Courtney Peters, assistant professor of marketing in Samford University’s Brock School of Business, was a participant in the Society for Marketing Advances (SMA) annual conference, Nov. 2-5, 2022. During the conference, her paper was recognized as a “Best in Track” paper in the marketing ethics and corporate social responsibility category.

 

The SMA is a premier marketing association that connects marketing educations and professionals in the United States and abroad. Its mission is to promote the growth of intellectual leadership in the field of marketing on the part of teachers, researchers, and students in universities and executive business and government.

 

Her paper, “Your Reputation Proceeds You: The Impact of Corporate Sociopolitical Activism on Consumer-Based Brand Equity,” was cowritten with marketing professors from The University of Memphis and DePaul University.

 

In the paper, Peters and the coauthors evaluate the impact of corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA) on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE). The group collected examples of CSA events using RavenPack Analytics from 2007-2020. Using daily brand equity data from YouGov as the measure of consumer-based brand equity, they analyzed the impact of CSA on CBBE and then, used a cross-sectional regression to evaluate how a firm’s CSR reputation and specific branding characteristics will impact this relationship. Results suggest that firms can mitigate the negative effects of CSA on CBBE when they have a strong reputation for CSR. Additionally, the paper explains that firms can further mitigate the negative effects using specific brand characteristics such as dynamic and asymmetric logos.  

Peters, who joined the Brock School of Business faculty in the fall of 2022, teaches courses related to principles of marketing, digital and social media marketing, and customer journey and content marketing.