2018-2019 BBA Marketing Seminar

Mobile Dating Apps and the Gamification of Entrepreneurialized Romance

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

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.

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.

Consumer Gift Giving

Evan Polman, Assistant 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.