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There are compelling reasons for educators to consider incorporating virtual worlds (VWs) in their marketing curriculum. That said, the ways in which VWs can be implemented into the teaching curriculum are many and varied. This article reports on two studies in which notionally similar graduate classes are taught about marketing in Second Life (SL). The degree of student and instructor immersion is intentionally varied: One class is taught entirely in SL, by a technically expert instructor, while novice/intermediate instructors teach the second class in an interactive tutorial setting. Taken together, these studies offer marketing educators insights into developing "full" and "lite" approaches to teaching in SL, thereby lowering the barrier to uptake of the technology by catering to a broader spectrum of both instructor and student competencies, interests, and abilities. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

The reported failure of organisations to successfully implement social media (SM) within marketing communications is likely to result in competitive disadvantage. An exploratory methodology was undertaken to understand implementation challenges of SM. The methodology drew on grounded theory with the in-depth interviews with senior marketers in the first phase of data collection guiding the second phase of data collection. The third phase involved 21 senior marketers completing an online questionnaire which obtained more generalised feedback on the model and identified differences in model application for different SM platforms. The contribution of the study is to propose a sequential decision-making framework for marketers that may help them overcome decision-making uncertainty regarding the choice and implementation of SM platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I. INTRODUCTION With the stunning recent growth of international electronic commerce, issues of personal privacy have become far more visible. Consumers express increasing concern with the ability to control their [...]

Social media and the digital era have created major challenges for brand managers. Brand strategies need to reflect this new era, but few do. Indeed, nothing has threatened the very foundations of brands more than technology, which has fundamentally and indefinitely altered the relationship between consumers and brands by empowering consumers like never before, while stripping brands of the 'control' they once took for granted.To survive, brands need to think in terms of influence. But influence can neither be assumed nor bought - it has to be earned.This paper discusses five now defunct branding assumptions and why they no longer apply. It then offers five new principles for building brand influence in the modern digital world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]