1,720,997 research outputs found
Algoritmi di raccomandazione e reti di influenza implicite
No full textIl consumatore postmoderno è distante da forme di aggregazione sociale spesso come risultato dell’utilizzo delle differenti piattaforme di comunicazione e transazione. Ma grazie agli algoritmi che alimentano i sistemi di raccomandazione, si vengono a creare reti di influenza implicite, all’interno delle quali, gli utenti che assumono legami poco solidi con i vari vicinati rappresentano un opportunità per la diffusione delle
azioni di marketing
Arts Marketing: strumenti e modelli manageriali per la valorizzazione dei beni culturali
No full textQuale potrebbe essere il ruolo del marketing delle arti, a supporto di una crescita simbolica, valoriale ed economica? Quale approccio strutturato sarebbe necessario perseguire per generare reale valore sia per l’offerta che per la domanda e quali cambiamenti logico-organizzativi dovrebbero seguire per rendere possibile un ulteriore salto di qualità? È questo l’obiettivo del presente volume che propone agli operatori del settore un rafforzamento del binomio Marketing e Arte. Dal branding della struttura museale a quello dei beni artistici e culturali, dalla definizione delle strategie di comunicazione a quelle di prezzo. Una nuova sintesi di processi e metodi manageriali consolidati e innovativi utili a valorizzare le potenzialità degli Arts Brand e sintetizzati nel risultante Art Value Creation Journey, la metodologia introdotta nel libro con la finalità di orientare i lettori verso i processi di creazione e gestione del valore, oltre a considerare gli aspetti trasversali che intervengono nei vari punti di contatto tra impresa e visitatore. Il libro, inoltre, si arricchisce di numerosi casi reali, scritti da imprese impegnate nel settore, spazi di approfondimento e una ricerca estesa a docenti, manager e direttori di musei
Unveiling the effects of recommendation agents on online behaviour: An inquiry into the users’ decision-making process, implicit social networks and algorithms specialization
Full text linkIn the last few decades, the term “algorithm” has become central to the social sciences, albeit its roots are more consolidated and evolved. The origins of the term are indeed dated back to al-Khwārizmī – an ancient Persian mathematician – and to some Euclidean scripts (Striphas, 2015) to refer to a set of mathematical procedures and rules that iteratively transform a group of input in a predefined output (Gillespie, 2014). The profusion of the term and the subsequent application coincide with the development of the Internet and new information technologies (Arnoldi, 2015). Nowadays, this simultaneous processing of users’ information – sent often passively during online activities – is leveraged by companies to direct users to contents/items related to their interests. Importantly, the results of this activity are the videos presented to users on their homepage, the featured posts on social networks, the pop-up advertisements on the visited websites, the appearance order of birthdays of our contacts lists on Facebook and, in general, the majority of things that surrounds our digital existence (Airoldi, 2015).
Specifically, the recommendation agents (RAs), that are central to this dissertation, refer to a particular category of algorithms, which has been implemented on websites with the aim of recommending contents relevant to users and their interests. MovieLens was the precursor of such agents, a platform which automatically processed the opinions of the users (expressed in the form of ratings) to offer contents of interest to the target user (Konstan and Riedl, 2012). Such algorithms change users’ digital experience into a tailor-made path built according to their interests. The growth of e-commerce has led to the exponential implementation of RAs, which, today, are fully integrated in the websites and it is not uncommon to come across the well-known prepositions "you may also like” " or " users who bought this product also bought". The results underlying these prepositions are the result of association rules and mathematical calculations that act as a filter in contexts with enormous assortments (e.g. Amazon.com)(Lash, 2007; Beer, 2009). The main aim of RAs is the reproduction of word-of-mouth that typically occurs between individuals (Ansari, 2000) and, at the same time, they replace the role of "cultural intermediaries" which had the function of disseminating information on new media and / or cultural products (Morris, 2015). However, RAs are not non-evaluative (as might be expected from their mathematical nature), on the contrary they might create a "normalized" culture in which elements beyond the user's interest are excluded (Mackenzie, 2015). Such systems are beneficial for both service providers and users (Pu et al., 2011). They reduce search costs and facilitate the selection of items in online shopping (Hu et al., 2009) and improve the decision-making and decision quality (Pathak et al., 2010). As a tool for e-commerce, RAs improve revenues, as an effective means of selling more products (Pu et al., 2011).
