Marketing | INSEAD Knowledge

Marketing

INSEAD Insights: September 2023 Research Picks

Lily Fang

Recent findings on online marketplace dynamics, new market creation, trust in AI, diversity in corporate boards and consumer choices.

Marketing

How Tech Transforms Luxury Brands’ Value Proposition

David Dubois

Luxury brands are increasingly leveraging technology to reduce uncertainty and enrich experience throughout the customer journey.

Marketing

How Luxury Consumers Can Seem More Authentic

S. Jung, A. J. Yap, C. Chen

Consumers can mitigate the negative social consequences of wearing luxury items by publicly revealing their passion for the products or brands.

Marketing

Customer Engagement in a Circular Economy

W. Ulaga, C. Senn

Embracing circular business models unlocks opportunities for companies to engage with customers, optimise resource utilisation and ensure a sustainable future.

Responsibility

From Super-Sized to Superior Gratification

Pierre Chandon

Why we need to focus on eating as pleasure if we want to start eating healthier.

Responsibility

Thoughtful Consumption for Well-Being and Sustainability

H. Plassmann, S. Rangan, E. Hansmeyer

Understanding consumer behaviour is key to making fashion more sustainable.

Operations

How Large Mergers Can Benefit Smaller Players

Xabier Barriola

Joint ventures between dominant incumbents can create opportunities for smaller firms to enter the market and capture market share.

Marketing

Five Ways to Optimise Your Subscription Model

W. Ulaga, M. Mansard

With more global distributors launching subscription models, retailers and consumer-packaged goods manufacturers must level up their offerings to stand out from the crowd.

Marketing

Cutting Through the Metaverse Hype

P. Zemsky, C. Poole, N. Bokil, C. Smith

The barriers to mainstream metaverse adoption and the key opportunities and challenges it presents.

Marketing

How Slow-Motion Video Ads Make Products More Luxurious

S. Jung, D. Dubois

Slowing down the speed of video ads can boost consumers' desires for the featured product or brand.

Marketing

When Feeling Good Feels Morally Wrong

S. Lin, T. Reich, T. Kreps

After witnessing human suffering, people believe it is more appropriate to prolong negative emotions than repair their mood.

Marketing

Putting a Price on Private Data

G. Tomaino, K. Wertenbroch, D. Walters

People value their private data higher in cash than in digital goods or services.

Marketing

Healthy Eating Interventions That Work

P. Chandon, K. L. Haws, P. J. Liu

Mutually beneficial solutions for the food industry, health and the environment.

Career

The Problem With Being Too Easy-going

A. Barasch, K. Woolley, P. J. Liu

Failure to express your preferences in everyday situations can make you seem less likeable and even slightly less human.

Marketing

How to Get More Value from Less Food

Pierre Chandon

Marketing focused on the multisensory properties of food can encourage people to eat less and experience more pleasure.

Responsibility

Americans Underestimate the Impact of Voter Suppression

G. Tomaino, Z. Carmon, A. Mazar, W. Wood

Voting suppression is on the rise, but many Americans fail to anticipate the harm of seemingly minor voting restrictions.

Marketing

NFTs as a Force for Good: The Savvy Salamanders

A. Rane, P. Kireyev

How a group of MBA students built a community of crypto pioneers and a unique approach to fundraising. 

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Marketing

Online Feedback Requests Are Effective, Even if Ignored

M. Rubin, D. Perez, G. Oestreicher-Singer, L. Zalmanson

Requesting feedback from online users can influence their behaviour, even when the requests go unanswered.

Marketing

A “Human” Understanding of the World Through AI

David Midgley

Information search could be made less biased and more holistic through the lens of empathy.

Marketing

How to Shoot for the Holy Grail of Social Media Marketing

Abhishek Borah

Quality, consistent and simple messaging is what will bring in sales. The rest is just noise.

Marketing

Healthy in the Wrong Way: When Food Marketers Don’t Listen

P. Chandon, R. Cadario

The meaning of “healthy” is constantly evolving, and food marketers are not always meeting consumers’ expectations.

Marketing

Consumer Streaks Are Motivating – The Key Is Keeping Them Alive

A. Barasch, J. Silverman

People often go out of their way to repeat a behaviour if it is logged and highlighted to them.

Strategy

Why the Customer Isn’t Always Right

Alixandra Barasch

Consumer behaviour on food-logging tools reveals initial expectations don’t match actual experience.

