2024 Marketing Symposium 

G1: 940-1100 4 presentations * 20 minutes talk with discussion 

G2: 1110-1210 3 presentations

G3: 1340-1440 3 presentations

G4: 1450-1530 2 presentations

G1: Consumer Behavior 1 

940-1100

Session Chair
Hiroshi Onishi (Keio University)

Takashi Teramoto (Chuo University), Satoshi Nakano (Meiji Gakuin University), Naoki Akamatsu (Meiji Gakuin University) & Shin Sato (CCCMK HOLDINGS)
https://c-research.chuo-u.ac.jp/html/100003056_en.html

Title
How and when does typing drive purchases? Impact of a specific mobile shopping list and lead time on planned purchases

Abstract
While shopping lists are commonly used in daily life, there is a dearth of studies on this topic in marketing literature. This study investigates the influence of item specificity in mobile shopping lists and purchase lead time on planned purchase fulfillment. Utilizing a unique single-source dataset of 4012 observations from 788 shoppers, the study analyzes mobile app shopping list entries and corresponding purchase history from ID-POS data. The findings suggest that for items with pronounced utilitarian characteristics or when the customer’s share of wallet is low, the likelihood of planned purchase fulfillment increases with more specific item information. Further, the probability of planned purchase fulfillment is higher when the lead time between list creation and shopping is short, decreasing as the lead time lengthens. Interestingly, when the lead time to purchase extends, the difference in fulfillment probability between items listed at the category level and those at the brand level narrows. This research enhances our understanding of planned purchases, a topic less explored compared to unplanned purchases in studies of consumer shopping behavior and decision-making at retail outlets.

Keywords
Planned purchase, Mobile shopping list, Incentive, Specificity, Lead time

Shunyao Yan (Santa Clara University) & Klaus Miller (HEC Paris)

https://www.scu.edu/business/marketing/faculty/syan/

Title
Does Polarizing Content Pay Off?

Abstract
News media today adopt very different content strategies: either commodifying or avoiding politically polarizing content. This study empirically investigates how news media’s content polarization impacts the subscription and advertising revenue for a major European news website. Utilizing recent advances in natural language processing, we first develop textual measures of political polarization tailored to a multi-party-political system based on parliamentary debate data. These measures are then applied to assess the evolution of article-level polarization for the news website. By combining micro-level user data, we analyze consumer interactions with these polarizing articles, particularly focusing on clicking and subscribing behaviors. To address potential endogeneity concerns between news coverage and consumption, we employ the emergence of highly polarizing political parties as an instrumental variable. Our findings reveal complex consumer responses to polarized content: while such content notably increases page views, it paradoxically leads to a decrease in subscriptions, especially among users whose ideological views align with the content. This counterintuitive outcome challenges conventional notions of confirmation bias in news consumption and underscores the complex effects of polarizing news on balancing subscription and advertising revenue models in the digital media landscape.

Keywords
Content Monetization, Digital Media, Confirmation Bias

Tsutomu Sunaga (Waseda University), Naoto Onzo (Waseda University) & Mime Yabuno (Waseda University)

https://w-rdb.waseda.jp/html/100003299_en.html

Title
Relative Nature of Crossmodal Associations Between Pitch and Brightness

Abstract
Consumers are often sequentially presented with music in a wide range of contexts. For instance, in a shopping mall, shoppers hear musical pieces sequentially while walking from one tenant shop, café, or restaurant to another. However, most marketing studies on crossmodal correspondences involving auditions have paid little attention to this and used standalone sounds as experimental stimuli. This study bridges this gap by focusing on the effects of sequential music presentation on consumers' audio-visual crossmodal correspondence. Specifically, the present study investigates (1) how consumers perceive a musical piece after being presented with higher- (vs. lower-) pitched another musical piece and (2) how the perception of the focal music influences a crossmodal correspondence between the music and brightness. A controlled lab experiment and a real-world field experiment using a café revealed that the participants were more likely to associate the focal music with spatial descent and prefer dark- (vs. bright-) colored paintings (lab experiment) and products (filed experiment) when they were precedingly presented with a higher- (vs. lower-) pitched music. This is the first empirical marketing study to investigate the context dependence or relativeness of pitch-brightness associations. The present study's findings will benefit a wide range of people in charge of music. Sound logs, jingles, background music, and music in advertisements for a brand, product, store, café, restaurant, or company whose color is bright/dark would improve their effectiveness by playing after a lower/higher-pitched song.

