Societal Value: Relevance and Impact

Academic Journals Ranking
Professor Adam Lindgreen

There literally are thousands of academic journals where one can publish his or her research. Thus, there needs to be some level playing field. This is the primary motivation of the team behind the so-called Academic Journal Guide that ranks academic journals as 1, 2, 3, 4, or 4* journals (or not all all). Emerging scholars will have greater clarity as to which journals to aim for, and where the best work in their field tends to be clustered. By the same measure, publication in top journals gives scholars a recognized currency on which career progress can be based; should personal networks deny its currency in one institution, there will be others who will recognize and welcome it.
   The Academic Journal Guide is based upon peer review, editorial, and expert judgements following the evaluation of many hundreds of publications, and is informed by statistical information relating to citation. It is a guide to the range, subject matter and relative quality of journals in which business and management academics publish their research. The team is advised by a scientific committee. Members of the scientific committee are employed in a business school; have specialist research knowledge of a specific subject field; and are appointed in a personal professional capacity as an expert in their field. Members also act as ambassadors for the Academic Journal Guide, explaining its objectives and principles. Based upon his research in marketing, Professor Adam Lindgreen has served as member of the marketing subject field since 2017 and contributed as expert to the recent Academic Journal Guide 2018.

Business Platform Ecosystems: Leveraging Marketing and Sales Analytics
Associate Professor Michel van der Borgh

Marketing and sales managers increasingly are confronted with the disruptive impact of digitalization. In a survey, 86% of CEOs said that advances in digital technologies will transform their business over the next five years. At the heart of this digital transformation rests an increased orientation towards digitally enabled platform-based business models with a different competitive model. The Internet-of-Things and digital platforms (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, Google) allow for many new and innovative business model opportunities. Business models are valuable resources in a competitive environment, be it for goods suppliers, system integrators, information and technology companies, or customers. More and more, the ecosystem (instead of the firm) becomes the level where value is created and appropriated. Therefore, it becomes more complex and challenging for focal firms to develop business models that help them to create and appropriate value.
   Associate professor Michel van der Borgh applies a design-based science approach to connect scientific insights with daily practitioners problems. The ultimate aim of the research projects is to provide sales managers with hands-on tools that enable better decision-making and increased bottom-line results. For instance, Dr. Van der Borgh has helped goods manufacturers to make the transition towards technology-enabled servitization business models by training the sales force and analyzing the data stored in ERP and CRM systems. Utilizing predictive modeling and process mining, managers get insights into current marketing and sales processes and how to improve them.

Entrepreneurial Marketing and Corporate Business: The National Museum as Case
Associate Professor Karin Tollin

At the first lecture, the purpose of the course exam project was laid out. On purpose, the purpose was strict but at the same time open for interpretation. The overall goal of the project was set to: describe and motivate initiatives for increasing the amount of customers/visitors to the National Museum/for making Danes and tourists love to visit and to return to the National Museum. A couple of days later, a guided tour at the museum and a guest lecture by Søren Moesgaard Bjørnsen (insight manager at NATMUS), made the students understand the potential social impact of their project work.  Two months later, we all enjoyed a couple of positive examination days. When asked to reflect on why one had succeeded so well, the answer given was that one felt having contributing in the rejuvenation process of the museum. The case was real and the task was important. This perception was much due to that Søren met the students more than once, asked for permission to read the reports and to provide feedback. Before Christmas we are having a seminar with Søren, the students are very enthusiastic about this.

Food Safety for Consumers
Professor Adam Lindgreen

Food safety is important. Food industry exports make a major contribution to economies like Denmark and New Zealand. Such countries’ ability to protect and increase their international trade in food products, as well as protect the health of consumers, depends on the food safety system in the countries. Industry, regulators, and governments recognize the need for collective investment to help ensure continued market access.
   For example, science and research are essential for managing food safety risks, preventing new food safety issues arising, and for informing and guiding consumers. In his research, Professor Adam Lindgreen has investigated marketing-related issues in the international food and beverage industry. Based upon his expertise, he is a member of the international scientific advisory panel of The New Zealand Food Safety Science & Research Centre. The Centre has been set up to co-ordinate food safety research and provide a collective resource that will further enhance New Zealand’s reputation as a source of safe food. The Centre provides a focal point for food safety science and research, bringing together the considerable expertise and resources of three Crown Research Institutes, three Universities, and the Cawthron Institute (all in New Zealand) in a unique partnership with government and industry. The Centre provides an internationally credible voice for food safety, providing a strong science base for decision-making in public health and the food industry.

Frontline Marketing: The Management of Frontline Employees
Professor Ad de Jong

Professor Ad de Jong’s research lies in the area of frontline marketing. Frontline marketing concerns the encounter between the organization’s frontline employees and the customer and as such is an essential activity to build and maintain competitive edge. Ad de Jong’s research focuses on the management and effectiveness of those employees (e.g., salespersons, service employees, service engineers, telemarketers) that operate in the organizational frontline and directly interact with the customer. The emergence of social media and the development of easy customer data collection procedures has renewed the need to study this value creation role of organizational frontline employees. Recent marketing research emphasizes the importance of frontline employees to engage in social media and act as knowledge brokers to facilitate and improve value creation and commercialization of innovations by (re)combining, linking, and integrating product knowledge from R&D colleagues with (social media-based) customer information, knowledge and experiences. 
   Professor Ad de Jong serves as a member of BrainCompass, which has a core activity to properly assess and profile potential job candidates for leading functions in companies. With help of BrainCompass he has developed and validated a multidimensional scale of knowledge brokering. This assessment scale is a novel indicator of employee performance skills in a dynamic business context in platforms/networks where the emphasis is more and more on the ability to absorb, combine, and integrate different types of job-related knowledge. At present, this knowledge brokering scale is part of BrainCompass assessment procedure and used to identify individuals’ potential to adequately perform their current job activities as well as how to improve on them. It has been especially used for profiling individuals in top management jobs in which management skills, thought leadership, and strategic decision-making are key aspects.