Although computer science and information technology literature on RAs is extensive, it is still an under-researched topic in the marketing perspective. In the manifold literature on recommender agents, only few relevant contributions have been outlined by marketing scholars with the aim to understand the phenomenon from a consumer and a firm’s perspective. Although some topics have been clarified and explained in detail, to date there are still many questions about the effectiveness of RAs.
With the aim to contribute to the extant literature related to RAs, the present thesis collects 3 articles - in 3 chapters - and reflects the evolution of 3 years of investigation on the topic. The findings of Chapter I laid down the foundations for Chapter II and, in turn, the theoretical implications of the Chapter II for the Chapter III.
In Chapter I, I carried out a systematic literature review on the topic, in order to get an organized representation of the phenomenon assuming a 22-year timeframe research period from 2000 to 2022 based on 128 articles. The contributions were then classified according to two theoretical perspectives used by marketing researchers to analyse consumers in RAs- mediated environments, (1) cognitive psychology and (2) social psychology. Then, the potential similarities among the articles were assessed through a co-citation analysis and multidimensional scaling. I found 26 theoretical frameworks which are recurrently adopted by marketing scholars to conduct research on this topic and refer to three sub fields. The findings contribute to the extant literature by providing an updated understanding of the research on recommender agents.
According to the literature gaps found in the Chapter I, no contributions have been outlined to investigate the implicit social networks enabled by recommendation algorithms, the connection among users inside the network (i.e., neighbours), their role in wide spreading marketing messages and whether dominant users exists in these implicit structures that aim at favouring customization processes.
To this end, in Chapter II, I (1) present a discussion about the role of RAs in the stages of the decision journey and through (2) an analysis of a real-world RAs-enabled network of 37,427 Amazon’s users and 1300 products (3) I assess how such agents enable implicit networks of influence inhabited by neighbourhoods of users and (4) the role of consumers in such networks. Therefore, the results emphasize the social nature of RAs-enabled networks and identify most influential users in wide spreading recommendations, according to a set of centrality and community-driven measures. Lastly, some relevant managerial implications are highlighted.
Drawing on such premises, I wondered if implicit influence social networks enabled by RAs really benefit users when associate them to similar ones or not. While prior research has primarily focused on the improvement of accuracy measures as a way to increase the match between users’ preferences and recommended items (Song et al., 2019; Dzyabura et al., 2019; Isufi et al., 2021; Hamedani and Kaedi, 2019; Panniello et al., 2014; Zhou et al., 2010; Ansari et al., 2000; Haübl et al., 2000; Knijnenburg et al., 2012; Lombardi et al., 2017; Tsekouras et al., 2020; Aggarwal. 2016), the effects of overspecialization on users’ outcomes and their antecedents are currently under-researched. In my idea, higher degrees of RAs accuracy (i.e., the attempt, for some RAs, to match users with similar interests and trigger them with the same recommendations) reduce the information overloading but increase the overspecialization and confines users within their preferences and negatively affect the outcomes of the choice. To respond to this question, in a sequence of four studies reported in Chapter III, 1) I manipulated the RAs specialization level (i.e., overspecialised vs. specialised vs. generalised (Study 1) and degree of novelty of a Recommendation set (RS; novel-based RS vs. accurate RS (Study 4), assessed the perceived reciprocity and intimacy of the RA (Study 2) and the effect on user’s expertise (Study 3), but keeping the underlying algorithms unvaried. Study 1 implies three conditions to assess how the increasing levels of RAs learning affects choice outcomes. The results, highlight that higher levels of specialization are associated to lower choice outcomes. Studies 2 and 3 reveal the antecedents of the avoidance of overspecialization. In Study 2, I assess how the RAs learning affects the perceived reciprocity and intimacy of users – as mediators - and in turn the choice outcomes. The results show that users feel a lack of reciprocity and intimacy when RAs increase the knowledge about them. Study 3 investigates how