Marketing (MKT)
Research area
Marketing
Keywords
Consumer Behaviour, Marketing Management and Strategy, Marketing Modelling
Mission of the programme
Contribute to the body of knowledge of marketing in a way that has academic rigour, leads to new scientific insights, and has practical relevance
Current programme coordinators
 | Gerrit van Bruggen Professor of Marketing |  | Benedict Dellaert Professor of Marketing |
 | Philip-Hans Franses Professor of Applied Econometrics & Professor of Marketing Research |  | Stijn van Osselaer Professor of Marketing |
 | Ale Smidts Professor of Marketing Research |  | Stefan Stremersch Professor of Marketing |
Background of the programme
This is an established research programme, which has significantly improved its productivity in the premier marketing research journals in the past six years.The marketing group is now one of the most productive research groups in marketing worldwide. The quality of our faculty and of our research has also received recognition from funding organisations like the European Union and the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO). Recently we received a number of substantial research grants. Finally, our faculty is increasingly present at editorial boards of the top research journals in marketing and part of conference organisation committees.
Programme design & leadership
Researchers are motivated to do research that is publishable in the top journals in our field. We provide our active researchers with ample research time and we make sure that we provide the right facilities to do the kind of research we are aiming for (our behavioural lab, computer equipment and software, databases etc.). Promotion possibilities are strongly linked to research output. We protect our junior faculty from administrative obligations and excessive teaching tasks. We stimulate them to work with various other top-level researchers both within and outside ERIM.
Problem formulation, goals, focus and methods
Our research group aims at covering all three major domains of research in marketing (Consumer Behaviour, Marketing Management and Strategy, and Marketing Modelling). Within these domains we study a large variety of topics (we elaborate on these later). It is our goal to do high-quality work and we focus on the top research journals as the outlets for our research. Given the breadth of our research group we apply a variety of methods, such as experimental research, survey research, and modeling data available from secondary sources.
Description of the programme and sub-programmes
Since 2004 the following developments have taken place in the three research domains in marketing: Consumer Behaviour, Marketing Management and Strategy, and Marketing Modelling. We distinguish between new areas of research and developments in existing lines of research.
CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR
In this area, behavioural decision making and social processes in consumer behaviour have been the focus of our research. Recently, some of this research has started to concentrate on issues with considerable consumer welfare implications.
In behavioural decision making, published and ongoing research has focused on the role of brands in consumer decisions and on the role of memory and learning processes in decision making. Other research investigates the role of surprise in consumer decisions. Ongoing research also involves the integration of behavioural decision making theory in econometric models of consumer behaviour, for example in the area of product search and consumer choice in complex decision environments. To this end experimental studies are conducted that are subsequently analysed with advanced econometric models. A new area of research with important consumer welfare implications involves impulsive decision processes, self control, and charitable, environmental and health-related decisions. Another stream of research involves behavioural aspects of sales person decision making and how to overcome elements such as the impact of anxiety in sales calls. Finally, work has started on the intersection between behavioural decision making and decision support systems.
Much of the research on social processes in consumer behaviour has focused on word-of-mouth (WOM). In three PhD projects, the antecedents and motives of WOM, the language used in WOM messages, and the persuasiveness of (financially stimulated) WOM referrals are studied. Other recent research in this area involves health communications, marketing communications involving children, the influence of mere social presence on advertising recall, and the influence of product placements. Much of this research has clear implications for public policy.
New sub-field of interest: Neuroeconomics / Neuromarketing
In this new research area we explore how neuroscience can inform consumer behaviour and decision-making and we establish how neuro-imaging methods (such as fMRI, MEG or EEG) can complement conventional research methods to advance our understanding of consumers and managers. Economics, psychology, and neuroscience are converging today into a single discipline with the ultimate aim of providing a general theory of human behaviour - Neuroeconomics. The goal of this discipline is to understand the processes that connect sensation and action by revealing the neurobiological mechanisms by which decisions are made. In this research we collaborate with neuroscientists from the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen. Recently, also collaboration has been established with the Erasmus Medical Center. A first project concerned the brain mechanisms of persuasive communication. Another line of research concerned the neurological underpinning of social influence in consumer decision making. Another line of research concerns identifying the specific brain mechanisms underlying very effective sales people.
