Papers
Looking for resource density in the platform supply network. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management
In a platform supply network, a platform owner uses a digital platform to link other firms such as suppliers, customers, logistics firms and other service firms to combine resources for value co-creation. Resource density (defined as the optimal combination of resources) is key to value co-creation in the network. We identify three mechanisms through which these companies achieve resource density: optimizing data sources, restructuring the platform, and shaping the supply network.
Full reference: Wei, R., & Pardo, C. (2024). Looking for resource density in the platform supply network. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 100938.
People devalue generative AI’s competence but not its advice in addressing societal and personal challenges. Communications Psychology
Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are becoming more common, but people’s perceptions of AI-generated advice are mixed. Our studies show that awareness of AI authorship reduces perceived competence but not content quality. Individuals’ preference to receive advice from AI (vs. human experts) increases when they gained positive experience with generative AI advice in the past.
Full reference: Böhm, R., Jörling, M., Reiter, L., & Fuchs, C. (2023). People devalue generative AI’s competence but not its advice in addressing societal and personal challenges. Communications Psychology, 1(1), 32.
‘Nothing goes to waste’: How Chefs Contribute to Food Well-Being, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing
Findings based on multiple sources (online streaming platforms, books, newspapers, magazines, websites, and social media channels) reveal that celebrity chefs challenge a wasteful food culture by supporting and training consumers and other stakeholders in the food supply chain. Chefs leverage their position in society and within the food supply chain to connect multiple stakeholders in order to form a mutually beneficial and positive relationship with food.
Full reference: Pizzetti, M., Longo, C. and Ture, M. (2023). ‘Nothing goes to waste’: How Chefs Contribute to Food Well-Being. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, forthcoming
Millennials’ attitudes and intentions toward masstige strategies: A cross-cultural study of French and Chinese consumers. Journal of Business Research
Chinese consumers express a more positive attitude and higher purchase intention toward masstige brand than French because they recognize the prestige of the parent brand in masstige sub-brands more than French consumers. Conversely, French consumers are more accepting of masstige in the form of new product lines, such as accessories.
Full reference: Pizzetti, M., Chereau, P., Soscia, I., & Teng, F. (2023). Attitudes and intentions toward masstige strategies: A cross-cultural study of French and Chinese consumers. Journal of Business Research, 167, 114174.
To disclose or not to disclose? Factors related to the willingness to disclose information to a COVID-19 tracing app. Information, Communication & Society
Contact-tracing apps are promising tools to combat COVID-19, but many users don’t disclose infection information. Our studies show that emphasizing prosocial benefits or ease of use increases disclosure. Perceived benefit, trust, and fear are key predictors.
Full reference: Jörling, M., Eitze, S., Schmid, P., Betsch, C., Allen, J., & Böhm, R. (2023). To disclose or not to disclose? Factors related to the willingness to disclose information to a COVID-19 tracing app. Information, Communication & Society, 26(10), 1954-1978.
How Communications That Portray Unhealthy Food Consumption Reduce Food Intake Among Dieters. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing
This paper shows that exposure to food advertisements containing unhealthy food consumption imagery reduces food intake, especially for people who are concerned with dieting.
Full reference: Birau, M. M., Hildebrand, D., & Werle, C. O. (2022). How Communications That Portray Unhealthy Food Consumption Reduce Food Intake Among Dieters. Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 41(2), 162-176.
Artificial intelligence and SMEs: How can B2B SMEs leverage AI platforms to integrate AI technologies? Industrial Marketing Management
We investigate how small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can leverage AI platforms to integrate AI Technologies. Based on twenty-one interviews with the managers of a digital platform company, we identify three AI platform layers where interactions between the platform and its users take place. We further identify six roles adopted by the users and highlight the mechanisms of their interactions with the platform. We also explore the conditional factors relating to these interactions, namely, knowledge (operational, functional, and technological), organizational processes, and access to external data.
Full reference: Wei, R., & Pardo, C. (2022). Artificial intelligence and SMEs: How can B2B SMEs leverage AI platforms to integrate AI technologies?. Industrial Marketing Management, 107, 466-483.
Increasing the effectiveness of display social media ads for startups: The role of different claims and executional characteristics. Journal of Business Research
In collaboration with a startup expanding to a new country, we conducted randomized field experiments reaching more than 800,000 potential customers to assess the effectiveness of display social media ads and explore how different claims and executional characteristics impact this effectiveness. Our analyses show that the elasticity of display social media ads is equal to 0.815 and 98% of the effect occurs within two hours. We also find that adding informative claims to an ad reduces the click-through rate (CTR) by between 24.8% and 43%. Regarding executional characteristics, we find that ad repetition significantly increases the CTR by 19.9%, whereas including a character and using gender-congruity in ads do not significantly increase their CTR.
