Consuming Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Tests: The Role of Genetic Literacy and Knowledge Calibration

As direct-to-consumer marketing of medical genetic tests grows in popularity, there is an increasing need to better understand the ethical and public policy implications of such products. The complexity of genetic tests raises serious concerns about whether consumers possess the knowledge to make sound decisions about their use. This research examines the effects of educational intervention and feedback on consumers\u27 genetic literacy and calibration -- the gap between consumers\u27 actual knowledge and how much they think they know. The authors find that consumers\u27 genetic knowledge was generally low and that people tended to underestimate their knowledge level. Furthermore, consumers\u27 perceived rather than actual knowledge levels drove attitude and purchase intention. Regarding the effect of educational intervention, exposure to an online educational module improved both genetic knowledge and calibration. Offering instant feedback resulted in greater knowledge gain than delayed feedback. The worst learning outcome occurred when feedback was both delayed and brief. On the basis of these findings, the authors offer recommendations for formulating ethically sound public policies in this area

Artificial Empathy in Marketing Interactions: Bridging the Human-AI Gap in Affective and Social Customer Experience

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform firm-customer interactions. However, current AI marketing agents are often perceived as cold and uncaring and can be poor substitutes for human-based interactions. Addressing this issue, this article argues that artificial empathy needs to become an important design consideration in the next generation of AI marketing applications. Drawing from research in diverse disciplines, we develop a systematic framework for integrating artificial empathy into AI-enabled marketing interactions. We elaborate on the key components of artificial empathy and how each component can be implemented in AI marketing agents. We further explicate and test how artificial empathy generates value for both customers and firms by bridging the AI-human gap in affective and social customer experience. Recognizing that artificial empathy may not always be desirable or relevant, we identify the requirements for artificial empathy to create value and deduce situations where it is unnecessary and, in some cases, harmful

Creating, Metavoicing, and Propagating: A Road Map for Understanding User Roles in Computational Advertising

Over the past two decades, everyday users have become a prominent force in the advertising landscape. They actively participate in conversations with and about brands by creating, amplifying, and interacting with brand-related messages. These user activities generate large volumes of structured and unstructured data that advertisers can mine to understand consumer interests and preferences. In this article, we survey insights from the user-generated content literature through the computational advertising lens to offer a road map for future research. Specifically, we discuss three roles that users play—as creators, metavoicers, and propagators. For each role, we present key research areas that can benefit from a computational approach, identify the opportunities and challenges, and propose questions for future research. We also discuss the practical implications of applying computational methods to study users and user-generated content for advertisers

Sense of Community: A Missing Link to Understand Users’ Performance in Firm-hosted Online Communities

We extended the current research stream about online communities by introducing sense of community as a new construct tounderstand the motivations of online collective and relational actions and highlight users’ loyal promotion to both the onlinecommunity and the host firm. In addition, through the lens of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), membershipperformance was presented as a form of users’ voluntary participation, voluntary cooperation, and firm-hosted loyalty,indicating users’ total contribution to the online community and the host firm. We then examined the relationships betweenmembership performance and its potential drivers. The research model was empirically tested using self-reported data from247 users of four firm-hosted online communities. Overall, we found that sense of community, trust in the host firm, andcommunity loyalty have either full or partial effects on membership performance

Refocusing Loyalty Programs in the Era of Big Data: A Societal Lens Paradigm

Big data and technological change have enabled loyalty programs to become more prevalent and complex. How these developments influence society has been overlooked, both in academic research and in practice. We argue why this issue is important and propose a framework to refocus loyalty programs in the era of big data through a societal lens. We focus on three aspects of the societal lens-inequality, privacy, and sustainability. We discuss how loyalty programs in the big data era impact each of these societal factors, and then illustrate how, by adopting this societal lens paradigm, researchers and practitioners can generate insights and ideas that address the challenges and opportunities that arise from the interaction between loyalty programs and society. Our goal is to broaden the perspectives of researchers and managers so they can enhance loyalty programs to address evolving societal needs