Operations

Mind the Inventory Risk: Price Paradox Under Competition

A. Ovchinnikov, H. Pun, G. Raz

In competitive environments, operational innovation could well be the answer to inventory risk.

Marketing

Unlock the Full Value of Your Business Relationships

Christoph Senn

A fruitful relationship starts with asking the right – and sometimes difficult – questions.

Responsibility

Not All Heroes Wear Capes. They May Just Have More Willpower

Amit Bhattacharjee

We instinctively see people with stronger self-control as more virtuous and more capable of realising good intentions.

Career

The Pitfalls of Flaunting Your Social Status

A. Barasch, S. Srna, D. Small

Ditch the luxury logos if you want to be seen as a cooperative team player.

Economics & Finance

Where a Firm’s Value Truly Lies

F. Belo, M. A. Vitorino

A new approach to uncovering the sum of all the parts of a modern firm.

Marketing

Why Facebook Is Rebranding Itself as Meta

Klaus Wertenbroch

Is the tech company dodging bad publicity or creating a gatekeeper economy?

Marketing

Why Investors’ Memories May Be Bad for Their Wealth

D. Walters, P. Fernbach

How positive bias can lead overconfident investors to inflate the size of their wins and forget their losses.

Marketing

Marketing Automation: Utopia or Dystopia?

Klaus Wertenbroch

Firms must take consumer psychology into account and resist the temptation to maximise short-term profits at the cost of consumers.

Marketing

We All Want to Be Good – Then Life Happens

Stephanie Lin

Starting with the best of intentions, people overestimate their ability to follow through.

Marketing

How Social Media Makes for Happier Families

David Dubois

There is a hydraulic relationship between domestic happiness and exposure to social media content opposite to our views.

Marketing

How Tech Can Make You Happier, Fitter and More Popular

Alixandra Barasch

Three rules to optimise the influence of your smartphone on your well-being.

Marketing

The Neuroscience of Eating

B. Kessler, H. Plassmann

An entire biological ecosystem – encompassing complex connections between our gut and brain – underpins our daily food choices.

Marketing

How Executives Should – and Shouldn’t – Engage With Customers

C. Senn, N. Capon

When done the right way, customer engagement can turn into a lucrative opportunity.

Marketing

Weight Loss Surgery Reduces Susceptibility to Food Marketing

H. Plassman, P. Chandon

Behavioural and neuroscience research by INSEAD and Sorbonne Université suggest bariatric surgery does a lot more than just help patients lose weight.

Marketing

The Digital Transformation of the “Mad Men” Model

D. Dubois, J. Teoh

The ad agency business needs to reinvent itself and embrace the two key challenges of the coming decade.

Marketing

Why Putting Your Phone Away Isn’t the Answer

Alixandra Barasch

Interaction on social media during an event increases our enjoyment in the moment and beyond.

Marketing

Making the Shift to Digital Sales in B2B

Joerg Niessing & Fred Geyer

The old methods of demand generation won’t work in the always-online era.

Marketing

The Tension-Filled World of Luxury Consumption

David Dubois

Recent research highlights how luxury consumers are pulled in different, often contradicting directions.

Marketing

How to Appease Your Customers After Your Algorithm Rejects Them

K. Wertenbroch, P. Kireyev, G. Tomaino

No one likes to hear “computer says no”. But there may be more ways to be transparent about algorithm-driven rejections than you think.

Marketing

Comparison Shopping in the Age of Information Overload

Daniel Walters

When consumers try to estimate a product specification, their best guess depends on whether they believe that they forgot this information or that they were never exposed to it.

Marketing

Making the Commute of the Future Happen

G. Tomaino, Z. Carmon

Mobility as a service (MaaS) is an attractive form of public transportation that offers a variety of benefits. Enticing consumers to abandon their private cars, however, will be tricky.

Marketing

Beyond Covid-19: Remodelling the Future of Fashion

D. Dubois, D. Teo

The industry is set to become less cyclical, less vicarious and more transparent.

Marketing

How Luxury Is Reinventing Itself

A. J. Yap, L. Lim, C. Y. Chen

Luxury brands must secure a place in the hearts and minds of their customers, their partners and the public.

Marketing

Building Digital Resilience Around the Customer

J. Niessing, D. Dubois, A. Bejjani

Resilient businesses use digital technologies, data and analytics to create long-term customer value.

