Our research team analyzed how firms responded to the “China Shock,” a surge of imports that disrupted many U.S. industries between 2000 and 2019. We discovered that firms with influential marketing departments and well-established market-based assets—like differentiation and customer capital—were better able to weather these competitive pressures. Specifically, we found that:

1. Marketing Leadership is Crucial

Firms where marketing had a strong voice in strategic decisions outperformed their peers. By aligning cross-functional teams and advocating for customer-driven innovation, these firms launched initiatives that enhanced brand loyalty, improved product innovation, and strengthened competitive positioning.

2. Strategic Differentiation Matters

Differentiation also proved to be a powerful tool. Firms that emphasized unique product features, higher quality, or sustainability outperformed those competing solely on price. For example, branding efforts like “Made in America” or customization helped firms justify premium pricing and retain customers, even when faced with cheaper imports.

3. Customer Relationships Drive Resilience

Customer relationship capital rounded out the trio of success factors. Firms that invested in building long-term trust and loyalty with their customers faced less risk of losing market share. Strong customer ties created switching costs, making it harder for competitors to lure away buyers.

What Does this Mean for the C-Suite?

These insights have significant implications for executives. Many firms respond to financial pressures by cutting marketing budgets or sidelining marketing leaders from strategic discussions. However, our findings highlight the need to elevate marketing as a core function. Boards and CEOs can support marketing by increasing its decision-making authority and ensuring it is involved in board-level discussions.

Policymakers also have a role to play. While trade policies and tariffs are commonly used to protect domestic industries, our research suggests that empowering firms with marketing resources can offer a market-driven alternative to counter import competition. Public–private partnerships focused on branding, differentiation, and customer engagement could strengthen the competitiveness of domestic firms.

The need for marketing-driven strategies will only grow. Experts warn of a potential “China Shock 2.0,” which could flood global markets with low-cost imports in sectors like electric vehicles and solar panels. Firms must proactively strengthen their marketing leadership and differentiation efforts to withstand future competition.

For firms navigating a volatile global trade landscape, strong marketing capabilities can make the difference between thriving and folding.

Source: Nandini Ramani, “,” Journal of Marketing, 89 (5), 47–65.

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Our research team defines “immersive services” as those in which consumers are deeply embedded for a period of time, with their experiences largely constructed by the service. This includes industries like healthcare, education, hospitality, and eldercare. We identify four key characteristics of these services that can challenge consumer agency:

1. Encapsulation: Consumers are deeply immersed in the service, often separated from other parts of their lives.
2. Positionality: Hierarchies and power dynamics create stark differences between consumers and service providers.
3. Protocolization: Rigid routines and protocols dictate consumer behavior.
4. Multivocality: Multiple voices and perspectives within the service influence how consumers are expected to act.

These characteristics can make it difficult for consumers to act freely, thus affecting their well-being. For instance, consider healthcare settings where patients are required to follow strict protocols, or eldercare facilities where residents may feel constrained by rigid schedules. As polarization and AI-driven decision making become more common, these challenges are becoming even more pressing.

We discover, however, that consumers are not passive participants in immersive services. Instead, they actively work to regain their sense of agency through “improvisations”—creative strategies that allow them to navigate the constraints of the service. Specifically, consumers use five pathways to reclaim agency:

1. Expanding the figured world: Shaping their experience on their own terms by exerting control over time and space.
2. Voicing: Speaking out to challenge rules or advocate for changes in how they are treated.
3. Seeking task responsibility: Taking on meaningful tasks to assert independence and purpose.
4. Challenging protocols: Pushing back against rigid processes to co-create a service experience that better fits their needs.
5. Playing and imagining: Using creativity and imagination to reframe their experience and celebrate life.

For service managers, these findings offer clear strategies to empower consumers while maintaining necessary structure. Two key managerial approaches stand out:

1. Leverage technology to expand consumer freedom: Virtual tools and personalized digital platforms can help consumers navigate encapsulation and protocolization by providing more choices and flexibility.
2. Develop empathy-driven relationships: By fostering stronger interpersonal connections, service providers can address positionality and multivocality, helping consumers feel valued and heard.