MARKETING MANAGEMENT AND STRATEGY
Traditionally, the ERIM marketing programme in this domain has had a particular strength in the area of marketing management support systems (MMSS). In the past years we have been working on a variety of topics, including (a) analogical reasoning as a decision support system for weakly-structured marketing problems, (b) reality versus perception in the effectiveness of DSS, (c) the effect of feedback and learning on DSS evaluation, (d) factors that determine the success of CRM systems, (e) demand-driven systems for scheduling decisions in the movieindustry, (f) marketing dashboards, and (g) systems for supporting sales promotion decisions. Several of these projects (a, d, e, g) are carried out in cooperation with companies. In the domain of movie marketing several research projects were carried out on the optimal scheduling of movies in cinemas, combining a marketing approach for the prediction of visitor numbers with an OR approach for finding optimal schedules. In these project researchers from the ERIM Marketing group (Wierenga, Eliashberg) cooperated with researchers form the ERIM LIS group (Huisman and Wagelmans).
New sub-field of interest: Online Marketing, Marketing Channels & CRM
With the advent of the Internet and other recent advances in information technology, an interactive paradigm is emerging in marketing practice and research. This paradigm integrates large scale implementation and relatively low costs, with greater individual-level value creation and flexibility. This new research area investigates this phenomenon and places particular emphasis on its implications for channel management, online marketing and customer relationship management (CRM). Examples of research questions that are addressed include: “What is the impact of interactive environments on customer decision-making process?”, “How can firms optimise their interactions with consumers across multiple channels?”, “What is the value of different ongoing consumer-firm relationships?”, and “How does electronic Word-of- Mouth spread across customer networks?”
MARKETING MODELLING
We have substantially increased the size of our modelling group. In particular the number of researchers applying Bayesian statistics has grown. We feel that our intensive links with the Econometric Institute at the Erasmus School of Economics gives us a competitive advantage. To answer novel research questions in marketing the use of econometric models is often indispensable. The typical research questions in marketing and the typical properties of marketing data nowadays require the use of advanced econometric models. This research programme concerns the development and implementation of these advanced models. The specific form of the models depends on the problem and data at hand. The marketing research in our group can be characterised as looking for the model that best fits the data, bearing in mind the specific use of the model. Forecasting models can differ from descriptive models, and futher requirements will be needed when it comes to including models in decision support systems. For the latter, one may need to include competitive reactions, expectations of customers and endogenous retailer behaviour. A key aspect concerns the level of aggregation of the data. Data may be observed at the more aggregated level, like sales of a product category or the market share of a brand. These data can be analysed for example using multivariate time series models. To describe the behaviour of ‘individuals’ such as households, consumers or firms, we use models with a microeconomic foundation.
The quantitative marketing research contributes to the development and implementation of descriptive and predictive econometric models for aggregated as well as individual data. Furthermore, our contribution also concerns the development of estimation techniques and simulation methods for statistical analysis of these advanced econometric models.
The research in quantitative marketing can roughly be summarised in six specific research topics:
- Diffusion models are used to describe the penetration of a new product on the market
- Models for Sales and Market Shares
- Choice Behaviour
- Unobserved Heterogeneity
- Psychometrics
- International Diffusion Models
New field of interest: Technology & Life Science Marketing
In this new field, we address the marketing modelling problems that technology and life science companies face. Underlying disciplines are technology, economics, health economics, statistics and econometrics. We co-operate in this field with scholars worldwide at schools such as Duke University, Emory University, New York University, University of Pennsylvania, and Tel- Aviv University. Scholars are working on the following topics:
- (international) diffusion and adoption of new technologies and new life science therapies
- international launch and pricing of new pharmaceuticals
- the effectiveness of marketing instruments in these markets
- consumer or physician behaviour in life science markets
- organisational and consumer behaviour of technology choice
- behavioural economics and health decisions models
