The 10 most-cited articles in Journal of Marketing, 2019

Highlighting the important role of marketing in encouraging sustainable consumption, the current research presents a review of the academic literature from marketing and behavioral science that examines the most effective ways to shift consumer behaviors to be more sustainable. In the process of the review, the authors develop a comprehensive framework for conceptualizing and encouraging sustainable consumer behavior change. The framework is represented by the acronym SHIFT, and it proposes that consumers are more inclined to engage in pro-environmental behaviors when the message or context leverages the following psychological factors: Social influence, Habit formation, Individual self, Feelings and cognition, and Tangibility. The authors also identify five broad challenges to encouraging sustainable behaviors and use these to develop novel theoretical propositions and directions for future research. Finally, the authors outline how practitioners aiming to encourage sustainable consumer behaviors can use this framework.

Influencer marketing is prevalent in firm strategies, yet little is known about the factors that drive success of online brand engagement at different stages of the consumer purchase funnel. The findings suggest that sponsored blogging affects online engagement (e.g., posting comments, liking a brand) differently depending on blogger characteristics and blog post content, which are further moderated by social media platform type and campaign advertising intent. When a sponsored post occurs on a blog, high blogger expertise is more effective when the advertising intent is to raise awareness versus increase trial. However, source expertise fails to drive engagement when the sponsored post occurs on Facebook. When a sponsored post occurs on Facebook, posts high in hedonic content are more effective when the advertising intent is to increase trial versus raise awareness. The effectiveness of campaign incentives depends on the platform type, such that they can increase (decrease) engagement on blogs (Facebook). The empirical evidence for these findings comes from real in-market customer…

The last decade has seen the emergence of the sharing economy as well as the rise of a diverse array of research on this topic both inside and outside the marketing discipline. However, the sharing economy’s implications for marketing thought and practice remain unclear. This article defines the sharing economy as a technologically enabled socioeconomic system with five key characteristics (i.e., temporary access, transfer of economic value, platform mediation, expanded consumer role, and crowdsourced supply). It also examines the sharing economy’s impact on marketing’s traditional beliefs and practices in terms of how it challenges three key foundations of marketing: institutions (e.g., consumers, firms and channels, regulators), processes (e.g., innovation, branding, customer experience, value appropriation), and value creation (e.g., value for consumers, value for firms, value for society) and offers future research directions designed to push the boundaries of marketing thought. The article concludes with a set of forward-looking guideposts that highlight the implications of the…

Words are part of almost every marketplace interaction. Online reviews, customer service calls, press releases, marketing communications, and other interactions create a wealth of textual data. But how can marketers best use such data? This article provides an overview of automated textual analysis and details how it can be used to generate marketing insights. The authors discuss how text reflects qualities of the text producer (and the context in which the text was produced) and impacts the audience or text recipient. Next, they discuss how text can be a powerful tool both for prediction and for understanding (i.e., insights). Then, the authors overview methodologies and metrics used in text analysis, providing a set of guidelines and procedures. Finally, they further highlight some common metrics and challenges and discuss how researchers can address issues of internal and external validity. They conclude with a discussion of potential areas for future work. Along the way, the authors note how textual analysis can unite the tribes of marketing. While most marketing problems are…

The authors test five theoretically derived hypotheses about what drives video ad sharing across multiple social media platforms. Two independent field studies test these hypotheses using 11 emotions and over 60 ad characteristics. The results are consistent with theory and robust across studies. Information-focused content has a significantly negative effect on sharing, except in risky contexts. Positive emotions of amusement, excitement, inspiration, and warmth positively affect sharing. Various drama elements such as surprise, plot, and characters, including babies, animals, and celebrities arouse emotions. Prominent (early vs. late, long vs. short duration, persistent vs. pulsing) placement of brand names hurts sharing. Emotional ads are shared more on general platforms (Facebook, Google+, Twitter) than on LinkedIn, and the reverse holds for informational ads. Sharing is also greatest when ad length is moderate (1.2 to 1.7 minutes). Contrary to these findings, ads use information more than emotions, celebrities more than babies or animals, prominent brand placement, little…

