Martin Eisend

• Dr.
• Chair at University of Vienna

Product differentiation is essential to attract consumers. Besides functional brand characteristics, symbolic traits like brand personality are a value‐adding differentiation tool for marketers. While extant research has examined the relationships between brand personality and its antecedents, an extended and contemporary review is lacking. Buildin...

This meta-meta-analysis study quantifies the development of scientific knowledge in consumer research by summarizing the findings of 222 meta-analyses that together include 2481 meta-analytic effect sizes. The results provide an overview of how much we know and how knowledge has developed in consumer research over time. By explaining 7.8% variance...

This research consolidates existing knowledge about customer brand loyalty and its antecedents by developing and empirically validating an integrative meta-model. First, with a grounded theory literature review of 199 prior studies, the authors identify 275 antecedents of loyalty that they aggregate into four meta-concepts: (1) brand offer, (2) con...

Creative media advertising is a specific type of unconventional advertising in which a regular physical object serves as a medium to carry an advertising message. To better understand the workings of this type of advertising, we conducted a meta-analysis. In this study, we explore the direct effects of creative media advertising, several moderators...

Current Data Extraction Practices in Meta-Analysis Research and How to Improve Them with the Help of AI

The effectiveness of service recovery initiatives has primarily been explained by exchange theories implicitly assuming that the customer desires beneficial relationships. The present research extends studies in this tradition by emphasizing the crucial role of the customer’s vulnerability. Drawing on crisis theory, we argue that the effectiveness...

Caffeine is the world's most popular stimulant and is consumed daily by a significant portion of the world's population through coffee, tea, soda, and energy drinks. Consumers often shop online and in physical stores immediately after or while consuming caffeine. This is further facilitated by the increasing prevalence of coffee shops and by the ph...

Diversity in advertising research refers to the portrayal of people with distinct attributes in advertising, while inclusion refers to the valuation of their presence and perspectives in advertising. The most commonly investigated diversity attributes in advertising research are gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and age. Extant research indica...

Advertisers have begun to acknowledge that an increasing number of consumers do not support the traditional gender binary, believing that gender is dynamic and lies on a continuum. Changing views, practices, and findings regarding gender are not well addressed in current advertising research due to a lack of knowledge regarding newer gender termino...

This research focuses on gender roles in advertising on YouTube using a content-analysis approach that addresses the unique functionalities and characteristics of online advertising formats and its consumers. The data was collected from Germany and Israel, based on 311 advertisements providing 473 central characters. The results provide evidence fo...

Many advertising constructs vary considerably in how they are defined and operationalized—variations which result from changes in definitions and operationalizations over time and between studies. These changes undermine the comparability of empirical insights, challenge the integration of insights into an existing body of knowledge, and thereby im...

Research on advertising containing negative information, such as two-sided messages, has neglected the potential of including humor in the advertisements, although both theory and practical examples suggest that humor might help to sell negative information. This paper presents the results from three studies that showed that humor can increase the...

Despite the increasing market size and consumption power of older consumers, older people seldom appear in advertising, and research activity in this area suggests that advertising scholars have lost interest in the topic. This article proposes some explanations for this neglect of the topic despite its increasing importance and provides a review o...

Persuasion knowledge development leads to better coping with marketplace persuasion, better consumer decision-making, and adds to consumer well-being. While significant knowledge exists on the impact that individual factors (e.g., age) and cues (e.g., sponsorship disclosure messages) have on consumers’ persuasion knowledge development, little is kn...

As companies increasingly communicate CSR initiatives through social media, viral message propagation has become a crucial prerequisite for CSR success. Evidence from two experimental studies, one based on a national representative online sample, shows that social media peers’ endorsement of a CSR message in terms of number of shares, likes and pos...

With global geo-political changes, marketers have increasingly employed advertisements featuring ethnic and religious minority endorsers. Researchers have examined the effects of this practice, where endorsers’ ethnicity and religious associations are interlinked. The present research disentangles the potential effects of these two factors and test...

Since the introduction of the persuasion knowledge model more than 25 years ago, many research studies have investigated how consumers’ persuasion knowledge affects their reactions to persuasion attempts. While most results have shown that persuasion knowledge increases coping responses and leads to less favorable evaluations of marketer actions, t...

Although marketers have been using various message tactics to breathe life into their brands, the concepts of animism and animistic cues, particularly in social media marketing, have received little theoretical and empirical attention. Therefore, we conducted two studies to uncover what drives animistic thinking on social media, how animism is link...

Die Untersuchung von Kausalbeziehungen ist ein zentrales Anliegen der Wissenschaft. Für das Vorliegen von Kausalität ist eine Reihe von typischen Merkmalen und Bedingungen erforderlich. Man unterscheidet unterschiedliche Arten von Kausalbeziehungen, insbesondere direkte, indirekte und moderierte Kausalbeziehungen. Die Untersuchung von Kausalbeziehu...

Einschätzungen von Forschungsmethoden und Empfehlungen für wissenschaftliche Arbeit sind entscheidend abhängig von Annahmen über Möglichkeiten und Grenzen wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis sowie von Zielen und Bedingungen wissenschaftlicher Forschung. Im Lauf der Wissenschaftsgeschichte und auch der Entwicklung der Betriebswirtschaftslehre gab und gibt...