Improving Donor Retention with Feedback on Past Donation Use
Associate Professor Edlira Shehu

Due to increasing competition, nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are struggling to find effective donor retention strategies. To improve donor retention, NPOs usually utilize donation appeals, which acknowledge donors’ past donations. In a common study with the blood donation services of the German Red Cross, Edlira Shehu (together will colleagues from the University of Hamburg and PennState University) propose and tests a reactivation strategy where donors are informed about their past donation use. A field experiment shows that providing feedback on past donation use increases reactivation likelihood by more than 11% in the field. For NPOs with a donor base of several hundred of thousand donors, the societal effect is substantial as each blood donation may serve up to three persons. Due to the results of the field experiment, the past donation use strategy was implemented as best practice by the blood donation services of the German Red Cross. Currently, Edlira is analyzing strategies to enhance donor retention in the field together with blood donation service organizations in Germany, Austria and Denmark.

Measuring City Attractiveness
Associate Professor Sebastian Zenker

Many of our public policies are aiming to increase the level of city attractiveness – but how do you measure city attractiveness? It is a very complex construct in itself and incorporates many aspects. For instance, it could be measured by physical characteristics of cities (such as percentage of recreation areas, unemployment rates, etc.) or through perception measurements (perceived attractiveness for different target groups).
In December 2017, the European Commission started a project through the Joint Research Centre to develop a city attractiveness measurement as a proxy to evaluate the characteristics of a city and the effectiveness of urban policies. Associate Professor Sebastian Zenker is part of the expert panel to contribute in this measurement development. As expert in perception measurements and city marketing, Dr. Zenker gives input on how to implement measurements for the city customer side (such as residents or tourists).

Neuromarketing
Associate Professor Jesper Clement

Neuromarketing has become an increasing and recognized indispensable field of marketing research over the last decade. We already see many renowned business schools doing research within the field of neuromarketing, contributing to the discipline’s maturity and bringing new knowledge to marketing, especially to the field of consumer bahaviour. At Copenhagen Business School, we see many of our study lines offering classes within content related to neuromarketing, and brand owners do acknowledge the value in understanding consumers’ nonconscious response for their brand. The same can be said about authorities and responsible companies finding these similar insights into consumers’ nonconscious responses important and relevant, for both market regulation and protecting vulnerable consumers. The Deparment of Marketing provides experiment-based research on newest equipment in its SenseLab managed by the Decision Neuroscience Research Cluster.

Participatory Place Branding

Associate Professor Sebastian Zenker

In place branding, residents are not just passive beneficiaries or place customers, but also active partners and co-producers of public goods, services and policies. Thus, increasingly residents demand a more participatory role in place branding activities. Without question, this participatory approach is a very demanding political exercise because place authorities may find themselves outside of their comfort zone. They must relinquish some power over decision-making (and budgets), hoping that this will lead to a positive development. This difficulty and discomfort may form one reason as to why both theory and practice show considerable shortcomings in bringing this idea to fruition. The participatory place-branding approach developed by Associate Professor Sebastian Zenker tries to help place brand managers by implementing a participatory place branding structure. With the help of Dr. Zenker, the German city of Bielefeld (330, 000 inhabitants) was one of the first cities implementing this management model. Through its ‘fan-projects’, the city incorporated successfully many different residential groups in its branding approach, developing the brand narratives and stories to tell for the city’s place-brand communication and winning authentic place brand ambassadors. Also some smaller German cities (i.e., Landau and Reutlingen) are currently implementing the participatory place-branding model in their place branding marketing activities.

Understanding Consumer Decision Making
Professor Torben Hansen

In the modern marketplace, the consumer is faced with challenges (e.g., increased market complexity, scare cognitive resources, and lifestyle changes), which increases the need for research devoted to investigating consumer behavior and decision making. Understanding consumer behavior is essential for developing well-functioning markets in which companies can create, communicate, deliver and exchange offerings that have value for consumers and society at large. In his research, Professor Torben Hansen has especially focused on investigating consumer financial behavior and consumer food behavior.
   Professor Torben Hansen has served as chairman for the Danish Money and Pension Panel (appointed by the Danish Government), a board established by the Danish Parliament with the purpose of improving consumers’ knowledge of and interest in financial matters. Based upon his insight in consumer financial issues he has acted as an advisor for several leading Danish organizations, including the Danish Consumer Council, the Danish FSA, Nykredit, Insurance and Pension Denmark, the Danish Competition, and Consumer Authority, among others. He has contributed to investigations and reports concerning consumer mortgage behavior, budgeting and financial trust.
   Professor Hansen has served as a member of the Danish Food Think Tank (in Danish: Måltidstænketanken) (appointed by the Danish Government). The purposes of the Think Tank was to increase consumer food involvement and competencies and to assist the Danish Government in further understanding consumer food culture and behavior.
   Also, Professor Hansen has served as a member of the Danish Marketing Practices Act Committee (appointed by the Danish Government) and as a member of the BEUC (the European Consumer Organization) Consumer Strategy Council (appointed by the 31 member states). He has assisted the Ministry of Higher Education and Science in developing an overview of the marketing discipline at Danish Universities and in revising the general marketing lecture instructions at Danish High Schools and Business Colleges.