Marketing Letters最新文献

This study investigates the short-term impact of generative AI, exemplified by the introduction of ChatGPT, on user contributions in a coding Q&A platform. We find that the introduction of ChatGPT led to a reduction in the number of high-quality answers provided by users, particularly among highly engaged contributors, despite an overall increase in answers. We identify two key mechanisms: (1) increased perceived question sophistication despite no actual change in content and (2) reduced motivation of loyal users in providing answers in the face of AI-generated alternatives. The findings suggest that while generative AI can facilitate value creation on user-generated content (UGC) platforms, it also poses challenges in retaining core contributors and managing content quality. The paper contributes to the literature on the impact of AI adoption on platforms and suggests practical implications for UGC platform management, such as the need for AI content disclosure measures to retain engaged users.

This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the significant contributions of the 2024 AMA Converse Award recipient Dr. Greg M. Allenby, as presented at the Converse Symposium held at the Gies College of Business, University of Illinois, at Urbana-Champaign. Highlighting the dual emphasis on theory and practice, the paper underscores Dr. Allenby’s pivotal role in advancing Bayesian statistical methods within marketing, thereby shaping modern marketing research methodologies. His work encompasses a broad spectrum of research, including choice modeling, heterogeneous response analysis, decision theory, and the integration of text data into marketing models. The paper also reflects on Dr. Allenby’s academic journey, professional achievements, and his influential role in national marketing and statistical organizations. Additionally, the paper discusses the historical context and ongoing evolution of the Converse Award, emphasizing its importance in recognizing and fostering innovation and leadership in the field of marketing.

The literature on marketing myopia suggests the need for exploring conditions under which myopic marketing management differs in its impact on stock performance. To that end, the authors investigate the role of asset turnover (AT), which is the ratio of the firm’s sales or revenues to its assets, indicating the effectiveness with which a firm is using its assets to generate incomes. AT suggests a persistent signal of the firm’s potential for future cash flows. The authors test their model on data from 210 publicly traded Brazilian companies from 2001 to 2017. Results show that when there is high AT, the stock performance in the short term (i) is higher in non-myopic firms with positive earnings surprise compared to myopic firms and (ii) does not significantly differ between non-myopic firms with negative earnings surprise and myopic firms. The study demonstrates that AT contributes to the identification, signalization, and evaluation of marketing myopia.

As co-chairs of the 21st Paul D. Converse Marketing Symposium, we are honored to introduce the groundbreaking contributions of the 2024 Converse Award recipients, Dr. Jennifer Aaker from Stanford University and Dr. Greg Allenby from Ohio State University. The Converse Award, one of the highest honors in the marketing discipline, celebrates exceptional research that significantly advances marketing science. Dr. Aaker’s pioneering work on the psychology of happiness and meaningfulness and Dr. Allenby’s influential advancements in Bayesian methods for marketing data analysis are exemplary milestones in our field. This preface provides an overview of their significant contributions and underscores the historical significance and enduring legacy of the Converse Award and Symposium, hosted by the marketing area at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. We highlight the symposium’s role in fostering a collaborative environment for enriching discussions that shape the future of marketing. Furthermore, we emphasize the University of Illinois commitment to advancing the field through rigorous scholarship and interdisciplinary collaboration. By honoring distinguished scholars like Aaker and Allenby, the Paul D. Converse Symposium continues to propel marketing science forward, ensuring its relevance and responsiveness to the evolving needs of academia and industry.

Consumers are inundated with choices, yet they effectively find products that satisfy them. In this review, we draw from the marketing, economics, psychology, and ecology literatures to outline a general framework for consumer search, implicit in many prior descriptions of consumer behavior. Within the framework, we particularly focus on navigation, which we define as the act of deciding the order in which to inspect products with the intention of learning more about them. We focus on navigation because it has received relatively little attention in marketing. We also highlight opportunities for future research in understanding interactions between stages of the framework. By understanding this framework, researchers and marketers can gain key theoretical insights into the consumer experience when looking for a product. Further, understanding these processes is likely to yield practical results that can help in the design of more effective search experiences, ultimately increasing consumer satisfaction.