Anhand von Hypothesen lassen sich Theorien empirisch prüfen. Nachstehend werden das Wesen von Hypothesen und die Vorgehensweise bei der Überprüfung von Hypothesen, den empirischen Tests, dargestellt. Dabei wird insbesondere auch auf die Probleme der Signifikanztests von Null-Hypothesen und der in der Wissenschaft immer wichtiger werdende Beziehung...

Wissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse werden hauptsächlich in Theorien systematisiert und zusammengefasst. Theorien sind somit die Basis für unzählige praktische Anwendungen und dienen der Bewahrung und Kommunikation von Wissen sowie der Entwicklung von Verständnis. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist ihre zentrale Bedeutung für alle wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen...

Im vorliegenden Kapitel geht es um Möglichkeiten, Theorien zu beurteilen und diese (zumindest vorläufig) zu akzeptieren oder abzulehnen. Dafür werden unterschiedlichse Kriterien herangezogen, die im Abschn. 5.1 kurz vorgestellt werden. Im Mittelpunkt dieses Buches stehen natürlich Aspekte der empirischen Bewährung einer Theorie. Der „klassische“ We...

Zum Testen von Theorien bedarf es geeigneter Methoden. Dabei müssen zunächst die Konzepte einer Theorie messbar gemacht werden, d. h. sie müssen operationalisiert werden (→ Operationalisierung), bevor man entsprechende Teile der Realität messen kann (→ Messung). Nur wenn die Übersetzung der Theorie in messbare Variablen gelingt, sind Untersuchungse...

Theorie-Entwicklung, die sich nur an den Ergebnissen einzelner Studien, orientiert, ist problembehaftet. Die Entwicklung von Theorien als umfassenden Prozess zu verstehen, wird der Idee des wissenschaftlichen Realismus am ehesten gerecht und adressiert zentrale Kritikpunkte an einer an Einzelergebnissen ausgerichteten Forschungspraxis. Spezifische...

Von Zeit zu Zeit erregen Wissenschafts-Skandale, die durch unethisches Verhalten von Wissenschaftler*innen– z. B. Plagiate bei Promotionen oder Fälschung von Daten – verursacht sind, erhebliches Aufsehen auch in der breiteren Öffentlichkeit. Damit verbunden ist oft eine Beeinträchtigung des Vertrauens gegenüber der Wissenschaft. Für die verantwortl...

Über lange Zeit hat man den Prozess des Theorie-Entwurfs aus dem Bereich wissenschaftstheoretischer Überlegungen weitgehend ausgeklammert, weil man davon ausging, dass es hier in erster Linie um kreative bzw. psychologische Prozesse gehe (siehe Abschn. 4.2), die für eine systematische Analyse zu schlecht zugänglich seien. Nun ist dieses Gebiet imme...

Advergames are generally believed to be an effective advertising format due to their gamified and engaging nature. The empirical evidence for this, however, is inconclusive, with several studies reporting nonsignificant or contradicting results. The current study aimed to address this research gap by providing a meta-analysis of five advergame effe...

Persuasion knowledge refers to consumers’ knowledge of how persuasion works in the marketplace. We argue that persuasion knowledge can be perceived as a dynamic consumer capability. Similar to the concept of organizational dynamic capabilities, persuasion knowledge can only be successful (in terms of increasing the value and benefit for consumers)...

This study uses evolutionary psychology to examine how the use of disease appeals affects unhealthy behavioural intentions among consumers with different life-history strategies (LHS). Do they invest more resources in survival (slow strategists) or more resources in reproduction (fast strategists)? The results of two experimental studies indicate t...

The increasing visibility of homosexuality in society, combined with the lesbian and gay community's considerable buying power, has triggered marketers and researchers' interest in understanding homosexual consumers' consumption patterns. Prior research on whether homosexual consumers behave differently from heterosexual consumers has yielded mixed...

This study proposes an ideal, four-stage model of construct evolution (emergence → conceptualization → competition → consensus) to explain construct development over time. An in-depth analysis of conceptualizations of two constructs, market orientation (MO) and customer-based brand equity (CBBE), however, reveals different evolutionary stages and t...

Mini-film advertising (MA) uses narratives to deliver hidden brand messages in 3-to 10-min online videos. It addresses online users to gain their attention and to build brand exposure on the inter-net. The current study investigates experimentally the effects of MA on consumer digital engagement. The findings demonstrate that digital engagement inc...

Despite noteworthy advances in theory and retail practice, the extant scholarship on customer privacy concerns is scattered across a wide range of academic domains and remains fragmented, in terms of both conceptual breadth and empirical results. This lack of convergence creates a pertinent need for a comprehensive synthesis to guide to further the...

Although creativity is often considered a key success factor in advertising, the marketing literature lacks a systematic empirical account of when and how advertising creativity works. The authors use a meta-analysis to synthesize the literature on advertising creativity and test different theoretical explanations for its effects. The analysis cove...

