Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools based on Large Language Models (LLMs) are quickly reshaping how researchers conduct surveys and experiments. From reviewing the literature and designing instruments, to administering studies, coding data, and interpreting results, these tools offer substantial opportunities to improve research productivity and advance methodology. Yet with this potential

Increased geopolitical tensions have raised firms’ uncertainty about some geographical markets; in response, firms may announce their disengagement from these markets. Such announcements may lower the firm’s future revenue and thus elicit negative reactions from shareholders. The authors theorize managers can frame announcements to impress shareholders and suppress their punitive reactions. Specifically

The global food system has a large impact on the environment. By converting household grocery purchases into environmental cost factors like greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and land use, this study examines the sustainability of food purchases over a 10-year period using household panel data in two pro-sustainability markets (Germany and the Netherlands). The environmental intensity of households’ grocery

Plastic waste has doubled in the past two decades, and less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled. “Bottle bills” are legislation to combat plastic waste by increasing recycling rates, by adding a per-bottle deposit that gets refunded to consumers who return empty containers. Industry experts are divided over the retail sales and price implications of such measures. To clarify the implications of such

Consumers have become more interested in purchasing products produced using more sustainable practices, with much of the recent growth in consumer-packaged goods (CPGs) within the United States from products with clearly labeled sustainability claims on their packaging. However, many categories have low levels of sustainable product market share, with substantial geographic variation. We assess the

This paper investigates the dynamic effects of temporarily suspending TV ads on online keyword search through a large-scale quasi-experiment in the U.S. wireless telecom industry. One top carrier, which spends stably around one million USD per day on TV advertising, halted its TV ads for a randomly selected week over our (6-month) study window. The primary challenges in this event study — continuously

This meta-analysis examines when three types of automated agents (AAs)—robots, chatbots, and algorithms—are equivalent to human agents (HAs) in marketing roles. Analyzing 943 effect sizes from 327 studies provides novel insights. First, customers may be skeptical of AAs; however, they value their performance and eventually choose or buy from them as if they were interacting with HAs. Second, each of

Contemporary trends in the buying behavior of increasingly technology-empowered business customers are triggering disruptive shifts in B2B selling and sales management, which have recently been the subject of extensive research. So far, however, there has been no comprehensive investigation into how foundational elements of B2B selling, encompassing its purpose, the salesperson’s role, and core selling

Marketers know the importance of online reviews, but what can be done to improve the prompts asking consumers to review? Across eight studies, the present work shows that a prompt that encourages writing reviews for a close audience enhances consumers’ use of narrative language. A growing body of literature reveals that narratives are powerful persuasive devices for shaping audiences’ beliefs, including

The sharing economy has become an increasingly widespread way for peers to rent out their owned goods to others seeking to rent them. This research investigates how providers (i.e., owners renting out their belongings) decide what price to charge, and identifies the provider WTA effect , where in the context of a peer-to-peer (P2P) collaborative consumption model, providers are willing to accept (WTA)

In dynamic and uncertain business environments, marketing organizations need to be constantly ready to enact strategic changes. However, a robust measure for capturing the organizational capabilities and underlying marketing activities required to achieve effective marketing-related strategic changes is lacking. This study addresses this gap by developing a measurement tool for strategic change capability

User-generated content, such as word of mouth, traditionally has been immune to firm influences. However, companies have recently started developing content and encouraging consumers to post it rather than relying solely on organic consumer-generated content. Such firm-generated user content (FGUC), which consumers can share easily, potentially alters their sharing behavior by providing specific language

This paper examines how the number of information cues in recommender systems influences consumer search and purchase. E-commerce platforms often display a list of recommended products on product pages, where consumers can browse and click on individual items for details. Given space constraints, determining the appropriate amount of information to display is crucial, as it affects consumers’ use of

In sectors across the experience economy—from live sports to festivals, nightlife entertainment, private members’ clubs, and invite-only events—firms compete by staging social atmospheres. When firms successfully stage social atmospheres, they benefit from enhanced customer experiences, loyalty, and place attachment. However, social atmospheres often fail when firms struggle to bring together the ‘optimal

