Knowledge that Transforms

Brand manufacturers, big and small, regularly prune brand portfolios by deleting brands from categories. Competing brands try to fill the void, including sister brands owned by the same manufacturer, rival national brands, and private labels. This research examines which competing brands benefit from brand deletions, how these gains depend on brand- and category-level characteristics, and how brands adjust their marketing mix following brand deletions. A difference-in-differences analysis of 1,046 national brand deletions over 10 years across 201 US markets shows that deletions benefit private label revenue the most, followed by sister brands, and rival national brands the least, while category revenue does not fully recover. Competing brands gain more revenue when they have greater price similarity with the deleted brand, when the deleted brand’s pre-deletion market share is higher, and when the category is less concentrated. Post-deletion gains are strongly shaped by marketing mix responses, especially through distribution increases and, for sister brands, longer line length. However, regular price increases constrain gains, as does the limited use of relatively effective price promotions, and the extensive use of relatively ineffective feature advertising. On average, manufacturers retain 38% of deleted brands’ revenues through sister brands, highlighting risks of brand pruning.

In this article, the authors examine the role of person brands in shaping emergent markets. Using ethnographic and archival data from the early online news market, they find that person brands use their social, cultural, and symbolic capital to create a unique organizational identity, establish a founding myth, and mobilize resonance with early followers. These organizational assets are carried forward in the emergent market to build cultural-cognitive, normative, and pragmatic legitimacy in a context where these factors are yet to be established. While prior research in marketing has investigated the market-driving effects of firms, consumers, and intermediaries, the findings yield insight into the role of specific people—person brands as institutional entrepreneurs—in driving emergent markets. These findings inform managers and other stakeholders in emergent markets as to how to strategically manage the organizational identity, founding myths, and audience resonance built by person brands in order to carry these assets forward as the market further develops.

This study investigates the sociopolitical processes underlying the development and approval of marketing budgets in large multinational corporations. While prior research has focused extensively on optimizing the level and allocation of marketing budgets, little attention has been paid to the internal organizational dynamics that shape the marketing budgeting process. Drawing on the theories-in-use of both CMOs and CEOs, this study examines how these executives co-develop a calibrated marketing budget (CMKB) - a budget that aligns expected performance with allocated resources through an iterative, participative process. Field data show that CMOs deploy a set of signals to assuage CEO concerns related to goal conflict and information asymmetry. These signals reflect both the quality (e.g., granularity, opportunity elaboration, threat mitigation) and intentions (e.g., cultivated endorsements, relinquishment) of the CMO’s budget. In addition, the study delineates between two types of CMKBs, a Growth Focused CMKB and a Constrained CMKB, and demonstrates that the effectiveness of the quality and intent signals used by CMOs varies across them. Taken together, this study seeks to provide a theoretical foundation for advancing research on the marketing budgeting processes in organizations.

Influencer marketing has emerged as a prevalent marketing strategy for firms seeking to engage target customers, with significant research identifying various criteria for influencer selection. However, the role of endorsement rate—the proportion of an influencer's brand-sponsored posts relative to their total social media posts—remains underexplored. This study addresses this gap by investigating how influencers’ endorsement rates affect the effectiveness of their subsequent sponsored posts. Using a multimethod approach, including two field studies and two controlled experiments across diverse platform contexts (e.g., Instagram, Twitter, Douyin), the findings reveal a consistent U-shaped relationship between endorsement rate and consumer engagement with sponsored posts. This pattern arises from the interplay of two countervailing forces: A higher endorsement rate enhances the influencer's perceived brand recognition, yet it simultaneously raises audience suspicion of manipulative intent. Notably, organic product mentions and consistent brand endorsements can attenuate the impact of endorsement rates on consumer engagement. Beyond advancing research in influencer marketing and brand endorsements, these findings offer marketers a valuable framework for evaluating influencers and making more informed selections.

Recent advances in live-streaming technology have empowered millions of amateur content creators to broadcast live video over the internet, sharing events and experiences with consumers as they happen. Despite the growing popularity of live streams, little research has examined how liveness may affect viewers’ experiences and behaviors. The current research addresses this gap and uses the context of amateur music performances to investigate how, when, and why viewing live streams (vs. equivalent or identical prerecorded video) can enhance presence, connection, enjoyment, and engagement. The authors find evidence of a mere liveness effect on consumer experiences: Simply knowing that an online video stream is live causes viewers to feel more connected to streamers. This effect is facilitated by an elevated sense of presence, or “being there,” in events that are viewed in real time. Critically, this effect also drives a liveness lift for online streamers; viewers of live (vs. prerecorded) streams enjoy the content more, choose to continue watching longer, and are more willing to follow and subscribe to the streamers’ channels. These findings have clear substantive implications: Marketers, platform developers, and content creators can enhance consumer connection, enjoyment, and engagement by going live.

