Scholarly Works, Department of Marketing

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  • Partisan Media Sentiment Toward Artificial Intelligence
    Yi, Angela; Goenka, Shreyans; Pandelaere, Mario (SAGE, 2023-09)
    Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming pervasive across society. However, its deployment appears to be a divisive issue. This research examines aversion to AI across the partisan divide. We analyze partisan media sentiment toward AI, a powerful driver of public opinion toward social issues. We conduct a text analysis of media articles on AI (N = 7,840) from several liberal-leaning and conservative-leaning media outlets. The results demonstrate that liberal-leaning media show a greater aversion to AI than conservative-leaning media. Furthermore, a mediation analysis suggests that liberal-leaning media are more concerned with AI magnifying social biases in society than conservative-leaning media, which drives the partisan media differences. Moreover, the results also show that media sentiment toward AI became more negative after George Floyd’s death, an event that heightened sensitivity about social biases in society. Implications for how these partisan media differences can polarize public opinion and policymaker support toward AI are discussed.
  • Materialism and life satisfaction relations between and within people over time: Results of a three-wave longitudinal study
    Jaspers, Esther D. T.; Pandelaere, Mario; Pieters, Rik G. M.; Shrum, L. J. (Wiley, 2023-04)
    The negative association between materialism and life satisfaction is well-documented, but it is unclear what the directionality of the association is. To address this issue, we (a) conducted a three-wave longitudinal study (N = 6551) over 3 years and examined the bidirectional relations between life satisfaction and materialism as a composite measure and with each of its three facets (happiness, success, and centrality), and (b) estimated Random Intercept Cross-Lagged Panel Models (RI-CLPMs) that separate inter- and intra-individual effects and compared them with traditional CLPMs that do not. The traditional CLPM showed bidirectional negative associations between composite materialism and life satisfaction and strong negative bidirectional association for the happiness facet, but positive effects of the centrality facet on life satisfaction. However, and importantly, the RI-CLPM revealed that these relations exist predominantly between people. Within people, materialism does not impact life satisfaction, but life satisfaction does impact the happiness facet negatively. These findings challenge common ideas that the direction of the effect is from materialism to life satisfaction and that it is unilaterally negative.
  • Voices of Privacy
    Wertalik, Donna; Belanger, France (Webflow, 2023-02-08)
  • Information acquisition and cognitive processes during strategic decision-making: Combining a policy-capturing study with eye-tracking data
    Pizzo, Alice; Fosgaard, Toke R.; Tyler, Beverly B.; Beukel, Karin (Public Library of Science, 2022-12)
    Policy-capturing (PC) methodologies have been employed to study decision-making, and to assess how decision-makers use available information when asked to evaluate hypothetical situations. An important assumption of the PC techniques is that respondents develop cognitive models to help them efficiently process the many information cues provided while reviewing a large number of decision scenarios. With this study, we seek to analyze the process of answering a PC study. We do this by investigating the information acquisition and the cognitive processes behind policy-capturing, building on cognitive and attention research and exploiting the tools of eye-tracking. Additionally, we investigate the role of experience in mediating the relationship between the information processed and judgments in order to determine how the cognitive models of student samples differ from those of professionals. We find evidence of increasing efficiency as a function of practice when respondents undergo the PC experiment. We also detect a selective process on information acquisition; such selection is consistent with the respondents' evaluation. While some differences are found in the information processing among the split sample of students and professionals, remarkable similarities are detected. Our study adds confidence to the assumption that respondents build cognitive models to handle the large amounts of information presented in PC experiments, and the defection of such models is not substantially affected by the applied sample.
  • Are Conservatives Less Likely Than Liberals to Accept Welfare? The Psychology of Welfare Politics
    Goenka, Shreyans; Thomas, Manoj (University of Chicago Press, 2022-07)
    Research has shown that conservatives tend to oppose the distribution of welfare to other people. However, are conservatives less likely than liberals to accept welfare for themselves? We find that the difference in liberals’ and conservatives’ welfare enrollment depends on whether the welfare program has a work requirement policy. A natural field experiment shows that when the supplemental nutritional program (SNAP) had a work requirement, liberals and conservatives were equally likely to enroll in this program. In the absence of a work requirement, conservatives were less likely than liberals to enroll in it. Follow-up experiments replicate this result and demonstrate the underlying mechanism: conservatives’ adherence to binding moral values (loyalty, authority, and purity; Graham, Haidt, and Nosek 2009) makes them hesitant to accept welfare without a work requirement. Policy makers can deploy marketing messages to mitigate this effect and boost conservatives’ enrollment in such welfare programs.
