Program Schedule

Monday, May 16th, 2022

Location: Arison 317

9:00-9:30 – Morning Gathering

9:30-9:45 – Opening Remarks

9:45-10:30 - Influence Corridors: A New Path to Seeding Targets on User-Generated Content Platforms

Andreas Lanz, HEC Paris

On user-generated content platforms, individuals and firms alike seek to build and expand their follower base to increase the reach of the content they upload. This setting generally belongs to influencer marketing, where the bulk of the seeding literature suggests targeting users with a large following—the high-status influencers. In contrast, some recent studies find targeting low-status influencers to be a more effective seeding policy to build a follower base due to their higher responsiveness. We revisit these two opposing policies and investigate how social capital—the value embedded in the expanding follower base—can directly support seeding efforts. Based on the rationale that the follower base serves as an intermediary of group identity, we demonstrate in data-based simulations that using the first-degree followers as influence corridors to target the low-status second-degree followers—i.e., the connected low-status influencers—is much more effective than targeting (1) unconnected high-status influencers and (2) unconnected low-status influencers. We augment the empirical study on this “friends of friends” phenomenon with a pre-registered field experiment and thereby obtain convergent validity of our findings.

10:30-10:45 – Coffee Break

10:45-11:30 – On My Own: The Aversion To Being Observed During The Preference-construction Stage

Yonat Zwebner, Reichman University

Previous research in consumer behavior and decision making has explored many important aspects of social observation. However, the effect of social observation during the specific time wherein consumers construct their preferences remains relatively understudied. The present work seeks to fill this knowledge gap and add to this literature by studying how consumers react to being observed during the preference-construction stage (i.e., prior to reaching their decision). While existing research on social observation focuses on accountability and self-presentation concerns, the current paper uncovers an additional unique concern. Specifically, being observed prior to reaching the decision threatens consumers’ sense of autonomy in making the decision, resulting in an aversion to being observed. We find that such threats lead consumers to terminate their decision by avoiding purchase or by choosing default options. Given the extent to which consumers are observedin the marketplace by other individuals or by online platforms, and given the rise in consumers’ privacy concerns associated with such practices, understanding consumer reactions to being observed in the pre-decisional stage is an important topic with practical implications.

11:30-11:45 - Coffee Break

11:45-12:30 -The Upside of Negative: Social Distance in Online Reviews of Identity-Relevant Brands

Nailya Ordabayeva, Boston College

Conventional wisdom in marketing emphasizes the detrimental effects of negative online reviews for brands. An important question is whether some firms could more effectively manage negative reviews to improve brand preference and outcomes. To address this question, our research examines how customers respond to online reviews of identity-relevant brands in particular, which have been overlooked in the online reviews literature. Eight studies (field data and experiments featuring consequential and hypothetical behaviors) show that negative online reviews may not be so detrimental for identity-relevant brands, especially when those reviews originate from socially distant (but not socially close) reviewers. This occurs because a negative review of an identity-relevant brand can pose a threat to a customer’s identity, prompting the customer to strengthen their relationship with the identity-relevant brand. To document the underlying process, we show that this effect does not emerge when the review is positive or the brand is identity-irrelevant. Importantly, we identify circumstances when negative reviews can actually produce positive outcomes (higher preference) for identity-relevant brands over no reviews or even positive reviews. By demonstrating the upside of negative reviews for identity-relevant brands, our findings have important implications for marketing theory and practice.

12:30-13:30 - Lunch

13:30-14:15 –The two faces of skepticism as both cause and cure for infodemic

Ruth Mayo, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The main conceptualization these days is that in the process of understanding information, one must first believe the information and is only later able to negate or falsify it. Thus, negation is considered a secondary process, demanding awareness and cognitive resources. Consequently, it also carries a risk of failure, resulting in gullibility. In my talk I will review empirical research demonstrating the existence of two models for the negation process, suggesting that while one may lead to gullibility, the other offers a strong and successful negation process that diminishes gullibility effects such as false memory and misinformation. Further studies reveal that contextual cues or personality dispositions may induce a skeptical mindset in which the successful negation process is spontaneous, serving as the default response. These studies lead to the conclusion that there is both a gullible mindset in which acceptance is the primary process and a skeptical mindset in which rejection is the primary process. The mindsets alter according to context and individual differences regarding trust. Critically, in a skeptical mindset, one's initial response is to reject information. Thus, the skeptical mindset may offer both a cure for disinformation but may also lead one to create disinformation, hence offering new insights regarding cognitive antecedents of the post-truth era.

14:15-14:30 - Coffee Break

14:30-15:15 -Diversity in advertising in times of racial unrest

Jochen Hartmann, University of Groningen

Firms often attempt to reflect age, gender, and/or racial diversity in their promotional material. At the same time, recent social movements such as BlackLivesMatter (BLM) or MeToo have raised the awareness of social inequalities and biases that are omnipresent in our everyday lives. This research investigates racial diversity in U.S. advertising both in terms of supply—how diverse are the ads presented to consumers, and in terms of demand—how do consumers react to diverse vs. less diverse ads. If diverse ads lead to favorable consumer reaction, this could lead to a win-win opportunity that could accelerate the representation of minorities in advertising. We further explore how the diversity in advertising has changed around the BLM protests surrounding the murder of George Floyd.

To explore the diversity in advertising, we obtained a unique longitudinal dataset covering tens of thousands of display ads with hundreds of billions of impressions. We use robust, state-of-the-art machine learning methods to understand diversity compositions on these ads.

Between January 2019 and July 2021, we observe an overall positive trend in terms of including minority models in digital ads (esp. Black models) as well as in terms of consumers’ response to ads that feature Black models (in terms of click-through rates). The murder of George Floyd in May 2020, which has caused a global wave of protests about racial inequality, is associated with a temporary increase of the inclusion of Black models in advertising and more positive reaction of consumers to ads with Black models. However, both these effects levelled off quickly. Overall, our results suggest social movements like BLM can spill over to advertising, enabling a win-win strategy that may help expedite diversity in advertising.

15:15-15:30 - Coffee Break

15:30-16:15 – The Market for Fake Reviews
Davide Proserpio, University of Southern California

We study the market for fake product reviews on Amazon.com. Reviews are purchased in large private groups on Facebook and other sites. We hand-collect data on these markets and then collect a panel of data on these products’ ratings and reviews on Amazon, as well as their sales rank, advertising, and pricing policies. We find that a wide array of products purchase fake reviews, including products with many reviews and high average ratings. Buying fake reviews on Facebook is associated with a significant but short-term increase in average rating and number of reviews. We exploit a sharp but temporary policy shift by Amazon to show that rating manipulation has a large causal effect on sales. Finally, we examine whether rating manipulation harms consumers or whether it is mainly used by high-quality products in a manner like advertising or by new products trying to solve the cold-start problem. We find that after firms stop buying fake reviews, their average ratings fall and the share of one-star reviews increases significantly, particularly for young products, indicating rating manipulation is mostly used by low-quality products.