Academic and Trade Journals Focusing on Advertising in the Media - Essay Example

Academic and Trade Journals Focusing on Advertising in the Media Word count 336 Page count: 8 This paper looks at four different journals that emphasize advertising in the media. Of the two academic journals, one is the European Journal of Marketing (EJM) and the other is The Journal of Interactive Advertising (JIAD). The other two journals are professional or trade publications and include PR Watch and KnowThis.com. All of the journals can be found on the internet, although a couple of them require registration to access articles. An article from each journal has been summarized for its content and aim. The style of reference used is American Psychologist Association (APA). ACADEMIC/SCHOLARLY JOURNALS European Journal of Marketing (EJM) discusses international marketing by distinguished academic professionals and also the people who employ the processes of marketing. The focus is to help build strategies that will help sales initiative. By using contributors from all over the world EJM offers a global viewpoint of issues that involve any industry. Theoretical information is made readable so that practical application is possible; this journal is used by academic libraries and marketing managers alike. Publishers are The Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. The article summarized in this paper was written to analyse three qualitative research themes that are objects of "frustration and confusion" (Gummesson, 2006, p.309) and are: "analysis and interpretation, theory generation and the quest for scientific pluralism and individual methodologies." (ibid.) The basis of this discussion is that complexity, change, chaos and other confusing factors are the characteristics of the market economy. The author feels that marketing has only customer satisfaction and planning as its clout in company boardrooms. He also references Piercy (2002) as saying that there is a "pathology of mediocrity and a process of trivialization" in the academic standards of marketing. He argues that even though quantitative analysis can take marketing studies from "an art to a science", that is not enough. He wants to know if research into marketing can make anything happen. Gummesson gives examples as to why it is not possible to just get more facts, or data, to find the solutions to marketing problems. The aftermath of the dot.com era's boom is an example. He uses both hard factual references and his own philosophical notions to come to his conclusions. He offers up some strategies for the analysis and interpretation of marketing data results. The fact that research is constrained by researchers having different agendas and incentives gives science a "disparate army of two-legged individual paradigms" says the author, which gives the reader an idea of his creative style as he discusses interactive research methods. The Journal of Interactive Advertising (JIAD) is a good collection of relevant articles by professionals and academics that give insights into topics such as (Fall 2005 issue) Super Bowl advertising and product review websites. JIAD is produced by both the Department of Advertising at Michigan State University and the Department of Advertising at The University of Texas at Austin. It is published twice a year. The first 2006 issue is not available. Contributors to the journal come from ivy league schools to marketing agencies around the world. Their audience is anyone who may be interested in the subjects that the journal includes. The article summarized focuses on online auctions as advertising revenue. A study was done of auctions conducted by the Ventura County Star's newspaper online that lasted 12 days each for 7 months. The study decided the effectiveness of this online auction for raising revenue compared to the revenue generated by its online banner advertisements. It also tracked the increase in traffic to the web site based on these auctions. Its findings were that revenues were substantially higher through auctions and that there was also a measurable increase in traffic. Despite the dominance of banner ads on the web, this author states that "according to Forester Research, online auctions will grow to $54.3 billion in 2007" (Rosencrans, 2005, p. 1) and are essentially good for newspapers these days that struggle to compete with internet use. TRADE/PROFESSIONAL JOURNALS PR Watch, published by the Center for Media and Democracy, is a journal that focuses on a form of advertising called public relations. Some public relations efforts are not good for an orgainization's image just as some forms of commercial advertisements are not good for a company's image. The article summarized from PR Watch illustrates bad press. Bob Burton, a contributing blogger, writes about a public relations professional named Anxious Alan Caruba for his conservative website, Warning Signs. A section of PR Watch is called SourceWatch and recently informed its readers that Monsanto funded a book by Michael Fumento in 1999, BioEvolution. Caruba, who promoted Fumento's book, wrote an article calling SourceWatch easily dismissable, because its readers believe that global warming is more than normal weather and that mad cow disease has entered the United States. Burton asserts that Caruba is basically ill informed. (Burton 2006) The point of this summarization is that all the references above seem to be causing their own bad press by publishing these contradictory accounts, and in the end, confusing the issues they hope to convey. For example, the PR Watch article includes a subtitle "Warnings of Warnings Signs". The level of obfuscation in this journal's writings can cause nothing but the desire to flee from this site. The dozens of individual and non-profit supporters of this journal may not benefit from having advertised with this publication. (Burton, 2006) Compare to this an article from the online journal KnowThis.com, published and edited by Paul Christ, Ph.D., that discusses classic marketing mistakes. KnowThis.com seeks to educate professional marketing people about a broad range of topics, and is a member of the World Wide Web Virtual Library. KnowThis.com has advertising by Yahoo.com, MSN.com, and Newsgator.com., and related Google links to Biz360, OptionMarketing and others. A much more concise article, it notes the change in marketing strategies after the 1950's when marketing departments emerged within companies that had previously had a scattered approach to advertising and public relations. He points up the mistakes that have been made since the early days of organized marketing, such as relying on market research, putting more money into promotion, and other problems. Believing you have the best product but not convincing your target consumer is another mistake that happens too frequently. Trusting that the boss knows the market despite his unwillingness to learn more about it seems to dispute the first thing this author says. But it seems he is trying to get the point across that it is a multi-dimensional issue that needs a variety of attack strategies. Doing market research is important but relying on it alone is a mistake. (Christ. 2006) Another mistake the author notes is thinking that customers only want the cheapest possible item, when it is more often the case that they want low cost PLUS value. If a company thinks it's losing business because its competitor has lower prices, they will suffer from this deception because the competitor is actually offering better value for less. (Christ. 2006) An interesting statement in this article is that companies should not always look at the profit side of business as a sign of success. Some strategies call for less profit and more efforts to strain the competitor's business by pushing an unprofitable product ahead of competitor's, thus causing the competitor to spend more money to regain their market share. (Christ. 2006) The author's last point is that it is just as important to have long range plans as well as short range ones, despite the way the market's fluctuations and the difficulties with creating plans. (Christ. 2006 References Burton, Bob. Anxious Al Caruba, PR Watch Publications. Center for Media and Democracy. http://www.prwatch.org/node/4441, [1/2006] no page given. Christ, Paul, Ph.D. Classic Marketing Mistakes That May Never Go Away. Knowledge Source for Marketing. http://www.knowthis.com/articles/marketing/classic_marketing_mistakes.htm, [1/2006] page 1. Gummesson, Evert. Qualitative Research in Marketing. European Journal of Marketing. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServletFilename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/0070390305.html, [1/2006] pp. 309-327 Rosencrans, Ginger. Online Auctions as Advertising Revenue In The Media Mix. Journal of Interactive Advertising. http://www.jiad.org/vol6/no1/rosenkrans/index.htm, [1/2006] no page given. Read More