The amount of literature on the effects of disclosing sponsored content has increased greatly in recent years. Although the literature provides valuable insights into the effects of disclosing sponsored content, several research gaps remain, such as inconclusive findings, boundary conditions, and the mechanisms that explain how disclosures work. Th...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to apply cultivation theory to social network sites by investigating how Facebook uses cultivates users' ethnic diversity perceptions and attitudes. Design/methodology/approach The authors’ investigations include an online and offline survey study with 476 Facebook users and a follow-up experiment with 75 indiv...

Noch immer gibt es große Hürden für einen Bildungsaufstieg - nach wie vor stammt nur eine Minderheit der Professor*innen aus der Arbeiterklasse. Was bedeutet es diesen Aufsteiger*innen, eine Professur erreicht zu haben? Wie erleben sie die Universität und das Versprechen der Chancengleichheit? Und wie haben ihre eigenen Aufstiegserfahrungen sie als...

While burgeoning research has shown the relevance of dynamic capabilities in terms of managers identifying and pursuing business opportunities, much less is known about the role of involving employees without managerial status in those activities. In this paper, we examine the impact of employee participation on the enactment of dynamic capabilitie...

Rising support for the LGBT community, paired with the considerable buying power of this group, has triggered increasing interest from marketers in the gay and lesbian market. Several companies have developed advertising with homosexual imagery to better target this group, thereby risking alienating most heterosexual consumers. The findings on the...

Increased societal diversity in Western societies led to increased public interest in minorities-especially ethnic and religious minorities. While negative images in media dominate, marketing scholars and marketers identified the opportunities addressing minority consumer offers. Past research that investigated the effects of ethnic minorities and...

Rising support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, paired with the considerable buying power of this group, has triggered increasing interest from marketers in the gay and lesbian market. Many companies have developed advertising with homosexual imagery to better target this group as well as the mainstream market. The...

Rising support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, paired with the considerable buying power of this group, has triggered increasing interest from marketers in the gay and lesbian market. Many companies have developed advertising with homosexual imagery to better target this group as well as the mainstream market. The...

Although prior research is congested with constructs intended to capture consumers’ dispositions toward globalization and global/local products, their effects appear to replicate with difficulty while little is known about the underlying theoretical mechanisms. This investigation revisits the relationship between prominent consumer dispositions (co...

Using another media screen while watching television has become a part of people’s daily routines. The topic of multiscreening has thus received increased attention from advertising scholars in recent years. To gain a better theoretical understanding of the circumstances under which multiscreening effects occur and to offer practical guidelines to...

Many studies have investigated why users engage in digital piracy. The theoretical explanations are particularistic, and the empirical findings are fragmented, sometimes divergent, and reveal unexplained variations of effects. Managers and academics have thus had little guidance on how to explain and combat digital piracy. To help fill this gap, th...

In this paper, we rely on evolutionary psychology to examine how the use of spontaneous versus canned humor affects response to advertising among male and female consumers. The results of three experimental studies indicate that response to advertising varies as a function of the type of humor employed and the gender of the message recipient: women...

In this paper, we rely on evolutionary psychology to examine how the use of lethal (threatening survival) versus reproductive (threatening reproduction) disease appeals affects smoking intention among consumers with different life history strategies. The results of two experimental studies indicate that smoking intention varies as a function of the...

Based on hypotheses, theories can be examined empirically (see Sect. 5.2). This chapter illustrates the nature of hypotheses and the procedure for testing them empirically. The chapter specifically addresses the increasingly important relationship between significance tests and effect sizes in research, as well as the problem of post hoc hypothesis...

From time to time, scandals triggered by the unethical behavior of scientists (e.g. plagiarism or falsification of data) generate significant notoriety, even grabbing the attention of the public at large. Often associated with this is the deterioration of trust in science. The scientists who are responsible for the scandals typically suffer from se...

For a long time, the theory building process was not part of philosophy of science considerations, because of the assumption that it was primarily about systematic, barely accessible creative and psychological processes (see Sect. 4.2). Nowadays, this area is still less developed than other parts of epistemology. Nonetheless, Sect. 4.3 presents thr...

The investigation of causal relationships is of central concern to science. The proof of causality requires a number of typical features and conditions. There are different types of causal relationships, in particular direct, indirect, and moderated causal relationships. The investigation of causal relationships is typically carried out in the cont...

Assessments of research methods and recommendations for scientific work obviously depend on assumptions about the chances and limits of scientific knowledge, as well as on the aims and conditions of scientific research. In the course of the history of science and the development of marketing research, there have been various views on the philosophy...

This chapter deals with the means to evaluate theories and to (preliminarily) accept or reject them. For this purpose, the different criteria that are used are briefly presented in Sect. 5.1. The chapter mainly focuses on different aspects of empirical tests of a theory. The “classical” path of forming and testing of theory-based hypotheses is pres...

An essential element of scientific realism is the frequent and long-term corroboration of statements based on empirical tests. From an empirical perspective, it is about the question of generalizability, and to what extent empirical findings on the same statement found in various other studies are confirmed. The current chapter deals with approache...