Susan FournierBoston University | BU · Department of Marketing
Susan Fournier
PhD University of Florida
About
49
Publications
188,969
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Introduction
Susan Fournier is Professor of Marketing and MBA Faculty Director at Boston University. Susan’s research explores the creation and capture of value through branding and brand relationships. Her work has been recognized with seven academic awards including the Long-Term Contribution Award in Consumer Research and Emerald's Citations of Excellence Award for the top 50 articles in Management. Susan previously served on the Harvard Business School Faculty and was a VP/Director at Young & Rubicam.
Additional affiliations
July 2005 - present
September 2003 - May 2005
June 1994 - May 2003
Education
September 1990 - December 1994
September 1980 - December 1982
September 1976 - May 1980
Publications
Publications (49)
This article proposes a novel theory, based on relational paradoxes, to explain how consumers enable or disable their relationships with brands over time. Analysis of data from in-depth, longitudinal interviews with 26 consumers reveals four relational tensions and seven actions that consumers take in response to these tensions, thus affecting the...
This article endeavors to advance research on the cultural resonance of brands by building bridges between branding scholarship in the consumer psychology tradition and interpretive research regarding brands and their meaning makers. We adopt a cognitivist conceptualization of cultural meaning and focus on the application of interpretive insights t...
Consumer self-presentation is considered a major driver of word-of-mouth (WOM)
communication. In particular, the manner in which consumers self-present using brand mentions
is likely to impact impressions of the WOM senders as well as the mentioned brands. In some
cases, however, mentioning reputable brands in a WOM message can be considered braggi...
Consumer self-presentation is considered a major driver of word-of-mouth (WOM)
communication. In particular, the manner in which consumers self-present using brand mentions
is likely to impact impressions of the WOM senders as well as the mentioned brands. In some
cases, however, mentioning reputable brands in a WOM message can be considered braggi...
Despite evidence suggesting a growing incidence of brand architecture strategies beyond the branded house (e.g., Boeing or IBM) and house-of-brands (e.g., P&G’s Tide and Cheer), and recognition that in practice that these strategies are very different, there is a need for research on how financial markets value the full range of brand architecture...
Relationships with brands are like relationships between people. Even when they were very close, they can fail for diverse reasons. The disadoption of favorite brands doesn't happen overnight. It tends to be an extended, often painful process and not a clear-cut, one-off event. Breakups are not isolated to the person and the brand. Friends and fami...
This four-part multi-method investigation into the under-researched yet increasingly prevalent phenomenon of consumer-generated advertising (CGA) confirms a performance advantage over traditional advertising and suggests a rationale for this differential. CGAs benefit from heightened consumer engagement and increased trustworthiness. CGAs also garn...
Although researchers and practitioners have access to a growing body of evidence on the effects of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) frequency and valence, a more detailed understanding of eWOM content is needed in order to better influence these social media-enabled conversations. Based on an ethnomethodological analysis of community conversations i...
Our commentary focuses on the negative pole of Park et al.'s Attachment–Aversion continuum. We argue that the distinction between positively- and negatively-valenced relationships matters, and open opportunities to further our knowledge about what makes a brand relationship “bad.” Two theoretical extensions are offered: (1) additional negativity di...
It has been ten years since the publication of
Consumers and their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research (Fournier 1998). Over the course of the decade, we have learned a great deal about the nature and functions of consumers' relationships with brands, and the processes whereby they develop at the hands of consumers and mark...
This naturalistic inquiry probes WOM concerning online consumer-generated advertising (CGA). Through a content analysis of online conversations regarding fourteen CGAs posted to YouTube.com, we uncover that multiple engagement dimensions (i.e., ad, brand, brand community and community-at-large) direct CGA interactions and WOM conversations. We find...
The dialogue between social perception and consumer-brand relationship theories opens new opportunities for studying brands as intentional agents. To advance branding research in the spirit of interdisciplinary inquiry, we propose to investigate the process of anthropomorphism through which brands are imbued with intentional agency; integrate the r...
Branding is widely recognized as an important marketing activity, yet marketing executives are challenged to prove the value of branding in clear financial terms. The objective of this chapter is to integrate emerging insights from the literature on branding and shareholder value into a process framework that helps enumerate and explain the brand-f...
