Marketing Commons^™

Causal Effect Estimates Of Online E-Cigarette Marketing Exposure On Future E-Cigarette Harm Perception And Use, Paul T. Harrell, Nicholas T. Williams, Kara E. Rudolph, Rachel Ayala Guzman, Ateeqa Ijaz, Nicole Rychagov, Aaron Null, Silvia S. Martins

Department of Pediatrics Faculty Publications

Background

Globally, over 10 million youth use e-cigarettes; United States use, in particular, dramatically rose in the late 2010's, exceeding year-over-year increases from any other substance in over four decades. This rise has been partially attributed to youth online e-cigarette marketing exposure, but has not been appropriately studied.

Methods

We examined youth data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) spanning the dramatic increase period (Waves 4, 4.5, and 5; 2016-2019). We estimated average risk differences (RD) for Wave 5 e-cigarette harmfulness perception and use comparing all youth versus no youth reporting past-month online e-cigarette marketing exposure in …

The Ai Revolution In Virtual Try-Ons: A Means-End Chain Model Perspective, Ju-Young M. Kang, Ji Young Lee, Dooyoung Choi, Sumin Helen Koo, Jeehyun Song, Youngjin Bahng

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Leading brands have begun to implement artificial intelligence-driven virtual try-on (AI VTO) technology, which helps reduce returns and increase conversion rates, repeat purchases, and customer loyalty. This research aimed to examine how retail user experience with specific perceived quality factors of AI VTOs influences users’ value equity and downstream loyalty and to investigate the moderating effects of clothing in relation to the self as structure and concern for physical appearance, based on a Means–End Chain model. Data were collected from 509 U.S. online apparel shoppers using a consumer panel. Structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis were used for data analysis. …

Chasing The Dream And Buying The Promise In A Conceptual Framework For Consumer Decision-Making, Casey H. Prentice

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

The American dream is a concept that is echoed across our society, and while the data show Americans do not overwhelmingly believe in the dream, marketers continue to pair it and the issue of economic prosperity in their agendas. Through a novel framework that overlaps a deeply studied mass communication theory with a decision-making framework used in marketing, this paper demonstrates a new lens to understand how marketers identify strategies and tactics, build agendas, and make sales by touting the American dream. As separate entities, decision-making models and agenda setting theory are powerful, but together can create an environment that …

Two Essays On Customer Loyalty, Arjang Attar Shoushtari

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Customer loyalty is vital for business success, yet most research treats loyal customers as a uniform group. This essay challenges that assumption by proposing that attitudinally loyal customers are psychologically heterogeneous. Drawing on Construal Level Theory (CLT), I introduce the construct of Consumer-Brand Construal Level (CBCL) to distinguish loyal customers based on how abstractly or concretely they construe their brand relationships. I conceptualize two loyalty mindsets, macro-loyalty (abstract, big-picture) and micro-loyalty (concrete, detail-focused), and argue that even highly loyal consumers differ meaningfully in their CBCL. I develop and validate a new CBCL scale (Studies 1–2) and then test how these …

Service With A Smile Or Salesperson Mirroring? Understanding The Flow Of Emotional Contagion In Sales Encounters, Vinh Quoc Trong Luong

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This study examines the directionality of emotional contagion in sales interactions, addressing a critical gap in understanding whether emotions flow primarily from the salesperson to the customer, from the customer to the salesperson, or bidirectionally. While prior research emphasizes customer-driven emotional flow or bidirectional alignment, this study challenges these assumptions by employing categorical Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA) to assess temporal emotional synchronization in sales dialogues. Leveraging automated sentiment analysis and multi-agent AI evaluation for performance metrics, the research analyzes 166 sales interactions to quantify emotional influence dynamics. Results reveal that salespeople predominantly lead emotional exchanges, exhibiting stronger and more stable …

Two Essays On The Role Of Anthropomorphism In Consumer Behavior, Faegheh (Faa) Taheran