the effects of RAs specialization are detrimental for users due to a reduced chance to form new preferences. The results of this study indicate that RAs are associated to higher choice outcomes when favour the breadth of knowledge rather than the depth. Finally, Study 4 involves an online experiment in which I manipulate two degrees of novelty (high vs. low) and measure their effects on perceived novelty, as a mediator, and choice outcomes. Results show that algorithmic novelty (i.e., the ability of the algorithm to provide items far from users’ preferences ) is a viable solution to the overspecialization problem and related to higher choice outcomes. The findings contribute to the extant literature (i) by providing an updated understanding of the research on recommender agents and offers insights about the extant research gaps; (ii) emphasizing the nature of RAs-enabled networks, identify most influential users in wide spreading recommendations, according to a set of centrality and community-driven measures, and some relevant managerial implications are highlighted; (iii) measuring the effects of algorithmic overspecialization on users choice outcomes, discover the value of unlearning as a beneficial process to improve product recommendations and shed light on the main antecedents of such issue and discuss the algorithmic novelty as the viable solution
Segnali tattili ed euristiche del consumatore: Il ruolo del Packaging design sulla willingness to pay
No full textIl packaging, nella sua accezione più diffusa, riferisce alla scienza, l’arte e la tecnologia di racchiudere e proteggere un prodotto ai fini della sua distribuzione, vendita e utilizzazione. Alcuni autori ne descrivono la rilevanza nel processo di creazione del valore e la capacità comunicativa in grado di orientare, in un lasso di tempo ridotto, le scelte di consumo degli individui. Formalmente, il packaging è una leva significativa a disposizione dei marketer, in grado di identifi care il brand, descrivere e narrare il prodotto, facilitarne il trasporto, la sistemazione negli ambienti, il consumo e l’esperienza, e influenzare il processo decisionale dei consumatori come attributo estrinseco capace di racchiudere le informazioni del prodotto e della marca. Nella sua natura più funzionale, deve essere in grado di proteggere il prodotto durante il trasporto e sigillarne la qualità, deve fungere da silent sales rapresentative attraverso gli aspetti sensoriali e, nel consumo
moderno, soddisfare la sostenibilità dell’ambiente attraverso il riutilizzo e il riciclo
dei materiali che lo compongono. Un’ulteriore classifi cazione, preponderante
nel settore della cosmesi, riguarda la suddivisione tra packaging primario e
secondario. Il packaging primario è quello a diretto contatto con il prodotto,
mentre il packaging secondario assolve la funzione di protezione, comunicazione e identifi cazione. Nella categoria beauty si stima che il 90% delle decisioni d’acquisto vengano presenel punto di vendita e il packaging primario è un driver fondamentale per stimolare una prima impressione positiva e garantire fi ducia e affi dabilità al consumatore
Injecting trust in consumer purchase intention through blockchain: evidences from the food supply chain
No full textBlockchain technology has been increasingly utilized in multiple businesses to validate the reliability of information related to ingredients and components, and to support the full traceability of end-products. Although, it has not yet been widely used in the context of food. As consumers of food products are becoming more and more interested in provenance, processes and ethical practices associated with what they are eating, blockchain might be the vehicle to provide reliable information. The paper seeks to determine whether technology can affect consumer perception, and specifically whether it can be considered to have an impact on the decision making process that leads to product selection. A structural model, based on extant literature, has thus been developed to analyse the impact on consumers of information provided by blockchain in terms of the perception of firm Transparency and Social Responsibility, Trust in Information provided, Attitude, Word-of-Mouth Intention and Purchase Intention. Findings, obtained from a dairy supply chain, show that (1) trust and transparency are prominent in the development of the intentions of individuals, and (2) the presence of blockchain-backed information regarding product quality increases Purchase and WOM Intentio
“Sustainability”: a new player in the field
