One advantage of advertising on social media is leveraging users’ expression of “likes” to influence the perceptions and responses of others in their network. Through a largescale field experiment on WeChat, three online lab studies and a theoretical model, we explore whether and how displaying more “likes” in an ad can effectively lead to more ad “likes” and clicks. We find that displaying the first

The authors develop and test a theoretical framework to examine the impact of app crashes on app engagement. The framework predicts that consumers increase engagement after encountering a single crash due to their need-for-closure and curiosity, yet reduce engagement after experiencing repeated and concentrated crashes, primarily because of frustration and perceived task unattainability; the recency

This article examines the motivational consequences of anthropomorphizing the means of goal pursuit. Eight studies show that consumers are more motivated to pursue fitness and academic goals with anthropomorphized (vs. non-anthropomorphized) means because such means elicit a greater sense of companionship and thus stronger beliefs that (a) goal pursuit is enjoyable (perceived enjoyability) and that

Conceptual research is fundamental to advancing theory and, thus, science. Conceptual articles launch new research streams, resolve conflicting findings, explain new phenomena, and integrate divergent research areas. Yet, compared with other disciplines, marketing publishes little conceptual research. This paper provides a multidisciplinary perspective of conceptual research to help increase the quality

Prior research on advertising media mixes has mostly focused on single channels (e.g., television), pairwise cross-elasticities, or budget optimization within single campaigns. This is starkly detached from advertising practice where (i) there is an increasingly large number of media channels available to marketers, (ii) media plans employ complex combinations of channels, and (iii) marketers manage

Perceived healthiness of food is generally regarded as a positive attribute in food choices as it positively impacts consumers’ preferences. The current research demonstrates that in contexts where there is a time delay between a food’s production and its consumption (referred to as “about-to-expire” food), strong perceptions of a food’s healthiness can be detrimental. This is because consumers hold

Donation-based crowdfunding platforms often claim to pursue equitable outcomes for all beneficiaries, yet many face criticism for failing to do so across different demographic profiles. In response, platform managers are eager to understand how these inequities emerge and explore solutions to address them. In this research, we show that the degree of facial emotional expressiveness of beneficiaries

Social media platforms have been used by firms for a variety of purposes - for building firms’ brand image, increasing customer engagement, providing customer service, among others. However, there is very little research on content strategies adopted by traditional rival firms competing on online social media platforms. This paper seeks to fill this gap by examining whether retailers, traditionally

Sponsored content allows brands to partner with creators to reach creators’ audiences on digital platforms. However, both creators’ and brands’ incomplete understanding of this object generates two critical ambiguities: how to determine the value of sponsored content and how to effectively co-produce it. To better understand these ambiguities, we theorize sponsored content as an epistemic market object:

Consumers use observable cues, like color, to help them evaluate products. This research establishes that consumers infer greater product efficacy from higher color saturation across seven lab experiments (n = 2,745), a web scraping study, and a field experiment. The studies provide evidence that this belief stems from learned associations between color saturation and potency and is applied to both

This paper assesses the extent to which consumers from the opposite poles of the socioeconomic distribution weigh three critical food attributes–healthiness, fillingness, and taste–, how they perceive the associations among them, and how differences in weights and associations influence food preferences. The results of a series of eight pre-registered studies in a highly unequal socioeconomic environment

Marketing to investors – especially when seeking funding for start-ups – is unique, with investors facing extreme uncertainty. This study uses foundational work in marketing, economics, management, finance, and psychology, as well as theories-in-use development with angel and VC investors to build a Business-to-Investor (B2I) Marketing theory. The theory proposes that investors rely on marketing signals

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandates explicit user opt-in consent for data access. It recommends transparency in opt-in requests about data collection, storage, and use, without specifying the format of these requests. Consequently, the GDPR gives firms flexibility in designing opt-in messages. This research uses theory, multiple datasets, and methods to investigate firms’ communication

Recent social movements, such as Black Lives Matter, have prompted brands and retailers to increase the use of minority ownership labels (e.g., Black-owned or woman-owned). The current research examines when and why minority ownership awareness influences consumer behavior, particularly for brand failures. When a brand failure occurs, minority ownership awareness can result in higher brand evaluations

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) installment payments allow customers to pay for purchases in a series of interest-free installments over a short period of time. This research provides novel insights into how customer adoption of BNPL installment payments impacts spending. The authors leverage customer-level transaction data before and after the introduction of a BNPL installment payment service at a large

Air pollution is a growing concern to economies and societies worldwide. Despite common knowledge that air pollution impairs our emotions and cognition and hence behavioral outcomes, the impact of air pollution on consumer spending remains an open question. Analyzing air quality readings and individual-level credit card transactions in South Korea, this paper shows that consumers spend more money when