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

The first essay of this dissertation investigates the contradictory findings on the relationship between anthropomorphism and self-control by focusing on how everyday anthropomorphized objects, rather than the products being used for consumption, influence consumer behavior. While previous studies have shown that using anthropomorphized products may decrease consumers’ self-control, this paper examines how unrelated [to consumption] anthropomorphized objects in a consumer’s environment—such as a water bottle with a humanlike face—can evoke a sense of social presence, increasing consumers’ perceptions that they are being negatively evaluated. Drawing on mind perception theory, I propose that this fear of negative evaluation can enhance self-control. …

Anime And Luxury Fashion: Studio Ghibli And Loewe's Unorthodox Brand Merchandizing, Theodore Gournelos, David Marutschke

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

While they might seem counterintuitive to traditional concepts of “luxury,” collaborations between luxury and anime brands are a growing pattern reflecting the growth of both industries for key demographics. This paper argues that luxury brands use these collaborations to establish brand relevance and cultural connection while also positioning themselves advantageously against other brands in an increasingly social and online environment. Through a qualitative and quantitative content analysis of Instagram posts and user comments from Studio Ghibli and the Spanish luxury brand Loewe regarding their three product collaborations, we argue that there is a significant amount of room for differentiation in …

How Personalized Chatbots Win Customer Loyalty, Jaeha Lee, Dooyoung Choi

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

The study applies affordance theory to investigate how perceived personalization influences loyalty through cognitive, affective, and social drivers. Data was collected from 220 participants who watched a video of a chatbot interaction and then assessed their loyalty intentions. While all paths were significant between personalization and consumer’s willingness to stay, the effects of personalization on consumer’s willingness to recommend the retailers to others were slightly different. If companies aim to capitalize on word-of-mouth marketing, it will be better to prioritize cognitive and affective qualities of chatbot over social qualities, because the latter did not contribute significantly to word-of-mouth intentions about …

(In)Attention To Attractive Brand Alternatives, Danielle J. Brick, Veronica L. Thomas

Marketing Faculty Publications

Understanding how consumers maintain their brand relationships has important implications for marketers as committed consumers contribute significant value to firms. In the present research, we propose and test one such way consumers protect their brand relationships, namely through attentional avoidance of attractive alternative partners. Across multiple studies, we find support for our theory that committed consumers avoid attending to alternative brand partners by recalling less about and spending less time focused on attractive alternatives. We further find that this inattention occurs because consumers view the competing brand as a threat to the consumer’s current relationship. In addition, we investigate a …

Service Coproduction Failure: The Role Of Service Provider Type And Role Clarity In Customer Participation's Impact On Causal Attribution And Emotional Outcomes, Dana Amiri, Abdolali Mortazavi, Faegheh Taheran

Marketing Faculty Publications

The article focuses on how customer participation, service provider type (human vs. non-human), and role clarity affect blame attribution and emotional outcomes during service failures. Topics include the interaction between service provider type and customer role clarity in determining blame; the impact of customer participation on internal versus external attribution; and the emotional responses linked to these attribution patterns.

Understanding The Application Of Evolutionary Psychology In Consumer Behavior: A Review And Future Research Agenda, Faegheh Taheran, Veronica L. Thomas, Kendra Fowler, Abdolati Mortazavi

Marketing Faculty Publications

This paper is the first to offer a comprehensive literature review of the role of evolutionary psychology (EP) in marketing and consumer behavior. This study takes a holistic approach, combining techniques of a systematic review with bibliometric analysis, to provide a performance analysis and identify theories and methodologies used in the literature. Most importantly, by studying the current state of EP, we elucidate six major themes: the role of gender in families, the role of affect in consumer behavior, food preferences and shopping behavior, motivations for and consequences of status signaling, the impact of ovulation on consumer motives and behaviors, …

Coping With Social Media Envy In Luxury Consumption: The Role Of Social Networking Site Actions, Murong Miao, Chuanyi Tang, Lin Guo, Kiran Karande