Keywords
Sensory marketing, Crossmodal correspondence, Musical pitch, Context effect, Experiment

Peng Liu (Santa Clara University), Cheng Chou (University of Leicester) & Hai Che (University of California Riverside)

https://www.scu.edu/business/marketing/faculty/pliu/

Title
The Power of Free: Consumer Choice in Freemium Market

Abstract
Freemium business model has become popular in recent years. We develop a model of a consumer’s simultaneous choice of the usage of a freemium product and the purchase of its premium add-ons. We estimate the proposed model using the player-level panel data from a freemium massively multiplayer online game. Our estimates quantify the economic value of free users in a freemium market. We design a counterfactual reward program, in which players will be rewarded with free items for playing the game. The analysis shows that the counterfactual reward program increases the revenue three times more than price promotion.

Keywords
Freemium, Massively multiplayer online games, Neighborhood effect

Working Paper Link

G2: Consumer Behavior 2 

1110-1210

Session Chair
Takuya Satomura (Keio University)

Akira Shimizu (Keio University)

https://k-ris.keio.ac.jp/html/100001018_en.html

Title
Research on the Purchasing Behavior of the Leading-Edge Group Using Receipt Data

Abstract
Past studies have shown that Leading edge consumers are more likely to purchase new products. However, it was not mentioned that the products they bought would survive in the market afterward. In this study, we collected data on consumers' purchasing history using receipt data from Japanese convenience stores and administered a questionnaire for consumers to ascertain their degree of Leading Edge. Then the two data were combined to explore the relationship between the degree of Leading Edge and the survival of new products. In Japan, there are about 40,000 convenience stores, and it is an oligopolistic market with the top three companies holding about 80% of the store market share. Competition among Japanese convenience stores is intense, and they are constantly introducing new products to the market. Competition among Japanese convenience stores is intense, therefore they are always introducing new products to the market. Convenience stores are operated under the same scheme throughout Japan, so differences by region are small, making them suitable for analyzing consumer data on a national scale. The results showed that, for private brands in Japanese convenience stores, new products purchased by consumers with high levels of Leading Edge were more likely to survive.

Keywords
Leading edge consumer, New products, Receipt data

Savannah Wei Shi (Santa Clara University), Seoungwoo Lee (Yonsei university), kirthi kalyanam (Santa Clara university)  & Michel Wedel (University of Maryland)

https://www.scu.edu/business/marketing/faculty/shi/

Title
The Impact of App Crashes

Abstract
The authors develop and test a theoretical framework to examine the impact of app crashes on app engagement. The framework predicts that consumers increase engagement after encountering a single crash due to their need-for-closure and curiosity for the remaining task; yet reduce their engagement after experiencing repeated, concentrated crashes because of perceived task unattainability; the recency of crashes moderates these effects. The results from a survey show that consumers experience repeated crashes across a wide range of apps. Using field data collected from a content aggregator app, the authors show that a single crash right-truncates the current session and causes a considerable loss in page views, but it shortens app-return time and prompts more page views in the subsequent session. Frequent and more concentrated app crashes, however, reduce engagement. Three online experiments in which crashes are exogenously manipulated support the validity and generalizability of these findings, confirm the proposed mediators, and provide evidence that pop-up messages can reverse the negative impact of repeated crashes. Managers can use the proposed framework to quantify the economic impact of single and repeated app crashes, analyze substitution behavior in content consumption, and assess the bias when taking a transactional view of app crash incidents. The authors also demonstrate how app managers can benefit from targeted release of app features to more resilient consumers, and mitigate the effect of crashes via pop-up messages that explain the cause and locus of the crash. 