Many marketers design their product packaging so that when individual units are positioned together, they form a coordinated and often larger image that spans multiple package faces. The authors coin the term “billboarding” to refer to this practice that blends product packaging and retail display and whose effectiveness remains unexplored in the marketing literature. They document that billboarding improves consumer responses and operates through a combination of heightened artistic perceptions of the brand display and consumer feelings of serendipity. Using an empirical approach that incorporates field data and experiments, the authors present eight studies that support this perspective. Because marketers are concerned that the improper implementation of billboarding can backfire, the authors further explore several moderators related to in-store (disorganized and incomplete billboarding) and design (image type) factors to understand how to maximize its utility. They further examine conceptual fluency as a moderator and show that the positive effects of billboarding are significantly weaker when the product category is conceptually less fluent with the inclusion of artistic qualities. This research offers the first examination of an important marketing tool that may help brand managers circumvent uncooperative retailers and advance actionable insights that are likely to boost consumer responses.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms promise openness and access, yet various biases and barriers shape who gets served. This research investigates how regional economic inequality drives access to P2P services. Using archival, survey, and experimental data across multiple contexts—including lending, lodging, car rental, and tool sharing—the authors provide convergent evidence that heightened economic inequality within a consumer's geographic region (community, state, or nation) reduces providers’ willingness to serve that consumer when inequality is a salient socioeconomic cue. This decreased willingness constitutes a form of exclusion rooted in providers’ inferences about potential consumers. Thought protocol analyses reveal that providers infer lower socioeconomic status and diminished trustworthiness among consumers from more unequal regions, thereby increasing perceived financial risk of serving them. Crucially, the authors demonstrate a boundary condition with practical relevance: A strong platform reputation, such as high ratings, can counteract the negative effects of regional economic inequality, restoring access and interpersonal trust in P2P exchanges.

We find that inter-departmental distance between two departments in a store can significantly impact joint (combined) sales of that pair. Using data from blueprints and sales across 64 stores for 52 weeks, along with an experimental study to test our theorizing, we find a curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) relationship between inter-departmental distance and joint sales. Specifically, close departments are perceived to be substitutes, decreasing the likelihood of buying products from both departments. As distance increases, departments are perceived as somewhat related but different, increasing their diversity and the likelihood of buying from both departments. As distance between departments becomes large and products are seen as unrelated, the likelihood of buying from both departments decreases. This relationship is moderated when departments have non-identical layouts and when there are larger variety differentials across departments. Accordingly, we determine an optimal store layout using BARON solver by maximizing total store revenue. Our results suggest an increase in weekly revenue of about 4.08% for supermarkets (range of -.67% to 9.50%) and 3.20% for hypermarkets (range of .82% to 8.5%). While strategic locations of departments can help retailers increase overall sales, prior empirical work has not studied the impact of distance between departments at the store level.

In a reward-program promotion (RPP), brand manufacturers offer additional stamps or collectibles when their product is bought, which enables consumers to accelerate toward their collection goal in a retailer-led reward program. Such retailer-manufacturer collaboration has become especially popular in the context of temporary reward programs where consumers have limited time to complete their collection. By examining over 800 RPPs across a broad set of categories in 26 reward programs at six Dutch grocery retailers, we provide a first comprehensive analysis of RPPs, which we contrast to regular price promotions. Our results show a clear positive effect of RPPs on brand sales, comparable in size to that of a 21% price discount, and point to program lock-in as likely mechanism of why RPPs work. RPPs work better in programs with a high requirement to complete a collection, in a later stage of the program, and when other brands in the same category participate with RPPs as well. They are less effective, however, when combined with regular price promotions, indicating negative synergies between the two. Importantly, the drivers of RPP effectiveness are largely similar for category and brand sales, highlighting RPPs’ potential for retailer-manufacturer collaboration.

Consumers expect managers to respond to positive reviews, but it is unclear whether these responses are beneficial. This research finds that managerial responses to positive reviews can positively impact consumers when managers follow conversational norms for responding to compliments. It proposes that managers downplay the compliments that their firms receive via positive reviews (e.g., “Dinner was fantastic!”) and examines two norms-based strategies for doing so: (1) shifting the content of the compliment (e.g., “We’re glad dinner was good.”) and (2) shifting the recipient of the compliment (e.g., “our suppliers helped.”). First, an experiment and Google Local data show a disconnect between how consumers think managers should respond and how managers currently respond. Second, six experiments test the proposed response strategies. Compared with managers who do not respond to positive reviews and managers who write responses currently recommended by industry or academics, managers who downplay compliments improve readers’ evaluations of the firm and engagement on the platform. Downplaying the compliment improves consumer outcomes by conveying the manager's humility, which is normative. Downplaying is most effective when the manager reduces credit to the firm, appreciates someone else involved (e.g., supplier, reviewer), and uses moderately positive descriptors (e.g., “good” rather than “fantastic”).