We recommend a two-pronged approach to assess and address gaps in consumer agency. First, managers should analyze how the four structural characteristics—encapsulation, positionality, multivocality, and protocolization—impact consumers. Second, they should evaluate how effectively their services support the five pathways consumers use to regain agency.

Immersive services are critical to modern life, but they must evolve to meet the needs of consumers. By empowering consumers to reclaim their agency, service providers can enhance customer satisfaction, foster loyalty, and improve overall wellbeing.

Source: Laurel Anderson, Catharina Von Koshull, Martin Mende, and Johanna Gummerus, “,” Journal of Marketing.

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A introduces NADE (Natural Affect DEtection), that bridges this gap. NADE goes beyond sentiment analysis by leveraging the power of emojis. It first “emojifies” text and then translates those emojis into eight well-established emotions like joy, sadness, and anger. This innovative approach allows a more nuanced and accurate understanding of consumer emotions, providing deeper insights into their thoughts and feelings.

NADE’s key innovation lies in using emojis as an intermediate emotional signal. Social media users naturally self-label their posts with emojis, offering implicit emotional cues. As a “text-to-emoji-to-emotion” converter, NADE utilizes these cues in a two-stage process: The model first learns to predict which emojis best match a given text, then, using established emotion models like , NADE converts these emojis into emotional intensities. This method outperforms traditional sentiment analysis by capturing more nuanced consumer emotions.

Using NADE for Better Consumer Sentiment Analysis

NADE has wide-ranging applications across industries, helping companies gain deeper insights and make data-driven decisions:

• In social media management, it empowers companies to go beyond simple sentiment analysis. NADE enables real-time monitoring of online conversations, allowing for rapid identification and effective mitigation of potential crises. Moreover, it can serve as a valuable proxy for traditional metrics like TV ratings, providing insights into audience engagement and sentiment surrounding specific events or campaigns.
  
  
• In product development, NADE can be a powerful tool for understanding customer emotions. By analyzing customer feedback, companies can pinpoint product features that evoke specific emotions such as frustration or excitement. This granular understanding can guide product improvements and ensure that products resonate with customer desires.
  
  
• Within customer service, NADE enhances both human agent and chatbot interactions. By providing real-time insights into customer emotions, NADE equips service agents with the information they need to respond empathetically and effectively. This can lead to improved customer satisfaction, reduced resolution times, and increased customer loyalty.
  
  
• Beyond these specific applications, NADE supports innovative advertising tactics. Mood-based targeting allows advertisers to reach specific audience segments based on their current emotional state, maximizing the impact of their campaigns.
  
  
• Additionally, NADE can be leveraged for market research, enabling more accurate emotion-driven demand prediction and providing valuable insights into brand loyalty and market trends.
  
  
• Finally, NADE empowers content creators by providing valuable insights into the emotional impact of their content. By understanding how their content resonates with audiences on an emotional level, creators can design and curate more engaging and effective user experiences.

Advantages of NADE for Researchers

For researchers, NADE offers several key advantages. First, it democratizes research by making sophisticated emotion analysis accessible to researchers with limited budgets. While commercial tools like LIWC offer similar capabilities, NADE provides more nuanced emotion analysis and is entirely free, opening doors for researchers who may have been previously deterred by technical or financial constraints. This removes a significant financial barrier, enabling broader participation in high-level research.

Second, NADE’s user-friendly interface allows researchers to conduct in-depth analyses without requiring extensive programming expertise. Finally, the availability of R and Python packages provides researchers with the flexibility to adapt and extend NADE to other languages, emojis, and emotion theories, enabling further advancements in the field.

Visit the NADE App to explore how it can enhance your research or business insights:

Source: Christian Hotz-Behofsits, Nils Wlömert, and Nadia ÂÜŔňÉçąŮÍř Nabout, “,” Journal of Marketing.

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We uncover a powerful insight: the key to increasing AI adoption lies not in technical sophistication but in emotional engagement. When AI feels magical, it inspires curiosity, excitement, and trust. Harnessing this emotional response can unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth across industries.