Consumer choice deferral contributes to the low conversion rate in online retailing. This paper investigates the impact of visual product frames on consumers’ decisions regarding choice deferral. We show that using visual frames to separate options in a product assortment increases consumers’ relative use of the by-alternative (vs. by-attribute) approach for option comparisons, which induces greater

How do managers time the launch of new technologies? Without actionable frameworks to ensure consumers and other stakeholders are ready, innovation releases remain a risky endeavor. Previous work on legitimacy has focused on stages following a product launch. However, launch timing concerns shared expectations of when actions should occur prior to launch. This conceptual article evaluates the alignment

Rare watches, fine wines and spirits, sports cars, designer sneakers, and many other luxury goods create massive enrichment opportunities for consumers if they resell them on secondary markets. This trend is part of the enrichment economy, a novel form of market arrangement where consumers use iconic goods to increase their capital. However, it creates challenges for brands, such as preserving their

The authors’ central premise is that a human-LLM hybrid approach leads to efficiency and effectiveness gains in the marketing research process. In qualitative research, they show that LLMs can assist in both data generation and analysis; LLMs effectively create sample characteristics, generate synthetic respondents, and conduct and moderate in-depth interviews. The AI-human hybrid generates information-rich

Multi-product ads (MPAs) allow an ad platform to display multiple products within a single ad unit. Unlike a single-product display ad, similar ads from the same product category may appear in MPAs and induce consumer satiation. Further, the simultaneous display of ads from multiple product categories can result in cross-category complementarity or substitution in consumers’ utility from ad-clicking

Marketers use online advertising platforms to compare user responses to different ad content. But platforms’ experimentation tools deliver different ads to distinct and undetectably optimized mixes of users that vary across ads, even during the test. Because exposure to ads in the test is non-random, the estimated comparisons confound the effect of the ad content with the effect of algorithmic targeting

This research investigates nickname branding, a novel phenomenon whereby firms incorporate the ‘street’ names consumers give brands into their own marketing (e.g., Bloomingdale’s opening a Bloomie’s store). While practitioners anticipate positive results from deploying this tactic, the current research serves as the first empirical investigation of its likely effectiveness. Drawing on speech act theory

This study empirically investigates whether and to what extent suppliers’ decisions to start selling directly to end-consumers provoke reactions in the ordering strategy of downstream channel partners, such as independent multibrand retailers. Using a multimethod approach that combines transactional data, survey data, and a scenario-based experiment, the authors demonstrate that retailers tend to exit

To better represent consumers who have traditionally been underrepresented in the marketplace, an increasing number of brands are extending or launching product lines that are more inclusive of a diverse consumer base. This work focuses on consumers’ feelings of representation (the feeling they, and consumers they identify with, are seen, heard, or taken into consideration when product decisions across

Existing literature suggests that employees who regularly interact with customers often find this central aspect of their work emotionally draining. Our findings provide a striking contrast by highlighting customer interactions that are not only pleasurable but that also manage to emotionally regenerate frontline service employees. Our ethnographic research demonstrates that several factors influence

Many charitable projects have started using online crowdfunding platforms to raise donations. The rise of these platforms as fundraising vehicles has been partially driven by easy access to a large pool of potential donors without the significant marketing costs that commonly accompany traditional fundraising. However, such a low cost of entry also results in a significant "crowding" of projects, making

Intersectionality remains largely underutilized within marketing. To address this gap, this paper synthesizes literature to provide tools for incorporating intersectionality into marketing research, including a framework for an intersectional marketing paradigm, a research design roadmap, a research agenda, and key takeaways for stakeholders. The definition of intersectionality focuses on three main

Services marketing originated as a discipline to guide managers in marketing intangible products; in today’s world, it must also guide managers in serving society. This research develops the concept of a social profit orientation, whereby organizations invest resources for the express purpose of enhancing the common good, especially the well-being of people and the health of the planet. Implementing

Anatomical depiction is a technique where the product is decomposed into components that are spatially arranged in a layer-by-layer manner to visually explicate its inner structure. The authors demonstrate that anatomical depiction, compared to non-anatomical depiction, enhances product valuation. This effect occurs because anatomical depiction elicits a ‘coming together’ of the inner components in

With the rise of social media and the peer-to-peer economy, sellers can easily tell potential buyers about themselves and their process of producing products and services. This research investigates the influence of a central aspect of the production process that sellers can communicate—their production enjoyment. Buyers are willing to pay a higher price, are more likely to click on ads, and are more

Prior research documents deleterious consequences of the annual clock change to daylight saving time in many contexts, but little is known about the effect the policy has on consumer behavior. While policy debates around ending seasonal clock changes continue, millions of consumers worldwide are potentially adversely affected by the time change. Drawing on the notions of sleepiness and self-control

Why do some technology products enjoy enduring continued use while others are quickly discarded? Existing marketing research explains that continued use is motivated by cost-benefit decisions over how useful a tech-product is and how easy it is to use. Yet the interconnected nature of contemporary technologies means that continued use can depend on tech-products’ capacities to interact with other devices