Keywords
Mobile Apps, App Crash, App Engagement

Makoto Mizuno (Meiji University), Makoto Takeuchi (CyberAgent, Inc.) & Yukie Sano (University of Tsukuba)

https://gyoseki1.mind.meiji.ac.jp/mjuhp/KgApp?kojinId=090012&Language=2

Title
The Long Tail Revisited --- An analysis of music streaming consumption behavior

Abstract
Anderson (2006) argued that the long-tail assortment with many additional niche options is the strength of online shopping, while Elberse (2008, 2013) countered by pointing to the importance of blockbusters. This debate has entered a different phase in a fully digitalized service environment such as music streaming as a subscription service. There, interest is likely to shift to whether the overall assortment, which ranges from blockbuster to niche, contributes to the duration of subscriptions.
This study focuses on assortment diversity as a factor in the continued use of music streaming. That is, whether the tracks and artists played include the high heads to long tails of the distributions. Therefore, tracks and artists are stratified based on the deciles of the overall number of plays and their entropy is considered as a diversity index. In addition, the entropy of the genre of the tracks played is another diversity indicator.
In addition to the diversity of music consumption, the current level of consumption is used as a predictor of whether the user will stop using the music in the next period. To take individual differences into account, a latent class logit analysis is applied. From this, it is possible to elucidate how assortment diversity and the current level of consumption are likely to influence the continuation or discontinuation of use. Finally, managerial implications and future research agendas are discussed.

Keywords
Online shopping, Long tail, niche, Blockbuster, Music streaming, Subscription, Customer retention, Assortment diversity, Entropy, Latent class logit analysis

G3: Health 

1340-1440

Session Chair
Kyung-Tae Lee (Chuo University)

Jong Yeob Kim (Nanyang Technological University)

https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/cris/rp/rp02278

Title
Health Insurance and the Dynamics of Patient Decision Making

Abstract
Increasing life expectancies and an aging population globally have put a significant burden on government sponsored health care programs for the elderly. This article exploits variation in eligibility age thresholds and coverage amounts in the South Korean dental market to examine health care utilization, strategic delays, and the dynamics of treatment choices by the elderly patients. We use two primary data sources: a repeated cross-sectional representative health survey, and a long panel data on individual-level prescription and treatment choices from a large university hospital in South Korea. Our empirical approach exploits temporal variation in eligibility thresholds, and out-of-pocket costs for different forms of treatments (dentures vs. implants) to compare age cohorts just meeting the insurance criterion vs. not. We find large increases in healthcare utilization post insurance expansion, and strong evidence of strategic delays — a particular form of moral hazard — in treatment choices for patients just below eligibility thresholds. Evidence from reduced-form analysis guides us to develop a dynamic structural “patient life-cycle” model to examine patients’ strategic delays of treatment and adoption of new technology (implants) under different dental insurance policies. From a methodological point of view, we show how the age threshold can be used as an exclusion restriction to estimate discount factors in dynamic models of health care choices. Structural parameters replicate many of the patterns observed in the data and allow us to conduct a variety of counterfactuals to provide welfare estimates for different health policies. For example, we find that lowering the eligibility threshold from age 65 to 60 increases treatment timing and improves patient welfare by 6.8% but also leads to a significant increase in government spending, resulting in a net negative overall change in social welfare. Implications of our findings for other contexts, such as the expansion of Medicare in the United States to include dental benefits and lowering age thresholds, are discussed.

Keywords
Public Health, Healthcare, Health Insurance Expansion, Dynamic Structural Model, Policy Implications

Baek Jung Kim (University of British Columbia/Korea University)

https://sites.google.com/korea.ac.kr/baekjungkim/

Title
Understanding Excessive Gambling with Financial Constraints

Abstract
This paper studies the impact of financial constraints on excessive gambling behaviors. Utilizing unique individual-level data sourced from an investment app in Australia, encompassing users' comprehensive gambling activity records, notably in online sports betting, and finely detailed user-level financial information, the paper empirically reveals two key findings. Firstly, it demonstrates a gradual escalation in gambling activity among users, indicative of a progression towards more serious gambling. Secondly, it highlights the persistent nature of this inclination, even in the presence of financial constraints, as measured by overdraft fees. Intriguingly, when faced with insufficient funds, gamblers exhibit a temporary reduction in gambling expenditure, only to swiftly revert to their initial patterns and sustain them across subsequent periods. This pattern appears to hold same even in the context of lottery purchases. Through integration with survey data, the study posits that gamblers' varying degrees of "risk-tolerance" might affect their responses to financial constraints. While risk-averse individuals do not display this propensity, those with a higher risk tolerance exhibit a tendency to engage in increased gambling activity, notwithstanding financial limitations.

