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Schulich Leads the Future of Marketing
Through steadfast research leadership by Schulich’s faculty members, the Schulich School of Business is able to not only generate new ways of understanding current market trends but further develop them into actionable insights for the business world of tomorrow through the Future of Marketing Institute.
Schulich was ranked
Schulich’s Marketing professors continue to release new research on everything from health crisis advertising (timely during the pandemic) to how social media manipulates the perception of calorie-dense food. The Future of Marketing Institute (FMI), funded and supported by Schulich, continues to bring together industry partners, technology companies, and major brands to interact with the brightest minds in academia.
In November 2021, Schulich was ranked 10th in the world and #1 in Canada in marketing research published from 2015–2020 in the Journal of Consumer Research, the world’s leading academic journal on consumer research, according to a University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) business school research ranking.
The ranking is based on a database created by the UTD’s Naveen Jindal School of Management, which tracks publications in 24 leading business journals across a wide range of major disciplines. The database contains titles and author affiliations of papers published in these journals since 1990. The information in the database is then used to provide global and regional rankings based on the total research contributions of various business school faculties.
“The UTD ranking is a real testament to the strength of the consumer behaviour research coming out of our School’s Marketing area, as well as confirmation of the world-class expertise and research being conducted by our faculty,” said Dean Detlev Zwick, who is also the Tanna H. Schulich Chair in Digital Marketing Strategy.
DEAN DETLEV ZWICK
Tanna H. Schulich Chair in Digital Marketing Strategy
Markus Giesler, Professor of Marketing, was elected in June 2020 as one of the editors of the Journal of Consumer Research, the most prestigious journal focused on scholarly research that describes and explains consumer behaviour.
Giesler is an expert on marketing and consumer behaviour with a specific sociological focus on how consumer behaviour shapes cultural and market systems. His published articles in leading social science journals, such as the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Research have reached a wider audience through coverage in major media outlets such as The New York Times, Time Magazine, BusinessWeek, Financial Times, Washington Post, and Wired. He has been named “one of the best recognized experts studying high-technology consumer behaviour” by Wired, one of “the 40 most outstanding business profs under 40 in the world” by Poets & Quants, one of “the young business school star professors on the rise” by CNN, and an MSI Scholar by the Marketing Science Institute. A study published in November 2020 in the Journal of Advertising shows that context harm crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, require not only bespoke advertising efforts for various communities and societies, but also an evolving, multistage approach not recognized in prior advertising literature on health messaging.
The research, based on consumerfocused advertising drawing implications for public health advertising, was undertaken by Professor Ela Veresiu in collaboration with Thomas Derek Robinson from the Business School (formerly Cass) at the City, University of London.
Associate Professor of Marketing, Nicole Mead, had a paper chosen over 300 other submissions for publication in the Journal of Marketing’s special issue on Better Marketing for a Better World in February 2021.
“This research has the potential to improve people’s lives in these challenging times. My co-authors and I have developed a simple, inexpensive, and easy-to-implement intervention that can help people to save more money,” said Mead.
Popping the Positive Illusion of Financial Responsibility Can Increase Personal Savings: Applications in Emerging and Western Markets argues that people hold unrealistically positive beliefs about their financial status because this enables them to feel good about themselves. However, these overly positive selfviews prevent people from saving. Therefore, researchers need to develop interventions which pop this positive illusion to encourage saving.
“Before the pandemic hit, many countries were reporting record low saving rates and record high debt loads. The pandemic made it very clear to both households and the government the importance of having an emergency savings fund. Hopefully expediting saving will continue to be a prominent conversation in the lives of people around the world,” Mead said.
ELA VERESIU
Associate Professor of Marketing
NICOLE MEAD
Associate Professor of Marketing
Research published in May 2021 in the Journal of Consumer Psychology indicates that the visual display of calorie-dense food is a key factor in boosting viewer engagement on social media.
According to the study, co-authored by Theodore Noseworthy, Professor of Marketing and the Canada Research Chair in Entrepreneurial Innovation and the Public Good, the caloric density of food dishes depicted on food sites positively influences social media engagement.
Their findings were published in a research paper titled, Content Hungry: How the Nutrition of Food Media Influences Social Media Engagement. The researchers examined the recipes and ingredients of hundreds of videos from Buzzfeed’s Tasty on Facebook using a text-processing algorithm. In particular, researchers determined that nutrients people can readily see, like saturated fats, are more likely to draw positive comments, likes and shares. A video summarizing the research paper can be found here.
“Understanding the specific characteristics that shape engagement on social media is of critical importance to content producers looking to tailor media towards viewer preferences, to advertisers seeking to increase impact, and to health advocates interested in helping consumers make better food choices.”
THEODORE NOSEWORTHY
Professor of Marketing and the Canada Research Chair in Entrepreneurial Innovation and the Public Good
Schulich’s Associate Professor of Marketing and Master of Marketing Program Director, Grant Packard, had one of his publications featured in the Harvard Business Review (HBR).
