Digital marketing
Our digital marketing research explores how to use digital technology to market products and services. We work with businesses and entrepreneurs to improve their digital marketing, deliver a better online experience for their customers and increase their market share.
We focus on how organisations and individuals can build a positive digital reputation through storytelling and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM).
We investigate the 'sharing economy', within which resources are shared through technology. The sharing economy is growing rapidly compared to the traditional economy, but little research has been conducted in this emerging field of marketing.
We seek to understand why and how disruptive companies such as Airbnb and Uber can take over traditional competitors using digital technology, and our research has been published in leading journals – including the Journal of Interactive Marketing, the Journal of Business Research, the Journal of Travel Research, and Computers in Human Behavior.
Project highlights
- We have a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) with Fresh Relevance, a Southampton based global company that creates personalised digital ads. They use Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning to understand user behaviour. Our research into their algorithms and customer segmentation helps them optimise their process to show consumers ads they care about and drive increased sales for their clients. This project is carried out by researchers in the Portsmouth Business School (PBS) and the School of Computing.
- We worked with peer-to-peer ridesharing platform, Uber, on dynamic pricing and how they control inventory to manage the availability of their service. We're using the insights from this research in the teaching of our Marketing units.
- We completed a project on Airbnb, an online marketplace for renting and leasing accommodation. We analysed video content produced by hosts explaining to potential customers about the accommodation facilities and the surrounding area. We analysed the effectiveness of video content based on the story arc and customers' responses to the video. We also compared the revenue of hosts with and without video content on their profiles.
Publication highlights
-
Who am I? How compelling self-storytelling builds digital personal reputation (2016)
Pera, R., Viglia, G. and Furlan, R. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 35, 44-55
-
Exploring how video digital storytelling builds relationship experiences (2016)
Pera, R. and Viglia, G. Psychology and Marketing, 33(12), 1142-1150
-
Consumer engagement in online brand communities: the moderating role of personal values
European Journal of Marketing, 2018, Julia Marbach, Christiana Lages, Dr Dan Nunan, Professor Yuksel Ekinci
Discover our areas of expertise
Our members
Dr Marta Nieto-Garcia
- Job Title Senior Lecturer in Marketing
- Email Address marta.garcia@port.ac.uk
- Department Marketing
- Faculty Faculty of Business and Law
- PhD Supervisor PhD Supervisor
Research groups
Interested in a PhD in Marketing?
Browse our postgraduate research degrees – including PhDs and MPhils – at our Marketing postgraduate research degrees page.