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 1/2026
Choice-Based Conjoint for Designing Home Appliances: Human Versus Silicon Samples of Respondents
Daniel Baier, Danilo Randazzo, and Maximilian Unger
Some researchers assume that Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has the potential to augment or even replace traditional market research. In this paper, we explore whether this assumption holds for Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis (CBC) studies, taking an investigation in the home appliance industry as an example: Choices among sets of multi-attributed stimuli are generated for digital twins of a sample of potential home appliance buyers (a so-called silicon sample of respondents). Then, partworth estimates from these choices are compared to estimates from corresponding human choices. As an experimental factor, GenAI generates these choices under varying amounts of provided information from company experts and preliminary studies. The results are encouraging: Even for a CBC study with innovative attribute-levels, partworth estimates from GenAI choices come close to partworth estimates from human choices, at least at the aggregate level and when market-related information of experts and/or from preliminary studies is provided. However, at the individual level and when additional information is not provided, GenAI choices lead to partworth estimates whose validity is almost equivalent to that of partworth estimates from random choices. (-> Executive Summary)
Empowering Consumers, Building Brands: How Crowdsourcing Contests Strengthen Brand Passion
Volker Bilgram, Alexander Hahn, and Johann Füller
Crowdsourcing contests are often viewed as open innovation tools. This article shows that they can also strengthen emotional consumer- brand relationships. Drawing on psychological empowerment theory, the study examines how perceived empowerment during participation in a crowdsourcing contest influences changes in brand passion. Using multisource data from a real-world SWAROVSKI GEMS™ contest, the findings show that empowerment is positively associated with increases in brand passion. This relationship is strengthened by relationship motivation and perceived fairness, while reward motivation does not significantly weaken the effect. The study contributes to research on consumer empowerment, co-creation, and brand passion by identifying empowerment as a psychological mechanism through which participatory brand initiatives foster affective consumer- brand relationships. (-> Executive Summary)