This sense of wonder drives a willingness to adopt AI, even though these users often perceive AI as less capable or ethical than those with greater AI literacy.

In contrast, consumers with higher AI literacy take a more critical view of AI, focusing on its technical limitations and ethical concerns. This group is less likely to see AI as magical and, as a result, is slower to adopt new tools or products.

Implications for Marketers and Product Designers

This gap in adoption behavior has significant implications for marketers, product developers, and policymakers. It challenges the common assumption that tech-savvy consumers are the leading edge of AI adoption. Instead, businesses targeting lower-literacy audiences can emphasize AI’s awe-inspiring potential to drive engagement and usage.

For example, marketing campaigns showcasing AI’s ability to generate lifelike images, analyze complex patterns, or offer empathetic care can resonate deeply with consumers who view these capabilities as extraordinary. By focusing on the “magic” of AI, brands can tap into the sense of wonder that drives adoption.

Marketing campaigns showcasing AI’s ability to generate lifelike images, analyze complex patterns, or offer empathetic care can resonate deeply with consumers who view these capabilities as extraordinary.

Balancing Wonder and Responsibility

This approach comes with a caution. Although lower AI literacy fosters adoption through magical thinking, it may also leave these consumers vulnerable to misuse or misrepresentation. For instance, users may overestimate AI’s capabilities or fail to recognize its limitations, leading to ethical and practical challenges.

Marketers and policymakers must strike a balance between highlighting AI’s potential and promoting informed usage. Clear messaging about AI’s capabilities and boundaries can help prevent misunderstandings while maintaining the sense of wonder that encourages adoption.

Another key challenge involves the role of education. As AI literacy increases, the perception of AI as magical diminishes. While education is crucial for fostering responsible use, it may inadvertently dampen adoption by reducing the sense of awe that motivates initial engagement. Policymakers and educators need to design programs that enhance understanding without eroding the excitement that drives consumers to explore new technologies.

Tailoring Strategies to Audience Perceptions

The study also highlights the broader implications of consumer perceptions for AI integration. Businesses should consider how AI is positioned within their offerings, ensuring that messaging aligns with the target audience’s level of understanding and emotional response.

For example, companies developing AI-powered tools for creative industries might focus on the “magic” of artistic generation, appealing to less tech-savvy consumers. Meanwhile, brands targeting professionals or experts might emphasize transparency and accuracy, addressing the more critical lens through which these audiences view AI.

Ultimately, the findings suggest that marketers and product developers must tailor their strategies to different segments of the population. By understanding how consumers perceive and interact with AI, businesses can create products and campaigns that resonate more effectively with their audiences.

Source: Stephanie Tully, Chiara Longoni, and Gil Appel, “,” Journal of Marketing, 89 (5), 1–20.

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A finds that the first like on a social ad has a profound impact, significantly boosting both clicks and likes. However, as the number of likes increases, their influence on clicks diminishes. The research reveals two key forms of social influence at play: normative and informational. Normative influence encourages users to conform to social norms, leading them to like an ad simply because others have done so. Informational influence, on the other hand, drives meaningful actions like clicking on an ad when users perceive it as credible or relevant.

This dual effect of likes provides critical insights for marketers and platforms aiming to optimize ad performance and user engagement.

Key Findings: How Likes Shape User Behavior

• Initial Likes Are Critical: The first like on an ad acts as a powerful social cue, boosting both clicks and likes. It serves as a signal of credibility, encouraging users to engage with the content.
• Normative vs. Informational Influence: While the first like generates both normative and informational influence, additional likes primarily encourage conformity rather than meaningful engagement. This results in more users liking the ad but fewer clicking through to learn more.
• Plateau in Engagement: As the number of likes grows, their ability to drive clicks diminishes. This suggests that showing too many likes can dilute their informational value, leading to a plateau in meaningful engagement.

The first like is a critical moment for engagement. It signals to users that the content is worth their attention, encouraging both likes and clicks. However, as likes accumulate, their role shifts. Instead of driving deeper interactions, they primarily serve to reinforce conformity, leading users to simply like the ad without taking further action.

