In this special edition of The Marketing Lab, I have a quick chat with Associate Professor Josh Newton about his research into how the mere presence of Christmas decorations lead people to soften their evaluations of a personally experienced service failure encounter.

Josh and his colleagues' research was published in the Journal of Service Research in 2018. The abstract is noted below.

Thanks for listening to The Marketing Lab (at Deakin) in 2021, and we look forward to talking to you again in 2022.
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The Marketing Lab (at Deakin) is recorded and produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and traditional custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.
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Newton, J., Wong, J. and Casidy, R., 2018. Deck the Halls With Boughs of Holly to Soften Evaluations of Service Failure. Journal of Service Research, 21(4), pp.389-404.

Abstract
Symbols associated with seasonal religious festivals are periodically displayed by service providers, but do these symbols serve more than just a decorative function? Findings from seven experiments suggest they do. In the presence of such symbols, individuals soften their evaluations of a personally experienced service failure encounter. This effect emerges through the activation of forgiveness but only among those with a religious upbringing and only when the encounter involves service failure (rather than neutral service). The softening of service evaluations in the presence of such symbols is reversed, however, when service failure is observed (rather than directed at the self) and when the recipient of that failure is perceived to be vulnerable. Contextual exposure to symbols associated with seasonal religious festivals therefore presents a double-edged sword for managers; depending upon the service failure recipient, these symbols can harden or soften evaluations of the service failure encounter.

In our final episode for 2021, our guest is Uppma Virdi, Deakin Alumni, Head Spice Dealer, Founder and CEO of Chai Walli, a female-centric, female owned small Australian business who are passionate about cultural preservation through the art of chai.

We discussed authenticity, why being successful is about more than size, money and growth, and how to final convince your parents that you are successful.

In 2022, we will be releasing each episode of The Marketing Lab on the first Friday of the month, from February. We all hope you have an opportunity to take a break over the summer/winter, and look forward to bringing you more marketing, culture and business insights in the new year.
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The Marketing Lab is recorded and produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.

Whether you use it to stay connected or as part of your marketing strategy, social media is integral for communication. But what happens when everything goes horribly wrong, like it did for Justine Sacco when sent her one-hundred-and-seventy twitter followers the following tweet: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” By the time she landed in Africa, Twitter users around the world had blasted Justine’s tweet as racist, callous and uncaring. Critics demanded that she be fired from her job and some even called for her death.

In this episode of The Marketing Lab at Deakin, I talk to Jeff Rottman and Gini Weber, two of my colleagues in the marketing department at Deakin University about their research into public condemnation, or what they have neatly called, "moral peacocking". On the way, we explore virtue signalling, morals violations and subjective sensitivities.
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The Marketing Lab is recorded and produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.

In this episode of The Marketing Lab at Deakin, we talk to Gordon Renouf, Co-Founder & CEO of Good On You, the world-leading source of trusted brand ratings, articles and expertise on ethical and sustainable fashion.
Since 2015, they have built a database of thousands of fashion brands, all assessed against their robust rating system for their impact on people, the planet and animals. They are supported by some of the biggest names in the industry, including Emma Watson, the world-renowned British actor and ethical fashion pioneer.
Gordon talks to The Marketing Lab about investors, jobs to be done, and how you develop personas for your market.
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The Marketing Lab is recorded and produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.

In this episode of The Marketing Lab at Deakin we talk to Dr Ali Tamaddoni from Deakin's Marketing Department about how we can use models and machine learning to understand why people change brands and also how religiosity influences online reviews.
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The Marketing Lab is recorded and produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.

We often think that marketers simply have to sell stuff to consumers, but marketing also requires an awareness of the context in which the business operates.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission promotes competition and fair trade in markets to benefit consumers, businesses, and the community and also regulates national infrastructure services. Their primary responsibility is to ensure that individuals and businesses comply with Australian competition, fair trading, and consumer protection laws - in particular the Competition and Consumer Act 2010.

In this episode of The Marketing Lab, we take a deep dive into how the ACCC works, how they make decisions, and their role in the marketing and consumer landscape in Australia, with the General Manager of their Economic Group, Baethan Mullen.
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The Marketing Lab is recorded and produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.

This week (4 - 11 July) is NAIDOC week in Australia. NAIDOC is a celebration of the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It’s an opportunity for all Australians, not just the Indigenous community, to come together and celebrate and participate in a range of activities that support your local community.

So, for this episode of The Marketing Lab, we celebrate NAIDOC by having a yarn with guests, Professor Mark Rose (Gunditjmara), Tom Molyneux (Gunditjmara) and Cassandra Seery (raised and living on Wurundjeri Country), about how we can think more about First Nations people when we undertake business, marketing and research.
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This year's NAIDOC poster - Care for Country is by Maggie-Jean Douglas - a Gubbi Gubbi artist from South East Queensland.

The 21-year-old artist said her first thoughts on hearing the 2021 NAIDOC theme ‘Heal Country’ was about how country has cared for and healed First Nations people in all senses of the meaning for so long.
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The Marketing Lab is recorded and produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.

Marketers are often portrayed in an unsophisticated way - that they are evil manipulators that are trying to get us to buy things we don’t want. But there are areas of marketing, like macro marketing and social marketing, where marketers are attempting to use marketing… for want of a better phrase… for good.

Social marketing uses the tools of marketing to lead to better societal outcomes, in things like health behaviour change programs. Their tools tend to be predominantly in the field of promotion - so this is why you often hear on the public health field people talking about health promotion, but more sophisticated social marketing considers all aspects of the marketing mix, including designing campaigns around segments, around the barriers to the good behaviour, and around how we move people through different stages to achieve the positive outcome.

That said, social marketing campaigns can also harm and become quite anti-social. In this episode of the marketing lab, we continued our exploration of food marketing and ethics with Alice Zaslavsky (Alice in Frames), and Deakin Alumnus, Moreen Kamau and Michaela Jackson and examined what happens when social marketing might miss the mark or a campaign goes wrong. We also explored how you can make the ordinary strange and the existential angst that comes with waiting for your Deliveroo or Uber order to arrive.

The Marketing Lab is recorded and produced on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Australians and Traditional Custodians of the land where we live, work, and learn.