Jordan Salvador Wins Best Paper Award

May 1, 2018

Jordan Salvador (marketing ‘18) received the Best Student Paper award for a presentation based on her honors thesis research at the recent meeting of the Association of Marketing Theory and Practice (AMTP). Georgia Southern University business faculty regularly attend and present their research at AMTP, and Dr. Lindsay Larson recommended attending this conference to Salvador and to her other students as well. However, Salvador was the only one among the students to present work.

Salvador’s research, “Beyond Higher Ed Marketing: Unsanctioned User Generated Content,” analyzes the purity of brands marketing content formed when students create accounts affiliated with certain universities. “This may be done through students creating various Twitter and Instagram accounts that affiliate themselves with the school but are not regulated or filtered by the university. I looked at whether students actually identified with the accounts, asking the question, ‘Are these accounts an accurate representation of student experience at Georgia Southern University?’ We also looked at whether students see these accounts negatively affecting the brand of the University,” she said.

Salvador worked closely with Dr. Larson in preparation for the conference. Together they created a poster presentation along with the research paper. “Dr. Larson has helped me tremendously over the past year. She was there for every step of the process, giving me guidance,” she said. “For the conference, we met once a week for a month, and I practiced my presentation with her.”

The conference consisted of mostly professionals and graduate students. Salvador was the only undergraduate in attendance. She was able to make connections with interested professionals in her field of study. “I really loved the flexibility and support that I was given at the conference. I was able to talk to some professors about the possibility of continuing my education further in grad school. I also had a few professors from other schools ask me to send them my paper so that they could use some of the information for their own personal research as well,” she said.

Conferences provide the students with the ability to learn new information as well as different means of research. They allow students to transfer what they have learned in the classroom to a professional setting. “At the beginning of the conference, I was worried because I do not like public speaking. However, the experience gave me so much more confidence in myself after presenting. Also, conferences are just a lot of fun and are definitely worth it,” Salvador said.