Marketing

What Drives Consumers to Share Online Content

Abhishek Borah

How to craft social media posts that drive both clicks and profits.

Marketing

Happiness Is a (Small) Piece of Cake

Pierre Chandon

Children inaccurately expect larger portions of a snack to be more enjoyable. A sensory imagery intervention can help them select healthier portion sizes.

Marketing

To Succeed With Neuromarketing, What Do You Need to Know?

H. Plassmann, A. Ling

Much of the classic market research advice applies to consumer neuroscience as well – but the emerging field also features unique challenges.

Marketing

What’s Up Front? The True Influence of Nutrition Labels in Real Life

Paulo Albuquerque & Pierre Chandon

A major randomized controlled trial finds that nutrition labels help healthier foods but do not hurt junk foods, leading to a much smaller boost than in lab studies.

Marketing

How Corporates Can Leverage Start-ups Against COVID-19

Joerg Niessing

Top start-ups may be a critical resource for recovery, providing quick solutions where they’re needed most.

Marketing

Consumer Autonomy Violations and the Coming AI Backlash

Z Carmon, R Schrift, K Wertenbroch & H Yang

The profoundly beneficial impact of AI-based systems may be blunted in the 2020s, if Big Tech isn’t careful.

Marketing

Discovering the Hidden Drivers of Decision Making

A time-tested technique from academic research can help practitioners better understand their stakeholders.

Marketing

The Neuroscience Behind What the Crowd Thinks

Leonie Koban

Information about how others feel about pain has an outsized effect on our own response to it.

Marketing

How Many Bad Customer Reviews Is Too Many? One

Paulo Albuquerque & Marton Varga

Sellers should focus less on cultivating a forest of positive reviews, and more on the state of each tree.

Marketing

Strategising Customisation and Privacy in the Digital Age

D. Dubois, J. Teoh

Five golden rules to effectively balance personalisation and customer protection.

Marketing

Employees as Social Media Influencers

Pawel Korzynski

How organisations can get workers to post more company-related content willingly.

Marketing

Three Cornerstones of Global Retail Innovation

V. (Paddy) Padmanabhan

INSEAD experts and industry executives drill down to the basic human needs driving changes in retail.

Marketing

The Growing Power of Marketers in the Business World

Abhishek Borah

Within the field, marketing communications are on an uptrend, while channel management is declining.

Marketing

Why Companies Should Seek Higher Damages for Counterfeiting

Z Carmon, M Amar, D Ariely, H Yang

Bogus items can psychologically “infect” the real items they’re copied from.

Marketing

Which Healthy Eating Nudges Work Best?

Pierre Chandon

Our framework shows how to guide consumers to choose healthier food options.

Marketing

An Unexpected Product Benefit Can Be a Powerful Marketing Tool

A. Chattopadhyay, J.C. Kim, M. Wadhwa, W. Wang

Framing a product feature as an unexpected benefit may stoke consumer desire.

Marketing

A Non-Scientist’s Guide to the Neuromarketing Toolkit

Hilke Plassmann & Aiqing Ling

Marketers need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the six main tools of neuromarketing.

Marketing

Driving B2B Digital Transformation Through Customer-centricity

Three steps to go beyond classic segmentation and unpack relationships with customers.

Marketing

What (Not) to Do in the Crosshairs of Digital Disruption

The downfall of iconic Swiss travel agency Kuoni exemplifies the grave options available to companies with pre-internet business models.

Marketing

Revolution in B2B Retail: From Perfume to Platform Economy

David Dubois

In the digital age where consumers and brands are connected like never before, B2B retailers need to embrace new business models and pivot into platforms.

Marketing

Coffee Pods: Tied Goods and the Pursuit of Profit

Maria Ana Vitorino

How licensing and price competition can lead to win-win agreements.

Marketing

Four Ways Foods Claim to Be “Healthy"

Pierre Chandon

Front-of-package claims influence perceptions, despite no link to actual nutritional quality.

Marketing

Rekindling an Old Flame on a Zero-Based Budget

How 3G Capital made Burger King cool again.

Marketing

Turn Free Services into Paid Opportunities to Grow Your Business

Wolfgang Ulaga & Stefan Michel

Instead of blindly giving away complementary services, B2B companies should make a strategic decision on whether to kill it, bill it or keep it free.

