Faculty in the News

“Even if people find her annoying, they don’t find her objectionable,” Lamberton said. In fact, even people who don’t like Flo do like Flo, because any character trait they cite as a reason for disliking her “reflects that there’s a very strong memory trace.” For advertisers, a character that stimulates mild irritation with every appearance is preferable to one that is innocuous, so long as the benign annoyance does not mutate into a strong negative association. Complaining about something trivial, Lamberton said, “is a very comforting experience.”

Advertising against a tragic event is a delicate calculation for American companies. Do they acknowledge the occasion and invite accusations of being opportunistic? Do they stay silent and risk appearing out of touch or unpatriotic? What is the border between commemoration and commercialization? Wharton Professor Cait Lamberton suggests that responses to these ads may depend less on moving graphics or evocative music, and more on the way that viewers’ lives have unfolded since that painful day.

As part of their popular “Brand Wars,” series, Wondery podcasts invited Dr. Cait Lamberton of The Wharton School to discuss whether various jeans were, “blue,” or “red,” and what the political connotations of brands mean for consumers, brands, and politics.

Why do people donate money to political campaigns? This question has vexed many scholars, especially because donations are often small and unlikely to affect the outcome of a race or curry influence with politicians.

A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research has a possible answer: The paper’s findings suggest that the main motivation for political giving is the same as it is for charitable giving—the donor is driven by his or her desire for the positive feeling that comes from doing something good.

The researchers noticed that the two kinds of giving often act like substitutes. When someone gives more to a political campaign, in other words, they are likely to give less to charity. The converse was also found to be true.

“Political contributions and charitable giving may satisfy the same psychological needs,” says Pinar Yildirim, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school and co-author of the study. Maria Petrova, Ricardo Perez-Truglia and Andrei Simonov are the study’s other authors.

To test whether charitable and political giving are interchangeable, the paper looked at contributions to the American Red Cross after a foreign natural disaster. The authors chose to focus on foreign catastrophes because they generate a lot of press coverage, which encourages people to donate, and, unlike domestic natural disasters, have little effect on Americans’ financial ability to donate.

The authors found that within six weeks of a foreign disaster, the American Red Cross tends to receive about a 27% increase in the amount of donations. After looking at data from the Federal Election Commission, the authors also found that in the same six-week period after a natural disaster, political donations decline by about 3.75%.

“That may seem small, but it’s statistically significant and could translate into a big loss over a campaign period for politicians, equating to about $562 million in political contributions,” says Dr. Yildirim.

The authors also tested whether upticks in political giving reduced charitable giving. They looked at political ads on TV, which encourage people to give to certain candidates. Television viewers often see different advertisements, depending on their market. The authors found that viewers in counties that saw more political ads increased their political giving by about 9.2% relative to an adjoining county that saw fewer political ads, and decreased charitable giving by about 0.7%. While the second number is small, it does illustrate that there is a relationship between the two, the authors say.

The authors looked to see if other explanations, like household budget constraints, could explain their results. But more charitable or political giving had no effect on spending on groceries, retail items or even lottery tickets.

“Past economic research has found that people tend to make mental buckets for groceries and other expenditures. It seems that charitable and political giving are often put in the same bucket,” says Dr. Yildirim.

It remains unclear how the substitution effect is likely to play out this fall as the U.S. faces a pandemic and an intense election season, says Dr. Yildirim.

Refers to the Green and Armstrong paper on mandatory dislaimers.

Talk given in Houston, July 14, 2013 at the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Conference.

For much more information, visit Americus’ PERSONAL WEB PAGE.

This letter drew in 2539 responses to the WSJ online version.

A letter to the editor regarding government spending on global warming policies.

Hello

Interview in report about The Future of Advertising Project

Media coverage of Fast.Forward (http://www.youtube.com/user/FastForward), the Marketing Channel on YouTube co-founded with Google

Listing of The Network Challenge: Strategy, Profit, and Risk in an Interlinked World in “KYW News Radio 1060 AM’s 10 Books to Read by Marc Kramer.” November 1, 2009.

