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Self-quantification, with the promise of motivating consumers to engage in health behaviors through measuring their performance, is a popular trend amongst consumers. Despite the economic impact of self-tracking technologies, consumers' experiences with self-tracking devices and corresponding consequences for firms remain understudied. Six studies examine how the popular marketing tactic of anthropomorphization influences (a) consumers' favorability towards wearable tracking devices, (b) their health motivation, and (c) their health behavior (number of steps taken) over time. The authors uncover a novel dynamic effect of anthropomorphism, such that with use, the initially positive evaluations of anthropomorphized (vs. non-anthropomorphized) devices decrease, and (contrary to prior literature), anthropomorphized devices are not favored. Importantly, health motivation and health behaviors are also reduced over time with the use of an anthropomorphized (vs. non-anthropomorphized) wearable device. This decrease occurs because anthropomorphized devices reduce the wearers' perceived autonomy, which in turn, reduces their health motivation and health behavior. However, customizing the anthropomorphized device (by setting a customized goal or by monitoring a greater number of health-related indicators) can mitigate its negative effects. These findings provide novel insights to marketing scholars and managers, by suggesting that anthropomorphism can be a successful short-term selling strategy, but over time, it can have unintended consequences for both firms and consumers., Author(s): Lane Peterson Fronczek [sup.1] , Martin Mende [sup.2] , Maura L. Scott [sup.2] , Gergana Y. Nenkov [sup.3] , Anders Gustafsson [sup.4] [sup.5] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.256304.6, 0000 0004 [...]

Customer diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is an increasingly important societal issue that is intimately linked to the marketing function and yet under-explored in the marketing literature. We draw on DEI literature from related domains and theories-in-use to build a multilevel conceptual framework that identifies external and internal antecedents to an organization's customer DEI outcomes. Evolving societal norms lead to dynamic and divergent stakeholder priorities that influence customer DEI outcomes over time. Market-based assets and marketing actions play key roles in determining customer DEI outcomes. We implement a novel approach to estimating customer characteristics and test the hypothesized relationships using a dataset featuring over 1.9 million households executing 18 million transactions at 24 nonprofit performing arts organizations over seven years. The results confirm central roles for diverging, dynamic stakeholder priorities, market-based assets, and marketing actions in driving customer DEI outcomes, resulting in increased participation for people of color but not for lower-income households., Author(s): Young Woong Park [sup.1] , Glenn B. Voss [sup.2] , Zannie Giraud Voss [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.34421.30, 0000 0004 1936 7312, Ivy College of Business, Iowa State University, [...]

This paper clarifies why context-specific studies have scientific merit and provides recommendations to authors and journal stewards on how to develop them well. A context-specific study is a study in a unique setting yielding conclusions that can be considered to have limited generalizability to other settings. A firm's industry-think of pharmaceuticals, video games, movies, platform markets, sharing economy-may represent an unambiguous example of a specific context. Unfortunately, the generalizability-specificity dilemma is often misunderstood. Generalizability is excessively heralded as the ideal, and studies in specific contexts are too often denigrated, while both intrinsically can be valuable to the advancement of knowledge. The present paper aims to (1) provide a more nuanced system of beliefs for marketing scholarship to adopt in favor of specificity; (2) offer a helping hand to authors and editors when developing and publishing context-specific studies; (3) review successful examples from the prior literature; and (4) offer clear implications for scholars., Author(s): Stefan Stremersch [sup.1] [sup.2] , Jorge Gonzalez [sup.2] , Albert Valenti [sup.2] , Julian Villanueva [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.6906.9, 0000000092621349, Erasmus School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam - [...]

Information about ethical strengths and weaknesses of individual products (e.g., cause-related marketing, corporate social responsibility records) is increasingly available in the marketplace. However, market shares of ethical brands are still low, even though prior research indicates that ethical attributes influence brand choice. This research broadens the perspective of prior research by investigating the role of ethical attributes during earlier stages of the decision funnel, namely, consideration set formation. Four empirical studies demonstrate that brands' ethical strengths exert less impact on the consideration than on the choice stage. Specifically, brands that are not otherwise part of consideration sets benefit less from ethical strengths in larger assortments where consideration set formation plays a more important role. By investigating the screening rules that consumers apply, this study determines that while ethical strengths are subordinate, ethical weaknesses evoke asymmetric effects, such that misconduct exerts a stronger effect during screening processes than benefits do. To increase effects of ethical strengths on screening, firms can enhance the emotional intensity of ethical attributes and make them more salient and subjectively important., Author(s): Christina Schamp [sup.1] , Mark Heitmann [sup.1] , Robin Katzenstein [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) 0000 0001 2287 2617, grid.9026.d, Institute for Marketing & Customer Insight, University of Hamburg, , [...]

