Knowledge that Transforms

Enacted in an effort to discourage negative political advertising, American regulations mandate that candidates endorse their ads (“My name is ___, and I approve this message.”). Four studies suggest that mandatory endorsements enhance the perceived credibility of some ads these regulations were designed to discourage. This research tests for what types of messages mandatory endorsements have this effect, and why. Mandatory endorsements boosted evaluations of policy-focused attack ads—those typically plagued by overcomeable skepticism—but had no consistent effect on positive or character-focused ads. Mandatory endorsements boost ad believability—largely outside of participants' awareness—for two reasons: (1) the tagline offers a legitimizing association with regulation and (2) the candidates' own personally delivered endorsement language offers an implicit promise of the ads' truth value. The authors discuss how these findings bring order to and extend previous work on mandatory endorsements and ironic effects of communications requirements. Finally, they consider how regulations could be reformed to promote the public good by informing (without misleading) the electorate.

Consumers pursue numerous goals that are linked to particular time frames. Might one's likelihood of agreeing to pursue a goal fluctuate even if nothing about the goal's objective features changes, but if instead the only change is in how the time allotted for goal pursuit is described? Seven experiments show that consumers are more likely to agree to pursue goals when the completion interval is described by duration (e.g., “within exactly two weeks from now”) instead of date (e.g., “between today and November 17”). This pattern may arise because dates, which may make it easier to retrieve competing obligations falling within the interval, lead people to focus more on the (unenjoyable) goal-pursuit process, whereas durations, which present the interval in isolation, allow people to focus more on the goal's (beneficial) outcome. These findings suggest that although how a time interval is described seems inconsequential, it has striking effects on goal-pursuit decisions and therefore has important implications for the marketing of products and actions designed to assist consumers in achieving their goals.

Matchmaking is a complex process that requires considerable expertise. Matchmakers in various industries often advertise proprietary technologies that presumably help users find an ideal match in a short time. However, matchmakers may have incentives to provide suboptimal matchmaking services so that users remain clients longer and pay more fees. This article considers a matchmaking market with network effects and strategic consumers and analyzes under what conditions matchmakers would offer more effective versus less effective matchmaking services. The authors find that stronger pricing power paradoxically leads to lower technology provision when consumers have high valuation for the matchmaking service. Moreover, network effects typically encourage matchmakers to retain the users in the market to create positive externalities, which can result in less precise matchmaking. In addition, consumer patience prompts competing matchmakers to implement ineffective technology. In two extensions, the authors explore asymmetric two-sided markets and discuss the impacts of alternative pricing schemes on technology provision.

Journal of Marketing Research ( JMR ) has a storied history as one of the preeminent journals in the marketing discipline. This position has enabled JMR to leverage and attract the best manuscripts from authors who seek a broad audience. Suggestions for improvements in five specific areas are discussed: competitive landscape, evolution in the theory and practice of marketing, stakeholder management, managing manuscripts, and improving credibility. Such improvements can be achieved with sustained effort and input from authors, reviewers, associate editors, and coeditors.

The authors propose a new approach to evaluate the perceptions and performance of a large set of paid search ads. This approach consists of two parts. First, primary data on hundreds of ads are collected through paired comparisons of their relative ability to generate awareness, interest, desire, action, and click performance. The authors use the Elo algorithm, a statistical model calibrated on paired comparisons, to score the full set of ads on relative perceptions and click performance. The estimated scores validate the theoretical link between perceptions and performance. Second, the authors predict the perceptions and performance of new ads relative to the existing set using textual content metrics. The predictive model allows for direct effects and interactions of the text metrics, resulting in a “large p, small n” problem. They address this problem with a novel Bayesian implementation of the VANISH model, a penalized regression approach that allows for differential treatment of main and interaction effects, in a system of equations. The authors demonstrate that this approach ably forecasts relative ad performance by leveraging perceptions inferred from content alone.

Goals are constructs that direct choice behavior by guiding a decision maker toward desirable (or away from undesirable) end states. Often, consumers are motivated to satisfy multiple goals within a single choice. Although previous research has recognized this possibility, it has not directly formulated models of choice as a multigoal problem. The authors develop such a model, referred to as the multiple-goal-based choice model, which incorporates (1) simultaneous multiple goal pursuit and (2) context-driven goal adaptation but (3) does not require a priori identification of the number or nature of the goals. Goal adaptation within a single choice instance, allied to repeated choices, is the key to empirical identification of multiple latent goals. The proposed model is tested and supported using discrete choice experimental data on digital cameras through multiple validation exercises. The model can lead to significantly different policy implications with regard to consumers’ valuation for new product designs, compared with extant utility-based choice models.

While a time-based segmentation approach to customer segmentation for new products allows firms to identify consumers in the innovator and early adopter segments, this study adds a profitability-based perspective to generate new insights. Using six years of data on the adoption of technology services over three generations from a large technology manufacturer–service provider across seven countries, the authors provide empirical evidence that the short-term and long-term profitability per period of clients in the early majority segment is the highest, followed by the late majority, the innovators, the early adopters, and the laggards, respectively. While a time-based segmentation approach enables firms to identify consumers who are likely to adopt new products sooner than others, a profitability-based perspective can complement their targeting strategy and enhance overall profits. Managers can make informed decisions on investments required to develop new markets with better estimates of the profitability of consumers from later segments. Our study offers managers the necessary insights to develop a road map for identifying and targeting the most profitable clients.

The pervasive use of merchandise (i.e., noncash) incentives in sales compensation plans is an empirical and theoretical puzzle given the supposed superiority of cash incentives in the standard theory (i.e., principal–agent models) as well as the scant, and contradictory empirical evidence. The authors conducted a large-scale field intervention that switched 580 salespeople at a large frozen food manufacturer away from their cash plus “merchandise points” bonus to a commensurate all-cash bonus. After controlling for salesperson, seasonality, year, and target effects, the authors estimate that sales, on average, dropped by 4.36%. Furthermore, they estimated individual-level sales changes and effort changes to validate the incentive–effort–sales causal chain. The results show that the top salespeople experienced the largest drops in sales. A post-intervention survey of social and individual difference variables reveals that salespeople from households with more discretionary financial resources and those who think more abstractly about the uses of cash income exhibited smaller reductions in effort and sales. Although the absence of a control group prevents the authors from making strong causal inferences, this set of results nevertheless provides descriptive and suggestive evidence for separate mental accounts as the most promising explanation for the greater utility provided by merchandise incentives.