Hiring frontline employees who represent ethnic groups can help businesses succeed with minority customers, according to a recent University of Texas at Arlington study.

Elten Briggs, associate professor of marketing at UT Arlington, and Detra Montoya, clinical associate professor of marketing at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business, wrote the paper, “Shared ethnicity effects on service encounters: A study across three U.S. subcultures,” and it was published in the Journal of Business Research.

Briggs and Montoya conducted an experiment and a survey to analyze the influence of shared ethnicity on consumer behavior and found that since Asian and Hispanic cultures, for example are more collectivist than individualistic, they may be more susceptible to shared ethnicity effects in the marketplace.

“The study showed that culture plays an important role in the interaction between businesses and customers,” Briggs said. “Customers may feel like they have some common ground with the service representative or sales person if there is a shared ethnicity.”

As businesses continue to diversify, it’ll be more and more important to consider the influence of culture, especially between customers and employees.

“The future of business will involve an increasing diversity of the customer base of many firms, both within the U.S. and internationally,” said Rachel Croson, dean of the UT Arlington College of Business. “The businesses that succeed will be those that understand how to customize the experience they give these customers. Dr. Briggs’ work identifies how to do this effectively, and will have important implications for both the practice and theory of marketing.”

Briggs hopes the research will help businesses improve marketing outreach.

“The study shows that if I work for a service or sales company, my company should reflect the audience I am seeking,” Briggs said. “When customers share the same ethnicity with their salesman or customer service agent, they generally have a more favorable perception of the business.”

There was a lot of industry news this past week you may have missed. Here are some headlines that caught our eyes.

Building ‘Tension’: An Inside Look at NIN’s Massive Arena Tour
—Wired
“The band’s shows are famous for their over-the-top visuals, and massive arena performances are where frontman Trent Reznor and art director Rob Sheridan really flex their muscles, pummeling audiences with an audio-visual experience that often feels closer to a big-budget Hollywood movie than a traditional rock concert.”

Winter Classic Crew Ready to Make Michigan Stadium Center of NHL Universe
—MLive
“[Dan] Craig and roughly 200 workers will spend the next week preparing an NHL-caliber rink on Michigan’s football field and plans to have the first sheet of ice sprayed down by next Thursday.”

How to Fix the Broken Venue Model
—Expo
“The traditional convention center model is broken and at least two major venues have begun experimenting with new ways to fix it.”

Molecular Gastronomy for Lunch on Campus
—Food Management
“The show starts with spheres of balsamic dressing on a bed of romaine and ends with a huge tank of liquid nitrogen turning cannoli ice cream into a space-age spectacle.”

(Image: Matthew Ryan Williams/WIRED)

Fashion industry elites found their way to Fair Park in Dallas for one of the season’s biggest events, the Chanel Métiers d’Art runway show, on December 10. Celebrities—such as Kristen Stewart, Lauren Hutton, and Dakota Fanning—were among the 1,000 people who attended the coveted invite-only show planned by Chanel’s Artistic Director Karl Lagerfeld.

The event’s three parts—a “drive-in” screening of Lagerfeld’s short film, The Return, which featured classic cars in Fair Park’s Automobile Building; a runway show styled like a rodeo arena; and an after party—were planned exclusively by Chanel’s international events team, who had complete control over the final look.

And it looked fabulous, fitting for the classy Chanel fashion house, which proves that non-traditional events can happen successfully in venues more accustomed to meetings, concerts, or games. As usual, it comes down to details, details, details.

“Our primary consideration is always what other events or activities are occurring simultaneously/concurrently given the fact that we are a complex of venues, museums, and a public park,” said Daniel Huerta, the executive general manager for Fair Park and an IAVM member. “Other considerations were traffic management, grounds and event security, and limited access.  We vowed to work with the show to insure that no word or photos would leak out ahead of the event in regards to the build out of sets, props, plans, etc. We dedicated a large amount of staff hours to insure that the event was a success, but in all honesty it wasn’t handled much differently that other events we host throughout the year.  It required a bit more team work given the number of days required for the move-in and set up.”

Considering the nature of the event and who all attended, security was definitely a high priority.

