International Journal of Research in Marketing最新文献

Firms increasingly rely on images to drive user engagement with their social media content. However, evidence is limited on when and why image characteristics can draw social media users’ attention and increase engagement. In this research, the authors theorize that color complexity in images can serve as an external cue that draws social media users’ attention and provokes a shift from the peripheral processing mode to the central processing mode. This shift can result in deeper processing of the social media post that features the image, thus increasing the likelihood of the users’ engagement with the post. They further reveal heterogeneity in the effect of color complexity due to the time of day when the users are exposed to the image, image height, and sentiment and complexity in the text accompanying the image. The results are consistent across an empirical analysis of two proprietary Facebook datasets from distinct industries and time periods and confirmed by two biometric eye-tracking experiments that provide process evidence. The findings have important implications for both content marketers and academics as they seek to identify content features that can maximize user engagement on social media.

From deadly disease outbreaks to crimes and terrorism, consumers often experience mortality salience (MS). This research examines how MS-inducing events impact brand evaluations. We propose that under MS, consumers avoid experiencing change. Because consumers perceive brands with an exciting personality to be more closely associated with the notion of change than brands with other types of personality, the onset of MS is more likely to hurt the evaluations of exciting brands than those of other brands. Study 1, a large-scale secondary data study, showed that the 9/11 terror attacks degraded consumers’ evaluations of exciting brands but not of other types of brands. Subsequent studies demonstrated causality and the underlying mechanism. In Study 2, experimentally inducing MS decreased evaluations of an exciting brand but not of a control brand. Using a process-by-moderation approach, Study 3 showed that manipulating consumers’ perception of the extent to which an exciting brand was associated with the notion of change moderated the negative impact of MS on brand evaluations. Studies 4a-4b demonstrated that consumers’ tendency to avoid experiencing change mediated the detrimental effect of MS on the evaluations of an exciting brand but not of a control brand. These findings add to the literature on branding and offer practical insights for brand management during crises.

Scents can improve product evaluations, but incorporating scents in advertising and packaging is relatively inefficient and oftentimes hard to implement (e.g., online). We therefore present a theoretical framework that explains how pictures on packages and in advertisements can evoke imagined scents (olfactory imagery), thereby improving evaluations and increasing choice shares, without delivering any actual scent. Seven main studies (and four supplemental studies) demonstrate this visual-olfactory effect on product evaluations and choices, and reveal three conditions that accentuate, eliminate, and reverse this effect. First, the effect of olfactory imagery on product evaluation is greater among consumers with a stronger need for smell. Second, although many products are marketed with scented versions, we show that pictures only improve evaluations of products for which scent is a relevant or typical attribute. Moreover, although deodorizing products frequently utilize pictures of malodorous objects, we show that such pictures actually harm evaluations. By revealing that pictures can evoke imagined scents, which affect product evaluations even without an actual scent, this research demonstrates that scent has far more pervasive and powerful marketing potential than previously thought.

In light of scarce resources, firms strategically weigh off between investments in value creation and value appropriation. They do so by placing more emphasis on one of the two strategic orientations which defines their strategic emphasis. So far, literature has relied on accounting data – specifically on reported investments in R&D and advertising – to operationalize reported strategic emphasis and studied its association with a firm’s financial performance. Previous studies suggest that firms benefit from emphasizing value appropriation. However, we show that the association between shifts in reported strategic emphasis and stock returns has actually changed over time. These days, the stock market wants firms to balance their strategic orientation. Moreover, this study not only takes a firm’s reported strategic emphasis into account but also considers what firms communicate about their strategic orientation. The study infers communicated strategic emphasis from a firm’s ‘Management Discussion & Analysis’ (MD&A) section of its Form 10-K filings. The authors develop a special purpose dictionary and show that what firms say about their strategic emphasis matters to investors in addition to what they report. The authors further discuss differences in the relevance of shifts in strategic emphasis across industries. Especially, the distinction between reported and communicated shifts in strategic emphasis provides novel managerial insights and avenues for future marketing strategy research.

This research employs upper echelons theory to examine whether executive hubris augments a firm's customer acquisition while concurrently impairing its customer retention. Drawing on an information processing perspective, we suggest that the influence of executive hubris on customer acquisition and retention is shaped by executives' selective attention to information. This influence is observed to amplify in the presence of market uncertainty and recede with an increase in firm product market experience. We validate these predictions through a mixed-method research design. Study 1 includes an original survey that gathers multi-informant responses, coupled with the subsequent year's ROA data, to assess the role of hubris and the moderating effects of market uncertainty and firm product market experience. Study 2 consists of two experimental studies that manipulate executive hubris to test its causal influence on customer acquisition and retention. Moreover, we utilize an eye-tracking method to examine whether the proposed influence is driven by executives' selective information processing. Our findings enhance the existing literature on upper echelons and marketing strategy, providing practical insights to align executive traits with firms' marketing objectives.

This study investigates how brands’ responses to competitors’ advertising actions change over the business cycle. In an empirical analysis of advertising activity by 105 brands in six consumer packaged goods categories over 10 years in a market that experienced severe economic swings, we show that managers become more aggressive in contractions. Brands respond not only more often to competitors’ advertising but also more intensely. Different brands react in contractions. Brand leaders respond less often and intensely in bad times; by contrast, premium-tier brands seem to avoid competition in good times but aggressively defend their position in bad times, especially against cheaper competitors, which are more popular in contractions. We corroborate the validity of our findings through in-depth interviews with executives and introduce two useful metrics, aggressivity and receptivity, to map changes in brand competition in an industry when economic conditions change. Collectively, the findings show how managers can better anticipate competitive advertising reactions in good and bad economic times.

In recent years, European regulators have debated restricting the time an online tracker can track a user to protect consumer privacy better. Despite the significance of these debates, there has been a noticeable absence of any comprehensive cost-benefit analysis. This article fills this gap on the cost side by suggesting an approach to estimate the economic consequences of lifetime restrictions on cookies for publishers. The empirical study on cookies of 54,127 users who received ∼128 million ad impressions over ∼2.5 years yields an average cookie lifetime of 279 days, with an average value of €2.52 per cookie. Only ∼13 % of all cookies increase their daily value over time, but their average value is about four times larger than the average value of all cookies. Restricting cookies’ lifetime to one year (two years) could potentially decrease their lifetime value by ∼25 % (∼19 %), which represents a potential decrease in the value of all cookies of ∼9 % (∼5%). Most cookies, however, would not be affected by lifetime restrictions of 12 or 24 months as 72 % (85 %) of the users delete their cookies within 12 (24) months. In light of the €10.60 billion cookie-based display ad revenue in Europe, such restrictions would endanger €904 million (€576 million) annually, equivalent to €2.08 (€1.33) per EU internet user. The article discusses these results' marketing strategy challenges and opportunities for advertisers and publishers.