  • When is sensory consumption immoral?
    Goenka, Shreyans; Thomas, Manoj (American Psychological Association, 2022-11-10)
    Although humans are hard-wired to pursue sensory pleasure, they show considerable heterogeneity in their moral evaluations of sensory pleasure. In some societies, sensory pleasure is pursued without any moral inhibition, but in other societies, it is considered to be immoral and actively suppressed. This research investigates the moral motives behind the suppression of sensory consumption. Is the suppression of sensory consumption caused by the moral motive to promote social justice or the moral motive to promote social order? We test these two competing accounts through country-level archival data and seven preregistered controlled experiments. We find robust evidence that the social-order emphasizing binding moral foundations (authority, loyalty, and purity; Haidt, 2007) suppress sensory consumption. Consequently, individuals and societies that adhere to the binding values are less likely to consume sensory products such as alcohol, tobacco, soda, fragrances, and sex toys. These effects are mediated by prescriptive moral beliefs and feelings of shame. We also identify several moderators of the moral suppression of sensory consumption. Binding values do not suppress sensory consumption after moral licensing. The effects of binding values on sensory consumption attenuate when the products are framed as status-affirming. Finally, while binding values suppress sensory consumption that is personal, they do not suppress sensory consumption that is shared. Altogether, our findings show that social-order emphasizing moral beliefs in society can inhibit the pursuit of pleasure and change consumption patterns in the economy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
  • Neurobiology of Well-Being
    Jackson, Pamela A.; Sirgy, M. Joseph; Medley, Gabriel D. (IGI Global, 2019)
    This chapter is designed to review much of the research on the neurobiology of well-being. A distinction between hedonic well-being and eudaimonic well-being is made. The brain reward center was discussed in relation to well-being, which was followed by an in-depth discussion related to drugs, neurotransmitters, and well-being. Neurochemicals related to hedonia and eudaimonia were then discussed, followed by another discussion on gene expression. Finally, brain structures involved in well-being were the discussed followed by concluding thoughts.
  • School choice increases racial segregation even when parents do not care about race
    Ukanwa, Kalinda; Jones, Aziza C.; Turner, Broderick L., Jr. (National Academy of Sciences, 2022)
    This research examines how school choice impacts school segregation. Specifically, this work demonstrates that even if parents do not take the racial demographics of schools into account, preference differences between Black and White parents for other school attributes can still result in segregation. These preference differences stem from motivational differences in pursuit of social status. Given that the de facto US racial hierarchy assigns Black people to a lower social status, Black parents are more motivated to seek schools that signal that they can improve their children’s status. Simulations of parental school decisions at scale show that preference differences under an unmitigated school-choice policy lead to more segregated schools, impacting more than half a million US children for every 3-percentage-point increase in school-choice availability. In contrast, if Black and White parents have similar preferences, unmitigated school choice would reduce racial segregation. This research may inform public policy concerning school choice and school segregation.
  • Why Is It Wrong to Sell Your Body? Understanding Liberals’ vs. Conservatives’ Moral Objections to Bodily Markets
    Goenka, Shreyans; van Osselaer, Stijn M. J. (American Marketing Association, 2021)
    People hold strong moral objections to commercial bodily markets—the buying and selling of the human body and its components (e.g., prostitution; commercial surrogacy; trade of kidneys, blood plasma, sperm, ovum, and hair). This research takes a descriptive approach to understand why people object to the marketing of the human body and how their moral objections differ across the political spectrum. The authors propose that liberals and conservatives find bodily markets to be morally wrong; however, the two groups object to bodily markets for different reasons. Liberals are more sensitive to exploitation concerns, but conservatives are more sensitive to violation of sanctity concerns in these markets. Real-world observational data and controlled experiments test these predictions. The findings show how sociopolitical leaders utilize the different moral objections to persuade their respective audiences, such as how conservative versus more liberal pastors sermonize differently on prostitution. Second, results show how targeted marketing campaigns encourage liberals and conservatives to participate in consumer advocacy and donate to political causes. Third, findings outline how liberals and conservatives support different regulatory laws that penalize buyers versus sellers. Finally, results show how the different moral objections manifest for live bodily products but not for dead bodily products.