Brands rushed into social media, viewing social networks, video sharing, online communities, and microblogging sites as the panacea to diminishing returns for traditional brand building routes. But as more branding activity moves to the Web, marketers are confronted with the stark realization that social media was made for people, not for brands. I...
Marketers in a variety of industries are trying to increase customer loyalty, marketing efficiency, and brand authenticity by building communities around their brands. Few companies, however, understand what brand communities require and how they work. Drawing from their research as well as their experience at Harley-Davidson, the authors dispel so...
We study a sample of U.S. firms with strong brands as defined by inclusion on Interbrand's most valuable brands list between 1994 and 2006. After adjusting for risk with the Fama and French (1993) three-factor model plus a momentum factor, we find that strong-brand firms have statistically and economically significant above-average returns. Motivat...
Past research has shown a correlation between measures of brand equity and stock price. However, these results are not sufficient to conclude that branding creates shareholder value. Using time-honored models from the discipline of finance, this paper specifies, and subsequently tests, the necessary and sufficient conditions to determine whether br...
This paper reports results from a longitudinal field experiment examining the evolution of relationships between consumers and an on-line photography brand in response to brand personality and transgression manipulations. Development patterns differed significantly for the two personalities, whereby relationships with sincere brands deepened over t...
Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Florida, 1994. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 359-385).
This article has no abstract
The authors present a phenomenological and longitudinal investigation of satisfaction, as revealed through consumers' ownership experiences with technological products. The study seeks to serve a provocative role in this mature research area by stepping back from the historically dominant comparison standards paradigm to question, invigorate, and,...
The authors present a phenomenological and longitudinal investigation of satisfaction, as revealed through consumers’ ownership experiences with technological products. The study seeks to serve a provocative role in this mature research area by stepping back from the historically dominant comparison standards paradigm to question, invigorate, and,...
Although the relationship metaphor dominates contemporary marketing thought and practice, surprisingly little empirical work has been conducted on relational phenomena in the consumer products domain, particularly at the level of the brand. In this article, the author: (1) argues for the validity of the relationship proposition in the consumer-bran...
Although technological products are unavoidable in contemporary life, studies focusing on them in the consumer behavior field have been few and narrow. In this article, we investigate consumers' perspectives, meanings, and experiences in relation to a range of technological products, emphasizing lengthy and repeated interviews with 29 households, i...
Relationship marketing is in vogue. And why not? The new, increasingly efficient ways that companies have of understanding and responding to customers' needs and preferences seemingly allow them to build more meaningful connections with consumers than ever before. These connections promise to benefit the bottom line by reducing costs and increasing...
This paper uses the perspective of interpersonal relationship theory to critically examine, reposition, and extend the notion of brand loyalty. Depth interviews among eight coffee-consuming adults who qualified as brand loyal by traditional criteria provide the data. The result is a deeper appreciation of the character of loyal consumer-brand relat...
This paper focuses on consumer materialism within the American culture. It reviews some of the diverse conceptions of materialism in the contemporary social science literature and compares these theoretical notions with popular notions obtained from an exploratory survey of adult consumers. While popular notions tend to mirror theoretical conceptio...
Thesis (M.S.)--Pennsylvania State University. Library holds archival microfiche negative and service copy,
Projects
Projects (2)
In this project, we experimentally test how social television (social TV) - the use of social media to communicate with other viewers while watching television (TV) - affects the consumption enjoyment of TV. In a theoretical contingency model, we show how participating in social TV can (i) enhance the enjoyment of TV viewing experience by creating a socially shared experience, (ii) polarize the enjoyment of the viewed content through synchronous co-attention, and (iii) degrade the enjoyment of the viewed content due to multitasking. We illuminate how, when, and why these mediating processes differentially affect different aspects of consumption enjoyment (i.e., experience enjoyment and content enjoyment). Specifically, we argue that when social TV transforms the viewing experience into a shared experience, the enjoyment of the experience will be enhanced via social connectedness. In addition, when people participate in social TV the enjoyment of the viewed content will be polarized (i.e., will increase if the content is pleasant, will decrease if the content is unpleasant) via salience of synchronous co-attention. On the other hand, we argue that when the content complexity is high, participating in social TV will make it difficult to allocate cognitive resources to the viewed content and the enjoyment of the content will be diminished.
With Cansu Sogut (sogut@bu.edu), Frédéric Brunel (brunel@bu.edu)
Barbara Bickart (bickart@bu.edu), Susan Fournier (fournism@bu.edu)
