Exploring online comments from a strategic marketing stance to reduce wildlife crime

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-1-2020

Publication Title

Psychology and Marketing

Volume

37

Issue

12

First page number:

1771

Last page number:

1780

Abstract

© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC Illegal wildlife trade (IWT) is an omnipresent global threat to ecological, social, and economic systems. Marketing expertise can aid in the mitigation and reduction of crime against wildlife using a variety of mechanisms. This paper focuses on how social media usage relates to the framing of conservation appeals. By studying the content of existing blogs, articles, white papers, and other online postings, we extract relevant themes and concepts. Conducting an unguided semantic analysis of our data, we analyzed messaging appeal strategies and the underlying social or informational frameworks they employ. Using literature on advertising appeal types and contrasting social/emotional with knowledge-based/informational messaging strategies, we identified how wildlife crime prevention content employs these rhetorical framing mechanisms. Through the lens of social learning theory, our study proposes messaging strategies as a framework for understanding online content. Crimes against wildlife are creating increasingly severe ecological, economic, and social damage within international political and social communities; individuals learn from and engage with online content, therefore appropriate framing mechanisms can aid marketers in designing effective prevention appeals.

Keywords

Communities; Crime; Enforcement; Illegal; Need; Social; Support

Disciplines

Marketing | Social Media

Language

English

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