  • Development of a Responsible Policy Index to Improve Statutory and Self-Regulatory Policies that Protect Children’s Diet and Health in the America’s Region
    Rincón-Gallardo Patiño, Sofía; Rajamohan, Srijith; Meaney, Kathleen; Coupey, Eloise; Serrano, Elena L.; Hedrick, Valisa E.; da Silva Gomes, Fabio; Polys, Nicholas F.; Kraak, Vivica (MDPI, 2020-01-13)
    In 2010, 193 Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed World Health Assembly Resolution WHA63.14 to restrict the marketing of food and beverage products high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) to children to prevent obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). No study has examined HFSS marketing policies across the WHO regional office countries in the Americas. Between 2018 and 2019, a transdisciplinary team examined policies to restrict HFSS food and beverage product marketing to children to develop a responsible policy index (RESPI) that provides a quality score based on policy characteristics and marketing techniques. After designing the RESPI, we conducted a comprehensive literature review through October 2019 to examine policies in 14 countries in the WHO Americans Region. We categorized policies (n = 38) as either self-regulatory or statutory and calculated the RESPI scores, ranked from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest). Results showed Brazil, Canada, Chile, and Uruguay had the highest RESPI scores associated with statutory policies that restricted point of sale, cartoon, licensed media characters and celebrities; and HFSS products in schools and child care settings, and broadcast and print media. Policymakers can use the RESPI tool to evaluate marketing policies within and across geopolitical boundaries to protect children’s diet and health.
  • A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation of Feedback in Ideation Contests
    Jiang, Juncai; Wang, Yu (Wiley, 2019-11-11)
    Ideation contests are commonly used across public and private sectors to generate new ideas for solving problems, creating designs, and improving products or processes. In such a contest, a firm or an organization (the seeker) outsources an ideation task online to a distributed population of independent agents (solvers) in the form of an open call. Solvers compete to exert efforts and the one with the best solution wins a bounty. In evaluating solutions, the seeker typically has subjective taste that is unobservable to solvers. In practice, the seeker often provides solvers with feedback, which discloses useful information about her private taste. In this study, we develop a game-theoretic model of feedback in unblind ideation contests, where solvers’ solutions and the seeker's feedback are publicly visible by all. We show that feedback plays an informative role in mitigating the information asymmetry between the seeker and solvers, thereby inducing solvers to exert more efforts in the contest. We also show that some key contest and solver characteristics (CSC, including contest reward, contest duration, solver expertise, and solver population) have a direct effect on solver effort. Interestingly, by endogenizing the seeker's feedback decision, we find that the optimal feedback volume increases with contest reward, contest duration, solver expertise, but decreases with solver population. Thus, CSC elements also have an indirect effect on solvers’ effort level, with feedback volume mediating this effect. Employing a dataset from Zhubajie.com, a leading online ideation platform in China, we find empirical evidence that is consistent with these theoretical predictions.
  • The Impact of Search Engine Selection and Sorting Criteria on Vaccination Beliefs and Attitudes: Two Experiments Manipulating Google Output
    Allam, Ahmed; Schulz, Peter Johannes; Nakamoto, Kent (2014-04)
    Background: During the past 2 decades, the Internet has evolved to become a necessity in our daily lives. The selection and sorting algorithms of search engines exert tremendous influence over the global spread of information and other communication processes. Objective: This study is concerned with demonstrating the influence of selection and sorting/ranking criteria operating in search engines on users' knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes of websites about vaccination. In particular, it is to compare the effects of search engines that deliver websites emphasizing on the pro side of vaccination with those focusing on the con side and with normal Google as a control group. Method: We conducted 2 online experiments using manipulated search engines. A pilot study was to verify the existence of dangerous health literacy in connection with searching and using health information on the Internet by exploring the effect of 2 manipulated search engines that yielded either pro or con vaccination sites only, with a group receiving normal Google as control. A pre-post test design was used; participants were American marketing students enrolled in a study-abroad program in Lugano, Switzerland. The second experiment manipulated the search engine by applying different ratios of con versus pro vaccination webpages displayed in the search results. Participants were recruited from Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform where it was published as a human intelligence task (HIT). Results: Both experiments showed knowledge highest in the group offered only pro vaccination sites (Z=-2.088, P=.03; Kruskal-Wallis H test [H-5]=11.30, P=.04). They acknowledged the importance/benefits (Z=-2.326, P=.02; H-5=11.34, P=.04) and effectiveness (Z=-2.230, P=.03) of vaccination more, whereas groups offered antivaccination sites only showed increased concern about effects (Z=-2.582, P=.01; H-5=16.88, P=.005) and harmful health outcomes (Z=-2.200, P=.02) of vaccination. Normal Google users perceived information quality to be positive despite a small effect on knowledge and a negative effect on their beliefs and attitudes toward vaccination and willingness to recommend the information (chi(2)(5)=14.1, P=.01). More exposure to antivaccination websites lowered participants' knowledge (J=4783.5, z=-2.142, P=.03) increased their fear of side effects (J=6496, z=2.724, P=.006), and lowered their acknowledgment of benefits (J=4805, z=-2.067, P=.03). Conclusion: The selection and sorting/ranking criteria of search engines play a vital role in online health information seeking. Search engines delivering websites containing credible and evidence-based medical information impact positively Internet users seeking health information. Whereas sites retrieved by biased search engines create some opinion change in users. These effects are apparently independent of users' site credibility and evaluation judgments. Users are affected beneficially or detrimentally but are unaware, suggesting they are not consciously perceptive of indicators that steer them toward the credible sources or away from the dangerous ones. In this sense, the online health information seeker is flying blind.