Practical Insights for Marketers

For marketers, these findings offer actionable strategies to enhance the effectiveness of social media ad campaigns:

• Optimize for Click-Through Campaigns: Campaigns designed to drive clicks should display only a few likes to preserve the informational value of the first like. This strategy helps maintain the ad’s perceived credibility, encouraging users to take action.
• Boost Brand Awareness: For campaigns focused on building brand awareness, showing higher like counts can leverage normative influence to make the ad appear more popular and widely accepted. This approach enhances brand perception and visibility.
• Tailor Social Cues to Campaign Goals: Marketers should carefully consider the type of engagement they aim to achieve. Balancing normative and informational influences can help design campaigns that maximize both likes and clicks.

By aligning the visibility of likes with campaign objectives, brands can optimize their return on investment.

Implications for Social Media Platforms

The study also has significant implications for social media platforms. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook continuously experiment with the visibility of likes, as seen in Instagram’s recent tests on hiding like counts. These decisions impact user behavior and advertiser outcomes, making it critical for platforms to strike the right balance.

Platforms can use these insights to refine how they display likes in ads. For click-through campaigns, limiting the visibility of likes can preserve the informational value of the first like, driving deeper engagement. For awareness campaigns, showing higher like counts can enhance normative influence, boosting surface-level engagement and brand visibility.

Platforms must consider how their design choices influence both user behavior and advertiser performance.

Challenges and Considerations

While likes are a powerful tool for driving engagement, their effects are not universal. Campaigns that rely too heavily on normative influence may fail to drive meaningful actions like clicks or purchases. Similarly, campaigns that prioritize clicks without considering the role of social cues risk missing opportunities to build brand awareness.

Another challenge lies in balancing authenticity with strategy. Overemphasizing likes as a metric of success can lead to inauthentic interactions, where users engage with content superficially rather than meaningfully. Platforms and marketers must work together to ensure that social cues are used in ways that enhance user experience and drive real value.

A Vision for the Future of Social Advertising

This study offers a framework for leveraging likes as a tool for both engagement and action. By recognizing the dual role of likes, marketers and platforms can design campaigns that deliver better results for advertisers while maintaining user trust.

In a world where attention is increasingly scarce, the ability to understand and harness the dynamics of social influence offers a competitive edge. Whether the goal is to drive clicks, increase likes, or boost brand awareness, leveraging the power of social cues is key to creating impactful campaigns.

Source: Song Lin and Shan Huang, “,” Journal of Marketing, 89 (5), 88–110.

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A reveals that parents of single children are more likely to invest in deficit-based education products, such as remedial tutorials aimed at addressing weaknesses. In contrast, parents with multiple children prefer strength-based options like STEM enrichment programs, which focus on growth and development. These choices reflect differences in how family size shapes parenting goals, priorities, and decision-making strategies.

Key Findings: Family Size and Education Spending

• Single-Child Parents Favor Deficit-Based Products: Single-child households are more likely to view their child’s weaknesses as critical areas to address, prompting them to invest in solutions like remedial programs or tutoring. This preference stems from a desire to avoid failure or setbacks for their only child, who often carry heightened expectations.
• Multi-Child Parents Prioritize Strength-Based Programs: In families with multiple children, parents focus on building strengths rather than addressing weaknesses. They are more likely to invest in programs that promote future-oriented skills, such as STEM camps or advanced enrichment classes. This approach reflects their broader goals of maximizing opportunities for all children in the family.
• Perfectionism Plays a Role: Parents with higher levels of negative perfectionism—who are more focused on avoiding failure—show a stronger preference for deficit-based education products, regardless of family size. Positive perfectionism, on the other hand, aligns more closely with strength-based decisions.

How It Works: The Psychology Behind the Decisions

Parenting decisions are driven by a combination of psychological, social, and economic factors. Single-child parents often view their child as a singular opportunity, leading to an “all-in” approach that prioritizes addressing perceived deficits. These parents are more risk-averse, focusing on loss prevention and ensuring their child does not fall behind.

In contrast, multi-child parents adopt a more balanced perspective. With limited resources spread across multiple children, these parents focus on growth-oriented opportunities that yield long-term benefits for the entire family. Strength-based programs align with this forward-thinking mindset, emphasizing skills that prepare children for future success.

