Cass Sponsors Social Media Think:Lab Thought Leaders' Summit

Sept. 6, 2012 - PRLog -- Twenty-five of the world's top social media scientists have been invited to the summit to identify crucial developments for the marketing industry and to set the agenda for research on social media in the future.

Three Cass academics - Professor Ko de Ruyter, Dr Caroline Wiertz , and Visiting Research Professor Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, are taking part in the event.

Professor Hennig-Thurau will be hosting the summit, along with Professor Dr Charles Hofacker of Florida State University in the US and Dr Björn Bloching of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants in Germany.

The summit is being held in co-operation with the Journal of Interactive Marketing, the leading scientific journal for social media research.

Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have been widely used by businesses as marketing tools to develop key branding messages and maintain relationships with their customers.

The summit will look at strategies for successfully managing businesses in a social media environment and will discuss key themes including consumer behaviour in social media, managing brands in the social media environment and key performance indicators. The resulting thought pieces will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Interactive Marketing, currently scheduled to appear in Summer 2013.

Dr Caroline Wiertz said: "It is great that Cass is at the forefront of such a leading academic event especially with the growth of social media becoming more crucial to business success. This further cements Cass Business School (http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/) as a leader in social media research."

In March, research entitled ‘Exploring the “Twitter effect”’ was produced by both Dr. Caroline Wiertz and Professor Thorsten Hennig-Thurau.   They found Twitter messages sent by cinema-goers to their network of followers could influence whether a movie becomes a box office hit or miss in the opening weekend, demonstrating that the ‘Twitter effect’ is no Hollywood myth.

They analysed four million tweets to show that Twitter influences whether a movie is a box office hit or miss.  It was revealed that the microblogging service Twitter could help sway the success of blockbuster movies in the space of just 24 hours.  

Dr Caroline Wiertz is a Reader in Marketing at Cass Business School.  She holds an MSc (http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/courses/masters) in International Business and a PhD (http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/courses/phd) in Marketing from Maastricht University in the Netherlands.   Caroline’s main research interests lie in the areas of consumer research and new media marketing.