Digital marketing

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Digital Marketing research

Explore our research in digital marketing, 1 of our areas of expertise in 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

Digital marketing is 1 of 4 areas of expertise in the Marketing research area. Explore the others below.

Advertising and branding

Discover the research we're doing in advertising and branding – across topics such as ethics and sustainability, gender stereotypes, and brand attachment.

Marketing and society

We're looking at macro trends influencing consumer decision-making – from sustainability to health – and the relationship between marketing and society.

Man wearing a hat with pro-NHS advertising stickers

Services marketing and tourism

Explore our work in cultural tourism, online reputation, revenue management, frontline service relationships, pricing and tourist behaviour.

Research groups

Systems and Information Systems Research Group

We're researching the practice, philosophy and methodological concerns of information processing with the aim to make the day-to-day jobs involved in complexed problem solving easier.

Interested in a PhD in Marketing?

Browse our postgraduate research degrees – including PhDs and MPhils – at our Marketing postgraduate research degrees page.