Marketing - HKU Business School

18 May

Not So Timely: Push-Notification Timing and User Engagement

SPEAKER

Professor Xinlong Li
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Nanyang Business School
Nanyang Technological University

ABSTRACT

The availability of granular user data allows digital platforms to time interventions with remarkable precision. However, does delivering messages exactly when a user is active truly maximize consumer response? We leverage a novel dataset from a leading push notification provider in China that captures the precise timestamps of screen-on events, inferred from mobile device app usage, and notification delivery. We exploit a quasi-experiment where a user’s screen-on timing is effectively random relative to the push request within a short window, creating exogenous variation in the timing gap between screen-on and delivery. Regression discontinuity estimates reveal that, contrary to industry wisdom, immediate screen-on delivery backfires, reducing same-day app logins by approximately 16%. To isolate the effects of different lags, we instrument the realized delay using granular variations in screen-on timing. We find a non-monotonic pattern: users receiving notifications with a modest delay (1-6 minutes) after a screen-on event exhibit peak engagement, surpassing both instant delivery and longer lags. Heterogeneity analysis shows that this penalty for immediate interruption is most pronounced during high-stakes periods, such as weekday mornings. Suggestive evidence from a second live-streaming app and from longer-term outcomes (app uninstalls) is consistent with the main findings. These findings challenge the race for immediacy, suggesting that a modest delay balances intrusiveness against timeliness, making it a variable to optimize rather than an inefficiency to eliminate.

28 April

Keeping Up With the Joneses? Not So Much for Those Who Move Around a Lot

SPEAKER

Professor Tina Lowrey
Professor of Marketing
HEC Paris

ABSTRACT

Changing residences is common for many consumers, and frequent moving has been shown to have important psychological and behavioral effects. The current research investigates the impact of residential mobility on the extent to which consumers engage in keeping-up behaviors–consumption (typically status-related) that is motivated by the desire to avoid status loss within the material domain. Based on theory and research showing that residential mobility affects the structure and strategies of social networks such that more mobile networks are associated with weaker norm strength, across five studies, we test the proposition that residentially mobile (vs. stable) consumers will engage in less keeping-up behavior because they socially compare less. Studies 1A and 1B use U.S. Census Bureau and Google Trends data to show that US state-level residential mobility is negatively related to the size of the US state-level jewelry industry (Study 1A) and search interest in luxury brands and social comparison words (Study 1B). Study 2 shows that measured residential mobility negatively correlates with prestige sensitivity, and Studies 3 and 4 manipulate residential mobility to show that residential mobility (vs. stability) leads to less motivation and interest in keeping-up behaviors and social comparison tendencies.

28 April

Chronic Loneliness and Comfort with Interpersonal Touch: Implications for Touch-Related Consumer Services

SPEAKER

Professor L. J. Shrum
Professor of Marketing
HEC Paris

ABSTRACT

Chronic loneliness is a serious social problem that appears to be on the rise, and more so after the global COVID-19 pandemic. Some firms have introduced consumer services to foster social connections, particularly ones that promote interpersonal touch. Such strategies are presumably based on the intuitive notion that consumers may be attracted to services that provide interpersonal touch because human touch has been shown to have therapeutic benefits. Based on predictions derived from the evolutionary theory of loneliness, across six studies (N = 4200+), we show that the opposite is true. Chronic loneliness is negatively correlated with comfort with interpersonal touch, which in turn translates into reduced rather than increased usage and preference for interpersonal touch-related services and service encounters. These effects are mediated by the negative effect of chronic loneliness on interpersonal trust and attenuated when interpersonal trust is boosted. These findings suggest that marketers may want to reconsider their assumptions that lonely consumers will be attracted to services that promote interpersonal touch as a means of social connection, unless interpersonal trust can be clearly established.

27 April

Should Referral Programs Reward Customers for the Short-Term Performance of Their Referrals?