Marketing Faculty Publications

Because social networking sites (SNS) facilitate social comparison, consumer envy becomes inevitable among social media users. Drawing on social comparison and coping theories, this study examines how different types of envy lead to consumers? distinct behaviors on SNS, some of which are self-directed and focus on self-enhancement, and others are either positive or negative interactions with the envied person. Employing both the contexts of luxury product and service sharing experiences on Instagram, our four studies consistently found that while consumers who experience benign envy are more likely to interact with the envied positively, such as liking the envied? posts, those …

Narrative Transportation: A Systematic Literature Review And Future Research Agenda, Veronica L. Thomas, Jaime L. Grigsby

Marketing Faculty Publications

Consumers are inundated with opportunities to become engaged with marketing-generated stories, from watching an influencer detail her adventures abroad or a commercial about a military service member who makes it home just in time for the holidays. When consumers become so engaged with a story that they begin to connect with the story characters and imagine what will happen next, they experience a process known as narrative transportation, which has significant positive outcomes for marketers. Given the value that narrative transportation provides to marketers, we conduct a systematic literature review to both synthesize and provide direction on the literature of …

Through The Filter Lens: The Negative Impact Of Beauty Filters In Influencer Marketing, Faegheh Taheran, Veronica Thomas, Abdolali Mortazavi, Dana Amiri

Marketing Faculty Publications

The article focuses on the negative impact of beauty filters on followers' perceptions of social media influencers, examining how these filters affect attitudes through perceived authenticity and deception. Topics include the relationship between filter usage and follower attitudes; the mediating roles of authenticity and deception; the effects of different types of filters on influencer credibility; and highlight the importance of genuine presentation in influencer marketing.

(In)Attention To Attractive Brand Alternatives, Danielle J. Brick, Veronica L. Thomas

Marketing Faculty Publications

Understanding how consumers maintain their brand relationships has important implications for marketers as committed consumers contribute significant value to firms. In the present research, we propose and test one such way consumers protect their brand relationships, namely through attentional avoidance of attractive alternative partners. Across multiple studies, we find support for our theory that committed consumers avoid attending to alternative brand partners by recalling less about and spending less time focused on attractive alternatives. We further find that this inattention occurs because consumers view the competing brand as a threat to the consumer’s current relationship. In addition, we investigate a …

Archiving Digital Marketing: Examining Preservation Of Dynamic Content On The Web Through The Lens Of Online Advertisements, Christopher Rauch, Alex H. Poole, Travis Reid, Michele C. Weigle, Michael L. Nelson, Faryaneh Poursardar, Mat Kelly

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The transition to digital marketing has revolutionized advertising, reflecting and shaping societal norms and trends. The “Saving Ads” project addresses the challenges of preserving these ephemeral digital artifacts, essential for understanding the evolution of advertising and its socio-cultural impact. The initiative focuses on technical solutions for archiving dynamic online ads and enhancing access to these critical resources for future scholarship. By examining the preservation of online advertisements and suggesting improved approaches for archiving dynamic online content, this project contributes to the documentation of digital history.

Inference For Multiple Utility In Time-Dependent Choice Pairs Under Copula-Based Models, Sasanka Adikari

Mathematics & Statistics Theses & Dissertations

Models for discrete choice experiments (DCE) are frequently used to analyze consumer choices about products and services. A family of DCE, best-worst scaling experiments, offers more in-depth insights into consumer preferences by eliciting a best and worst choice from a set of options, rather than just a single preference. Traditional approaches often assume that choices are mutually exclusive over time, which may not always be the case. This dissertation proposes a novel model for DCE that takes into account the changing nature of consumer choices over time and the priority constraint of transition probabilities. The model introduces a copula combination …

A Systematic Review Of Marketing Practices Used In Online Grocery Shopping: Implications For Wic Online Ordering, Leslie Hodges, Caitlin M. Lowery, Priyanka Patel, Joleen Mcinnis, Qi Zhang