Managing brands in the social media environment

The dynamic, ubiquitous, and often real-time interaction enabled by social media significantly changes the landscape for brand management. A deep understanding of this change is critical since it may affect a brand's performance substantially. Literature about social media's impact on brands is evolving, but lacks a systematic identification of key challenges related to managing brands in this new environment. This paper reviews existing research and introduces a framework of social media's impact on brand management. It argues that consumers are becoming pivotal authors of brand stories due to new dynamic networks of consumers and brands formed through social media and the easy sharing of brand experiences in such networks. Firms need to pay attention to such consumer-generated brand stories to ensure a brand's success in the marketplace. The authors identify key research questions related to the phenomenon and the challenges in coordinating consumer- and firm-generated brand stories

Not all repeat customers are the same: Designing effective cross-selling promotion on the basis of attitudinal loyalty and habit

Not all repeat purchases are created equal. They can be driven by both positive reaction toward a brand (i.e., attitudinal loyalty) and automaticity triggered by non-brand-related contextual cues (i.e., habit). Combining the loyalty literature with recent habit research, the authors suggest ways to distinguish the two drivers of repeat purchase and examine how they affect consumer response to cross-selling promotions. In Study 1, the authors propose a method to derive individual-level habit strength from consumer transaction records and demonstrate the influence of both attitudinal loyalty and habit on repeat purchase. Studies 2a and 2b then show that attitudinal loyalty facilitates cross-selling, whereas habit has the opposite effect. Finally, in Study 3, the authors suggest a specific promotional design that works better for habitual consumers than those with attitudinal loyalty and demonstrate that ignoring these two underlying drivers can lead to unintended negative consequences on consumer behavior. This research adds to a richer understanding of repatronage and yields important managerial insights into more effective cross-selling to repeat customers

The effect of loyalty program expiration policy on consumer behavior

Although loyalty programs can help divert costs to the future by using delayed rewards, unredeemed program currency can become significant liability for the firm. To alleviate this concern, many programs have introduced a point expiration date or have shortened their expiration time horizon. This issue of point expiration has received scant attention in the literature. Contrary to an intuitive negative effect one would expect from a more stringent expiration policy, our real-life data and lab experiment demonstrated that a finite expiration policy can affect purchases positively but only for consumers who havethe flexibility toadapt their behavior tosucha policy. We identified usage level and engagement in multi-store shopping as two sources contributing to flexibility. Overall, our findings point to a need to understand one’s customer base to design the optimal point expiration policy and program communication.status: publishe

Close but No Cigar: The Joint Impact of Goal Type and Goal Completion Magnitude on Consumer’ Post-Goal Behavior

Goal pursuit represents an important psychological mechanism under loyalty programs. Although academic research on loyalty programs has examined the extent to which consumers succeed or fail in reward-goal pursuit, insufficient attention has been paid to the consequences of such successes or failures. Addressing this gap, this paper draws upon research on goal pursuit and counterfactual thinking to examine the effect of goal completion magnitude on individuals’ effort toward achieving subsequent goals, and how maintenance versus attainment goal types moderate this relationship. Analyses of flight activities from 5,719 members of a major airline’s frequent flyer program reveal that (1) individuals who failed (vs. succeeded) at achieving an attainment goal will put more (vs. less) effort into subsequent goal pursuit than individuals who failed (vs. succeeded) at fulfilling a maintenance goal; (2) goal achievement magnitude has a linear effect on future goal pursuit effort under a maintenance goal, such that the more one completed his/her previous goal, the more effort he/she will invest in the subsequent goal cycle; and (3) under an attainment goal, goal achievement magnitude has a reverse U-shaped effect, such that substantial goal achievement in the previous goal cycle creates a surprising hampering effect (i.e., close-but-no-cigar effect) on subsequent goal pursuit. Instead, moderate achievement of the previous goal leads to the most effort invested in subsequent goal pursuit. These results and the proposed underlying processes are further explored in two lab experiments.https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/business_strome/1006/thumbnail.jp