Keywords
Excessive Gambling, Financial Health

Minjung Kwon (Syracuse University) & Si Cheng (Syracuse University)

https://whitman.syracuse.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty-staff-directory/details/mkwon02

Title
Prescribing Sustainability: How ESG Shapes Physicians’ Drug Choices?

Abstract
Using granular claim-level prescription data, we show that physicians prescribe fewer drugs from affected firms after negative ESG incidents. Controlling for physician-product-level heterogeneity, the daily paid amount of each prescription declines by $1.608 at the time of ESG incidents, accounting for 10% of the sample average. Such decline (i) persists in the subsequent two quarters, (ii) cannot be fully explained by the deterioration in product quality, and (iii) is unrelated to patient demographic characteristics. We find similar results around ESG rating downgrades but not upgrades. A case study on brand switching between close substitutes provides direct evidence of the prescribing behavior of healthcare providers.

Keywords
ESG, Prescription, Brand Switching, Physician Behavior, Pharmaceutical Market

G4: Management 

1450-1530

Session Chair
Hikaru Yamamoto (Keio University)

Takumi Tagashira (Kobe University) & Kohei Matsumoto (Hitotsubashi University)

https://sites.google.com/site/takumitagashira/home

Title
Do Customers Recognize Myopic Marketing Management? Consequences for Customer Satisfaction

Abstract
Marketing contributes to sustained competence in consumer markets through long-term orientation, which also benefits financial markets. However, some managements prioritize short-term accounting performance over long-term marketing investments. Prior research introduces Myopic Marketing Management (MMM), where firms reduce marketing and R&D expenditures to boost short-term profits, ultimately harming long-term corporate value. While studies predicted that consumers recognize MMM and that it harms customer satisfaction, resulting in lower firm value in financial markets, they have not empirically tested these predictions. A notable methodological obstacle to identifying MMM's effects on customer satisfaction is the complex bidirectional relationship between MMM and customer satisfaction. This study aims to clarify this relationship and describe the underlying mechanisms. Using a dataset from the Japanese Customer Satisfaction Index (2008-2019) and a unique instrument variable, this study shows that MMM harms customer satisfaction. Further, additional analyses of this study show how MMM affects factors related to customer satisfaction (e.g., perceived quality and intention to share word-of-mouth) and interpret the mechanism underlies our findings. This study provides empirical evidence that consumer markets react immediately to MMM, leading to a decline in competitiveness, quantitatively supporting an overlooked aspect of prior research.

Keywords
Myopic Marketing Management, Customer Satisfaction, Instrumental Variable Method

Desmond Lo (Santa Clara University), Wouter Dessein (Columbia University), Ruo Shangguan (Jinan University), & Hideo Owan (Wasade University)

https://www.scu.edu/business/marketing/faculty/lo/

Title
Managerial Attention in Knowledge Work

Abstract
This study examines managerial attention in knowledge-intensive work. We propose that a manager’s time use in a project involves ex ante attention, which includes understanding, specifying, and delegating tasks, and ex post attention, which involves overseeing the team’s task execution. Our theoretical predictions align with micro-level data from architectural design teams: (i) the manager’s peak attention hours occur before those of the team, and (ii) both the manager and the team exhibit higher attention levels during the ex ante phase compared to the ex post phase. This pattern is more pronounced in highly knowledge-intensive projects and those with greater information frictions. Finally, deviations from our predicted managerial attention are associated with higher team hours and lower overall profitability.

Keywords
Attention, Knowledge, Coordination, Teamwork, Delegation

Working Paper Link

Key Note Speech

1540-1710 30 minutes with discussion * 3 presentations

Chair & Facilitator

Masakazu Ishihara (New York University)

Makoto Abe (University of Tokyo)

Title
Interaction between data and decision-making in the absence of statistical uncertainty: Probability-based A/B testing with Adaptive Minimax Regret (AMR) criterion for long-term metrics