Full reference: Hervet, G., & Guitart, I. A. (2022). Increasing the effectiveness of display social media ads for startups: The role of different claims and executional characteristics. Journal of Business Research, 153, 467-478.
Managing paradoxical tensions in platform-based modular solution networks. Industrial Marketing Management
Using a case study approach, we examine how two firms in the lighting facility and ICT industries use digital platforms to coordinate their diverse, large and dynamic modular solution networks. Our findings reveal that due to contradictory goals in offering diverse customized solutions, solution providers with digital platforms are facing several paradoxical tensions between flexibility and efficiency, control and autonomy, and standardization and customization. We find that solution providers cope with these paradoxes through implementing two simultaneous mechanisms: unification and diversification. While the diversification mechanism aims at increasing variety among modules and module providers, unification focuses on forming similarities among them. These mechanisms are made possible through digital platform features, such as algorithms, online communities and platform access.
Full reference: Wei, R., Geiger, S., & Vize, R. (2022). Managing paradoxical tensions in platform-based modular solution networks. Industrial Marketing Management, 100, 96-111.
When sustainability backfires: A review on the unintended negative-side effects of product and service sustainability on consumer behaviour. Psychology & Marketing
The systematic review of 94 articles reveals that corporate sustainability has negative side‐effects on consumers. It identifies three main cognitive mechanisms (information elaboration, product perception bias, and self‐perception) and several emotionally aversive states (anxiety, shame, guilt, regret, distress, reduced enjoyment, frustration, discomfort, stress, and embarrassment) that are responsible for unintended negative side‐effects consumers experience when purchasing or consuming sustainable products and services.
Full reference: Acuti, D., Pizzetti, M., & Dolnicar, S. (2022). When sustainability backfires: A review on the unintended negative side‐effects of product and service sustainability on consumer behavior. Psychology & Marketing, 39(10), 1933-1945.
The impact of informational and emotional television ad content on online search and sales. Journal of Marketing Research
We document how informational and emotional appeals in more than 2,000 television ads for 144 car models, aired over four years, influence online search and sales. Increasing the emotional content of ads leads to increases in online search, but increasing the informational content does not. Both informational and emotional content positively influence sales. However, increases in informational content lead to more incremental sales for low-price and low-quality cars than for high-price and high-quality cars. In turn, increases in emotional content generate more incremental sales for high-price cars than for low-price cars. Thus, the managers of high-price and high-quality cars should prioritize emotional rather than informational content in ads whereas the managers of low-price and low-quality cars should emphasize emotional content if their objective is to increase online search and informational content if their objective is to increase sales.
Full reference: Guitart, I. A., & Stremersch, S. (2021). The impact of informational and emotional television ad content on online search and sales. Journal of Marketing Research, 58(2), 299-320.
Augmented self: The effects of smart mirrors on consumers’ self-concept. Journal of Business Research
While commercial immersive technologies, such as augmented reality mirrors, are deployed to generate responses related to brands and products, this study demonstrates that the effects extend to consumers’ self-concept. AR mirror are intense sensory experiences that affect consumer perception of the self, specifically the gap between actual and ideal attractiveness. Viewing oneself in an AR mirror (as opposed to the regular mirror) affects the ideal-actual attractiveness gap and that this effect differs depending on a consumer’s self-esteem.
Full reference: Javornik, A., Marder, B., Pizzetti, M., & Warlop, L. (2021). Augmented self-The effects of virtual face augmentation on consumers’ self-concept. Journal of Business research, 130, 170-187.
Green lies and their effect on intention to invest. Journal of Business Research
The article conceptualizes greenwashing as a form of company deception to stakeholders, which can take different deception forms. Results suggest that greenwashing has a greater negative impact on intention to invest than a corporate misbehavior unrelated to a deceptive communication. Moreover, individuals are less inclined to invest in a company that falsifies its claims (deception by falsification) and which engages in manipulative business practices (deceptive manipulation), as compared to a company that instrumentally selects which information to disclose (deception by information selection) or tries to obscure misbehaviors through publicizing its good business practices (deception by attention diversion).
Full reference: Gatti, L., Pizzetti, M., & Seele, P. (2021). Green lies and their effect on intention to invest. Journal of business research, 127, 228-240.