SPEAKER

Professor Yupeng Chen
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Nanyang Business School
Nanyang Technological University

ABSTRACT

Referral programs are widely used by firms as a tool for new customer acquisition. In practice, most referral programs reward existing customers for the acquisition of their referrals (i.e., referred customers). Although such acquisition-based referral rewards incentivize existing customers to refer new customers, they can be ineffective in generating high-value referrals. To increase the value created by referral programs, we propose that firms complement their acquisition-based referral reward with an additional reward to existing customers contingent on the short-term performance of their referrals. We test our proposal using a randomized field experiment conducted at a Chinese firm offering financial deposit services. During a 30-day experimental campaign, existing customers in both the control and treatment conditions were offered the same acquisition-based referral reward, while only those in the treatment condition could additionally receive a performance-based referral reward for each referral whose total investment made during the campaign in selected financial deposits met a predefined threshold. Assessing the value of referred customers acquired during the campaign based on their investment behavior over a 480-day period, we find that the introduction of the performance-based referral reward increases the total value of referrals by more than 110%, and this effect is driven primarily by the acquisition of higher-value referred customers rather than more referred customers. We propose two mechanisms for the acquisition of higher-value referred customers, including the performance-based referral reward (1) motivating existing customers to screen their friends and refer good matches to the firm and (2) providing referred customers with an additional incentive to invest. Our data provide suggestive evidence for both mechanisms.

09 April

Being Your (Not-So) Best Self: How Self-Diagnosticity Shapes Motivation and Virtue

SPEAKER

Professor Rima Toure-Tillery
Associate Professor of Marketing
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University

ABSTRACT

Most people wish to maintain a positive self-concept and thus often behave virtuously (e.g., choosing healthy foods, donating to charity, spending responsibly) in an effort to present themselves to themselves in a favorable light (i.e., self-signaling). However, we only need to look around to see that people do not always behave in the most virtuous ways. This is because the motivation to engage in such self-signaling behaviors is not always present. Specifically, this motivation is particularly low when people perceive their actions as unrepresentative of the type of person they are (i.e., as low in self-diagnosticity; Touré-Tillery and Fishbach 2012, 2015). Across a series of studies, we find that people behave less virtuously when they (a) expect to forget (vs. remember) their choices (Touré-Tillery and Kouchaki 2021; Touré-Tillery and Light 2018), (b) perceive their choices as less (vs. more) real (Touré-Tillery and Wang 2022), (c) have an unclear (vs. clear) sense of self (Wang and Touré-Tillery 2024), or (d) are part of a small (vs. large) audience (Jia, Touré-Tillery, and Wang, under revision), because such choices seem less self-diagnostic.

10 March

From Ranking to Matching: Evidence on Information-Driven Risky Choice Updates in China’s Gaokao

SPEAKER

Professor Shane Wang
Co-Director of Sponsored Research and Executive Education
Professor of Marketing
Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech University

ABSTRACT

We investigate how information shapes strategic ranked choice updating and allocation outcomes in high-stakes, competitive environments. We study a unique information provision event in China’s College Entrance Examination (Gaokao), in which a university invites all potential applicants to participate in a mock major rank order list (ROL) submission and subsequently provides personalized relative-position information. Using administrative data that tracks individuals’ ROLs before and after intervention for all mock participants and realized admission outcomes for admitted students, we show that relative-position information induces directional choice updating: individuals receiving positive information revise more aggressively, while those receiving negative information become more conservative, amplifying stratification. These behavioral responses exhibit substantial heterogeneity and translate into a trade-off between admitted major quality and ordinal matching outcomes through endogenous ROL updating. Moreover, when participation is endogenous, individuals who participate in the information provision but do not ultimately include the university in their final submission (“ghost competitors”) distort information signals, causing transparency to backfire. Our findings highlight both the power and limits of personalized information and underscore the importance of accounting for strategic behavior and participation dynamics in information design for centralized matching markets.

