Beth Fossen
Assistant Professor of Marketing | Indiana University, Kelley School of Business
Bloomington, IN, UNITED STATES
Beth Fossen is an expert in the areas of advertising, social media, online word-of-mouth, and political marketing.
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Biography
Fossen joined the Marketing Department at the Kelley School of Business in July 2016. She earned her Ph.D. in Marketing at Emory
Industry Expertise (3)
Social Media
Education/Learning
Advertising/Marketing
Areas of Expertise (5)
Marketing Strategy
Online Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Advertising
Social Media
Political Marketing
Accomplishments (5)
John D. C. Little Award, Finalist (professional)
2018 Awarded annually for the best marketing paper published in an INFORMS journal
MSI Research Grant (professional)
2018
Trustee Teaching Award, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, Winner MSI Research Grant (professional)
2016
MSI Alden G. Clayton Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Competition (professional)
2015
Goizueta Business School Doctoral Fellowship, Emory University (professional)
2011 - 2016
Education (2)
Emory University: Ph.D., Marketing 2016
Millsaps College: B.A., Business and Studio Art 2010
Links (1)
Articles (6)
Social TV, Advertising, and Sales: Are Social Shows Good for Advertisers?
Marketing Science
2019 Television viewers are increasingly engaging in media-multitasking while watching programming. One prevalent multiscreen activity is the simultaneous consumption of television alongside social media chatter about the programming, an activity referred to as “social TV.” Although online interactions with programming can result in a more engaged and committed audience, social TV activities may distract media multitaskers from advertisements.
Measuring the Impact of Product Placement with Brand-Related Social Media Conversations and Website Traffic
Marketing Science
2019 Advertisers are growing increasingly concerned about the ease with which traditional television advertising can be avoided. Product placement activities, where brands are visually and/or verbally incorporated into television and movies, have continued to grow. In contrast to television commercials that can be avoided by viewers, product placement is embedded in the programming itself and is more difficult to avoid.
Examining Brand Strength of Political Candidates: a Performance Premium Approach
Customer Needs and Solutions
2019 Despite the growth of research on political marketing, fundamental questions concerning brand value of political candidates and its relationship with marketing mix activities remain unanswered. This research extends premium-based brand valuation methods to the political context by presenting a performance premium approach to assessing the strength of politicians’ brands and exploring the relationship between politician brand strength and political advertising.
Social TV: How Social Media Activity Interacts with TV Advertising
GFK Marketing Intelligence Review
2017 Not every social show is good for advertisers, Our analysis of more than 9000 advertisement instances for a total of 254 brands across 15 product categories are already in 84 prime-time programs revealed that advertisements do contribute to more online word-of-mouth.
Sociodemographic versus Geographic Proximity in the Diffusion of Online Conversations
Journal of the Association for Consumer Research
2017 Social media platforms are changing how people spread information via word of mouth by allowing individuals to rapidly disseminate information to virtually anyone. Yet little is known about whether this ability affects how contagion spreads within online social systems. While digital platforms may facilitate diffusion to those nearby, they also may facilitate dissemination to like-minded folk regardless of physical proximity. These different outcomes suggest competing drivers for the diffusion of online conversations: geographic proximity, sociodemographic proximity, or a blend of both. Identifying which of these drivers underlies virality is critical because they yield strategically different marketing implications. Based on a data set of 355,021 microblogs, we build a spatiotemporal model to capture the diffusion of conversations within the United States. When accounting for sociodemographic proximity, geographic proximity does not significantly govern the spread of online conversations. Rather, sociodemographic factors propagate online social contagion, suggesting that social media campaign success relies on sociodemographic segmentation-based targeting.
Television Advertising and Online Word-of-Mouth: An Empirical Investigation of Social TV Activity
Marketing Science
2016 In this research, we investigate the relationship between television advertising and online word-of-mouth (WOM) by examining the joint consumption of television programming and production of social media by television viewers, termed social TV. We explore how television advertising impacts the volume of online WOM about advertised brands and about the programs in which the advertisements air. We also examine what encourages or discourages viewers to engage in this particular social TV activity. Using data containing television advertising instances and the volume of minute-by-minute social media mentions, our analyses reveal that television advertising impacts the volume of online WOM for both the brand advertised and the program in which the advertisement airs. We additionally find that the programs that receive the most online WOM are not necessarily the best programs for advertisers interested in online engagement for their brands. Finally, our results highlight the brand, advertisement, and program characteristics that can encourage or discourage social TV activity. We discuss the implications of our findings for media planning strategies and advertisement design strategies.
Social