Marketing ZFP – Journal of Research and Management publishes four issues and 16-20 peer-reviewed articles per year. As subscriber you find fulltext access (PDF) and search function to the complete archive of all issues on elibrary.vahlen.de.
Please find detailed information on the current issues below:
ISSUE 2/2025
Einfühlung: Overview of Theory Components and Test in Advertising Settings
Nadine Brauckmann and Heribert Gierl
Einfühlung describes processes of imitating the postures, movements, and emotions of other people, which lead to immediate sensations of oneness of the observer with these people. The fundamentals of this theory have been developed by historical German philosophers more than a hundred years ago. Contemporary researchers added theories and empirical findings (concept of the malleable self, mirror neurons, EMG and fMRI-based studies). We identified two gaps in this research. First, while there are some publications that we attribute to research on Einfühlung, there is a lack of an overview of the entire model that combines its elements, e.g., sensations of oneness are not clearly investigated. We present the historical conceptual model of Einfühlung and then report the major lines of research to date. Second, we consider advertising in the mass-media and assume that viewers of commercials can develop Einfühlung with actresses and actors when these persons’ movements provide opportunities for bodily and emotional imitations. The theory of Einfühlung could therefore be a topic in research on advertising effectiveness and therefore tested in this field. We created pairs of promotional videos – one that offered more opportunity for bodily and emotional imitation of actresses and actors and one that provided fewer such opportunities – for a large sample of brands and non-profit-organizations and tested the model of Einfühlung. Our results show that commercials are more effective when they offer more opportunities for imitation. (->to the Executive Summary)
On the Use of Alternative-Specific Designs in Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis
Anastasia Mirow, Peter Kurz, and Winfried J. Steiner
In this paper, we’d like to draw the attention of marketing academics and marketing practitioners to the use of alternative-specific designs (ASD) for choice-based conjoint (CBC) studies in marketing research. As opposed to transportation research, where the ASD approach for discrete choice experiments (DCE) or discrete choice modeling in general originated from and is still widely used, this design method rather tends to lead a shadowy existence in marketing research despite its obvious superiority for generating more realistic choice situations for respondents compared to the application of the generic designs. The latter are commonly employed in conjoint experiments in a marketing context, for example for product design and related market simulations and optimizations. We discuss why and when it is recommendable to use an ASD, propose a typology for characterizing different types of ASD structures, and work out the particularities of interpreting the estimation results of an ASD-CBC model and calculating related willingness-to-pay quantities. For illustration, we use an empirical example based on an ASD-CBC study on consumer preferences for electric vehicles in the UK. We further point to advanced modeling options for enriching or extending ASD-CBC models, including alternative-specific hybrid choice models and nonlinear utility specifications. Finally, we discuss the state-of-the-art how artificial intelligence (AI) is already influencing the domain of conjoint analysis and DCE. (->to the Executive Summary)
The Effect of Information on Money-Back Guarantees on Brand Attribute Perceptions and Choices in Competitive Markets
Amir Heiman, Lutz Hildebrandt, and Udo Wagner
During the last decade, the share of online purchases in the apparel market has increased substantially. However, the quantity and the costs of handling product returns negatively affected various fashion category profits. Some retailers responded by reducing money-back guarantee quality or offering deep discounts to mitigate risks, though the long-term profitability effects remain unclear. This study analyzes how comparative information on money-back guarantees and pricing strategies influences buying decisions. The authors conduct research based on extant literature, an analytical model, and an empirical study in the Israeli apparel market. While such comparative information affects consumer perceptions of brand attributes to a certain extent, it only modestly affects purchase probabilities. As managerial takeaway results recommend being cautious when generously extending money-back guarantee duration periods beyond the requirements set by regulators because such extensions might be costly but less impactful. (->to the Executive Summary)