S. Adam Brasel

When Good Brands Do Bad

This paper reports results from a longitudinal field experiment examining the evolution of relationships between consumers and an on-line photography brand in response to brand personality and transgression manipulations. Development patterns differed significantly for the two personalities, whereby relationships with sincere brands deepened over time in line with friendship templates, and relationships with exciting brands evinced a trajectory characteristic of short-lived flings. However, these patterns held only when the relationship proceeded without a brand transgression. Relationships with sincere brands suffered dramatically and irrevocably in the wake of transgressions but, surprisingly, showed signs of reinvigoration for exciting brands. Character inferences concerning the quality of the brand as a relationship partner mediated the results. Findings suggest a dynamic construal of brand personality, greater attention to interrupt events including transgressions, and consideration of the relationship contracts formed at the hands of different brands.

Media Multitasking Behavior: Concurrent Television and Computer Usage

Changes in the media landscape have made simultaneous usage of the computer and television increasingly commonplace, but little research has explored how individuals navigate this media multitasking environment. Prior work suggests that self-insight may be limited in media consumption and multitasking environments, reinforcing a rising need for direct observational research. A laboratory experiment recorded both younger and older individuals as they used a computer and television concurrently, multitasking across television and Internet content. Results show that individuals are attending primarily to the computer during media multitasking. Although gazes last longer on the computer when compared to the television, the overall distribution of gazes is strongly skewed toward very short gazes only a few seconds in duration. People switched between media at an extreme rate, averaging more than 4 switches per min and 120 switches over the 27.5-minute study exposure. Participants had little insight into their switching activity and recalled their switching behavior at an average of only 12 percent of their actual switching rate revealed in the objective data. Younger individuals switched more often than older individuals, but other individual differences such as stated multitasking preference and polychronicity had little effect on switching patterns or gaze duration. This overall pattern of results highlights the importance of exploring new media environments, such as the current drive toward media multitasking, and reinforces that self-monitoring, post hoc surveying, and lay theory may offer only limited insight into how individuals interact with media.

Points of View: Where Do We Look When We Watch TV?

How is our gaze dispersed across the screen when watching television? An exploratory eyetracker study with a custom-designed show indicated a very strong center-of-screen bias with gaze points following a roughly normal distribution peaked near screen center. Examining the show across time revealed that people were rarely all looking at the same location, and the amount of gaze dispersion within frames was highly variable. Different forms of programming yielded different levels of dispersion: static network ‘bumpers’ created the tightest visual groupings, and gaze dispersion for frames with show content was less than the dispersion for commercials. Advertising frames with brand logos generated higher dispersion than the non-branded advertisement portions, and repeated advertisements generated higher dispersion than their first-run counterparts.

Interface Psychology: Touchscreens Change Attribute Importance, Decision Criteria, and Behavior in Online Choice.

Abstract As the rise of tablets and smartphones move the dominant interface for digital content from mouse or trackpad to direct touchscreen interaction, work is needed to explore the role of interfaces in shaping psychological reactions to online content. This research explores the role of direct-touch interfaces in product search and choice, and isolates the touch element from other form factor changes such as screen size. Results from an experimental study using a travel recommendation Web site show that a direct-touch interface (vs. a more traditional mouse interface) increases the number of alternatives searched, and biases evaluations toward tangible attributes such as décor and furniture over intangible attributes such as WiFi and employee demeanor. Direct-touch interfaces also elevate the importance of internal and subjective satisfaction metrics such as instinct over external and objective metrics such as reviews, which in turn increases anticipated satisfaction metrics. Findings suggest that interfaces can strongly affect how online content is explored, perceived, remembered, and acted on, and further work in interface psychology could be as fruitful as research exploring the content itself.

Cross-Modal Communication: Sound Frequency Influences Consumer Responses to Color Lightness

This research demonstrates that the synesthetic cross-modal correspondence between sound frequency and color lightness can guide visual attention: high-frequency (low-frequency) sounds guide visual attention toward light-colored (dark-colored) objects. Three eye-tracking studies indicate that this influence is automatic; it arises without goals or conscious awareness, it seems to take precedence over the influence from a simultaneously occurring semantic correspondence, and it even operates despite explicit instructions to the contrary. Two additional studies highlight the potential role for this influence in marketing contexts. In Study 4, the audio frequency in a soundtrack guides visual attention in a commercial, as evidenced by recall of marketing messages. In Study 5, customers in a supermarket exposed to high-frequency (vs. low-frequency) music are more likely to purchase products from a shelf with light (vs. dark) decor.

Embedded promotions in online services: how goal-relevance ambiguity shapes response and affect.