No full textFootball is the most popular and well-known industry in sport since the past few decades, where a growing number of people are practicing, match and events draw billion of spectators, and private investors are continuously looking for opportunities in this field. However, when speaking about sustainability, the sector seems not at the bar with expectations of different stakeholders, and part of the management not ready to maintain proper standards in terms of economics, societal impact, and internal governance. Grounding on extant literature, this paper discusses the results of a qualitative research conducted in Italy among relevant players in the sector, aimed at identifying principles that could support the proper development in terms of sustainability of the professional football industry as a whole. Results shows an overall shallow knowledge of the topic in the sector, a low level of implementation of sustainability measures, a limited proactiveness to act in the short term, counterbalanced by a clear self-awareness of the necessity to step-up in this area in terms of organizational and managerial action
Digital e Social Media in Cina
No full textLa rapida evoluzione dei social media in Cina e il loro importante ruolo per servire i clienti Cinesi li rende fondamentali nei processi di marketing delle aziende presenti sul mercato locale e prevede adattamenti significativi nelle modalità di interazion
Measuring Consumers’ Acceptance in Food Labels: a Cross-Country Investigation on Usefulness, Ease of Use and Trust
Full text linkFront-Of-Pack Labels (FOPLs) are being increasingly investigated as a tool to
guide customers toward healthier food choices. Existing theoretical models focused on consumers understanding have not been able to provide clear evidences of which labels are more effective on food choices. Drawing on extant studies conducted on primary grocery shoppers from Italy, France and the UK we developed a new framework, the Front-Of-Pack Acceptance Model (FOPAM), to evaluate label effectiveness in terms of usefulness, ease of use, attitude, trust and behavioral intention. Our findings highlight significant relationships between perceived usefulness, ease of use of the labels and trust towards them, and the way consumers form their attitudes and intentions towards buying healthier product
Maccarese – From agriculture to food tech: Trading-Up and De-Commoditizing Valuable Raw Materials
Full text linkThe case is focused on th following area: (a) Understand the rationale and the drivers underlying the need of differentiation for a Company operating in a market where there is limited perceived difference in terms of raw material, (b) Understand the role of a new technology, blockchain, and its contribution to the food sector; (c) Understand how a data-driven approach can be leveraged in any sector, and the drivers on which it can impact and contribute to, and the role of technology in bringing in modern and advanced business strategies to a sector that is based on tradition, (d) Understand which strategies can be applied to reinforce Brand Equity in moments of strategy-switch while promoting company’s and product’s uniqueness can promote value, (e) Engage in teamwork and develop the ability to present conclusion backed with analysi
In Search of Superiority: Exploring the Effectiveness Gap of Front-of-Pack Nutritional Labels. An Assessment of Consumer’s Decision-Making Process Toward Healthier Food Choices
Full text linkIn recent years, increasing attention has been paid to issues on overweight and obesity. This is due to the combined effect of the focus of policymakers, aimed at solving a problem that is currently severely affecting public health in multiple countries, and a rising stream of academic research, directed at identifying the best tools to help customers make healthier food choices within a balanced and varied diet. In this respect, the use of Front-of-Pack Labels (FOPLs) on pre-packaged foods and their impact on consumer decision making have been investigated from multiple angles, with the hope of identifying a FOPL that could be considered undoubtedly superior to all others, and thus worth being standardized through the intervention of supra-national regulatory bodies.
Despite utilizing similar theoretical frameworks, two major streams of evidence emerge, depending on the underlying view on how a consumer should be supported (more guided vs. more informed) and the subsequent measurements of objective vs. subjective understanding. While on objective understanding, Summary Labels appear to be more effective, on subjective understanding, Nutrient-Specific ones are more supportive to consumers, when taking an informed food decision. Further research should be developed to arrive at a new unified theory and a clear view on which FOPL could best support consumers in their decision-making toward healthier food choices
- …