05 March

The Trouble with Deviation Scores: Misinterpreting Mean Shifts and Variability

SPEAKER

Professor Dan Schley
Associate Professor of Marketing
Rotterdam School of Management
Erasmus University

ABSTRACT

Deviation-based metrics (e.g., mean absolute deviations-MAD) are commonly used to assess anchoring effects, judgment accuracy, and related phenomena. However, this manuscript demonstrates that these metrics inherently conflate meaningful shifts in mean judgment positions with incidental changes in variance, potentially misleading researchers about treatment effects. Using intuitive examples, rigorous simulations, and reanalyses of past findings, we show that deviation scores frequently produce results that contradict the true underlying effects. We illustrate this conflation of mean and variance in the context of anchoring-effect and wisdom-of-the-inner-crowd studies. Ultimately, we argue for a conceptual and analytical separation of mean position from variance.

03 March

Best for Last? (Re)examining How People Sequence Positive Hedonic Experiences

SPEAKER

Professor Kristin Diehl
Herrmann Family Endowed Chair
Professor of Marketing
USC Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California

ABSTRACT

People frequently plan their experiences. Whether planning a vacation or the visit to a museum, prior research found people prefer “improving sequences” of experiences. We revisit these findings. For purely positive experiences, across conceptual and direct replications (N = 2175), including consequential studies, we find a reversal of prior findings: most respondents prefer “declining sequences”. Given the many differences between any replication and the original studies it is impossible to know what caused the observed reversal. Still, trying to understand the phenomenon better, we explored the effect of sample characteristics (age) and two theoretical moderators (impatience and uncertainty about life overall), previously unexamined background factors that might have contributed to the reversal. We only found suggestive evidence that generalized uncertainty may contribute to our findings.

03 March

Effects of Click to Cancel on a Regional Newspaper

SPEAKER

Professor Elea Feit
Professor of Marketing
Associate Dean of Research
LeBow College of Business
Drexel University

ABSTRACT

In October 2024, the Federal Trade Commission announced the final “click-to-cancel” rule, mandating that most U.S. online subscription businesses provide an accessible cancellation process. A Federal Appeals Court struck down the rule in July 2025, leaving a patchwork of state regulations. Consumer advocates have praised the policy for enhancing consumer rights, while some firms have opposed it over implementation costs and potential reductions in subscriber retention. We examine the impact of introducing an online cancellation option at a regional newspaper, analyzing a natural experiment that occurred when the newspaper complied with state-level regulations in some states. Our analysis shows that the lower-friction online cancellation option increased overall cancellation rates modestly, if at all. Further, using data on consumers’ access of free articles after cancellation, we find that using the click-to-cancel feature appears to mitigate the decline in user engagement that is typical following cancellation. Overall, these results suggest that firms adopting a lower-friction cancellation process may benefit from improved post-cancellation user engagement without negatively affecting cancellation rates.

10 February

When Consumers Prefer Labor (vs. Material) Cost Justifications for Price Increases

SPEAKER

Professor Rajesh Bagchi
Associate Dean for Research, Graduate Programs, and Centers
R.B. Pamplin Professor of Marketing
Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech

ABSTRACT

Sometimes, firms justify price increases by citing an increase in their material costs; at other times, they justify the increases by citing an increase in their labor costs. Which justification – material or labor costs – is preferred by consumers? Previous theories suggest that material cost justifications are preferred because material costs tend to be more aligned, transient, and uncontrollable. However, this research shows consumers prefer labor cost justifications in certain contexts. Specifically, we document a novel psychological reaction that can be activated by price increase announcements – feelings of responsibility. Labor (vs. material) cost justifications can activate consumers’ feelings of responsibility to support low-wage labor and promote equality, making labor cost justifications appear fairer. The preference for labor (vs. material) cost justifications is demonstrated through preregistered laboratory studies, social media sentiment analysis, website traffic data, and stock market analysis. Importantly, we show that labor cost justifications are only preferred when feelings of responsibility are active. As such, the labor cost preference depends upon equality beliefs, the physical distance of labor, the type of labor beneficiaries, and consumers’ economic understanding of labor markets. Altogether, this research generates insights for managers seeking to announce price increases tied to labor cost justifications.