2018-2019 BBA Marketing Seminar

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Mobile Dating Apps and the Gamification of Entrepreneurialized Romance

Anil Isisag, Doctoral Student, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison

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How does a domain of social life that was once deemed outside the realm of the marketplace become marketized? In this study, I address this question by focusing on the marketization of romantic-sexual relationships in the context of mobile dating apps. My historical analysis demonstrates that rather than a one-off transition, marketization of romance transpires in stages and mobile dating apps facilitate the transition from the earlier model of entrepreneurialized romance (as exemplified by online dating) to the contemporary model of gamified romance. Based on semi-structured interviews with 25 mobile dating app users, I examine the implications of this transition for app users' romantic-sexual relationships.

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As a second project based on the same data set, I investigate the positioning wars in the mobile dating apps market by focusing on how Bumble and Hinge utilize Tinder's bad reputation in their own branding efforts. Capitalizing on Tinder's image as a platform that fosters a sexist hook-up culture, Bumble ("the feminist app") and Hinge ("the relationship app") carved out unique market positions by presenting their brand as a remedy to Tinder's shortcomings. By explicating the process through which they make use of defamatory messages about Tinder to create their own branding story, I offer a step-by-step framework that marketing professionals can utilize in similar markets where emotional branding prevails.

Image AddedEvan Polman, Professor, Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Synopsis

How people choose gifts is a widely-studied topic. However, what happens after people choose gifts is largely understudied. In three experiments, we show that giving a gift has unintended consequences, by altering how givers behave with recipients. Consistent with moral licensing, we find that gift-giving negatively affects givers’ subsequent, interpersonal behavior with the recipients of their gifts. In Study 1, we find that giving a gift to one’s romantic partner changes givers’ interpretation of which behaviors constitute as infidelity. We find that after giving their partner a gift, givers classify behaviors (e.g., dancing with someone other than their partner) less as cheating on their partner. In Study 2, we examined how friendly participants behave when they deliver a bad-news message to a friend. Using LIWC content analysis, we find that after giving their friend a gift, givers wrote a significantly less warm/friendly message to their friend. In Study 3, we tested real gifts that people give others, and found givers subsequently made more selfish decisions at their gift-recipients’ expense. In all, our research challenges the oft-cited axiomatic assumption that gift-giving strengthens relationships; and illuminates the potential for future research to examine the effects of consumer behavior on altering interpersonal/romantic relationships.

2018-2019 Marketing Seminar

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Consumer Claims to Space in the Politics of Consumer Identity

Melanie Wallendorf, Professor, Eller College of Management, University of Arizona

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Physical space is an integral element of social life that impacts a wide range of consumption experiences, including shopping, eating, and exercising. However, not every consumer has access to the same kinds or amounts of spaces. Just like with the resources of money and knowledge, access to the resource of space is socially structured, being unevenly available to different consumer categories. This substantial issue, consumer differential access to space, has been underexplored in consumer research; in this literature, the predominant approach to study space has been to focus on how social actors work to make specific sites more meaningful, through practices that are mostly detached from the influence of social structure. In response to this oversight, the present research employs a mixed-method ethnography to study a contemporary ethos of consumption that questions the differential access to space that women encounter with some of their self-expressive consumption activities as a result of pervasive power hierarchies. This research develops a geosocial framework that sheds light on how consumers act on space as a way of interrogating the cultural subordination of their consumer identities. This framework helps unravel the interlinkage between space and power relations in the realm of consumption.

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Avi Goldfarb, Professor, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

SynopsesSynopsis

Perhaps the most popular topic with respect to the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) concerns what this technology means for jobs. As AI develops and mimics increasing levels of cognitive functions, the scope of jobs that might be impacted is great. This has motivated investigations into the nature of cognitive skills required for a wide array of occupations in order to identify those most likely to be impacted. Estimating the impact of AI on labor market outcomes requires an understanding of the particular tasks that AI will directly effect. Our goal in this article is to specify the characteristics of the technological change brought about by AI, and then to demonstrate how understanding these details provides useful insight into the labor market consequences.

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Robert Zeithammer, Professor, Anderson School of Management, University of California - Los Angeles

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Prior theoretical research has shown that a Name-Your-Own-Price (NYOP) seller can profit from charging each prospective buyer a non-refundable fee for the opportunity to place a bid, akin to an entry fee to the seller’s store. We examine the profitability of such two-part tariffs in NYOP markets using incentive-compatible laboratory experiments. Overall, our results suggest two-part tariffs increase NYOP profit in a standard information-poor setting in the short run, but they are not as profitable as theory would suggest when the bidders get more information or experience. We also propose an individual-level non parametric test of the risk-averse expected utility model, and the test results suggest that this canonical model for decision making under uncertainty is not a good fit to the behavior of a substantial proportion of our subjects.

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What is Social About Social Class?

Image AddedPaul Piff, Professor, Department of Psychological Science, University of California Irvine

Synopsis

What is social about social class? How does money shape the mind, how people think about themselves and behave toward others? This talk will highlight the emerging psychological science of social class. I will describe studies showing that social class exerts a pervasive influence on the social realm, critically shaping emotions, morality, social relationships, materialism, and consumption.

2018 Marketing Camp

The Wisconsin School of Business’ Marketing Department hosts an annual Marketing Camp that invites guest speakers from all around the globe to present their research. The objective of the Camp is to network, share research, studies, and findings regarding the ever-changing marketing landscape. The marketing landscape is continuously evolving due to technological advancements and the multifaceted human population. We believe that in this day and age marketing research has never been more imperative. The focus of our marketing research is to help us gain key insights on marketing analytics and big data, consumer culture theory, and consumer behavior. A big part of this research involves bringing in new ideas from our fellow peers in the world of academia. As such, we have invited these four guest speakers below to share with us some of the research that they have been working on.

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