This study investigates group-level customer–company identification (CCI), extending social identity theory to explore how individual-level identification evolves into strong, collective group dynamics. By analyzing interconnected customer groups, the research demonstrates how these dynamics shape individual behavior and drive organizational outcomes across diverse group types. Drawing on a comprehensive

When using opt-out (vs. opt-in) policies, choice architects presume that people consent, rather than explicitly asking them to state their consent. While opt-out policies often increase compliance, they are also associated with managerial issues such as ethical considerations, legal regulations, limited public support, and increased no-show rates. This research demonstrates that choice architects can

With infeed advertising becoming an increasingly popular advertising tool for advertisers to reach mobile consumers, the authors propose an integrated model of contemporaneous, carryover, and spillover effects to measure the incremental contributions of infeed ads in multiple types of mobile apps: newsfeed, social, and video. They empirically examine the three proposed effects of newsfeed ads, social

We aim to stimulate discussion on how innovation research within marketing can use a better world (BW) perspective to help innovation become a driver of positive change in the world. In this “Challenging the Boundaries” series paper, we hope to provide purposeful research opportunities for scholars seeking to bridge innovation research with the BW movement. We frame our discussion with four areas of

The vast amount of content on social media platforms makes it extremely challenging to get posts noticed. An increasingly popular approach to increase customer engagement relies on text overlays, where text is placed directly on images. Such practices raise questions of how to balance the visual and text elements for the best impact. Three key factors, commonly used by practitioners, can trigger engagement

This study examines how different stakeholders perceive influencer authenticity, revealing the misalignments that arise when each group prioritizes different aspects of authenticity. In doing so, the authors generate new theory on influencer marketing and provide managerial insights for brands and agencies to collaborate effectively with influencers to resolve these misalignments and ultimately build

Many business-to-business sales firms use automated lead nurturing (ALN) systems, which track leads’ online behavior and nurture them through personalized content. ALN software providers claim that ALN improves lead conversion, but whether this benefit materializes is unclear. Therefore, this research examines ALN’s effect across one qualitative and three quantitative studies. The findings indicate

Online word of mouth (WOM) is a critical driver of consumer purchases; however, relatively few researchers have sought to understand how a company’s characteristics might impact aggregate WOM valence (e.g., average star ratings of online reviews). The authors examine the effects of one such attribute—company size—and how it impacts WOM valence through individuals’ decisions regarding whether to engage

Some review platforms display how long reviewers used a product alongside their review. The authors investigate whether doing so translates to more helpful reviews. Using online reviews of video games from a video game platform and leveraging its unique playtime tracking feature, they find the relationship between the amount of time playing a game before posting a review and the number of helpful votes

This research introduces a novel conceptualization of immersive service, defined as service that consumers are embedded in and surrounded by, in the sense that their life experience is within the service and, in great part, constructed by it for some period of time (e.g., hospital stays, residential care, air travel). The authors examine two key questions: How can characteristics of immersive service

Emotions are central to consumer communications, and extracting them from user-generated online content is crucial for marketers, considering that such consumer opinions significantly shape brand perceptions, influence purchase decisions, and provide essential insights for marketing analytics. To leverage vast user-generated data, marketers and researchers require advanced text-to-emotion converters

The author explores how racial alignment between film critics and movie casts affects critic ratings and their market implications. Testing the hypothesis of cultural affinity, this research finds that critics’ ratings tend to decrease as the proportion of Black cast members increases, but this effect is mitigated when the critic is Black. A text analysis of critics’ review excerpts suggests the presence

As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms society, understanding factors that influence AI receptivity is increasingly important. The current research investigates which types of consumers have greater AI receptivity. Contrary to expectations revealed in four surveys, cross country data and six additional studies find that people with lower AI literacy are typically more receptive to AI. This lower

One advantage of advertising on social media is leveraging users’ expression of “likes” to influence the perceptions and responses of others in their network. Through a largescale field experiment on WeChat, three online lab studies and a theoretical model, we explore whether and how displaying more “likes” in an ad can effectively lead to more ad “likes” and clicks. We find that displaying the first