Firms talk, suppliers walk: Analyzing the locus of greenwashing in the blame game and introducing ‘vicarious greenwashing’. Journal of Business Ethics
The article proposes and tests a new typology of greenwashing, based on the locus of discrepancy, i.e., the point along the supply-chain where the discrepancy between ‘responsible words’ and ‘irresponsible walks’ occurs. Results of three experiments demonstrate that the more internal, controllable and intentional the discrepancy is, the greater the blame attributed to a company is, and the lower the intention to invest will be. When greenwashing occurs at a company level (direct greenwashing), this results in a higher level of blame attribution, while the intention to invest falls. Indirect greenwashing refers to a misbehavior perpetrated by a supplier who claims to be sustainable, and which results in a less negative impact on a supplied company. Vicarious greenwashing occurs when the behavior of a supplier is in breach of a company’s claims of sustainability, and it is nevertheless detrimental to investment.
Full reference: Pizzetti, M., Gatti, L., & Seele, P. (2021). Firms talk, suppliers walk: Analyzing the locus of greenwashing in the blame game and introducing ‘vicarious greenwashing’. Journal of Business Ethics, 170, 21-38.
Impact of brand anthropomorphism on ethical judgment: The roles of failure type and loneliness. European Journal of Marketing
For less-lonely consumers, a brand humanizing strategy backfires when the failure is moral but helps the brand when the failure is competence-related. On the other hand, more-lonely consumers judge the situation less negatively overall, and this effect is not impacted by the anthropomorphization strategy.
Full reference: Dalman, M. D., Agarwal, M. K., & Min, J. (2021). Impact of brand anthropomorphism on ethical judgment: the roles of failure type and loneliness. European Journal of Marketing, 55(11), 2917-2944.
Competitive advertising strategies for programmatic television. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science
By analyzing a dataset of more than 43,000 own-brand and 49,000 competitor TV ad insertion we study how managers can improve the effectiveness of their ad schedules by considering the relative placement of their ads with respect to competitor ads. The best strategy is to place ads in isolation, either when competitors are not advertising at all or advertising on other stations. If this avoidance strategy is not possible, brands should advertise more heavily than their competitors. Our analyses show that adopting programmatic television technology would have led the focal firm to increase the conversions from television advertising by 59%.
Full reference: Guitart, Ivan A., Guillaume Hervet, and Sarah Gelper (2020). Competitive advertising strategies for programmatic television. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48 (2020): 753-775.
Negative word of mouth for a failed innovation from higher/lower equity brands: Moderating roles of opinion leadership and consumer testimonials. Journal of Business Research
Among consumers who exhibit higher opinion leadership, higher-equity brands attract more (less) negative word of mouth than lower-equity brands in the absence (presence) of testimonials.
Full reference: Dalman, M. D., Chatterjee, S., & Min, J. (2020). Negative word of mouth for a failed innovation from higher/lower equity brands: Moderating roles of opinion leadership and consumer testimonials. Journal of Business Research, 115, 1-13.
The Differential Influence of Identification on Ethical Judgment: The Role of Brand Love. Journal of Business Ethics
Brand identification both decreases (direct effect) and increases (indirect effect through brand love) consumers’ ethical judgment following extremely unethical events. Moreover, consumers who are in a love type relationship with the brand proactively shield the brand from other consumers by employing two brand supportive behaviors; sin of omission and brand defense.
Full reference: Dalman, M. D., Buche, M. W., & Min, J. (2019). The differential influence of identification on ethical judgment: The role of brand love. Journal of Business Ethics, 158, 875-891.
A platform approach in solution business: how platform openness can be used to control solution networks. Industrial Marketing Management
This paper explores how customer solution providers leverage digital platform architectures to exert control over complex organizational networks. Our findings show that the features of product modules (core or peripheral), service modules (relationship intensity and customization), and knowledge modules (explicit, tacit and codified) have differential influence on the levels of platform openness. By managing platform openness of different subsystems accordingly, solution providers can achieve different control benefits, including ensuring module quality, increasing offering variety, reducing dependence on module providers, and facilitating resource sharing.
Full reference: Wei, R., Geiger, S., & Vize, R. (2019). A platform approach in solution business: how platform openness can be used to control solution networks. Industrial Marketing Management, 83, 251-265.
Service robots: Drivers of perceived responsibility for service outcomes. Journal of Service Research
Service robots are becoming more common, and their social presence raises questions about responsibility attribution. The research explores how perceived autonomy, ownership, and interruptability influence responsibility perceptions in service robot interactions. Findings indicate that autonomy decreases control and responsibility for positive outcomes, ownership increases responsibility for negative outcomes, and interruptability enhances control and responsibility for positive outcomes.
Full reference: Jörling, M., Böhm, R., & Paluch, S. (2019). Service robots: Drivers of perceived responsibility for service outcomes. Journal of Service Research, 22(4), 404-420.