The non-profit sector is home to some of the most recognized and trustworthy brands, all competing for financial resources and volunteers. Akin to consumers, volunteers entertain relationships with non-profit brands. These relationships have recently become more diverse as individuals increasingly look for more ephemeral and distant forms of involvement. Drawing on an extensive qualitative dataset

Presumably in an effort to reduce cyberbullying and promote mental health, online influencers often limit viewers’ ability to post comments. In this research, we find that influencers incur significant interpersonal and professional repercussions for doing so. Across a Twitter dataset and six experiments utilizing both consequential and hypothetical dependent measures, we find that consumers form more

This research studies sales force incentive compensation in Brand-Managed Retail (BMR) operations, which are particularly prevalent in high-end department stores and vertically integrated retailers. In particular, the research explores how a brand’s strength may affect the relative benefit to a brand from using individual versus group incentives for motivating its salespeople in BMR settings. The authors

Myopic marketing spending—curtailing marketing and research and development expenses to boost earnings—damages firms’ long-term value. Despite this, Top Management Teams (TMTs) are often myopic and by the time investors or boards detect such short-termism, it is too late to react or intervene. This research introduces a novel prediction method by analyzing the language TMTs use in earnings’ calls,

The Drug Price Control Order 2013 (DPCO) in India, regulated the prices of certain essential and life-saving drugs to ensure their affordability and availability; with the expectation that this would translate into boosting the sales of those drugs. To assess whether such a sales increase was achieved, we study the effects of the regulation on sales volumes of each regulated drug using a synthetic

McShane et al.'s (2024) wide-ranging critique of null hypothesis significance testing provides a number of specific suggestions for improved practice in empirical research. This commentary amplifies several of these from the perspective of computational statistics—particularly nonparametrics, resampling/bootstrapping, and Bayesian methods—applied to common research problems. Throughout, the author

Marketing scholars have extensively studied marketing’s effect on firm value and developed metrics and dashboards to help establish marketing accountability. However, empirical evidence of marketing accountability’s specific outcomes is scarce and mainly derived from surveys. It also lacks consideration of outcomes beyond the marketing function’s standing in the firm, thus overlooking possible downsides

Research examining the antecedents instead of consequences of recalls is relatively sparse and has not considered whether firms’ likelihood to recall products is influenced by legal changes that could induce managerial opportunism, such as those reducing shareholder litigation risk. To examine this question, the authors exploit the staggered adoption of universal demand (UD) laws across different states

Following trends in entertainment streaming services, online educational platforms are increasingly offering users flexible “on-demand” content options. It is important to understand how the timing of content release affects learning behaviors and firm revenue drivers. The current research studies over 67,000 users taking a marketing course before vs. after a natural experiment where the platform switched

Specialty drugs treat complex, severe diseases and offer significant therapeutic advances. Despite their potential to transform patient care, little is known about the drivers of their diffusion. I...

This research investigates how a price promotion on a fast-moving consumer good influences the sales of substitute products in a retail shelf/online display. An analysis of supermarket yogurt data ...

Technologies are becoming increasingly autonomous, able to complete tasks on behalf of consumers without human intervention. For example, robot vacuums clean the floor while cooking machines implem...

Given the high failure rates of brand extensions, insights into the drivers of brand extension success are critical for marketing practitioners and scholars. Prior research has inferred that parent...

Fifty years ago, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stopped enforcing its fictitious reference pricing guidelines, emphasizing the search qualities of price and the belief that competition would dr...

An increasingly common strategy when naming new brands is to use an unconventional spelling of an otherwise familiar word (e.g., “Lyft” rather than “Lift”). However, little is known about how this ...

Policy makers and insurers promote the use of generic drugs because they can deliver large savings without sacrificing quality. But these efforts meet resistance from the public, who perceive gener...

Membership-based free shipping (MFS) has become increasingly adopted by online retailers. However, its effectiveness is understudied. This study leverages a consumer transaction dataset provided by...

This systematic literature review enhances paradigmatic/metaphysic analyses by examining how value-based commitments, intellectual personae, and stances impact the diversity, relevance, and conside...

Language is critical to the effectiveness of marketing messages. Achieving a desired outcome requires arranging words to formulate a message (i.e., syntax), but this task is not trivial. Here, we s...

From advertisers and marketers to salespeople and leaders, everyone wants to hold attention. They want to make ads, pitches, presentations, and content that captivates audiences and keeps them enga...

This research explores how marketers can best persuade consumers to act in a collective goal context such as donation campaigns and signing a petition. We examine whether consumers respond differen...

Increased consumer demand for healthier product options and looming regulation have prompted many consumer goods brands to adjust the amount of sugar content in their product lines, including addin...

Hospital advertising has grown more than five-fold in the last two decades. However, hospital advertising has been understudied, unlike detailing and advertising for prescription drugs. This study ...