Abstract
Data and decision-making are the crux of Marketing Science. In early days, managerial decisions must be made with scarce and aggregated data. In contrast, in the era of big data, useful insight for decisions must be explored from abundance of disaggregated data. Now, the timing is ripe for data collection and decision-making interactions in order to optimize firms’ objectives.
As the importance of long-term customer metrics such as lifetime value and churn rate continues to grow, companies find themselves compelled to make prompt decisions before observing the full results.
Consider the following scenario: In an existing campaign, E, with a track record of 4 years, the average lifetime of acquired customers was 2.7 years. Now, to increase the lifetime, a new campaign, N, is being planned. If we were to implement N and compare its effectiveness with E, we need to wait for 4 years for the results to come out. If, however, we knew the probability distribution of the average lifetime of N from prior market research (e.g., 2 years with 0.4 and 4 years with 0.6), we would choose N with the higher expected value (3.2 years) over E (2.7 years). However, under "ambiguity," where this probability distribution is unknown but only its interval (support) is known, how should decisions be made?
We propose an approach called Adaptive Minimax Regret (AMR), applying the Minimax Regret criterion to the selection of campaigns E and N based on the results obtained at each point in time and updating it sequentially. The approach permits companies to respond before knowing the complete results of long-term metrics for swift marketing actions.

Hotaka Katahira (Marunocuhi Brand Forum)

Title:
Not UGC but Structured User Narratives (SUN): A New Frontier for Future Marketing Science Research and Applications

Abstract:
Having been away from the mainstream of Marketing Science research for over a decade, I am not in a position to elaborate on the grand narrative of how Marketing Science has evolved in Japan nor predict its future trajectory.  Instead, I aim to shed light on a relatively unexplored area in Marketing Science that might interest some of emerging Marketing Scientists and Managers in the future.
The presentation is structured as follows:
1. Importance of First-Hand Information in Marketing: I will highlight the success stories of MUJI and P&G, demonstrating the critical role that first-hand information has played in their marketing.
2. Pros and Cons of UGC as a Data Source for Marketing Decisions: While User-Generated Content (UGC) is valuable as it reflects the authentic voices of users and thus enjoys emerging popularity in the discipline, it often lacks comprehensive user profiles and fails to represent the entire population. UGC participants tend to be a biased subset of total users.
3. Introduction to SUN and Its Advantages Over UGC: Structured User Narratives (SUN) are collected through computer surveys with a structured sample design, ensuring a robust set of respondent characteristics. For instance, we have successfully gathered information on people’s brand engagement and their reasons, yielding insightful results.
4. Synergy of SUN with Generative AI: I will explore how SUN can be effectively integrated with generative AI to enhance marketing insights.
5. Major Findings from SUN Applications: Key discoveries and insights obtained from applying SUN in various contexts will be shared.
6. Reviews by Marketing Executives Using SUN: Feedback and evaluations from marketing executives who have utilized SUN in their decision-making processes will be presented.
Finally, I will discuss the future directions and potential of SUN in advancing Marketing Science research and applications.

Slides Link

Russell Winer (New York University)

Title
The History of Marketing Science: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going

Abstract
The field of marketing science has existed roughly from the 1950s with articles in the journals Operations Research and Management Science. A report by the Ford Foundation in 1959 spurred the growth of more rigorous, quantitative approaches to handling business problems including marketing.  Key events followed including the founding of the Marketing Science Institute (MSI), the TIMS College of Marketing, and the establishment of the Journal of Marketing Research. Significant boosts to the field came with the first Marketing Science Conference held at Stanford in 1979 and the founding of the journal Marketing Science in 1983.  Since then, the field has exploded with more journals, more research, and significantly increased attendance at marketing science-related conferences.
The purpose of this talk is to describe the history of the field, to highlight past and current research areas, and to point to some directions that I feel that the field will take.  I will use word clouds to show the evolution of journal article keywords over the last 10 years which demonstrates a distinct trend towards the use of field experiments for better understanding cause-and-effect relationships.  In addition, I will show some examples from the current literature which highlight this trend as well as examples of possible future research in particular areas. Finally, I will make some concluding remarks about likely future topics in the marketing science literature.

Slides Link

Panel Discussion

1720-1750

Panelists

Russell Winer (New York University)

Hotaka Katahira (Marunouchi Brand Forum)

Makoto Abe (University of Tokyo)

Facilitator

Masakazu Ishihara (New York University)