Hip-Hop: The New Answer?

Hip-Hop: The New Answer? analyzes a total of nine companies from different industries that have used Hip-Hop, whether via advertisements with artists or symbols of the music’s culture, as a part of company marketing. Through marketing, firms are able to obtain new consumers of different demographics or more from its core customer base and thus raise sales. More and more corporations that are well established in their industries are incorporating some influence from Hip-Hop. This seems to say mature companies have found a way to increase market share and sales. Therefore, this paper looks at the changes in annual sales data from before and after Hip-Hop was used in company marketing. In addition to sales data, company stock prices were also analyzed. Stock prices are another major element to examine because they reflect how well a company is able to sell products and manage operations. Companies were discussed from different industries to show that this new form of marketing does not just apply to one type of consumer product. In order to look at annual sales, information was taken from company annual reports. Stock price data in the paper was retrieved from historical company market prices. So evidence used are financial statistics reported by the firms to the Securities Exchange Commission, and as an end result the public, as well as the per share value of the firm. In this paper it has been determined that not all companies which use Hip-Hop artists or other characteristics associated with this genre of music will experience an increase in sales results and/ or stock returns