Packard and Jonah Berger from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania explored how a subtle aspect of how people talk — known as linguistic concreteness — can have an important impact on customers’ attitudes, purchase intentions, and even their actual purchases. Packard and Berger first analyzed the content of over 1,000 real customer service interactions from two different companies, one based in the U.S. and the other in Canada. Experiments revealed a significant increase in satisfaction and actual purchases when agents used more concrete words because it signals the agent is paying attention to the customer. “The fact that concrete language suggests to others that you’re listening makes sense,” says Packard. “If you’re not paying attention to someone, you can’t really reference the things they care about. By paying attention to the language their employees use, all kinds of organizations might help reduce customer anxiety and frustration, improve satisfaction, and build trust with customers in what are truly challenging times.”
GRANT PACKARD, Master of Marketing Program Director, and Jonah Berger from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania explored how a subtle aspect of how people talk — known as
Linguistic Concreteness
— can have an important impact on customers’ attitudes, purchase intentions, and even their actual purchases.
Professor Russell Belk’s recent work has included edited books on marketization in emerging markets, consumer culture in Asia, and childlikeness in adults. He has a book on digital consumption coming out in 2022. Belk has been fortunate to have had co-editors in Europe, Asia, and North America. Besides technology-related work he has also written about decolonizing marketing, creating original theory, what science fiction has to say about life after humans, property ownership and sharing, humility versus humiliation in old age, gay consumer coping, guest workers from India in the Middle East, ethical issues in AI, analogue consumption in a digital age, artificial life, consumer acceptance of new technologies, standing out versus fitting in, Hong Kong resistance to mainland Chinese shoppers, gift-giving over the life course, globalization, attempting to voice control our digital devices, art consumption, tattooing and the body, and our changing sense of self.
Belk has two current projects that he is excited about: “One, violence toward women and toward robot sex workers (using a story-writing technique to gather data), and two, experience of self in people who suffer from severe facial disfigurement. On the second project my co-author and I will work in Canada, the US, Turkey, and Taiwan.”
RUSSELL W. BELK
Professor of Marketing; Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing
Professor Eileen Fischer has recently published work with a number of Schulich PhD graduates and graduates-to-be. For example, research conducted with Associate Professor Marie-Agnes Parmentier of Montreal’s HEC, published in the Journal of Marketing and entitled “Working It: Managing Professional Brands in Prestigious Posts,” explores how professionals who land high-profile gigs can successfully manage their person-brands.
A study undertaken with Associate Professor Andrew Smith of Boston’s Suffolk University, published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and entitled “Pay Attention, Please! Person Brand Building in Organized Online Attention Economies,” focuses on how bloggers can successfully compete for audience attention in content platforms. And a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Psychology entitled “The Case for Qualitative Research” is co-authored with a doctoral candidate, Gulay Taltekin Guzel, who has recently taken a job in the Marketing Department at Bucknell University.
Recently, Professor Fischer received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland in recognition of her scholarly contributions to the fields of consumer culture, marketing and entrepreneurship research.
Professor Eileen Fischer has recently published work with a number of Schulich PhD graduates and graduates-to-be.
EILEEN FISCHER
Professor of Marketing; Anne and Max Tanenbaum Chair in Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise; Director, PhD Program
FUTURE OF MARKETING INSTITUTE
Marketing is changing at an unprecedented pace. Technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, neuromarketing, the Metaverse and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), are challenging traditional marketing thinking and practices. Marketers need to be on top of all these emerging technology fields. Schulich is at the forefront of understanding this change. The Future of Marketing Institute (FMI), a think-tank within Schulich, is a global leader in research, teaching, and outreach on future of marketing topics.
“Schulich’s Future of Marketing Institute is home to the latest research and thought leadership on the marketing trends and innovations that are transforming the field of marketing and business,” said Schulich Dean Detlev Zwick.
FMI is the publisher of the ‘Future of Marketing Magazine.’ The magazine is the most prominent digital publication on the topic, with 50,000+ readers and more than 1.4 million pages read. The magazine is widely respected and is considered an excellent resource for marketing professionals, academics, and students. It is curated daily by students in Schulich’s Master of Marketing program. In addition to the magazine, FMI offers weekly curated podcasts and videos on future of marketing topics. The Institute maintains an active LinkedIn site and tweets daily about leading-edge marketing topics. FMI is also a leader in producing and publishing original research on future of marketing topics. Recently, FMI staff have written articles on diverse topics, including virtual reality, the Internet of Senses, AR glasses, Holograms, the Metaverse, and CGI (virtual influencers).
In a recent article, FMI Executive Director David Rice and TrackDDB analyst Julia Orsini explored the possibility of ‘Advertising in Dreams.’ While advertising in dreams may sound like it falls within the realm of science fiction, advancements in our understanding of a new technique called Targeted Dream Induction, raise the possibility that this practice may widely be used in the future. Indeed, in their article, Rice and Orsini reference a recent petition by 30 sleep researchers to enact policies to protect consumers from the potential of advertising in dreams. *
The Future of Marketing Institute is the publisher of the ‘Future of Marketing Magazine.’ It is the most prominent digital publication on the topic, with
The magazine is curated daily by students in Schulich’s Master of Marketing program. In a recent article, FMI Executive Director David Rice and TrackDDB analyst Julia Orsini explored the possibility of
Check out this dystopian video called “Branded Dreams”. Even though the brand wasn’t mentioned, most people will recognize this is a dream (or nightmare) for Coca-Cola.