  • The Effect of Social Support Features and Gamification on a Web-Based Intervention for Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients: Randomized Controlled Trial
    Allam, Ahmed; Kostova, Zlatina; Nakamoto, Kent; Schulz, Peter Johannes (2015-01)
    Background: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is chronic systematic disease that affects people during the most productive period of their lives. Web-based health interventions have been effective in many studies; however, there is little evidence and few studies showing the effectiveness of online social support and especially gamification on patients' behavioral and health outcomes. Objective: The aim of this study was to look into the effects of a Web-based intervention that included online social support features and gamification on physical activity, health care utilization, medication overuse, empowerment, and RA knowledge of RA patients. The effect of gamification on website use was also investigated. Methods: We conducted a 5-arm parallel randomized controlled trial for RA patients in Ticino (Italian-speaking part of Switzerland). A total of 157 patients were recruited through brochures left with physicians and were randomly allocated to 1 of 4 experimental conditions with different types of access to online social support and gamification features and a control group that had no access to the website. Data were collected at 3 time points through questionnaires at baseline, posttest 2 months later, and at follow-up after another 2 months. Primary outcomes were physical activity, health care utilization, and medication overuse; secondary outcomes included empowerment and RA knowledge. All outcomes were self-reported. Intention-to-treat analysis was followed and multilevel linear mixed models were used to study the change of outcomes over time. Results: The best-fit multilevel models (growth curve models) that described the change in the primary outcomes over the course of the intervention included time and empowerment as time-variant predictors. The growth curve analyses of experimental conditions were compared to the control group. Physical activity increased over time for patients having access to social support sections plus gaming (unstandardized beta coefficient [B]=3.39, P=.02). Health care utilization showed a significant decrease for patients accessing social support features (B=-0.41, P=.01) and patients accessing both social support features and gaming (B=-0.33, P=.03). Patients who had access to either social support sections or the gaming experience of the website gained more empowerment (B=2.59, P=.03; B=2.29, P=.05; respectively). Patients who were offered a gamified experience used the website more often than the ones without gaming (t(91)=-2.41, P=.02; U=812, P=.02). Conclusions: The Web-based intervention had a positive impact (more desirable outcomes) on intervention groups compared to the control group. Social support sections on the website decreased health care utilization and medication overuse and increased empowerment. Gamification alone or with social support increased physical activity and empowerment and decreased health care utilization. This study provides evidence demonstrating the potential positive effect of gamification and online social support on health and behavioral outcomes.
  • Falling Back on Numbers: When Preference for Numerical Product Information Increases after a Personal Control Threat
    Lembregts, Christophe; Pandelaere, Mario (2019-02)
    Despite the ubiquity of numerical information in consumers' lives, prior research has provided limited insights to marketers about when numerical information exerts greater impact on decisions. This study offers evidence that judgments involving numerical information can be affected by consumers' sense of personal control over the environment. A numerical attribute's format communicates the extent to which the magnitude of a benefit is predictable (Study 1a), such that people who experience a control threat and want to see their external environment as predictable (Study 1b) rely on point value (vs. range) information as a general signal that the environment is predictable (Study 2). A personal control threat changes consumers' preferences as a function of whether the numerical information appears as a point value or a range (Studies 3-4). This heightened focus on format may lessen the impact of a product benefit's predicted magnitude, if a lower magnitude is specified in a more precise format (Study 5). Study 6 provides first evidence that the interactive effect of personal control levels and numerical formats can affect consequential choices.