Adding promotions to online services is increasingly commonplace, yet consumers may have difficulty determining whether service-embedded promotions are goal-relevant, due to the linear and transactional nature of online services. This contextual effect of goal-relevance ambiguity on promotions is explored across three studies. An exploratory study utilizing actual service websites and a broad range of consumers as participants showed promotional elements in online services generated considerable confusion, and instructions labeling promotions as optional did little to relieve goal-relevance ambiguity. A second study using student participants inserted promotions into an online airline ticket service, a shopping site, a local news blog, and a news headline aggregator, to explore how linear and transactional sites such as online services compared to more exploratory or informational online environments. Results showed that service-embedded promotions enjoyed initial compliance far beyond promotions in traditional websites but also generated increased confusion, frustration, and anger. A third study utilizing student participants explored how varying levels of online service experience created differing responses to promotions in services; novices were less able to judge promotional goal-relevance and experienced more confusion, whereas experienced searchers were more likely to respond with frustration and anger. Many participants complied with promotional offers at the time of the service transaction, but stated intentions to use the promotion postservice were very low. The overall results spotlight goal-relevance ambiguity as an important driver of consumer response to online promotions, and highlight the role website context can play in the processing of online promotional elements.

Media multitasking: How visual cues affect switching behavior

As media multitasking becomes the most common form of entertainment consumption, foundational research is needed to explore actual patterns of multitasking behavior. This work uses direct observation to provide better insight into media multitasking, exploring visual cues that encourage or discourage switching. A first eyetracker study recorded consumer reactions to simultaneous television and webpage media coded on numerous content variables. Consistent with differences between peripheral and central vision, results show that lower-level visual cues (such as motion) were more effective at creating switches towards content, while higher-level perceptual cues (such as faces) were more effective at discouraging switches away. A second naturalistic study observed participants using a computer and television simultaneously, and established that media switching is rapid and constant. Breaks between show-to-commercial or commercial-to-show, or moving between webpages, led to increased switching in the seconds immediately following. Unlike lay theory, both show and commercial onsets favored towards-computer switches, further highlighting the importance of multitasking work that records and establishes baseline behavioral patterns. Central vs peripheral vision differences can drive multitasking media switching.Low-level visual cues (e.g. motion, luminance) can encourage switches towards media.High-level perceptual cues (e.g. faces. people) can discourage switching away.Media breaks (e.g. commercial-to-show, new webpages loading) can drive switching.Onset of both commercial and show content favor switching towards the computer.

Excellence in Marketing Education and Innovative Teaching Track - Special Session Creating Value in Marketing Courses

This session features three different approaches to teaching marketing research and one approach to teaching sports marketing. All four approaches illustrate how we can bring more realism and business practice into the classroom and merge these experiences with process and theory. Marketing research is a large and growing component of the marketing enterprise. Yet, extracting consumer insights from data can be difficult. Indeed, in a recent survey of over 1,500 American Marketing Association members, 45.7% of respondents singled out data analysis as either their biggest or second biggest challenge (Arnold 2005). More generally, “analytics” is increasingly perceived as a source of competitive advantage (Davenport 2006). Despite the growing importance of marketing research in the real world, most business students do not look forward to taking a course marketing research (Bridges 1999). Research has shown that students don’t look forward to marketing research because they typically do not understand what marketing research is or who does marketing research, they fear either “research” or the use of statistics, they presume the course is difficult, or do not know how it applies in the real world. These same issues can be mitigated by the use of activities that bring the real world into the classroom such as hands-on-experience, guest speakers, connections to real data and problems in an environment that allows the students to express themselves and learn not only from the instructor, but from their peers in a team based environment. As such, the three papers in this session represent three different strategies to achieve these goals.

The Role of Theory in Junior Faculty Research

This panel discussion explores the uses and roles of theory development in junior faculty research. How do we reconcile a top-tier journal focus on theoretical contributions with a relative lack of instruction on theory development in doctoral programs? Given tenure pressures, can junior faculty risk developing truly new theory, and what does that mean for our field? How do we value advances and contributions in psychometrics and analytical techniques, and how important is the distinction between ‘core’ and ‘applied’ theory? Come join the discussion as researchers at various stages in their academic careers explore the role of theory in junior faculty research.

Real-Time Data Collection and Online Service Transactions: Matching Methodology and Marketplace

Many online service transactions, such as purchasing airline or concert tickets, are multi-stage experiences involving a series of webpages. This serial service presentation suggests that post-hoc survey measures of service experience and quality will obscure transitory thoughts and affect that are centered around individual segments of the service transaction. By using realtime data collection methods such as eyetrackers, mouseloggers, and digital voice recorders, affective and cognitive responses to individual segments of the service process can be captured, and the effects of manipulations more directly measured. In one example, real-time data in an online study showed strong differences between web novices and experts in their affective and cognitive reactions to varying marketing efforts within a service transaction; these differences were obfuscated in post-stimulus survey measures. Real-time measures were especially well-suited to exploring reactions to changes in segment order and questions of segment bundling versus contiguity.