Negative perfectionism also amplifies deficit-focused behavior. Parents who fear failure or judgment are more likely to invest in products that promise to “fix” their child’s weaknesses. This dynamic can override typical family size patterns, leading some multi-child parents to prioritize deficit-based options when negative perfectionism is high.

Practical Insights for Education Marketers

The findings from this study provide valuable guidance for education providers and marketers:

• Tailor Messaging to Family Size: Education products should be positioned differently depending on the target audience. For single-child parents, messaging should emphasize addressing specific challenges or areas for improvement. For multi-child households, highlighting growth opportunities and future-oriented benefits will resonate more effectively.
• Recognize the Role of Perfectionism: Marketers can address perfectionism by offering reassurance and framing their products as solutions that reduce stress for parents while supporting their goals. For example, deficit-based products can be positioned as proactive tools for ensuring readiness, while strength-based options can be promoted as ways to unlock potential.
• Segment Products for Diverse Needs: Providers should consider developing distinct offerings tailored to the unique preferences of single- and multi-child families. Bundled programs that cater to multiple children or adaptive solutions that address both weaknesses and strengths can appeal to broader audiences.

Implications for Policymakers and Educators

Policymakers and educators must also consider these insights to ensure equitable access to education resources:

• Support for Single-Child Families: With single-child households becoming more prevalent, education systems should develop programs that address their specific needs, such as targeted tutoring initiatives or tailored support for skill gaps.
• Promote Balance in Education Approaches: Schools and policymakers should encourage families to adopt balanced strategies that focus on both addressing weaknesses and building strengths. Providing clear guidance on the benefits of different education products can help parents make informed decisions.
• Accessibility for Multi-Child Families: Multi-child households may face economic constraints that limit their ability to invest in premium education products. Offering subsidized enrichment programs or scalable solutions can ensure these families have access to growth-oriented opportunities.

As single-child households continue to grow in number, their influence on the education market cannot be overlooked. Education providers, marketers, and policymakers must recognize the unique challenges and priorities faced by these families. At the same time, multi-child families remain a significant segment of the market, with distinct preferences that require tailored approaches. By addressing the needs of both groups, stakeholders can create more inclusive and effective education solutions that empower all children to succeed.

Source: Phyllis Xue Wang, Ce Liang, and Qiyuan Wang, “,” Journal of Marketing, 89 (4), 21–38.

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A addresses this need by spotlighting the transformative power of conceptual research. Our research team demonstrates how conceptual studies redefine norms, explain new phenomena, and resolve conflicts. Unlike empirical research, which primarily analyzes data, conceptual studies focus on developing theories that influence practice and drive interdisciplinary progress. These studies provide a foundation for new ways of thinking, enabling businesses and academics to stay ahead of trends. Conceptual studies are cited 2.5 times more often than empirical work, underscoring their long-term impact on both scholarship and practice.

Our study categorizes conceptual research into five distinct types:

• New Paradigms: These studies challenge prevailing assumptions to reshape how we think about markets and consumer behavior. By questioning the status quo, they open the door to revolutionary ways of understanding business problems.
• New Theories: These papers combine existing frameworks or develop entirely novel approaches to address emerging trends and unresolved questions. They provide fresh perspectives that empirical research often cannot achieve alone.
• Theory Elaboration: By extending established theories to new contexts, these studies refine and enhance existing knowledge, making it more applicable to diverse industries and challenges.
• Literature Reviews: These papers synthesize existing research to reveal gaps in understanding and guide future investigations. They serve as roadmaps for scholars and practitioners seeking to address critical unanswered questions.
• Analytical Research: Using logic and mathematical modeling, these studies advance theory by deriving insights into how consumers and firms behave under different conditions.

Each type of conceptual research serves a unique purpose, but all share the common goal of providing clarity and direction in an increasingly complex marketing environment.

Practical Guidance for Crafting Conceptual Research

Our study provides a practical guide to crafting impactful conceptual papers. Scholars are encouraged to start by identifying promising research questions that address real-world challenges. Building strong theoretical arguments requires a clear understanding of the problem, the ability to integrate diverse perspectives, and the creativity to propose new frameworks or solutions. Writing compelling conceptual studies also involves avoiding common pitfalls, such as being overly abstract or failing to connect theories to actionable insights.