  • How to enhance the well-being of healthcare service providers and their patients? A mindfulness proposal
    Sirgy, M. Joseph; Jackson, Pamela A. (Frontiers Media S.A., 2015-03-17)
    The notion of mindfulness is key to developing ideas that can address how healthcare service providers (e.g., clinicians) can effectively enhance their own well-being in the workplace, and by doing so, increase the well-being of their patients. The seminal definition of mindfulness is “paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn, 1994, p. 4). Linehan (1993) argued that mindfulness involves six skills: three skills involve what the person is doing (observing, describing, and participating) and three skills relate to how the person is doing (non-judgmentally, focused attention, and performance quality). Another way to illustrate mindfulness is to make reference to its opposite: lack of awareness about current experience and a preoccupation with the past (rumination) or the future (worry). Therefore, mindfulness is both a skill and a way of being that can be cultivated through mindful meditation practices—formal practices such as sitting meditation or yoga, and informal practices such as eating, walking, and driving meditation.
  • Attainment versus maintenance goals: Perceived difficulty and impact on goal choice
    Stamatogiannakis, Antonios; Chattopadhyay, Amitava; Chakravarti, Dipankar (Elsevier, 2018-09-19)
    We argue that individuals monitor and evaluate attainment and maintenance goals differently. Attainment goals feature a salient current-end state discrepancy that is processed more than the corresponding match for maintenance goals. For maintenance goals, for which a salient discrepancy is absent, contextual influences on goal success/failure receive more processing than for attainment goals. Thus, objectively more difficult attainment goals may be judged as easier than maintenance goals, when they feature sufficiently small discrepancies, or when context information is unfavorable. Study 1 establishes this core effect. Study 2 shows that thought listings capturing the relative processing of the current-end state discrepancy (match) and context information mediate perceived goal difficulty. Study 3 shows that the favorability of context information moderates the effect. Study 4 establishes joint difficulty evaluations as a boundary condition. Studies 5 and 6 (and Appendix B) show that such goal difficulty judgments affect consequential goal choices in real-world financial, workplace, and shopping situations.
  • Strategic Social Media Planning for a University Business School
    Wertalik, Donna (SAGE, 2017-11-15)
    Strategic Social Media Research, Marketing Planning and Beta Testing to build, for the first time, a unique brand for a named college. Market research was at the heart of this research, which led to a campaign which increased ROE and ROI.
  • Price-Matching Guarantees with Endogenous Consumer Search
    Jiang, Juncai; Kumar, Nanda; Ratchford, Brian T. (Informa, 2017-10-01)
    Price-matching guarantees (PMGs) are offered in a wide array of product categories in retail markets. PMGs offer consumers the assurance that, should they find a lower price elsewhere within a specified period after purchase the retailer will match that price and refund the price difference. The goal of this study is to explain the following stylized facts: (1) many retailers that operate both online and offline implement PMG offline but not online; (2) the practices of PMG vary considerably across retail categories; and (3) some retailers launch specialized websites that automatically check competitors’ prices for consumers after purchase. To this end, we build a sequential search model that endogenizes consumers’ pre- and postpurchase search decisions. We find that PMG expands retail demand but intensifies price competition on two dimensions. PMG drives retailers to offer deeper promotions because it increases the overall extent of consumer search, which we call the primary competition-intensifying effect. We also find a new secondary competition-intensifying effect, which results from endogenous consumer search. As deeper promotions incentivize consumers to continue price search, retailers are forced to lower the “regular” price to deter consumers from searching. The strength of the secondary competition-intensifying effect increases with the ratio of product valuation to search cost, which explains the variation in PMG practices online versus offline and across retail categories. We show that an asymmetric equilibrium exists such that one retailer offers PMG while the other does not. In this equilibrium, the PMG retailer may benefit from launching a price check website to facilitate consumers’ postpurchase search.
  • A Case Study of an Interdisciplinary Design Course for Pervasive Computing
    Coupey, Eloise; McNair, Lisa D. (IEEE, 2010)
    This paper provides a case study of an interdisciplinary design project course for pervasive computing products. As a team of faculty from computer engineering, industrial design, and marketing, we have run several interdisciplinary design projects with teams of undergraduates from those disciplines. Our paper will detail our process for each of these projects and how that process has evolved with each offering of the course.