<p><span class="p-body"><i>The article was published on June 8, 2022</i></span></p> <p><span class="p-body">Congratulations to the NYU SPS DPB Integrated Marketing &amp; Communications (IMC) faculty team for having their research paper, titled “Brand Social Value (BSV) Indices – Instrument Development and Validation,” selected as the best in track paper for the Branding and Brand Management track at the upcoming 2022 American Marketing Association (AMA) Summer Academic Conference (August 12-14 in Chicago).</span></p> <p><span class="p-body">This accomplishment of Michael Diamond, academic director of the IMC programs and clinical assistant professor; Milos Bujisic, clinical associate professor; and Jennifer Scott, clinical assistant professor, will be recognized at a special in-person awards ceremony at the conference. Event co-chairs will also name a best-in-conference paper selected from those track paper honorees, including the IMC submission, during the ceremony.</span></p> <p><span class="p-body">“In today’s market, companies need to take a more human-centric or purpose-driven approach to their business and to reaching their customers,” said Diamond. “A brand’s social value and purpose are now more important than ever, especially how those values and purpose are communicated and line up with a consumer’s values. For a brand, matching and aligning with those consumer social values can lead to developing more consumer loyalty, stronger brand trust, and greater financial benefit,” added Diamond.  Balancing the data-driven inquiry with the more qualitative exploration of marketing and communications is central to the mission and activity of the academic degrees and research programs in the <a href="/content/sps-nyu/about/academic-divisions-and-departments/division-of-programs-in-business/integrated-marketing-and-communications.html">NYU SPS IMC department</a>.</span></p> <p><span class="p-body">The main objective of the paper is to introduce new research instruments which enable marketers to investigate and measure the key drivers of customers’ brand relationships and loyalty.  Specifically, to determine the relative importance of social value alignment versus product benefit match with respect to customer trust and loyalty for leading global brands.</span></p> <p><span class="p-body">According to Bujisic, “Social value is becoming a strong driver of consumer interest and commitment to a brand in today’s global marketplace. With the creation of our Brand Social Value model, we can help brands find out what their customers care about, help predict the strength of their consumer relationships, and measure loyalty to the brand, among other components.”</span></p> <p><span class="p-body">IMC’s BSV Model is based on a set of algorithms that maximize the predictive ability of individual indices - the BSV, Brand Product Benefits (BPB), and Total Match indices – to track and forecast Brand Relationships, Brand Reputation, Loyalty, and Purchase Intention, and, ultimately, Brand Strength.</span></p> <p><span class="p-body">This new Brand Social Value model and indices will be the foundation for a new annual NYU Integrated Marketing &amp; Communications Corporate Social Value Study. For the inaugural study, which will be publicly available later this year, the IMC team interviewed 3,000 consumers from the United States on their opinions on more than 75 different global brands, including Amazon, American Express, Coca-Cola, MasterCard, McDonald’s, Netflix, Nike, Starbucks, and Visa.</span></p> <p><span class="p-body">In a recent <a href="https://medium.com/authority-magazine/pr-pros-dr-jennifer-scott-of-nyu-school-of-professional-studies-on-the-5-things-you-need-to-create-84cf48b641b8" target="_blank">interview with <i>Authority Magazine</i></a><i>,</i> Scott talked about the work she and her colleagues are doing on creating the new BSV model and the broader study: “Traditionally, brands have earned customers through delivering quality and good value, as well as creating brand affinity and familiarity. We are looking at data that indicates that customers now also prefer that brands share their broad values – that they have a common worldview. This could have major implications for the ways in which the largest corporate brands express their brand identity – and might pose some interesting challenges for brands operating in societies where there is polarization in terms of basic values.”</span></p>