Collaboration between scholars and practitioners is particularly critical. Practitioners can provide valuable context and real-world examples that make theories more relevant and applicable, while scholars offer the rigor and depth needed to address complex issues. By working together, these groups can ensure that conceptual research has a tangible impact on both academic knowledge and business practices.

Areas Ripe for Conceptual Exploration

Looking ahead, our study identifies five areas that are particularly ripe for conceptual research:

• AI Transformation: Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing how marketers understand, predict, and influence consumer behavior. Conceptual studies are needed to explore how AI will redefine core marketing functions, from personalization to supply chain optimization, and its broader implications for customer relationships.
• Virtual Marketing: Augmented reality (AR) and virtual environments are creating new spaces for consumer engagement. What theories can explain behavior in these immersive digital spaces? How should companies adapt their strategies?
• Privacy Balances: As consumer data become increasingly central to marketing, the tension between personalization and privacy grows. Conceptual research can help regulators, firms, and consumers find ways to balance the benefits and risks of data-driven marketing.
• Crowdsourcing: Many companies now rely on customer communities for ideas and innovation. Conceptual studies can explore models that maximize the effectiveness of crowdsourcing while maintaining brand integrity and fostering community engagement.
• Sustainability: As environmental concerns become more pressing, marketers need frameworks to understand how sustainability initiatives affect consumer preferences, brand loyalty, and long-term profitability.

Bridging Theory and Practice

Conceptual research bridges the gap between theory and practice, enabling businesses to foresee and adapt to seismic changes in the market. For example, companies grappling with the challenges of integrating AI into their operations can benefit from theoretical models that predict how these technologies will reshape consumer interactions. Similarly, marketers venturing into virtual environments need guidance on how traditional strategies may or may not apply.

By investing in conceptual research, scholars and practitioners alike can tackle the most pressing challenges facing the marketing field. This collaboration is particularly important in a world where markets evolve faster than ever before. Theoretical insights grounded in practical relevance can help businesses anticipate changes, mitigate risks, and seize opportunities that others might overlook.

Source: Irina Kozlenkova, Caleb Warren, Suresh Kotha, Reihane Boghrati, and Robert Palmatier, “,” Journal of Marketing, 89 (4), 1–20. doi:

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A finds that combining traditional media, such as TV and outdoor ads, with digital channels, including Facebook and YouTube, can significantly enhance brand performance. Our research team analyzed 1,083 global campaigns to uncover how integrated media strategies create synergies that amplify advertising results.

Key Findings

No One-Size-Fits-All Media Mix: We find that there isn’t a universal “best” combination of media channels. Instead, high-performing campaigns tailor their media mix to specific goals, such as boosting brand awareness, driving conversions, or enhancing customer engagement.

For example, pairing TV with YouTube can create broad awareness, while using Facebook alongside in-store promotions helps drive localized action. Understanding these relationships allows marketers to craft more effective campaigns.

Untapped Potential in Current Strategies: Our findings reveal that many advertising campaigns are not fully optimized. Simple adjustments in media planning could result in over 50% higher lifts in key brand metrics such as awareness or consideration.

Archetypes and Synergies in Media Channels: We identify common media archetypes, which represent patterns in how channels are combined. High-performing campaigns leverage synergies among these archetypes to amplify impact. For instance, traditional media channels like TV and outdoor advertising create a foundation of trust and familiarity, while digital channels add precision targeting and interactivity. By combining the strengths of these channels, marketers can achieve exponential results.

Practical Recommendations for Marketers

• Adopt a Holistic Approach
  Marketers should move beyond isolated strategies and focus on how different media channels work together. For example, combining TV’s reach with YouTube’s engagement can strengthen brand resonance.
• Tailor the Media Mix to Campaign Goals
  Each campaign objective requires a unique mix of channels. Awareness campaigns may prioritize TV and social media, while conversion-focused campaigns might benefit from pairing digital ads with in-store promotions.
• Emphasize Brand Lifts Over Reach
  While reach is often the default metric for measuring campaign success, our findings highlight the importance of focusing on brand mindset lifts, such as changes in perception, awareness, and consideration.