“Event security was handled by our contractor, Platinum Services, and the Chanel security team,” Huerta said. “There were six walk-throughs of security to make certain that everyone involved was on the same page.  Everyone knew what  was happening, when it was happening, how it was to be handled, etc., and no exceptions were made.  A credential system and check-in area was established with limited access for staff unless our services were requested.  We did not allow use of cellular or electronic devices inside the building, as we didn’t want the client to lose the ‘wow factor’ via social media tweets or pics ahead of the party.”

Once the party began, though, it was the talk of the town, reaffirming Dallas’ premier place in the fashion world, as well as Fair Park’s ability to host with style and class.

(Image: Nancy Martin Koen)

It’s the end-of-year prediction time! That part of the year where we all become armchair soothsayers, waxing wisdom to whomever will listen.

One person to listen to, though, is Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite. He wrote an article on FORTUNE today about five predictions for social media in 2014. His No. 1 prediction is the rise of ephemeral social networks, such as Snapchat (it’s a image and video sharing site where the content disappears after one to 10 seconds). However, one of his predictions really stood out: social media as a job requirement.

“You know the old guy who’s been at the company forever and still can’t figure out email?,” Holmes wrote. “If you don’t get up to speed on social media in 2014, you’ll be that guy.”

Holmes, in fact, says that there are “13 times as many jobs advertised on Indeed.com that mention the use of social media,” compared to last year.

“Not only are departments like marketing, sales, and customer service expected to be on Twitter and Facebook, teams as diverse as R&D, logistics, and HR are increasingly using internal networks like Yammer to streamline operations,” he wrote. “Social media has grown so critical to the workplace, in fact, that major universities are beginning to offer certificate programs for socially inept corporate types to get up to speed.”

And why should you need good social media skills? Because customers are increasingly using it to interact with businesses (which is another of Holmes’ predictions).

“A 2012 Nielsen survey shows more than half of all customers now turn to social media for redress; meanwhile, some 81 percent of Twitter users expect a same-day response to questions and complaints,” he wrote.

Personally, I’ve had more issues resolved correctly via social media than I have by email or a phone call. My praise and complaints hit the Twitter airwaves before anywhere else. Going forward, the smart businesses are the ones who quickly respond to customers on social media.

“With paid social media now in customers’ arsenal, 2014 may mark the beginning of the end of abysmal customer service at major airlines, credit card companies, banks, and other repeat offenders, characterized by endless phone wait times and those automated ‘phone trees’,” Holmes wrote.

Check out the article for the rest of his predictions, and please let us know in the comments your own industry predictions for 2014. Also, if you’re on Twitter, let us know so we can follow you (please follow me, too: @pimplomat).

(photo credit: mkhmarketing via photopin cc, howtostartablogonline.net)

The calendar year is winding down, and many of you may be making goals for next year. How you frame them, though, will affect feelings of pride or shame, say researchers from Penn State and Central Queensland University in Australia.

“Our research suggests that when your goal is to outperform others, your feelings of pride will be amplified when you succeed,” said Amanda Rebar, a postdoctoral researcher at Central Queensland University, in an interview by Sara LaJeunesse for Penn State News. “But when your goal is to avoid being outperformed by others, your feelings of shame will be amplified when you fail.”

Study participants played 24 rounds of Tetris and were told to earn as many points as they could.

“Before each round, one of four different criteria for earning a point was presented onscreen, the goal of which was to elicit different achievement goals among the participants,” LaJeunesse reported. “Immediately following each round, the researchers provided the participants with bogus feedback and the participants rated their shame and pride.”

According to David Conroy, a professor of kinesiology at Penn State, motivation and purpose play a key role in how we feel at the end of a task.

“Whether that task is a video game, a race or an academic exam, [motivation and purpose] impacts the amount of pride or shame he or she will experience in response to success or failure,” Conroy said. “And the amount of pride or shame a person feels can influence whether he or she will persist in the task or drop out.”

Comparing your performance to others isn’t always bad, though.

“Pride is known to invoke a boost of confidence, persistence, and problem-solving ability, which can help people perform at their best,” Rebar said.

Shame, however, is a different story.

“If a baseball player is the first to strike out in a game, his shame may cause him to become distracted or to worry too much about his precise movements, both of which can hurt his performance,” Rebar said.

Conroy suggests that people “focus on what they can achieve rather than on what they can lose.”

“It may be particularly helpful if coaches and teachers understand these results so they can help influence their athletes’ and students’ achievement goals so as to minimize feelings that can hurt performance,” he said.

(photo credit: Scott Ableman via photopin cc)