Purpose\ud The objective of this exploratory study is to propose a new methodological approach to investigate brand associations. More specifically, the study aims to show how brand associations can be identified and analysed in an online community of international consumers of fashion in order to determine the degree of matching with company-defined brand associations.\ud Design/methodology/approach\ud The methodology is two-pronged, integrating qualitative market research techniques with quantitative text mining. It was applied to determine types and perceptions of brand associations among fashion bloggers with reference to three leading Italian fashion houses. These were then compared to brand associations found in company-generated texts to measure the degree of matching. \ud Findings\ud The results showed consistent brand associations across the three brands, as well as substantial matching with company-defined brand associations. In addition, the analysis revealed the presence of distinctive brand association themes that shed further light on how brand attributes were perceived by blog participants. \ud Practical implications\ud The methods described can be used by managers to identify and reinforce favourable brand associations among consumers. This knowledge can then be applied towards developing and implementing effective brand strategies. \ud Originality/Value \ud The authors propose an interdisciplinary approach to investigate brand associations in online communities. It incorporates text mining and computer-assisted textual analysis as techniques borrowed from the field of linguistics which have thus far seen little application in marketing studies, but can nonetheless provide important insights for strategic brand management

Although extensive reading is now recognised as an important element of language instruction, it appears that EFL students specialising in business studies do little reading in English beyond course requirements. This study illustrates the findings of a survey of reading frequency and attitudes related to extensive reading in English. A questionnaire administered to 182 Italian EFL students at the University of Florence showed that even if frequency of reading in English is quite low, attitude towards it is clearly favourable. In addition, multiple regression analysis was used to determine potentially influential factors. Reading in Italian and experience abroad were significantly correlated with both reading frequency and attitude. The correlation between past access to English books and reading attitude approached the significance level. A negative correlation was found instead between the number of years of past English study and reading attitude. These findings are useful for defining appropriate instructional actions and identifying areas for further research, with the aim of more effectively promoting extensive reading in English.

Considerable research has been done on brand personality as a key factor in brand management, focusing mainly on how it is perceived by consumers, but without much attention to the managerial perspective. However, the latter is crucially important to ensure that the brand personality that consumers perceive actually corresponds to what a company intends to communicate. This study offers an innovative methodology to achieve this dual-perspective objective, integrating notions of marketing and linguistics to investigate brand personality alignment as it emerges from authentic and spontaneous digital environments. Textual data were collected from both company and consumer web communications across a sample of 100 + fashion brands, and then processed with software to extract sets of adjectives as the expression of brand personality. The adjectives were interrelated to calculate ratios that measure (a) the degree of alignment between company-defined vs. consumer-perceived brand personality, (b) similarity in personality between brands and (c) consumer perception of similarity in personality between brands. Varying degrees of alignment were identified, suggesting differences in how effectively the companies communicate their brand personality. The combination of the ratios derived from this research process can be utilized to evaluate the strength of brand differentiation and to redefine brand communication strategies.

Scholars have become increasingly interested in how organizations communicate with external stakeholders, such as consumers. Recent studies have looked specifically at consumer response to the use of English in advertising texts in a number of different European countries. The use of English in such texts is part of a commonly used marketing strategy to standardize advertising campaigns that builds on the assumption that English is not only neutral but also widely understood. This article presents the results of a survey of the attitudes of Emirati consumers toward the use of English in advertising texts in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The survey Downloaded from findings are discussed in terms of the unique social and cultural fabric of the modern-day UAE, as well as of the Emirati community as an economically powerful Muslim population.Keywords product advertisements, consumer attitudes, business English as a lingua franca, ArabicScholars have become increasingly interested in how organizations communicate with external constituencies, particularly with important groups of stakeholders, such as investors and consumers. For instance, Cornelissen (2008) provided an account of corporate communication strategies in general; De Mooij (2010) focused specifically on the impact of consumer behavior and culture on advertising, Livesey (2001, 2002; Livesey, Hartman, Stafford, & Shearer, 2009) looked at how corporations such as McDonalds and Shell have adapted their corporate communication to move toward an increase in dialogue with their stakeholders after a number of corporate scandals in the past 10 years; and Crawford Camiciottoli (2009, 2010) showed how the communication that executive management uses to interact with the investment community is uniquely shaped by the information and communication technology-mediated setting in which it takes place.In addition to studies such as these that have been primarily concerned with the corporate discourse itself, a number of scholars have turned their attention to the impact that such organizational communication has on stakeholders; they have therefore focused on the response of various interactants to specific aspects of this discourse.Such investigations of how people respond to a text have often involved surveying a group of participants who are asked to respond to a set of manipulated texts designed to establish the effect of a particular characteristic or set of characteristics. For example, Renkema (2009) investigated how readers evaluate the usability of two revised governmental texts (a tax form and a passport renewal letter); De Groot, Gerritsen, Korzilius, and Nickerson (2011) took a genre approach to explore the response of financial analysts to the text realizations used in annual reports; and Hornikx, Van Meurs, and De Boer (2010) investigated the effects of using English slogans in advertising in a non-English-speaking context (i.e., the Netherlands). Hornikx et al.'s study focused on an important strand of research into organizational communication that inf...

This paper addresses how the university lecture is evolving in response to new realities in international higher education driven by two important trends: innovative online instructional technologies and the rise of English Medium Instruction (EMI). Following a brief review of the lecture as the core instructional channel in universities, we offer a detailed overview of the new technology-driven lecture formats that are now available to learners worldwide. We then shift the focus to the role of EMI, with particular attention to understanding how both instructors and students view this relatively new approach to learning. This was accomplished through a systematic review of EMI-related literature available in scholarly databases. Findings showed that most research has focused on the language-related issues of learners, and little attention has been paid to the crucial issue of lecture comprehension, which is mainly caused by the low level of proficiency of students/instructors and domain-specific vocabulary. Moreover, studies have almost exclusively addressed face-to-face settings, indicating a need to expand EMI research to include online lecture settings that are increasingly frequent in international higher education. This paper contributes to the body of knowledge relating to new trends in how lectures are experienced and perceived in international educational settings.