Marketing

The Little-Known Quirk in the Way Our Brain Evaluates Goals

A. Chattopadhyay, A. Stamatogiannakis, D. Chakravarti

Contrary to popular belief, pursuing a modest positive change is sometimes perceived as easier than maintaining the status quo.

Marketing

How Brands Can Stay Relevant in the Digital Age

The brands that mean the most to consumers aren’t always the ones you’d expect.

Marketing

The Bright Side of Busyness

A. Chattopadhyay, M. Wadwa, J. C. Kim

Subtly reminding people how busy they are can nudge them to make virtuous choices.

Marketing

How Managers Can Curb Overconfidence

Taking the time to consider unknowns helps executives make better decisions.

Marketing

How Luxury Brands Can Combat Pop-Up Fatigue

Modern-day temporary retail blurs the line between shopping and marketing – thus demanding a strategy of its own.

Marketing

How Political Ideology Shapes Luxury Spending

D. Dubois, J. C. Kim, B. Park

Conservatives are more likely to buy luxury when they believe it can help them maintain their social position.

Marketing

Why Meeting Customers’ Expectations Isn’t Enough

Happy customers may come back, but only customers who are thrilled will recommend your product.

Marketing

How Testosterone Influences Men’s Preferences for Luxury Products

H. Plassmann, D. Dubois, G. Nave

A man’s testosterone level can tell you the type of products he may gravitate towards.

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Marketing

Does Your Brain Structure Influence Your Food Choices?

Neuroanatomy may help explain why some people are better than others at resisting food temptations.

Career

How to Hire a Rock Star Chief Marketing Officer

The ten qualities you should look for when interviewing potential CMOs for your start-up.

Marketing

How Marketing Can Help Tech Start-Ups Survive

Fewer start-ups would fail if marketers had a bigger say in the 4 Ps of the marketing mix.

Marketing

Selling Kids on Healthy Eating

Marketers and parents both have a role to play in combating the global childhood obesity crisis.

Marketing

Start-Ups: Stop Wasting Your Marketing Budget

Having the best product won’t help your start-up without a focus on segmentation, targeting and positioning.

Marketing

Where Is Consumer Research Going Next?

Consumer behaviour may be influenced by a host of neurobiological factors that science is just beginning to understand.

Marketing

How to Build a Brand Pyramid

A vital tool that will help you define the very essence of your brand.

Marketing

Think You’re Immune to Advertising? Think Again

Benjamin Kessler & Steven Sweldens

With literally thousands of ads hitting us every day, it’s impossible to avoid being influenced.

Marketing

How Academics Can Rebuild Trust in Science

The tools for overcoming declining trust in science lie in science itself.

digital to optimise customer experience.jpg

Marketing

Leveraging Digital to Optimise the Customer Experience

A broad array of new digital tools and trends can help you re-imagine the customer journey.

Kickstarter Backers Like Novelty or Usefulness.jpg

Marketing

Kickstarter Backers Like Novelty or Usefulness, Not Both

Amitava Chattopadhyay

To attract the most crowdfunding, a product should be framed as either new or useful.

Marketing

Marketers Should Leverage, Not Fight, Consumer Habits

Wendy Wood

Old habits are a powerful yet overlooked driver of consumer resistance to new products.

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Marketing

The Four Types of Big Data That Matter for CMOs

David Dubois & Gilles Haumont

C-level executives lack a clear typology of the digital data that can help marketing strategists unlock value.

Marketing

How Marketing Can Trick Our Brains

Hilke Plassmann & Liane Schmidt

Marketing cues can influence the neurobiology underlying our feelings and behaviour.

Strategy

Amazon-Whole Foods Is Not About to Wipe Out Supermarkets

P. Padmanabhan & D. Lecossois

Amazon will gain access to new capabilities in retail, but the challenge to traditional supermarkets will come from elsewhere.

Marketing

How Your Firm Can Reignite Sales Growth

Connecting with a fundamental consumer concern can give your brand purpose and create a platform for long-term profitable growth.

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Marketing

Two New Commandments of Customer Engagement

Mark Hunter, Luk Van Wassenhove & Maria Besiou

Fields as disparate as journalism and technology have a common route to success in the digital era.