Community & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

The Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) plans to allow participants to redeem their food package benefits online, i.e., online ordering. As grocery shopping online has become more common, companies have developed strategies to market food products to customers using online (or mobile) grocery shopping platforms. There is a significant knowledge gap in how these strategies may influence WIC participants who choose to shop for WIC foods online. This review examines the relevant literature to (1) identify food marketing strategies used in online grocery shopping platforms, (2) understand how these strategies influence consumer behavior and consumer …

Competition And Sensegiving: Nonprofit Markets And Organizational Signaling, Adam Eckerd, Jacob Fowles, Jamie Levine Daniel, Riley Sandel

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

In this paper, we investigate how an organization’s position within its nonprofit marketplace influences how nonprofits convey images about themselves to their stakeholders. We discuss the nature of competition in the nonprofit sector and explore the different competitive positions that nonprofits find themselves in. We assess how this positionality affects the ways that nonprofits attempt to convey images, or senses, of themselves to external audiences. We find that these sensegiving approaches are affected by competition, particularly when considered together with the stage of the organization’s lifecycle.

How Social Media Influencer Collaborations Are Percieved By Consumers, Veronica L. Thomas, Kendra Fowler, Faegheh Teheran

Marketing Faculty Publications

Within the social media community, influencers engage in a variety of collaborative practices such as tagging, reposting content from, or forming partnerships with other influencers and brands. While such collaborative efforts are a known practice, less is understood about how influencer collaborations affect consumers' perceptions of the partnering influencers, specifically when a status differential exists within the collaboration. We suggest that such collaborative practices, specifically those where the focal influencer has a higher status than the collaborating partner, may help to weaken consumers' perceptions that the influencer's actions are purely self‐focused. A pilot study, analyzing both influencer–influencer collaborations and influencer–brand …

Three Essays On The Effects Of Other Customer Brand Tie And Employee Behavior On Consumer Behavior, Saeed Zal

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

In the first essay, by drawing on theories of balance, social identity, and cue consistency, this research seeks to explain how in a mutual consumption customer B tie to the brand (other customer brand tie) may have an influence on customer A (new customer) brand trust and behavioral intentions. This study introduces a model integrating these constructs in a service context where there is a high chance of social encounters between and within customers and employees. The model also seeks to investigate the moderating effects of employee rapport building behavior, customer-to-customer closeness relationship, employee-to-employee positive interaction, and employee-to-employee incivility behavior …

Two Essays On The Role Of Empathy In Consumer Response To User-Generated Content, Mohammadali Koorank Beheshti

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Empathy is known to be the basis of all human interactions and an essential component of human psychology. Empathy includes a cognitive component (perspective-taking) and an affective component (e.g., emotional contagion). The two essays of my dissertation investigate how each of these components of empathy affect consumer responses to user-generated content.

Essay 1: Although both price and online review ratings are important cues in consumers’ product quality judgment, most previous studies have treated price and review ratings as separate inputs into consumer decision-making. The current research shows that the two cues are intertwined, such that consumers’ perception of the same …

Collecting Samples From Online Services: How To Use Screeners To Improve Data Quality, Aaron D. Arndt, John B. Ford, Barry J. Babin, Vinh Luong

Marketing Faculty Publications

Increasingly, marketing and consumer researchers rely on online data collection services. While actively-managed data collection services directly assist with the sampling process, minimally-managed data collection services, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), leave researchers solely responsible for recruiting, screening, cleaning, and evaluating responses. The research reported here proposes a 2 × 2 framework based on sampling goal and methodology for screening and evaluating the quality of online samples. By sampling goals, screeners can be categorized as selection, which involves matching the sample with the targeted population; or as accuracy, which involves ensuring that participants are appropriately attentive. By …

Artificial Empathy In Marketing Interactions: Bridging The Human-Ai Gap In Affective And Social Customer Experience, Yuping Liu-Thompkins, Shintaro Okazaki, Hairong Li