This article’s objective is to inspire and provide guidance on the development of marketing knowledge based on the theories-in-use (TIU) approach. The authors begin with a description of the TIU approach and compare it with other inductive and deductive research approaches. The benefits of engaging in TIU-based research are discussed, including the development of novel organic marketing theories and the opportunity to cocreate relevant marketing knowledge with practitioners. Next, they review criteria for selecting research questions that are particularly well-suited for examination with TIU-based research. This is followed by detailed suggestions for TIU research: focusing on developing new constructs, theoretical propositions (involving antecedents, moderators, and consequences), and arguments for justifying theoretical propositions. A discussion of TIU tradecraft skills, validity checks, and limitations follows. The authors close with a discussion of future theory-building opportunities using the TIU approach.

Online firestorms pose severe threats to online brand communities. Any negative electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has the potential to become an online firestorm, yet not every post does, so finding ways to detect and respond to negative eWOM constitutes a critical managerial priority. The authors develop a comprehensive framework that integrates different drivers of negative eWOM and the response approaches that firms use to engage in and disengage from online conversations with complaining customers. A text-mining study of negative eWOM demonstrates distinct impacts of high- and low-arousal emotions, structural tie strength, and linguistic style match (between sender and brand community) on firestorm potential. The firm’s response must be tailored to the intensity of arousal in the negative eWOM to limit the virality of potential online firestorms. The impact of initiated firestorms can be mitigated by distinct firm responses over time, and the effectiveness of different disengagement approaches also varies with their timing. For managers, these insights provide guidance on how to…

Despite the demonstrated importance of customer sentiment in social media for outcomes such as purchase behavior and of firms’ increasing use of customer engagement initiatives, surprisingly few studies have investigated firms’ ability to influence the sentiment of customers’ digital engagement. Many firms track buyers’ offline interactions, design online content to coincide with customers’ experiences, and face varied performance during events, enabling the modification of marketer-generated content to correspond to the event outcomes. This study examines the role of firms’ social media engagement initiatives surrounding customers’ experiential interaction events in influencing the sentiment of customers’ digital engagement. Results indicate that marketers can influence the sentiment of customers’ digital engagement beyond their performance during customers’ interactions, and for unfavorable event outcomes, informational marketer-generated content, more so than emotional content, can enhance customer sentiment. This study also highlights sentiment’s role as a leading indicator for…

Marketers strive to create cool brands, but the literature does not offer a blueprint for what “brand coolness” means or what features characterize cool brands. This research uses a mixed-methods approach to conceptualize brand coolness and identify a set of characteristics typically associated with cool brands. Focus groups, depth interviews, and an essay study indicate that cool brands are perceived to be extraordinary, aesthetically appealing, energetic, high status, rebellious, original, authentic, subcultural, iconic, and popular. In nine quantitative studies (surveys and experiments), the authors develop scale items to reliably measure the component characteristics of brand coolness; show that brand coolness influences important outcome variables, including consumers’ attitudes toward, satisfaction with, intentions to talk about, and willingness to pay for the brand; and demonstrate how cool brands change over time. At first, most brands become cool to a small niche, at which point they are perceived to be more subcultural, rebellious, authentic, and original. Over time, some…

Recycling campaigns abound, but do consumers think about what becomes of those recyclables? This research proposes that product transformation salience (thinking about recyclables turning into new products) increases recycling. The authors theorize that consumers are inspired by the transformation of recyclables into new products and that this inspiration motivates them to recycle. The authors demonstrate the effect of product transformation messages on recycling behavior using a recycling campaign (Study 1) and advertisements for products made from recycled plastic (Study 2). Study 3 demonstrates the mediating role of inspiration. Then, three field studies provide robust support for the transformation salience effect through click-through rates for recycling advertisements (Study 4), recycling rates during pre–football game tailgating (Study 5), and a reduction in the amount of recyclable materials incorrectly placed in the landfill bin by students in a university residence hall (Study 6). The authors discuss implications for the design of recycling campaigns and positioning of…