Pub Date : 2026-02-06DOI: 10.1007/s11747-025-01129-x
Paul W. Fombelle, Clay M. Voorhees, Amie Gustafsson, Lars Witell, Anders Gustafsson
This research demonstrates the impact of unconditional business-to-consumer (B2C) gifts. It contributes to the literature by examining how an unconditional gift at the beginning of a shopping experience can influence both loyalty and transactional spending. The findings show that an unconditional gift creates feelings of gratitude, driving loyalty and transactional spending. At the same time, receiving such a gift can lead to a sense of obligation, prompting increased transactional spending to alleviate this feeling. To address the identified gaps in research on B2C gift giving and provide managers a clear path to successfully launch an unconditional gift-giving program, we conduct two firm-partnered field experiments, tracking the behaviors of customers after receipt of an unconditional gift. We then conduct five experimental studies to validate the theoretical process and examine three managerially relevant contingencies: value of the gift, new versus existing customers, and a promotional reward versus an unconditional gift. We find that even unconditional gifts with little monetary value provide benefits for a firm and the effects are robust across new and existing customers. Furthermore, we find that unconditional gifts create greater feelings of obligation than promotional rewards. Managers can use our findings to design unconditional gift-giving programs regarding when, what, and how unconditional gifts should be given to have the largest impact on customers.
{"title":"The effects of unconditional gifts on customer-firm relationships","authors":"Paul W. Fombelle, Clay M. Voorhees, Amie Gustafsson, Lars Witell, Anders Gustafsson","doi":"10.1007/s11747-025-01129-x","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01129-x","url":null,"abstract":"This research demonstrates the impact of unconditional business-to-consumer (B2C) gifts. It contributes to the literature by examining how an unconditional gift at the beginning of a shopping experience can influence both loyalty and transactional spending. The findings show that an unconditional gift creates feelings of gratitude, driving loyalty and transactional spending. At the same time, receiving such a gift can lead to a sense of obligation, prompting increased transactional spending to alleviate this feeling. To address the identified gaps in research on B2C gift giving and provide managers a clear path to successfully launch an unconditional gift-giving program, we conduct two firm-partnered field experiments, tracking the behaviors of customers after receipt of an unconditional gift. We then conduct five experimental studies to validate the theoretical process and examine three managerially relevant contingencies: value of the gift, new versus existing customers, and a promotional reward versus an unconditional gift. We find that even unconditional gifts with little monetary value provide benefits for a firm and the effects are robust across new and existing customers. Furthermore, we find that unconditional gifts create greater feelings of obligation than promotional rewards. Managers can use our findings to design unconditional gift-giving programs regarding when, what, and how unconditional gifts should be given to have the largest impact on customers.","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.2,"publicationDate":"2026-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146138644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-02-02DOI: 10.1007/s11747-025-01125-1
Carolyn Wells Keller, Chethana Achar
{"title":"Value congruence in evaluations of product aesthetics: Political conservatives’ preference for kinderschema cute products","authors":"Carolyn Wells Keller, Chethana Achar","doi":"10.1007/s11747-025-01125-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01125-1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"232 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.2,"publicationDate":"2026-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146101526","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-27DOI: 10.1007/s11747-025-01131-3
Hai-Anh Tran, Heiner Evanschitzky, Stephan Ludwig, Bach Nguyen, Dhruv Grewal, Andrew M. Farrell, Anna-Lena Ackfeldt
Higher education institutions face increasing pressure to promote their complex services in competitive global markets, yet they lack evidence-based insights into effective marketing communication strategies. Drawing on signaling theory, the current research examines how universities’ social media content influences student acquisition. Based on interviews with university social media managers, text analyses of more than one million tweets from 94 U.K. universities, and two experiments, the authors outline how universities’ communication content and style choices drive student acquisition. Rather than content focused on the service environment or outcome quality, the study findings indicate that content pertaining to interaction quality has the strongest positive effect on acquisition. Stylistically, an emotional tone enhances the impact of such content, but a cognitive tone is more effective for content about outcome quality; the tone has no significant effect on content about the service environment. Furthermore, external signals offered by third-party rankings moderate these effects: Highly ranked institutions benefit most when they signal environment quality, whereas lower-ranked institutions benefit from emphasizing interaction quality. With such strategic guidance, universities can align their social media content and style and third-party quality signals to optimize student acquisition.
