Bobby J Calder

Northwestern University | NU · Kellogg School of Management

There are two approaches to treating marketing expenditures, not as a cost to be expensed, but as an investment in a financial asset. The customer equity (CE) approach views customer relationships as generating future returns and uses customer lifetime value (CLV) models. The brand equity approach (BE) views brands as creating future returns and us...

Almaatouq et al. view the purpose of research is to map variable-to-variable relationships (e.g., the effect of X on Y). They also view theory as this mapping of variable-to-variable relationships rather than an explanation of why the relationships occur. However, it is theory as explanation that allows us to reconcile disparate findings and that s...

Researchers are increasingly asked this question: On what basis can one have confidence in theapplicability of behavioral research findings? Two answers are typically offered. One is to drawconfidence from establishing effects. Pre-registration and replication are often advocated as waysof increasing confidence in effects. Thus, the criterion for c...

JBR Special Issue Call for Papers on "Fostering Consumers’ Climate (Change) Engagement" Guest Editors: Linda D Hollebeek, Raffaele Filieri, Bobby Calder & David E Sprott Submissions window: March 1 - May 1, 2024

Five comments below provide strong and interesting perspectives on multi‐item scale use. They define contexts and research areas where developed scales are valuable and where they are vulnerable. Katsikeas and Madan begin by taking a global perspective on scale use, demonstrating how the use and transferability of scales becomes even more problemat...

Purpose Customer interactions are integral to service brands. Indeed, many product brands have added services in order to create more opportunity for customer interaction. This paper deals with the strategic use of customer interactions to build a strong brand. Customer interaction strategy has evolved considerably beyond traditional sales and adve...

Clickstream data recording each click that each individual user makes on a media website has become the currency for evaluating digital platforms in order to maximise advertising and/or subscription revenue. There is a growing recognition, however, that the mere volume of clicks is not adequate for this purpose. We propose a new systematic approach...

Current research practices often conflate theoretical constructs and explanatory hypotheses with variables and predicted effects, to the detriment of research progress. This has led to the use of procedures such as manipulation checks, mediation analysis, and boundary conditions predicated on the idea that matching constructs to variables is necess...

Investments in intangibles, as opposed to things such as plant and equipment, have become more and more critical to the financial performance and growth of organizations. Brands represent an important source of intangible investment. Unfortunately, expenditures for branding are still commonly treated in financial accounting as expenses rather than...

Customer engagement behaviors (CEBs) with marketing content or contacts, such as downloading a whitepaper or attending an event, can increasingly be recorded for individual customers. We develop a five-step process for monitoring CEBs. This engagement monitoring process requires understanding which CEBs relate to relevant outcomes and detecting whe...

Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with oral Truvada prevents human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. However, the adherence to pill-taking required for efficacy has sparked interest in developing new antiretroviral (ARV) delivery systems that decrease such demands. Long-acting formulations, such as injections and implants, represent promising o...

The transactional perspective of branding is being increasingly critiqued for its shortcomings, and more relational, engagement-based marketing approaches are being advocated. Here, the authors argue for adopting a consumer engagement-based strategy that is posited to contribute to a superior consumer experience. Based on this perspective, the auth...

This chapter clarifies the conceptualization of customer engagement, relative to the existing literature, in order to show how engagement theories can be applied to create better advertising and marketing programs. Consistent with the notion of an engagement system, it explains consumer engagement behaviors and proposes a typology of broad categori...

We study whether marketing can have a new role, one that is better aligned with the sales force, by adapting content marketing (CM) in B2B professional services organizations. CM activities can be in-person events such as conferences, which involve personal contacts with clients, or digital, such as webinars (i.e., digital events) or posting firm-g...

This study examines how the domains of reward and attention, which are often studied as independent processes, in fact interact at a systems level. We operationalize divided attention with a continuous performance task and variables from signal detection theory (SDT), and reward/aversion with a keypress task measuring approach/avoidance in the fram...

This paper builds upon Zaltman’s call for greater imagination in theory and practice by exploring the role of imagination in building and applying good theories. It begins by juxtaposing everyday associations to the concept of imagination with scientists’ goal of developing theories that are objectively grounded in data. In research, imagination mu...

The use of social media environments that enable consumers to engage with a brand publicly is of increasing interest to marketers. In particular, contests in which consumers create user-generated content (UGC) offer the potential of actively engaging consumers with a brand and thereby directly affecting consumer purchases. This research demonstrate...

Academics and practitioners alike have increasingly embraced the idea of customer engagement as a major objective of marketing. But this raises the question of how engagement should be conceptualized and measured. Existing research has approached this in a conventional way by developing “one size fits all” measures with a fixed set of scale items....