Marketing

Drunk on Vodka and Marketing

Branding and advertising energy drinks as elixirs of sexual prowess and risk taking makes for a dangerous mixer with alcohol.

control deprivation functional products.jpg

Marketing

Consumers Who Lack Control Seek Functional Products

Andy J. Yap & Charlene Y. Chen

Framing a product as functional can appeal to those who feel a loss of control.

Marketing

Responding to “Fake News” in the Post-Truth Era

Accusations that have no basis in reality can be surprisingly damaging. But there are some ways to weaken them.

Marketing

Using History to Motivate Change

Creative and entrepreneurial employees thrive on a sense of the organisational past.

Marketing

Why It’s So Hard to Reverse Food Supersizing

Understanding size perceptions can help make consumers more receptive to both downsizing and supersizing.

Marketing

Lessons in Digital Transformation from the Hotel Industry

Integrating content creation, curation and dissemination skills into business operations is a must to meet the challenges brought by e-disruptions.

Marketing

For a Healthy Holiday and a Merry New Year, Listen to Epicurus

Overeating is typical during the holiday season, but you can enjoy yourself more by eating less.

Marketing

Disrupting a Traditional Industry by Breaking its Rules

Joerg Niessing

An INSEAD alumnus takes on the global beverage business.

Marketing

When Advertising is Just a Waste of Money

The tipping point when the unrestrained repetition of ads goes from informative to downright irritating.

Responsibility

Customer Orientation Drives Environmental Innovation

Firms adopting environmental management practices are customer-oriented.

Marketing

Why More Businesses Should Consider Flat Pricing

Flat pricing can represent a win-win for customers and firms.

Why Forcing Market Change can be a Good Strategy

Marketing

Why Forcing Market Change Is Good Strategy

Apple is forcing change on the market again and that’s no bad thing.

Marketing

Growing a Brand in a Stigmatised Industry

The recreational cannabis industry holds lessons for building brands in an industry with negative associations.

Marketing

Attractive Salespeople Don’t Always Boost Sales

Attractive sales people may actually decrease shoppers’ purchase intentions.

Strategy

Mobilising Online Communities to Your Cause

Vinika Rao & Parminder Singh

Social media can amplify a message or start a movement, but there are fundamental rules for success.

Marketing

Welcome to the Social Media Shopping Mall

The future of e-commerce belongs to social apps like China’s WeChat. Here’s how brands can start preparing.

Matteo Altobelli The choice between more followers or greater engagement

Marketing

The Limits of Social Media Engagement

When brands reach a certain number of followers, engagement starts to drop.

Annet Aris Cornering new markets in the digital economy

Marketing

The Fight for a Smaller Slice of the Pie

The digital economy is setting new rules for cornering market share.

Marketing

Making Digital Marketing Strategy Work

Joerg Niessing & David Dubois

Three fundamental principles are at the core of successful digital marketing campaigns.

Marketing

Ad Hoc Promotions Can’t Buy Customer Loyalty

Jasjit Singh & Serguei Netessine

Short-term promotions disconnected from your overall strategy will not give your business a lasting lift.

Marketing

Getting Emerging Market Brands to the World Stage

Transferability of core brand propositions, deep understanding of local markets and the ability to celebrate their origins and legacy are key factors that will influence the success of emerging market brands on the global stage.

Marketing

The Considerations for Launching an Innovation

Contrary to popular belief, innovations don’t sell themselves. Successful adoption depends on how brands position themselves and how much they listen to their customers.

Marketing

Manipulating Consumers is Not Marketing

Consumers increasingly view marketing as manipulation. It is important to dispel this notion and the profession should take steps to do so.

Marketing

Finding New Possibilities in Online Data

Analytic techniques developed by academics can help marketing professionals extract useful insights from customer data.

Marketing

Do Happy Customers Lead to Happy Shareholders?

Customer satisfaction has an impact on firm value if, and only if, marketing managers make the right investments.

Marketing

Close Friends Could Darken Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Customers in tight-knit groups are more likely to be negative about products or services to protect each other, but when consumers in large, disparate groups interact, they are more positive to boost their social position.

Henrich Greve Protect your firm against customer panic

Marketing

When Customers Panic

Even loose association with a similar firm embroiled in scandal or facing difficulty can mean ruin for a healthy company. But there are measures to protect your business against guilt by association.

Marketing

Brain Imaging Triggers Marketing Breakthroughs

The holy grail of marketing—a universal predictor of customer behaviour—may be closer than ever, thanks to recent advances in the field of neuromarketing.