{"title":"How universities can use social media for student acquisition","authors":"Hai-Anh Tran, Heiner Evanschitzky, Stephan Ludwig, Bach Nguyen, Dhruv Grewal, Andrew M. Farrell, Anna-Lena Ackfeldt","doi":"10.1007/s11747-025-01131-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01131-3","url":null,"abstract":"Higher education institutions face increasing pressure to promote their complex services in competitive global markets, yet they lack evidence-based insights into effective marketing communication strategies. Drawing on signaling theory, the current research examines how universities’ social media content influences student acquisition. Based on interviews with university social media managers, text analyses of more than one million tweets from 94 U.K. universities, and two experiments, the authors outline how universities’ communication content and style choices drive student acquisition. Rather than content focused on the service environment or outcome quality, the study findings indicate that content pertaining to interaction quality has the strongest positive effect on acquisition. Stylistically, an emotional tone enhances the impact of such content, but a cognitive tone is more effective for content about outcome quality; the tone has no significant effect on content about the service environment. Furthermore, external signals offered by third-party rankings moderate these effects: Highly ranked institutions benefit most when they signal environment quality, whereas lower-ranked institutions benefit from emphasizing interaction quality. With such strategic guidance, universities can align their social media content and style and third-party quality signals to optimize student acquisition.","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"397 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"146056046","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-08DOI: 10.1007/s11747-025-01133-1
Carlos Bauer, Mansur Khamitov, Mathew S. Isaac, Julio Sevilla
{"title":"The visual moderation effect: How the representation of loyalty reward progress affects consumer judgments and behaviors","authors":"Carlos Bauer, Mansur Khamitov, Mathew S. Isaac, Julio Sevilla","doi":"10.1007/s11747-025-01133-1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01133-1","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"185 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145947276","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-08DOI: 10.1007/s11747-025-01123-3
Brianna JeeWon Paulich, Anita Pansari, V. Kumar
{"title":"Where did you receive the free sample? Sustained impact of new product sample distribution on customer purchase journey","authors":"Brianna JeeWon Paulich, Anita Pansari, V. Kumar","doi":"10.1007/s11747-025-01123-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01123-3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145947274","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2026-01-03DOI: 10.1007/s11747-025-01126-0
Pierre Chandon, Andde Indaburu
{"title":"When and how simplified nutrition labels improve fast-food choices","authors":"Pierre Chandon, Andde Indaburu","doi":"10.1007/s11747-025-01126-0","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01126-0","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"29 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.2,"publicationDate":"2026-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145895668","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-12DOI: 10.1007/s11747-025-01120-6
V. Kumar, Philip Kotler, Ajay Kumar
{"title":"Transformative marketing strategies in the era of new-age technologies: Principles, plan, purpose, and practice","authors":"V. Kumar, Philip Kotler, Ajay Kumar","doi":"10.1007/s11747-025-01120-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01120-6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145753015","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-12-01DOI: 10.1007/s11747-025-01127-z
Mengzhou Zhuang, Eric Er Fang, Peijian Song
Many omnichannel firms are switching from channel-specific pricing to uniform pricing, but little is known about the immediate and long-term effects of this change. Relying on a quasi-experiment setting featuring a pricing policy change varying across 4,150 products over 18 months, we empirically investigate the effects of uniform pricing on online and offline channel sales. We show that this transition is beneficial for both online and offline sales, with effects becoming increasingly positive over time. Furthermore, we show that the treatment effects can be decomposed into two contrasting effects: a delayed positive effect and an immediate negative effect on product sales. Last, in consumer-level analysis, we show that the treatment effects are due to two distinct behavioral patterns: a decrease in the shopping frequency of 77.4% of the consumers who can no longer leverage price differences between channels and an increase in the activity of 22.6% of consumers who appreciate the ease of search and the comprehensiveness of the omnichannel experience. This study sheds light on an important pricing decision in omnichannel retail—whether to switch from channel-specific to uniform pricing.