The use of social media environments that enable consumers to engage with a brand publically is of increasing interest to marketers. In particular, contests in which consumers create user-generate content (UGC) offer the potential of actively engaging consumers with a brand and thereby directly affecting consumer purchases. This research demonstrat...

One of the key elements being used today to support/reject/enhance marketing/advertising theory is Kahneman and Tversky’s prospect theory (1979). Interest has been growing on how that concept might support/explain how advertising “works” based on Kahneman’s later concepts as found in his text “Thinking Fast and Slow” (2011). All have spawned and su...

Although academics and practitioners have embraced customer engagement as a major objective of marketing, the conceptualization and measurement of engagement is challenging. Prior research largely has relied on conventional "one-size-fits-all" measures with a fixed set of scale items. The current, more flexible approach measures engagement based on...

This study examines how processes such as reward/aversion and attention, which are often studied as independent processes, in fact interact at a systems level. We operationalize attention with a continuous performance task and variables from signal detection theory, and reward/aversion with a keypress task using variables from relative preference t...

The conventional business-to-business (B-to-B) marketing organization, particularly within large industrial companies and the consultancies that serve them, has typically focused on supporting the personalized selling efforts of business development and sales teams. Business development and sales teams work with marketers to analyse highly detailed...

Integration is the term for the blurring of the line between media content and advertising. It is a different way of thinking about advertising and media. It represents a paradigmatic shift in management thinking, a move away from separation to integration. This chapter tries to suggest a third way, an alternative to both separation and integration...

To market successfully, a company must transcend its own internal point of view to understand what the product means, and could mean, to consumers. The goal of understanding consumers is fundamental. Marketers only have to ?do a study? or ?get the data.? However, the real answer is not so simple. The truth is that using marketing research to unders...

The traditional goal of marketing is to stimulate consumer demand and/or to shift it from one company's product to another. From this perspective, low-income consumers, and especially the so-called bottom-of-the-pyramid poor, are of little interest. There is no point in marketing to people who cannot feasibly pay for our product or our competitor's...

There are many successful paths to innovation, yet companies often limit themselves to only one or two of these paths, and therefore they unnecessarily constrain their growth potential. A “path to innovation” is the application of a specific set of disciplines, processes, or frameworks that lead to a positive business outcome. Traditionally, compan...

Writing an effective brand positioning statement is critical to branding. It should capture the meaning of the brand, and it merits considerable effort in its crafting. This is best approached not as an adjunct to planning or advertising, but as part of a consumer-focused, design-based process negotiated through internal dialogue. Brand positioning...

Loss aversion (LA), the idea that negative valuations have a higher psychological impact than positive ones, is considered an important variable in consumer research. The literature on aging and behavior suggests older individuals may show more LA, although it is not clear if this is an effect of aging in general (as in the continuum from age 20 an...

This study of 101 newspapers and markets finds that the strongest predictors of readership are length of residence and age in most markets, although the effect sizes vary across newspapers and markets. Income also has a highly significant positive overall effect. The effect of education is small, but varies considerably across newspapers/markets. T...

Multiple transformative forces target marketing, many of which derive from new technologies that allow us to sample thinking in real time (i.e., brain imaging), or to look at large aggregations of decisions (i.e., big data). There has been an inclination to refer to the intersection of these technologies with the general topic of marketing as “neur...

Depression is a debilitating condition that adversely affects many aspects of a person's life and general health. Earlier work has supported the idea that there may be a relationship between the use of certain media and depression. In this study, we tested if self-report of depression (SRD), which is not a clinically based diagnosis, was associated...

Two experiments investigated the effect of reward on forced compliance attitude change in relation to two supposedly crucial interactive variables. The results of these experiments indicated that previous analyses of these effects are open to serious question.

Branding is traditionally thought of in terms of high consumer involevment. Persuasive messages are used to influence consumers to think about a product in a conscious, deliberative way. The psychological rationale for this Sys2 branding is developed here. An understanding of this psychology also leads to a strategic alternative to the conventional...

Satisfaction is commonly monitored by news organizations because it is an antecedent to readership. In fact, countless studies have shown the satisfaction-readership relationship to be true. Still, an essential question remains: Is satisfaction the only, or even the critical, thing to focus on with readership? This research indicates that the answe...

One thing is certain about Mexico. It has never been predictable.

The function of packaging is now subsumed under the strategic discipline of brand design. The goal of brand design is to enable consumers to immediately perceive the brand meaning or essence intended by the marketer. This is accomplished by the use of both verbal and visual cues. Marketers and designers must work together collaboratively to ensure...