Lessons from Walmart’s Strategy

Walmart’s success demonstrates the power of integrated advertising strategies. By combining traditional and digital channels, the company has created seamless consumer touchpoints that enhance brand performance. Other marketers can learn from this approach by investing in diverse media channels and ensuring alignment with campaign goals.

Integrated media strategies are no longer optional—they are essential for modern advertising success. By understanding the synergies among traditional and digital channels, marketers can craft campaigns that resonate with their target audiences and achieve transformative results.

Source: J. Jason Bell, Felipe Thomaz, and Andrew Stephen, “,” Journal of Marketing.

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A reveals a surprising solution: anthropomorphizing workout equipment—assigning human-like qualities to objects—can significantly boost exercise motivation. By fostering a sense of companionship, anthropomorphism turns solitary workouts into collaborative experiences. Our research team explores this phenomenon through eight experiments in which participants engaged with either anthropomorphized or standard fitness tools.

Key Findings: How Anthropomorphism Boosts Motivation

• Increased Exercise Plans: Participants who anthropomorphize their workout tools plan more ambitious routines and exercise with greater intensity.
• Companionship Effect: Imagining fitness tools as teammates makes workouts feel less daunting and more enjoyable.
• Enhanced Engagement Beyond Fitness: The motivational benefits extend to educational tools, making learning more engaging.

How It Works: Anthropomorphism in Practice

In one experiment, participants were introduced to a jump rope described as, “Hello! I am your workout partner,” while a control group received the standard description, “This is your workout tool.” Another experiment encouraged participants to imagine their treadmill as a person and describe its personality, creating a “workout buddy” effect.

When participants anthropomorphized their equipment, they reported feeling less alone during their exercise sessions. The imagined relationship between the individual and the equipment transformed a solitary task into an engaging interaction, much like working out with a friend. In the treadmill study, for instance, participants who imagined the treadmill’s personality not only exercised longer but also pushed themselves harder. These feelings of support and partnership reduced the mental barriers to starting or continuing exercise.

Interestingly, participants also described their anthropomorphized tools as being “cheerleaders” or “encouraging friends” rather than just objects. This framing boosted confidence and increased expectations of success, further reinforcing motivation. By cultivating a sense of collaboration, anthropomorphism redefines the exercise experience, making it less about effort and more about teamwork.

Practical Insights for Marketers

Marketers and product designers can leverage these findings to enhance user engagement. Here’s how:

• Human-Like Features: Fitness tools and apps can integrate friendly interfaces, supportive messages, or avatars to foster a sense of partnership.
• Collaborative Messaging: Marketing campaigns should emphasize teamwork, using phrases like, “Let’s tackle this together!” to build user trust and motivation.
• Targeting Diverse Audiences: Understanding the demographic most likely to benefit from anthropomorphic tools—such as beginners or individuals lacking external support—can refine marketing strategies.

Limitations of Anthropomorphism

While anthropomorphism can be effective, its impact is situational and has boundaries:

• Presence of Real Companions: The motivational boost is less significant when a human workout partner is present.
• Inherently Fun Tools: Equipment already perceived as enjoyable (e.g., dance-based workouts) receives less added benefit from anthropomorphic features.
• Controlling Framing: Tools framed as strict “coaches” or “supervisors” can reduce autonomy and diminish enjoyment.

Implications for Public Health

Anthropomorphism’s potential extends beyond fitness, offering applications in education and other self-improvement contexts. By humanizing tools, public health campaigns can create engaging experiences that drive behavioral change.

For instance, educational apps can incorporate friendly, human-like study aids to make learning less intimidating and more enjoyable. Similarly, fitness campaigns targeting inactive populations can emphasize collaboration with anthropomorphic tools to bridge the gap between intention and action.

Broader Applications and Lessons for Practitioners

Consumers should seek out workout tools or apps with well-designed anthropomorphic features to sustain motivation and build long-term commitment. For businesses, investing in anthropomorphic design is a strategic move that enhances consumer well-being and fosters brand loyalty and repeat use.