Abstract. The launch of a new product is one of the most critical activities that product and brand managers are faced with. It requires a substantial communications budget to introduce [...]

Marketing strategy is a construct that lies at the conceptual heart of the field of strategic marketing and is central to the practice of marketing. It is also the area within which many of the most pressing current challenges identified by marketers and CMOs arise. We develop a new conceptualization of the domain and sub-domains of marketing strategy and use this lens to assess the current state of marketing strategy research by examining the papers in the six most influential marketing journals over the period 1999 through 2017. We uncover important challenges to marketing strategy research-not least the increasingly limited number and focus of studies, and the declining use of both theory and primary research designs. However, we also uncover numerous opportunities for developing important and highly relevant new marketing strategy knowledge-the number and importance of unanswered marketing strategy questions and opportunities to impact practice has arguably never been greater. To guide such research, we develop a new research agenda that provides opportunities for researchers to develop new theory, establish clear relevance, and contribute to improving practice., Author(s): Neil A. Morgan [sup.1] , Kimberly A. Whitler [sup.2] , Hui Feng [sup.3] , Simos Chari [sup.4] Author Affiliations: (Aff1) 0000 0001 0790 959X, grid.411377.7, Kelley School of Business, [...]

Abstract. Accounting-based approximations of Tobin's q (AATQ) are increasingly popular in marketing. AATQ differ from Tobin's original conception in that they use accounting data to assess the replacement cost of [...]

Many brands build market share by acting as a substitute when competitive brands become undesirable or difficult to obtain. Notably, prior research offers competing strategic recommendations for marketers hoping to encourage consumers to engage in substitution. Past research examining substitute selection-measuring consumers' beliefs about how well one product will substitute for another-suggests that marketers should offer replacements that are similar to the initially preferred product. In contrast, research examining substitute effectiveness-the consequences of substitution-suggests that differentiated brands will enjoy more long-term success. We integrate these two streams of research, explaining why there is a mismatch between substitute selection and substitute effectiveness, replicating and showing boundary conditions for the effects, and testing a managerial intervention that encourages consumers to choose more dissimilar (and more effective) substitutes., Author(s): Zachary G. Arens [sup.1] , Rebecca W. Hamilton [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) Oklahoma State University, 0000 0001 0721 7331, grid.65519.3e, , 74078, Stillwater, OK, USA (2) Georgetown University, 0000 [...]

Abstract. We study consumer search behavior in a brick-and-mortar store environment, using a unique data set obtained from radio-frequency identification tags, which are attached to supermarket shopping carts. This technology [...]

Abstract. This report describes entrants in the 2016 ISMS Gary Lilien Marketing Science Practice Prize Competition, representing the best examples of rigor plus relevance that our profession produces. The winner, [...]

In large markets comprising hundreds of products, comprehensive visualization of competitive market structures can be cumbersome and complex. Yet, as we show empirically, reduction of the analysis to smaller representative [...]

Market liberalization of the German household electricity market has led to an excessive number of competitors (1,150 electricity providers) and volatile price dynamics on price comparison sites. To date, providers [...]

This paper investigates the economic value of online reviews for consumers and restaurants. We use a data set from Dianping.com, a leading Chinese website providing user-generated reviews, to study how [...]

Firms with a customer-centric structure--an organizational design that aligns each business unit with a distinct customer group--are expected to exhibit superior performance compared to firms that are internally structured. Top [...]

There is substantial academic interest in modeling consumer experiential learning. However, (approximately) optimal solutions to forward-looking experiential learning problems are complex, limiting their behavioral plausibility and empirical feasibility. We propose [...]

Learning models extend the traditional discrete choice framework by postulating that consumers have incomplete information about product attributes and that they learn about these attributes over time. In this survey [...]

From 2003 to 2012, the ISMS-MSI Practice Prize/Award competition has documented 25 impactful projects, with associated papers appearing in Marketing Science. This article reviews these papers and projects, examines their [...]

We propose a structural model to study the effect of online product reviews on consumer purchases of experiential products. Such purchases are characterized by limited repeat purchase behavior of the [...]

Although the assumption of utility-maximizing consumers has been challenged for decades, empirical applications of alternative choice rules are still very new. We add to this growing body of literature by [...]

This series of discussions presents commentaries and a rejoinder on the economic perspectives on branding arising from Moorthy [Moorthy S (2012) Can brand extension signal product quality? Marketing Sci. 31(5):756-770]. [...]

This paper develops and calibrates a simple yet comprehensive set of models for the evolution of binary attribute importance weights, based on a cue-goal association framework. We argue that the [...]