Engagement has emerged as an important concept for newsorganizations. Yet lack of agreement within the industry and the academy on the definition of engagement has left news companies vulnerable to the definitions dictated by advertisers, who focus on brand placement not news content. This paper relies on quantitative and qualitative methodologies...

We make three contributions towards understanding how engagement with the surrounding editorial context affects reactions to ads. First, while previous studies have shown that respondent-level engagement affects ads, we argue that vehicle-level engagement is more relevant to placement decisions, and show that magazine-level engagement affects actio...

We discuss consumer engagement with a website, provide a systematic approach to examining the types of engagement produced by specific experiences, and show that engagement with the media context increases advertising effectiveness. Based on experiments using measurement scales involving eight different online experiences, we advance two types of e...

Three studies show that consumer response to advertising depends on engagement with the media content, in this case a television program, in which the advertising appears. The specific form of engagement studied is the experience of narrative transportation, of being absorbed into the narrative world of the program. If an ad is not intrusive, by vi...

We discuss consumer engagement with a website, provide a systematic approach to examining the types of engagement produced by specific experiences, and show that engagement with the media context increases advertising effectiveness. Based on experiments using measurement scales involving eight different online experiences, we advance two types of e...

In an era of extreme advertising clutter and consumer avoidance, perhaps no other recent concept has captured more interest from marketers than engagement .T his interest is symptomatic of changes in the field. Traditionally, marketers have thought about advertising as a process of translating a brand, expressed as a benefit, a promise to the con-...

Strong brands are necessary in media because technology has increased the number of content providers and made it possible for many more competitors to seek the attention and loyalty of audiences and advertisers. Brands are crucial in separating media companies and their products from those of competitors, in creating continuity of quality and serv...

This study presents a quantitative examination of the qualitative impact of magazines on advertising effectiveness. The research identifies 39 distinct experiences involved in reading magazines. We propose that these experiences are a way of describing the media context for ads that appear in magazines. We show that the large majority of these expe...

Advertising is commonly presented in the context of media articles or programs that are intended to engage the consumer. An important aspect of this engagement is media transportation, where a person not only attends to information but also is absorbed into the narrative flow of a story in a pleasurable and active way. This research examines the ef...

This article defines the integrated marketing process and shows how it can be used to improve advertising. It discusses how integrated marketing thinks about brands, the consumer experience with products or services, and contact points. The role of media in delivering messages is reconsidered and ways of measuring the engagement with a medium are d...

Abstract Study of 101 newspapers,and markets finds that the strongest predictors of readership are length of residence and age in most markets, although the effect sizes vary across newspapers

This article defines the integrated marketing process and shows how it can be used to improve advertising. It discusses how integrated marketing thinks about brands, the consumer experience with products or services, and contact points. The role of media in delivering messages is reconsidered and ways of measuring the engagement with a medium are d...

Both qualitative and quantitative research is used to identify and measure the experiences people have with online content web sites. A stratified sample of 39 web sites was employed. The quantitative work involved a national survey of over 2000 people. The results reveal 22 distinct experiences with online content. Some of these are similar to but...

Three quasi-experimental research designs which promise the possibility of yielding strong conclusions about the effects of consumer protection initiatives are reviewed. The threats to internal validity which face these designs are described and illustrated with specific studies. The broader implications of evaluation research for consumer protecti...

In this two-part article, current methodological approaches to the evaluation of consumer protection reforms are critically reviewed. In Part I, three quasi-experimental research designs commonly used to evaluate consumer protection initiatives are examined. It is shown that these designs are inherently incapable of yielding strong conclusions abou...

We seek to understand the experience of reading a newspaper. Qualitative and quantitative research methods identify 44 distinct dimensions of the newspaper reading experience. Using statistical models, these experiences are compared across a random sample of 101 daily U.S. newspapers to examine the extent that the experiences vary both across newsp...

This article examines customer satisfaction models for assessing the relationship of overall satisfaction with a product or service and satisfaction with specific aspects of the product or service for organizations having multiple units or subunits. These units could be stores, markets, dealers, divisions, and so on. The authors suggest a method fo...

This paper seeks to understand the expe- riences involved in reading a magazine. We study 100 magazines using qualitative and quantitative research and identify 39 expe- riences associated with magazines. Statisti- cal models are used to compare the strength of each experience across magazines, and the extent to which readers of a particular mag- a...

Theoretical explanation is most often confined to the independent or predictor variables in most consumer research. Consumer behavior itself is either not measured or measured as a single manifest variable, usually of the form, How/will you buy/use product _____ in a period of time? Dependent variables should be considered from a more theoretical p...