Ann Kronrod

• Ph.D. in Marketing and Linguistics
• Associate Professor of Marketing at University of Massachusetts Lowell

With the recent rise of the metaverse, blockchain, and nonfungible token (NFT) technologies, luxury brands have embraced these concepts to expand their portfolios. To boost NFT sales, marketers often link them to specific physical products, creating digital twins. While this strategy may enhance perceptions of NFTs, its impact on consumer response...

This paper suggests a theory-driven approach to address the managerial problem of distinguishing between real and fake reviews. Building on memory research and linguistics, we predict that when recollecting an authentic experience in a product review, people rely to a greater extent on episodic memory. By contrast, when writing a fictitious review,...

This monograph aims to introduce researchers to the fascinating world of linguistics and to show how to conduct meaningful language research in marketing, exploring the way language influences behavior and how language can express thoughts, emotions, and mental states in marketing contexts. Ann Kronrod, who holds a Ph.D. in linguistics and conducts...

This manuscript aims to introduce researchers to the fascinating world of linguistics and to show how to conduct meaningful language research in marketing, exploring the way language influences behavior and how language can express thoughts, emotions, and mental states in marketing contexts. Ann Kronrod, who holds a Ph.D. in linguistics and conduct...

Objective There is insufficient evidence for the effectiveness of various tones of communication in modifying health behaviours. We examine the moderating role of assertiveness in the effect of positive/negative language on emotional responses (optimism, self-efficacy, and guilt), and resulting preventive health behaviours. Design Three experiment...

How do embodied states influence the inferences people make about the meaning that is intended by communicators? We propose that embodied states encourage mental representation of certain meanings while inhibiting others, thereby facilitating or hindering comprehension in social interactions and potentially causing miscommunication. Four experiment...

The link between poor diet and poor health is well-known. Nevertheless, 90% of Americans are not meeting current dietary guidelines, avoiding nutrient dense foods like vegetables, and opting for high-calorie foods. One of the reasons for this behavior is that healthy options are often considered less enjoyable, compared with less healthy options. A...

Every day, consumers share word of mouth (WOM) on how products and behaviors are commonly adopted through the use of consensus language. Consensus language refers to words and expressions that suggest general agreement among a group of people regarding an opinion, product, or behavior (e.g., “everyone likes this movie”). In a series of online and f...

Conveying the environmental friendliness of a product is both crucial and challenging. One efficient way to overcome this challenge is by using brand names as a way to signal environmental friendliness. Linking research in sound symbolism and metaphor cognition, the current research suggests that silent consonants in brand names (e.g., Etopal), com...

This paper presents a novel conceptualization of the most common techniques firms use to communicate prices. First, we classify existing price communication techniques based on the type of action taken by firms. We then develop a framework to understand the influence of the different techniques in our classification on the ongoing relationship betw...

This paper reports a surprising reversal in the effect of advertising repetition over time. A field study shows higher annoyance with a more frequently advertised brand at the time of advertising, but greater preference for this same brand several weeks later. A longitudinal online experiment replicates the reversal in brand preference across four...

This research investigates how the combination of aesthetically appealing and unappealing visual elements in marketing communications can motivate prosocial behavior. Prior literature has investigated the effectiveness of aesthetically pleasing or displeasing visuals separately and has reported mixed results. Based on the notion that empathy is a k...

The current work focuses on non-price policies to achieve residential water conservation, specifically on water conservation campaigns. The authors report the results of a large-scale longitudinal field experiment encouraging residential water conservation among 1500 households. The effectiveness of two commonly-used message phrasings is compared:...

Fraudulent user-generated content is harmful for both consumers and marketers and increases uncertainty about consumption experiences and offerings. Ann Kronrod, Jeffrey Lee, and Ivan Gordeliy investigate a novel method leveraging linguistic theory, experiment-driven data sampling, and automated text analysis to test three linguistic aspects that d...

When developing new brand names, marketers face the dilemma of how similar their new brand name is or should be to familiar brand names in the market. The current research tests the complete range of conditions exploring how the degree of similarity of a new brand name to an existing one may affect attitudes toward the new brand name. The authors f...

In search of effective ways to encourage consumers to follow desired behaviors such as healthy eating, recycling, or financial planning, marketers sometimes use praise (e.g., "You are doing great") and sometimes use scolding (e.g., "You are not doing enough"). However, the effectiveness of each approach in triggering behavior is not clear. A possib...

Forthcoming

Figurative language in advertising affects product attitudes positively across contexts. In contrast, the present research demonstrates that the use and effectiveness of figurative language in consumer-generated content is context specific, because of conversational norms unique to this form of communication. Study 1 shows that consumer reviews con...

Numerical information is an important feature in green advertising claims. In four experiments, the authors examine the extent to which numerical precision signals the competence of an advertised company. The results suggest that consumers who are low in advertising skepticism tend to perceive the advertised company as more competent when presented...

Reticence to express emotions verbally has long been observed in Chinese culture, but quantitative comparisons with Western cultures are few. Explanations for emotional reticence have typically focused on the need in collectivist culture to promote group harmony, but this explanation is most applicable to negative emotions such as anger, not positi...

Numerical information is an important feature in green advertising claims. In four experiments, the authors examine the extent to which numerical precision signals the competence of an advertised company. The results suggest that consumers who are low in advertising skepticism tend to perceive the advertised company as more competent when presented...

This paper examines the persuasiveness of assertive language (as in Nike’s slogan “Just do it”) as compared to nonassertive language (as in Microsoft’s slogan “Where do you want to go today?”). Previous research implies that assertive language should reduce consumer compliance. Two experiments show that assertiveness is more effective in communicat...

Environmental communications often contain assertive commands (e.g., Greenpeace’s “Stop the Catastrophe”, Plant-For-The-Planet’s “Stop Talking and Start Planting” or Denver Water Campaign’s “Use only what you need”), even though research in consumer behavior, psycholinguistics, and communications, has repeatedly shown that gentler phrasing should b...

This paper is concerned with the tension between consumer persuasion and freedom of choice. We study how assertive language (as in the slogan Just do it!) affects consumer compliance in hedonic vs. utilitarian contexts. Previous literature consistently claimed that forceful language would cause reactance and decreased compliance. However, we find i...

In 6 experiments we test the Optimal Innovation Hypothesis, according to which an optimally innovative stimulus, such that induces a novel response while allowing for the recovery of a salient one (Giora, 1997b, 2003), would be rated as more pleasing than either a more or a less familiar stimulus. Experiment 1 shows that it is the stimulus that mee...

In any spoken or written, visual or auditory discourse the speaker must enable the addressee to identify the entities mentioned in the text by using appropriate referring expressions. A speaker who uses a definite referring expression, presupposes that a mental representation of the entity being referred to exists in the addressee's mind (Prince, 1...