Erick Mas
Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Kelley School of Business-Indiana University
Status or Status Quo: How Political Ideology Affects the Appeal of Really New Products
Synopsis: Really new products (RNPs), novel products that have never been seen before have an interesting duality. The newness makes RNPs a potential signal of consumer status, albeit a risky status symbol because of the potential uncertainty regarding product performance. Politically conservative consumers characteristically seek to avoid the risk of uncertainty, yet they also value social hierarchy and products that signal status. To address these conflicting accounts, we propose two models to explain the relationship between political ideology and RNP adoption: the status quo versus the social hierarchy model. Across five studies, we find the baseline preference for RNPs is higher for conservatives than liberals, supporting our social hierarchy model. RNPs inherently signal status because consumers can display access to exclusive products not yet available for mass consumption, and we confirm that conservatives’ desire to signal status supersedes their aversion to uncertainty. Furthermore, we demonstrate key moderators that are important to advance theory and marketers’ ability to better position RNP for conservative and liberal consumer segments.
Aaron Barnes
Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Louisville-College of Business
Top Rated or Best Seller? Culture Influences Responses to Attitudinal versus Behavioral Consensus Cues
Synopsis: Marketers tend to use consensus cues about others’ behavioral choices (“Best Seller”) as opposed to their attitudes (“Top Rated”) when labeling products in e-commerce settings. This paper suggests that the effectiveness of these two types of cues may differ in ways that depart from common marketing practice. We suggest that cultural factors influence consumer responses to attitudinal and behavioral consensus cues. Prior research shows that in non-Western or interdependent contexts, choices are often responsive to social expectations rather than personal preferences. This paper proposes that, because interdependence expects such behavioral conformity, cues that convey consensus about others’ choices may be less diagnostic and, thus, less persuasive than cues that convey consensus about others’ attitudes. Two cross-national industry datasets, along with four experiments examining cultural differences in multiple ways offer evidence consistent with this reasoning, suggesting that among interdependent, behavioral consensus cues can actually be less effective than attitudinal ones.
Linda Hagen
Assistant Professor of Marketing at the USC Marshall School of Business
Differential Effects of Minimalist Marketing Aesthetics on Utilitarian and Hedonic Inferences: When and Why Less Really is Less
Synopsis: Minimalist marketing aesthetics (e.g., stylized brand logos; reductive packaging design) are popular—but are they universally beneficial? This research shows that equally attractive aesthetically minimalist (vs. complex) packaging design leads consumers to expect products to be superior on utilitarian dimensions (as perhaps intended by the marketer), but inferior on hedonic dimensions (as perhaps unintended by the marketer). This pattern is driven by minimalist aesthetics communicating that the product is more focused on fewer purposes (thereby boosting expected performance) but concurrently appearing less stimulating due to its limited sensory features (thereby hampering expected pleasure). Accordingly, when marketers emphasize utilitarian (vs. hedonic) product benefits, displaying a product featuring minimalist (vs. complex) packaging design enhances ad liking. Likewise, when consumers hold utilitarian (vs. hedonic) purchase goals, minimalist (vs. complex) packaging design boosts choice. The insights from this research help expand existing theoretical understandings of minimalist aesthetics as well as consumers’ intuitions about antecedents of product efficacy, and they caution marketers to think carefully about when to use minimalist aesthetics for their brands and products. Sometimes, less really is less.
Fred Selnes
Professor of Marketing at BI Norwegian Business School
How Marketing Should be Taught?
Synopsis: The title of my talk is “What is marketing management?” with the follow-up question “How should marketing management be taught at a business school?”. My starting point is that how marketing management is described in textbooks is not how marketing management is practiced nor how most people outside the marketing departments in business schools think of marketing. This is very different from other fields like finance, strategy, logistics, and accounting where we find a stronger link between theory and practice. A lot has been written in our journals describing the diminishing power and influence of marketing in top management and in the board rooms but without any good solution to what we as a field in a business school need to do. I believe the STP and marketing-mix approach to marketing management is making marketing management tactical and not strategic, and that we rather should think of marketing management as how organizations should better connect their resources to customers to grow the (future) value of the customer portfolio. Our work on CPLV illustrates the some of links between strategic marketing decisions and the mechanism of creating customer portfolio growth. And our work on developing more valuable relationships through brand relationship adaptation illustrates how we can start to think of managing heterogeneity and the dynamics of customer needs. I will also illustrate how the CPLV approach can be presented in marketing textbooks. I hope my talk will inspire academics in marketing to critically reflect on how we should teach marketing management and to build a stronger bridge between theoretical research and practice in our field.
Jared Watson
Assistant Professor of Marketing at NYU Stern School of Business
Popular by What Measure? How Less (vs. More) Social Popularity Labels Influence News Media Consumption
Synopsis: People primarily consume news for information or entertainment. However, given the abundance of content available at any given moment, consumers may have difficulty deciding what articles will best satisfy these goals. To aid this decision, news outlets commonly highlight the most popular content using different labels (e.g., “most read” and “most shared”). This research demonstrates that these popularity labels can differ in their social basis and signal different levels of information versus entertainment value, which shapes consumers’ news preferences and decisions. Specifically, labels reflecting less (vs. more) social behavior (e.g., “most read” vs. “most shared”) convey higher information value but lower entertainment value. Thus, when consumers have information motives, they prefer less social popularity labels, a stronger signal of information value. Conversely, activating entertainment motives generates a preference for more social labels, a stronger signal of entertainment value. Additionally, we examine the moderating role of factors under the control of news outlets—endorsement source (i.e., readers vs. editors) and featured list position (i.e., top or bottom of page). We examine the effects of popularity labels on news consumption in two field experiments and seven lab studies (including two in the web appendix) and discuss the managerial and theoretical implications.