As physical inactivity and sedentary lifestyles rise globally, stakeholders in public health, marketing, and product design should integrate anthropomorphic elements into their offerings. By doing so, they can help reframe traditionally burdensome tasks as collaborative, enjoyable experiences. Whether tackling fitness or education, the right “partner” can make all the difference.

Source: Lili Wang and Maferima TourĂ©-Tillery, “,”  Journal of Marketing.

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In a , we investigate whether firms traditionally recognized as close competitors exhibit the same rivalry online through similar content strategies or whether they adopt more unique approaches on X. In a competitive digital landscape, marketers realize the importance of differentiating their social media strategies from competitors. Platforms like X offer distinct features such as real-time interaction, community building, and content co-creation that significantly enhance a firm’s ability to stand out. We explore whether and how firms might differentiate themselves from close competitors using X.

Our study examines 199 large consumer-facing retail brands on X over a five-year period, using a novel metric to assess content similarity between these firms and their closest traditional competitors. Results show firms that diverge from their competitors’ strategies benefit from higher engagement and attract new followers more quickly.

Three Tiers of Tweets

A key discovery from our study is a hierarchical structure in content creation strategies. To better understand how firms differentiate their content strategies, we classify tweets into ten distinct categories, grouped into three tiers:

1. All firms we studied produced content to some degree in the five categories that represent the bottom tier, which focus on one-way information dissemination. Examples include promotional messages or product updates.
2. A majority of firms (61%) also adopted content strategies that focused on community engagement.
3. An even lower number of firms, around 35%, added content strategies that focused on user interaction and co-creation.

Firms that focus on community building and co-creation not only differentiate their content strategies from their close competitors but also perform better in terms of engagement and follower growth. In contrast, firms that are more similar to their competitors primarily create content in the base tier, where the content strategy is focused on vertical differentiation from the closest competitors.

The firms that perform best on social media are those that build strong relationships with their followers. These companies excel by using strategies that go beyond simple promotions to create interactive experiences. For example, some firms organize events or launch campaigns that encourage users to share their own content, participate in conversations, or provide feedback on new products. This level of engagement helps differentiate these firms from their competitors and results in stronger brand loyalty.

Our research also highlights the importance of adaptability in social media strategy. As social media platforms like X evolve to offer new tools and features, firms that are quick to adapt and leverage these features are more likely to succeed.

Lessons for Marketers

For marketers and business leaders, the implications of our study are clear. Firms should use novel solutions to monitor competitors’ strategies and focus on differentiating their content strategies if they want to succeed on social media platforms. This means moving beyond basic promotions and embracing strategies that engage users, foster community, and encourage interaction and co-creation. Retailers that can leverage these effectively will see the greatest returns in terms of engagement and follower growth.

Our findings provide vital lessons for Chief Marketing Officers:

• Firms can rank competitors by dissimilarity of content to determine which of their top traditional competitors have a potential social media competitive advantage. This mapping of competitors can help firms better understand their own position in the social media competitive space and strategically develop their own social media content toward further differentiation.

• Firms can use our hierarchical structure to better design their social media differentiation strategies. Our hierarchy connects specific content strategies with engagement on X. It is important for managers to know the capabilities of social media and how they can leverage those capabilities to increase social media engagement.

• To maximize engagement, firms could use emerging novel AI-based solutions that allow monitoring of competitors’ actions and content in real time.

• Managers should use memorable hashtags to create valuable communities of social media followers around their products, events, interactive marketing campaigns, and contests involving followers in value co-creation and co-innovation.

• Platform providers can design mechanisms to facilitate co-creation interactions between firms and followers. For instance, a social media platform might offer a functionality to create “virtual design labs” where firms would initiate discussions around new products and invite ideas and user-generated content from followers. Such value-added features can be priced differently and would serve as additional revenue streams for platforms.

Source: Mikhail Lysyakov, P.K. Kannan, Siva Viswanathan, and Kunpeng Zhang, “,” Journal of Marketing.

Go to the Journal of Marketing

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