Mass Marketing
Public Perceptions of Corporate Position-Taking on Abortion and Transgender Rights
Wayde Marsh & Jordan Carr Peterson
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Corporations regularly express preferences on questions of public policy. This can occur through costly actions like lobbying public officials, contributing money to candidates, and engaging in litigation. One less costly way of expressing policy preferences is by issuing statements of support for or in opposition to a given policy or government practice. In this article, we examine public perceptions of corporate position-taking to determine the partisan dimensions of how the public evaluates corporate expressions of policy preferences on divisive “culture war” issues. Specifically, through three original survey experiments, we find that while corporate position-taking on abortion rights and transgender sports legislation shifts mass opinion on the role of corporations in politics, such expressions do not change individual attitudes on the underlying policy. In an age during which large firms play an increasingly influential role in the construction of public policy, this article sheds light on public opinion regarding corporate messaging.
Psychological Ownership and Territorial Behaviors in Rental Transactions: Why “Who” You Rent from Matters
Nirajana Mishra & Sarah Whitley
Journal of Marketing, forthcoming
Abstract:
The phenomenal growth in rentals, with the advent of access-based platforms, has made it possible for consumers to rent products from person providers (e.g., Alex on Airbnb) and company providers (e.g., Apex Vacations on Airbnb). But does “who” a consumer rents from matter? Across nine experiments (including one with real behaviors), we demonstrate that despite the product being the same, consumers differ in how they feel about the product depending on “who” they are renting from. Consumers feel stronger psychological ownership for the product when renting from company providers than person providers. These feelings of psychological ownership drive consumers to engage in “territorial” behaviors -- actions that assert their claim on the rented product (e.g., moving furniture in a rental cabin). Consequently, consumers are more willing to exhibit such behaviors when renting from company providers than person providers. These behaviors impose real costs on rental providers through increased operational burdens and property damage, as exemplified through additional analyses of providers’ comments on Airbnb’s community platform and interviews with providers. We further identify strategies to mitigate consumers’ territorial behaviors by altering consumers’ feelings of psychological ownership through its antecedent in the rental context: provider’s connection to the rental product.
Explaining the Big Mac Urban-Rural Price Gap in the United States
Fernanda Alfaro et al.
Journal of Regional Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Law of One Price (LOP) is a fundamental economic principle, yet its application in regional studies often excludes rural areas due to data limitations. We analyze price equalization across the US using Big Mac prices to address this gap. Our analysis focuses on three key questions: (i) Is there evidence of price equalization between urban and rural areas in the US over the short and long run? (ii) What factors drive urban-rural price equalization? (iii) How does inflation influence the behavior of price equalization? Our findings reveal that inflation affects the speed of urban-rural gap convergence and determines the key variables that explain the price gap.
Bots Bargaining with Humans: Building AI Super-Bargainers with Algorithmic Anthropomorphization
Sumon Chaudhuri & Arnaud de Bruyn
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
As AI-powered negotiations spread, their psychological and relational impact remains unclear. We propose a novel Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) framework that trains a bot to aim for superior economic outcomes while appearing “human” (“algorithmic anthropomorphization”). In a bargaining game experiment, we compare this “superhuman” bot to two simpler alternatives: a bot that mimics human behavior and a purely efficient bot. Our results show that (a) superficial anthropomorphization can make a bot seem human but does not improve subjective evaluations, (b) the efficient bot is so rational it is easily exploited, undercutting its performance, and (c) the superhuman bot achieves superior economic results while appearing more human than actual humans. Yet even when bots act indistinguishably from humans, they may trigger an “uncanny valley” effect, lowering subjective evaluations regardless of performance. Because subjective evaluations predict future negotiation outcomes, these findings highlight the potential negative impact AI bargaining algorithms can have on long-term customer relationships. We urge firms to measure more than objective outcomes when assessing AI negotiators.
Sustainability Cues Can Delay Consumption
Feifei Huang, Rafay Siddiqui & Qianqian (Esther) Liu
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
With the rise of environmental concerns in recent decades, many companies have joined the initiative to advertise and promote sustainable consumption. The current research examines how providing sustainability cues to consumers might have unintended consequences of which practitioners and policymakers may not be fully aware. One pilot study and ten main studies, including two real-choice studies, show that a sustainability cue may delay consumption. That is, in an intertemporal choice, a sustainability cue can increase preference for a larger-later option over a smaller-sooner option. This effect occurs because a sustainability cue shifts a consumer’s temporal focus toward the future, leading to a shorter perceived wait time for the larger-later option. The findings further show that the delay does not emerge among those with strong green consumption values and can be circumvented if firms communicate the immediate need or instant payoff of sustainable actions. By investigating how sustainability cues shift consumer preferences between two options separated in time, the current research contributes to the literature on both sustainable consumption and intertemporal choice. The findings offer practitioners and policymakers guidelines to nudge consumers’ sustainable consumption more effectively.
The Bright Side of Lower Quality: Evidence from Restaurant Exploration
Clara Carrera, Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz & Manuel Sosa
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The value derived from hedonic goods is affected by reference effects at the time of consumption, usually in the form of quality standards. Consumption typically involves two steps: First, the consumer chooses a given good, among a pool of available choices; then, the consumer experiences the good and derives a satisfaction from it. Between both steps, consumers might build expectations about the good that might affect the ultimate realized utility. We investigate the role of quality references in this two-stage (choice-outcome) process. We develop a flexible framework for estimating quality references and their effect in choice and outcome that can include consumers’ own past experiences, as well as that of others, and can give salience to more recent or more distant past experiences. Using novel longitudinal data from online restaurant reviews, we find evidence of quality loss aversion in the choice decision stage in accordance with prospect theory. However, in the outcome stage, we do find evidence of the opposite to loss aversion, that is, satisfaction is affected much less than one would expect when going to a lower quality restaurant. This is consistent with consumers adjusting their expectations downward and suggests that expectation adjustment protects consumers when they experience a good of lower-than-reference quality. Our results challenge the implicit assumption made by most recommendation systems that the expectation building process after making a choice does not change the outcome and imply that it may be better to patronize activities by alternating between high- and low-quality choices.
Can Privacy Technologies Replace Cookies? Ad Revenue in a Field Experiment
Zhengrong Gu, Garrett Johnson & Shunto Kobayashi
Boston University Working Paper, June 2025
Abstract:
As regulators seek to balance user privacy with publisher sustainability, Google’s Privacy Sandbox offers a potential replacement for third-party cookies. This paper presents the first independent estimates of the publisher-side economic effects of Privacy Sandbox, a suite of privacy-enhancing technologies for online advertising. Leveraging an open, industry-wide field experiment, we partner with a major ad management firm to evaluate over 200 million ad impressions across more than 5,000 publishers. We find that removing third-party cookies reduces publisher revenue by 29.1%, while Privacy Sandbox preserves just 4.2% of this lost revenue. We further document that Privacy Sandbox increases ad latency and reduces impression delivery by 2.9%. The results underscore the continued economic tension between privacy and the funding of online content.