Satisfying Customers
Multidimensional Media Slant: Complementarities in News Reporting by US Newspapers
Sandra García-Uribe
Information Economics and Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies front-page choices made by editors of major US newspapers. I document that newspaper front pages are biased to certain combinations of news after controlling for the newspaper bias and the overall market coverage of such news. I also provide a reader-maximization model for front-page decisions that I use to interpret the empirical biases as preferences of the newspaper population of target readers. Through the lens of my model, my estimates recover maps of complementarities among pairs of topics for each newspaper and I find that these contribute to the probability that news on a topic appears on the front page.
Hey Siri, I love you: People feel more attached to gendered technology
Ashley Martin & Malia Mason
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Debate abounds regarding the role that various technologies play in the reification of gender stereotypes and norms. We demonstrate that although assigning technology a male or female gender (i.e., gendering technology) increases gender stereotyping, it also increases attachment to anthropomorphized technologies. Across five studies, using archival (Amazon Reviews), correlational, and experimental methods (N = 10,781), we show people feel more attached to gendered technology. We further show these benefits are rooted in the tendency to ascribe greater humanness to technology that has stereotypically male and female traits. These results illustrate a paradox: gendering technology reinforces problematic stereotypes, but it also facilitates anthropomorphism, with beneficial consequences for the marketing of various technologies.
The Sound of Music: The Effect of Timbral Sound Quality in Audio Logos on Brand Personality Perception
Johann Melzner & Priya Raghubir
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research aims to advance the understanding of audio branding by investigating the effect of the understudied auditory attribute “timbre” in the context of brand audio logos. Specifically, the authors propose, and provide evidence in ten studies, that timbral sound quality in audio logos (i.e., roughness/ smoothness) informs abstract judgments of brand personality (i.e., ruggedness/ sophistication). Study 1 shows that the industry practice of altering instrumentation, and thus timbre, in audio logos can change personality perceptions of even well-known brands. This effect persists keeping sound source constant using various instruments (Studies 2A-D), a combination of instruments (Study 3), and in the absence of an identifiable sound source (Study 4). The authors test specific acoustic underpinnings of timbral sound quality perceptions (Study 4) and show that the effect on brand personality judgments is counteracted by incongruent sensory information from another modality (Study 5). The results of Study 6 suggest that the influence of timbral sound quality on brand personality perceptions is non-conscious as consumers are unaware of the extent to which the stimulus affects their judgments. Study 7 shows downstream consequences for purchase intentions. Practical implications, theoretical contributions, and directions for future research are discussed.
Anchoring on Historical Round Number Reference Points: Evidence from Durable Goods Resale Prices
Scott Wiltermuth, Timothy Gubler & Lamar Pierce
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines how people price the resale of durable goods in systematically biased ways. We show across four studies that the anchoring effect of durable goods’ prior sales prices on subsequent valuations is discontinuous at psychologically salient round number reference points (e.g., $10,000 increments) because these numbers create qualitative differences in how people perceive values below them versus values at/above them. Resellers set disproportionately larger subsequent prices when previous prices move from just below round number thresholds (e.g., $349,000) to those at or just above these thresholds (e.g., $351,000). The findings show that buyers who pay a price just below a round number, therefore, may sacrifice money because they receive disproportionately less when reselling the good. Market forces only partially attenuate this pricing bias, but valuator experience seems to play a moderating role. Archival data show that home buyers who previously paid just under a $10,000 reference point subsequently listed their homes for about 1.8% (over $3,700) less on average than did buyers selling comparable homes who previously paid at or above a round number threshold. This drop is observable controlling for home characteristics and the general relationship between previous and current prices. Three experimental studies looking at housing and used car markets replicate these findings, highlight the mechanism, and increase confidence in causality. Market mechanisms and the negotiation process attenuate discontinuities by about 30%, but lower initial listing prices persist to final sales prices. We find additional weak evidence suggesting that valuator experience may attenuate intergenerational pricing bias.
Buy Now, Pay Later Credit: User Characteristics and Effects on Spending Patterns
Marco Di Maggio, Emily Williams & Justin Katz
NBER Working Paper, September 2022
Abstract:
Firms offering “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) point-of-sale installment loans with minimal underwriting and low interest have captured a growing fraction of the market for short-term unsecured consumer credit. We provide a detailed look into the US BNPL market by constructing a large panel of BNPL users from transaction-level data. We document characteristics of users and usage patterns, and use BNPL roll-out to provide new insights into consumer responses to unsecured credit access. BNPL access increases both total spending levels and the retail share in total spending, with magnitudes too large for standard intertemporal and static substitution effects to explain. These findings hold for consumers with and without inferred liquidity constraints. Our findings are more consistent with a “liquidity flypaper effect” where additional retail liquidity through BNPL “sticks where it hits”, than a standard lifecycle model with liquidity constraints.