The authors develop and test a theoretical framework to examine the impact of app crashes on app engagement. The framework predicts that consumers increase engagement after encountering a single crash due to their need-for-closure and curiosity, yet reduce engagement after experiencing repeated and concentrated crashes, primarily because of frustration and perceived task unattainability; the recency

This article examines the motivational consequences of anthropomorphizing the means of goal pursuit. Eight studies show that consumers are more motivated to pursue fitness and academic goals with anthropomorphized (vs. non-anthropomorphized) means because such means elicit a greater sense of companionship and thus stronger beliefs that (a) goal pursuit is enjoyable (perceived enjoyability) and that

Conceptual research is fundamental to advancing theory and, thus, science. Conceptual articles launch new research streams, resolve conflicting findings, explain new phenomena, and integrate divergent research areas. Yet, compared with other disciplines, marketing publishes little conceptual research. This paper provides a multidisciplinary perspective of conceptual research to help increase the quality

Prior research on advertising media mixes has mostly focused on single channels (e.g., television), pairwise cross-elasticities, or budget optimization within single campaigns. This is starkly detached from advertising practice where (i) there is an increasingly large number of media channels available to marketers, (ii) media plans employ complex combinations of channels, and (iii) marketers manage

Perceived healthiness of food is generally regarded as a positive attribute in food choices as it positively impacts consumers’ preferences. The current research demonstrates that in contexts where there is a time delay between a food’s production and its consumption (referred to as “about-to-expire” food), strong perceptions of a food’s healthiness can be detrimental. This is because consumers hold

Donation-based crowdfunding platforms often claim to pursue equitable outcomes for all beneficiaries, yet many face criticism for failing to do so across different demographic profiles. In response, platform managers are eager to understand how these inequities emerge and explore solutions to address them. In this research, we show that the degree of facial emotional expressiveness of beneficiaries

Social media platforms have been used by firms for a variety of purposes - for building firms’ brand image, increasing customer engagement, providing customer service, among others. However, there is very little research on content strategies adopted by traditional rival firms competing on online social media platforms. This paper seeks to fill this gap by examining whether retailers, traditionally

Sponsored content allows brands to partner with creators to reach creators’ audiences on digital platforms. However, both creators’ and brands’ incomplete understanding of this object generates two critical ambiguities: how to determine the value of sponsored content and how to effectively co-produce it. To better understand these ambiguities, we theorize sponsored content as an epistemic market object:

Consumers use observable cues, like color, to help them evaluate products. This research establishes that consumers infer greater product efficacy from higher color saturation across seven lab experiments (n = 2,745), a web scraping study, and a field experiment. The studies provide evidence that this belief stems from learned associations between color saturation and potency and is applied to both

This paper assesses the extent to which consumers from the opposite poles of the socioeconomic distribution weigh three critical food attributes–healthiness, fillingness, and taste–, how they perceive the associations among them, and how differences in weights and associations influence food preferences. The results of a series of eight pre-registered studies in a highly unequal socioeconomic environment

Marketing to investors – especially when seeking funding for start-ups – is unique, with investors facing extreme uncertainty. This study uses foundational work in marketing, economics, management, finance, and psychology, as well as theories-in-use development with angel and VC investors to build a Business-to-Investor (B2I) Marketing theory. The theory proposes that investors rely on marketing signals

The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandates explicit user opt-in consent for data access. It recommends transparency in opt-in requests about data collection, storage, and use, without specifying the format of these requests. Consequently, the GDPR gives firms flexibility in designing opt-in messages. This research uses theory, multiple datasets, and methods to investigate firms’ communication

Recent social movements, such as Black Lives Matter, have prompted brands and retailers to increase the use of minority ownership labels (e.g., Black-owned or woman-owned). The current research examines when and why minority ownership awareness influences consumer behavior, particularly for brand failures. When a brand failure occurs, minority ownership awareness can result in higher brand evaluations

Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) installment payments allow customers to pay for purchases in a series of interest-free installments over a short period of time. This research provides novel insights into how customer adoption of BNPL installment payments impacts spending. The authors leverage customer-level transaction data before and after the introduction of a BNPL installment payment service at a large

Air pollution is a growing concern to economies and societies worldwide. Despite common knowledge that air pollution impairs our emotions and cognition and hence behavioral outcomes, the impact of air pollution on consumer spending remains an open question. Analyzing air quality readings and individual-level credit card transactions in South Korea, this paper shows that consumers spend more money when

Consumer choice deferral contributes to the low conversion rate in online retailing. This paper investigates the impact of visual product frames on consumers’ decisions regarding choice deferral. We show that using visual frames to separate options in a product assortment increases consumers’ relative use of the by-alternative (vs. by-attribute) approach for option comparisons, which induces greater

How do managers time the launch of new technologies? Without actionable frameworks to ensure consumers and other stakeholders are ready, innovation releases remain a risky endeavor. Previous work on legitimacy has focused on stages following a product launch. However, launch timing concerns shared expectations of when actions should occur prior to launch. This conceptual article evaluates the alignment

Rare watches, fine wines and spirits, sports cars, designer sneakers, and many other luxury goods create massive enrichment opportunities for consumers if they resell them on secondary markets. This trend is part of the enrichment economy, a novel form of market arrangement where consumers use iconic goods to increase their capital. However, it creates challenges for brands, such as preserving their

The authors’ central premise is that a human-LLM hybrid approach leads to efficiency and effectiveness gains in the marketing research process. In qualitative research, they show that LLMs can assist in both data generation and analysis; LLMs effectively create sample characteristics, generate synthetic respondents, and conduct and moderate in-depth interviews. The AI-human hybrid generates information-rich

Multi-product ads (MPAs) allow an ad platform to display multiple products within a single ad unit. Unlike a single-product display ad, similar ads from the same product category may appear in MPAs and induce consumer satiation. Further, the simultaneous display of ads from multiple product categories can result in cross-category complementarity or substitution in consumers’ utility from ad-clicking

Marketers use online advertising platforms to compare user responses to different ad content. But platforms’ experimentation tools deliver different ads to distinct and undetectably optimized mixes of users that vary across ads, even during the test. Because exposure to ads in the test is non-random, the estimated comparisons confound the effect of the ad content with the effect of algorithmic targeting

This research investigates nickname branding, a novel phenomenon whereby firms incorporate the ‘street’ names consumers give brands into their own marketing (e.g., Bloomingdale’s opening a Bloomie’s store). While practitioners anticipate positive results from deploying this tactic, the current research serves as the first empirical investigation of its likely effectiveness. Drawing on speech act theory

This study empirically investigates whether and to what extent suppliers’ decisions to start selling directly to end-consumers provoke reactions in the ordering strategy of downstream channel partners, such as independent multibrand retailers. Using a multimethod approach that combines transactional data, survey data, and a scenario-based experiment, the authors demonstrate that retailers tend to exit

To better represent consumers who have traditionally been underrepresented in the marketplace, an increasing number of brands are extending or launching product lines that are more inclusive of a diverse consumer base. This work focuses on consumers’ feelings of representation (the feeling they, and consumers they identify with, are seen, heard, or taken into consideration when product decisions across

Existing literature suggests that employees who regularly interact with customers often find this central aspect of their work emotionally draining. Our findings provide a striking contrast by highlighting customer interactions that are not only pleasurable but that also manage to emotionally regenerate frontline service employees. Our ethnographic research demonstrates that several factors influence

Many charitable projects have started using online crowdfunding platforms to raise donations. The rise of these platforms as fundraising vehicles has been partially driven by easy access to a large pool of potential donors without the significant marketing costs that commonly accompany traditional fundraising. However, such a low cost of entry also results in a significant "crowding" of projects, making

Intersectionality remains largely underutilized within marketing. To address this gap, this paper synthesizes literature to provide tools for incorporating intersectionality into marketing research, including a framework for an intersectional marketing paradigm, a research design roadmap, a research agenda, and key takeaways for stakeholders. The definition of intersectionality focuses on three main