The article by Mittelman et al. (2014, Journal of Consumer Research, 41(4):953–964) introduced the offer framing effect, suggesting that consumers exhibit greater variety-seeking behavior when selecting products sequentially (single offering) compared to choosing from bundles (bundled offering). The opposite was found by O’Donnell et al. (2023, Journal of Consumer Research, 49(5):861–881), resulting in opposing management implications. To clarify the direction of effect, we conducted four studies in two product categories and found evidence of a stronger preference for variety in bundled offering conditions (compared to single offering conditions), replicating O’Donnell et al.’s (2023) findings. However, utilizing logistic regression analyses, we identify product liking discrepancies as the primary driver of variety seeking. We further reveal that the offer framing effect is more distinctive for choices between products with prosocial attributes compared to hedonic attributes. Our findings provide valuable insights for marketers aiming to optimize product bundling strategies.

The goal of this paper is to illustrate how customer text reviews can be used to identify (a) the factors underlying consumers’ preference for a product offering and (b) the magnitude of each of these factors on the consumers’ overall assessment of the product offering experience. The authors do this using approximately 317k Google patient reviews for U.S. acute care hospitals. They first analyze the texts using Natural Language Processing and find eleven valenced topics well-describe the types of healthcare experiences. Then, after describing the structure of these reviews, they use regression analysis to estimate the magnitude of each type of experience on the patient’s overall evaluation of the experience after adjusting for any halo effect associated with the dominantly discussed topic, which has the potential of influencing the impact of the other discussed experiences. The authors conclude by providing numerous managerially significant insights coming from these analyses.

Social media marketing is an established promotion strategy that offers firms extensive opportunities to nurture brand equity and to disseminate product information. Therefore, it is crucial for firms to create content with significant potential for virality. However, understanding the elements that make certain content more viral than others, especially regarding unstructured data such as images, is not straightforward to marketers. Using data collected from the Twitter API of 54 major fashion brands over 55 months, we investigated how image factors—particularly the size of brands’ logos in posted images—influence the virality of social media content. Our findings suggest that larger logos in posted images correspond to a greater number of retweets for midtier fashion brands. However, we find an opposite effect for top-tier brands—the smaller the logo, the greater the number of retweets. Bottom-tier brands also benefit from larger logos, but the impact is significantly less pronounced compared with midtier brands. These results present significant implications for viral marketing as well as the design of social media content.

Despite people’s universal interest in the pursuit of physical attractiveness, little is known about the behavioral consequences of individuals’ self-perceived physical attractiveness. Across four studies, we find that a boost in individuals’ self-perceived attractiveness increases public self-consciousness and thus heightens their motivation for impression management, which in turn increases prosocial behavior. Furthermore, we identify the salience of privateness as an important moderator. The effect of self-perceived attractiveness on prosocial behavior is disrupted when the privateness of prosocial behavior is made salient. This research thus provides evidence for the causal link between self-perceived physical attractiveness and prosocial behavior.

We explore how first-time adopters of complex new technology products are influenced by the volume of positive WOM that they receive prior to adoption. Such positive WOM can flow through to alter adopter’s goals during initial product use, with consequences for their usage experiences and strategies. Two longitudinal surveys and an experiment reveal a potential downside of positive WOM. Specifically, receiving a greater volume of positive WOM about a new technology product can establish normative standards for adopter’s performance during product use. This leads adopters to feel pressure to meet those standards, prompting avoidance-oriented performance goals for initial use of their new product. Together, these processes undermine adopter’s experiences with their new product, as well as their strategies for using it. Our findings offer insights for marketers and researchers by identifying and explaining an ironic post-adoption effect of PWOM.

Too much of a good thing? High volumes of positive WOM can undermine adopters of new technology products.