Beck, Joshua
    The past few decades have witnessed massive expansion of technology infrastructure and digital devices. As technological advancement continues to upend many existing social and business norms, it fundamentally changes how we as consumers participate in the marketplace: from the way we communicate and interact with each other and with companies to the way we are exposed to different identities while continuously developing and maintaining our own in the digital age. In this dissertation, I investigate how consumers view and react to minority identities and how we strive to protect our own personal information as we become active members of the digital world. Building on foundational theories in sociology, consumer psychology and marketing strategy and utilizing a multi-method approach (econometrics models, text analysis and experiments), this two-essay dissertation strives to provide insights for market stakeholders (consumers, marketers, policymakers) who are navigating a digitally advanced, increasingly diverse and complex demographic and sociopolitical environment.Essay I (“Shifting Frames: How #MeToo Shaped Consumers’ Movie-Going Decisions”; under review at the Journal of Marketing) capitalizes on a rich data set of top 1500 performing movies from 2010 to 2019 and investigates how consumers perceive and respond to marginalized identities in an increasingly diverse and digitally driven world. Specifically, this first essay investigates how major social justice movements that primarily aim to change the narratives around marginalized identities could spill over to affect many other consumer spending decisions. Essay II (“Feeling Violated: How and When Privacy Violations Produce Commensurate Consumer Responses;” in preparation for 3rd round revision at the Journal of Consumer Research) studies how consumers strive to protect their personal identity and information in the pervasive digital environment.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Stakeholder Implications of Corporate Sociopolitical Activism
    (University of Oregon, 2022-10-26) Edelblum, Andrew; Beck, Joshua
    Today’s dynamic market landscape affects and is affected by a variety of significant cultural shifts and touchstones, from global warming and racial injustice, to voter disenfranchisement and the Covid-19 pandemic. In the current dissertation, I examine how firms have expanded their institutional role to address these issues and communicate a sense of moral engagement linked to their brands. I associate these behaviors with a centralized phenomenon—corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA)—which reflects firms’ public speech or actions focused on polarizing issues of societal concern. Such shifts in business behavior coincide with fieldwide conversations among practitioners and scholars about the implied responsibility for broadened social engagement. However, despite the increasing prominence of CSA in the marketplace, the practice has only recently received scholarly attention. In turn, the current dissertation seeks to examine and conceptualize the theoretical, practical, and strategic implications of firms’ activist efforts using a multi-methodological approach. First, Essay I (“‘Focus on Our Cause: How Brand Activism Helps and Hurts Activist Organizations”; under third-round review at the Journal of Consumer Research) utilizes randomized controlled experiments with consequential outcomes to chart the impact of brand activism on consumers’ charitable giving to activist organizations. Next, Essay II (“An Institutional View of Investor Response to Corporate Sociopolitical Activism”; manuscript in progress; targeting the Journal of Marketing) is an event study that examines the moderating effects of issue legitimacy on stock market response to market leaders’ activist efforts.