Promotion
You Should Try These Together: Combinatory Recommendations Signal Expertise and Improve Product Attitudes
Jennifer D'Angelo & Francesca Valsesia
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This work introduces a novel cue that consumption advisors, like stylists and interior designers, can use to signal expertise: combinatory recommendations. In a combinatory recommendation, a person offers an opinion about compatibility among multiple products intended for joint usage. Across nine studies conducted in the lab and field, we find that offering a combinatory recommendation signals greater expertise (study 1a, study 2a), and specifically, depth of knowledge (study 1b), relative to other types of recommendations involving the same number of products. This effect does not depend on the helpfulness of the advisor (study 2b) but is qualified by features of the recommendation itself (study 3a) as well as the type of combination recommended (study 3b). Importantly, we find this effect to have important downstream consequences, as the increased perceptions of expertise that follow a combinatory recommendation improve consumers' attitudes both toward products included in the recommendation and toward subsequent recommendations made by the advisor (study 4, study 5). The real-world persuasive value of combinatory recommendations is also tested in a field study (study 6) that explores the effect of combinatory recommendations on click-through rates of Instagram advertisements.
Dual-promotion: Bragging Better by Promoting Peers
Eric VanEpps, Einav Hart & Maurice Schweitzer
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, June 2022
Abstract:
To receive credit and to create favorable impressions, individuals need to share information about their past accomplishments. Claiming credit to demonstrate competence, however, can harm perceptions of warmth and likability. In fact, prior work has conceptualized self-promotion as a hydraulic challenge: tactics that boost perceptions along one dimension (e.g., competence) harm perceptions along the other dimensions (e.g., warmth). In this work, we identify a novel approach to self-promotion: We show that by combining other-promotion (promoting others) and self-promotion, which we term "dual-promotion", individuals can project both warmth and competence to make better impressions on observers. In two pre-registered pilot studies, including annual reports from members of Congress and an interactive lab study, we demonstrate that even when motivated to create a favorable impression, people rely heavily upon self-promotion. Yet across four experiments using workplace and political contexts (N = 1,510, pre-registered), we show that individuals who engage in dual-promotion consistently create more favorable impressions than those who only engage in self-promotion, an effect mediated by enhanced perceptions of both warmth and competence. These benefits also extend to behavioral intentions. In addition, we show that regardless of what colleagues and peers do, dual-promotion creates more favorable impressions than self-promotion, suggesting that sharing credit can be an optimal strategy across a variety of contexts.
Collaborations and Innovation in Partitioned Industries: An Analysis of U.S. Feature Film Coproductions
Ruo Jia, Demetrius Lewis & Giacomo Negro
Organization Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
In partitioned industries, a small number of generalist organizations occupy the center of the market, whereas a much larger number of specialists populate the periphery. The role of collaborations within and across the center-periphery boundary in these industries has been underexplored. We propose that hybrid collaborations between organizations in the center and periphery-combining the broad resource base of generalists with the focused knowledge of specialists-encourage product innovation and result in enhanced organizational adaptation for both populations. We test these ideas in the U.S. motion picture industry, where film production companies face significant unpredictability of success and fluctuating audience tastes. We find that generalist and specialist production companies that partner to produce films introduce more creative content in their films compared with those that collaborate in the same population or produce alone. Generalist film companies benefit further from these collaborations through increased competitive differentiation of their films from other generalists in subsequent productions, whereas specialists experience lower exit rates. These findings suggest that interorganizational collaborations between generalists and specialists provide effective adaptive strategies to compete in markets with uncertain demand and shifting audience preferences. These strategies can sustain, rather than weaken, industry partitioning.
"It Could Be Better" Can Make It Worse: When and Why People Mistakenly Communicate Upward Counterfactual Information
Xilin Li, Christopher Hsee & Ed O'Brien
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Imagine you are a realtor and are showing a prospective buyer a house with a lake view, but it is foggy and the view is less than ideal. Are you inclined to tell the prospective buyer, "Unfortunately it is foggy outside. If it were not foggy, the view would be even better!"? Eight studies, spanning diverse domains, reveal a novel discrepancy: Most presenters (e.g., the seller) choose to communicate such upward counterfactual information (UCI) to experiencers (e.g., the prospective buyer), believing it will enhance experiencers' impressions (e.g., of the house)-yet UCI actually worsens their impressions. This discrepancy arises because presenters insufficiently account for the fact that they possess more knowledge about the presented target than experiencers, failing to realize that noting an imperfection reveals it. Accordingly, when experiencers are knowledgeable about the target, either because the imperfection is obvious or because they can easily envision the upward counterfactual, the discrepancy attenuates. Finally, the presenter-experiencer discrepancy occurs only when the counterfactual information is upward-such that presenters do not over-communicate downward counterfactual information-ruling out a desire to share any information as an alternative mechanism for presenters' communication decisions. Together, this research highlights the prevalence and costs of sharing UCI.
Negative Advertising and Competitive Positioning
Gorkem Bostanci, Pinar Yildirim & Kinshuk Jerath
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Negative advertising provides information about the weaknesses of a competitor's product. We study negative advertising with a focus on how its regulation impacts product positioning for profit-maximizing firms. We build a model of informative advertising competition, where product positioning is endogenous, and consumers have rational expectations. We show that despite the informational benefits of negative advertising, permitting it (as the Federal Trade Commission in the United States does) may lead to reduced product differentiation and lower consumer welfare, even in markets where firms do not use negative advertising in equilibrium. We then extend our model to political competition, where a candidate's objective is to obtain a larger share of votes than the competitor. We show that political competition supports higher positional differentiation, along with more negative advertising than product competition, in line with observed high use of negative advertising in political races and their rarer use in product competition.
Breakthrough invention and problem complexity: Evidence from a quasi-experiment
Yuchen Zhang & Wei Yang
Strategic Management Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Problem formulation is central to recombinant invention, and problem complexity particularly shapes the process and outcome of knowledge recombination. However, research on the antecedents of problem complexity remains limited. This study examines how breakthrough inventions may serve as an important antecedent of the complexity of problems formulated by individual inventors. We propose that a breakthrough invention may facilitate inventors' appreciation of novel knowledge couplings and improve their overall comprehension of knowledge interdependence for problem formulation, thus increasing problem complexity. We further argue that inventors' prior search breadth and experimentation strengthen the above effect. By exploiting the unexpected victory of AlphaGo and tracking the questions posted on StackOverflow.com by developers interested in deep learning, we find empirical evidence that supports our hypotheses.