{"title":"Effects of switching from channel-specific pricing to uniform pricing in omnichannel retail: Evidence from a quasi-experiment","authors":"Mengzhou Zhuang, Eric Er Fang, Peijian Song","doi":"10.1007/s11747-025-01127-z","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01127-z","url":null,"abstract":"Many omnichannel firms are switching from channel-specific pricing to uniform pricing, but little is known about the immediate and long-term effects of this change. Relying on a quasi-experiment setting featuring a pricing policy change varying across 4,150 products over 18 months, we empirically investigate the effects of uniform pricing on online and offline channel sales. We show that this transition is beneficial for both online and offline sales, with effects becoming increasingly positive over time. Furthermore, we show that the treatment effects can be decomposed into two contrasting effects: a delayed positive effect and an immediate negative effect on product sales. Last, in consumer-level analysis, we show that the treatment effects are due to two distinct behavioral patterns: a decrease in the shopping frequency of 77.4% of the consumers who can no longer leverage price differences between channels and an increase in the activity of 22.6% of consumers who appreciate the ease of search and the comprehensiveness of the omnichannel experience. This study sheds light on an important pricing decision in omnichannel retail—whether to switch from channel-specific to uniform pricing.","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.2,"publicationDate":"2025-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145657176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2025-11-30DOI: 10.1007/s11747-025-01128-y
Haisu Zhang
Despite growing scholarly work on crowdfunding, not enough studies have examined post-crowdfunding commercialization. In this research, we conceptualize post-crowdfunding commercialization as a three-phase process: product launch, sales in the mainstream market, and product survival. In Study 1, we examine 638 video games and find that successfully crowdfunded products are about seven times more likely to be launched in the market than failed ones. In Study 2, we rely on the dual-market view from innovation diffusion theory and suggest that backers at the crowdfunding stage and consumers at the commercialization stage represent two distinct markets. Using longitudinal data on 211 crowdfunding projects, we find that crowd size (i.e., the number of backers) functions as a double-edged sword: It is positively related to product adoption but negatively related to customer satisfaction. Product adoption and customer satisfaction further mediate the relationship between crowd size and product survival. Moreover, time to market worsens the negative relationship between crowd size and customer satisfaction.
{"title":"Navigating post-crowdfunding commercialization: Launch decision, market sales, and product survival","authors":"Haisu Zhang","doi":"10.1007/s11747-025-01128-y","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01128-y","url":null,"abstract":"Despite growing scholarly work on crowdfunding, not enough studies have examined post-crowdfunding commercialization. In this research, we conceptualize post-crowdfunding commercialization as a three-phase process: product launch, sales in the mainstream market, and product survival. In Study 1, we examine 638 video games and find that successfully crowdfunded products are about seven times more likely to be launched in the market than failed ones. In Study 2, we rely on the dual-market view from innovation diffusion theory and suggest that backers at the crowdfunding stage and consumers at the commercialization stage represent two distinct markets. Using longitudinal data on 211 crowdfunding projects, we find that crowd size (i.e., the number of backers) functions as a double-edged sword: It is positively related to product adoption but negatively related to customer satisfaction. Product adoption and customer satisfaction further mediate the relationship between crowd size and product survival. Moreover, time to market worsens the negative relationship between crowd size and customer satisfaction.","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.2,"publicationDate":"2025-11-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145651522","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"To quote or not to quote: The effect of direct-speech appeals on donation in charity crowdfunding platforms","authors":"Ziqi Zhang, Xuejiao Lin, Qiang Kris Zhou, Guoqing Guo","doi":"10.1007/s11747-025-01122-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01122-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":17194,"journal":{"name":"Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science","volume":"37 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":18.2,"publicationDate":"2025-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145608828","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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