Marketing Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform firm-customer interactions. However, current AI marketing agents are often perceived as cold and uncaring and can be poor substitutes for human-based interactions. Addressing this issue, this article argues that artificial empathy needs to become an important design consideration in the next generation of AI marketing applications. Drawing from research in diverse disciplines, we develop a systematic framework for integrating artificial empathy into AI-enabled marketing interactions. We elaborate on the key components of artificial empathy and how each component can be implemented in AI marketing agents. We further explicate and test how artificial empathy generates …

Green Advertising Using Sick-, Well-, And Healed-Appeals, Dooyoung Choi, Ha Kyung Lee

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of sick, well, and healed appeals while examining the interaction effect of the saliency of environmental issues in the fashion industry on consumer responses. A 3 x 2 experimental study was conducted with the appeals (sick vs. well vs. healed appeals) and the salience for environmental issues in fashion (low vs. high) as independents and positive and negative anticipated emotions as mediators, leading to purchase intentions. A total of 195 usable responses were collected through MTurk. While all appeals worked well with consumers with high saliency through anticipated positive emotions, …

Hacking The Pandemic: Launching Third Space Into Cyberspace, Brittany Bowser

STEMPS Faculty Publications

The article discusses importance of the school library as a third space for learning. Topics discussed include need for school library's third space to expand into cyberspace; focus to promote awareness of school librarianship; and need for school librarians to prioritize marketing themselves and their instruction.

Two Essays On Consumer Envy, Murong Miao

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Consumer envy, which is a two-faceted emotion (benign versus malicious), could change consumer behavior in different ways. Although research on envy is abundant in the psychology field, little attention has been paid to envy in marketing research. This dissertation composes of two essays. Based on Social Comparison Theory (SCT), these two essays examine the envy mechanism in driving consumer behavior using different contexts (social media behavior and counterfeit luxury consumption).

Essay one examines the relationship between envy and consumer’s intention to conduct different social networking sites (SNSs) activities. To test the hypothesized relationships, four experiments were conducted. Experiments 1, 2, …

Three Essays On The Roles Of Review Valence And Conflict In Online Relationships, Ran Liu

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

In the context of online marketing, product reviews and online relationships have played essential roles in determining consumer's decision making. The three essays examine how valence and volume of online reviews affect consumers' perceived relationships with a firm, as well as the boundary effect of the causal link. Previous literature has been focusing on the direct effects of word-of-mouth (WOM) on consumers' short-term purchase decisions and treating WOM solely as an outcome of a relationship. Consequently, the role of online reviews has been underestimated by contemporary literature and how electric WOM (eWOM) changes consumers' perception with an exchange partner is …

Essay 1: How We Feel: The Role Of Macro-Economic Sentiment In Advertising Spending-Sales Relationship; Essay 2: It Was The Best Of Times; It Was The Worst Of Times: The Effect Of Emotional Uncertainty And Arousal On Healthy Food Choices, Leila Khoshghadam

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Essay 1: Controversies regarding the advertising spending-sales relationship have spawned many studies in marketing. Previous research on macroeconomic influencers of this relationship has focused mostly on objective macroeconomic indicators such as cyclical contraction and expansion. Extending these previous studies, the current research argues that sales response to advertising is also contingent upon the pervasive feelings present in the macroeconomic environment, above and beyond the influence from objective macroeconomic factors. Specifically, it argues that future outlook negativity and uncertainty in macroeconomic sentiment can affect the ad spending-sales relationship. Analyzing sales and advertising spending data for salty snacks in conjunction with macroeconomic …

The Influence Of Mating Motives On Reliance On Form Versus Function In Product Choice, Seyed Hamid Abbassi Hosseini

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Through five experiments, this research examined and supported the central hypothesis that a casual mating motive promotes higher reliance on form in product evaluation and choice, whereas a committed mating motive promotes higher reliance on function. Particularly, compared to a committed mating motive, a casual mating motive was associated with the relative preference for product options superior in form attributes as opposed to options superior in function attributes (Study 1, Study 2, and Study 4). This research applied three different operationalizations of mating motives. In studies 1 and 5, contextual priming was used. Studies 2 and 3 employed chronic mating …