Media coverage of Fast.Forward (http://www.youtube.com/user/FastForward), the Marketing Channel on YouTube co-founded with Google

Media coverage of Fast.Forward (http://www.youtube.com/user/FastForward), the Marketing Channel on YouTube co-founded with Google

Media coverage of Fast.Forward (http://www.youtube.com/user/FastForward), the Marketing Channel on YouTube co-founded with Google

Media coverage of Fast.Forward (http://www.youtube.com/user/FastForward), the Marketing Channel on YouTube co-founded with Google

Podcast with David Pottruck

First Friday Book Synopsis

Featured book in Wharton Alumni Newsletter

ARF, Wharton School Study Finds WOM Largely Driven by Paid Media Ads

Video interview at MPlanet 2009 Conference

Interview with LA Times on the financial crisis

A 101-carat diamond could fetch millions of dollars in a spring auction in Hong Kong. Sally Herships reports Asia’s love of luxury and increased wealth has raised the demand for gemstones.

Report on Las Vegas Fellows Master Class

Stephen Hoch, Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor; Professor of Marketing, Chairperson, Marketing Department; Director, Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative, was quoted in an article about how gas prices affect retail sales. (A similar article appeared in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 5/8/06 )

Stephen Hoch, Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about common traits in fast-food product brands.

Stephen Hoch, Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor; Professor of Marketing, Chairperson, Marketing Department; Director, Jay H. Baker Retailing Initiative, was quoted in an article about negative consumer mood and how this affects shopping behavior.

Stephen Hoch, Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about global customer dissatisfaction trends. ( Similar articles appeared in several other outlets including: The Plain Dealer, 3/15/06, Investment Dealer’s Digest, 3/28/06, and Detroit News, 3/28/06 )

Stephen Hoch, Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about overall U.S. consumer-spending trends.

Stephen Hoch, Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about the overall retail industry and the results of holiday shopping.

Stephen Hoch, Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about the effect of gas prices on holiday shopping.

Stephen Hoch, Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about recycling practices throughout the Wal-Mart stores’ network.

Stephen Hoch, Patty and Jay H. Baker Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about holiday shopping trends in discount department stores. (A similar article appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, 12/2/05)

Following a corporate scandal, managers who acknowledge they have problems and launch communication programs to repair their tarnished reputations stand the best chance of rehabilitating a tainted brand or corporate image, according to Wharton faculty and branding consultants.

Peter Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about the role of technology-savvy social leaders in augmenting the publicity of a product

Peter Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan professor of marketing, and Eric T. Bradlow, professor of marketing and statistics and academic director of the Wharton Small Business Development Center, were featured in an article about their research on supermarket shopping patterns.

Peter Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about how the music industry has changed in the past several decades.

Peter Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about the role of technology in the general marketing of products.

Peter Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor; Professor of Marketing, Eric Bradlow, associate professor of marketing and statistics, and Jeffrey Larson, doctoral student in the Marketing Department, were quoted in an article about the time consumers spend in a supermarket and how this impacts future shopping trends.

Peter Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about Amazon’s future marketing strategy.

Peter Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor; Professor of Marketing, Eric Bradlow, associate professor of marketing and statistics, and Jeffrey Larson, doctoral student in the Marketing Department, were quoted in an article about the time consumers spend in a supermarket and how this impacts future shopping trends. ( A similar article appeared in The Globe & Mail, 6/8/05 )

Peter Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor; Professor of Marketing, was interviewed about Mexican panaderias and starting hybrid chains using Starbucks as a business model.

Peter Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor; Professor of Marketing, was interviewed about dual-disc DVD marketing initiatives.

Peter Fader, Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor; Professor of Marketing, was quoted in an article about CD-DVD dual discs and how they will promote music sales.

It’s a question as old as business itself: How can a company be sure it’s spending the right amount of money on the right kind of marketing so that it can sell more products or services to increase profitability and, ultimately, enhance shareholder value?

“Pixar isn’t like Disney; they don’t do things the same way,” Mar Elepano, production supervisor of the division of animation and digital arts at USC’s School of Cinema-Television, told MacNewsWorld. “At Disney, there’s the problem of too many cooks in the kitchen.” But Elepano pointed out that Disney has one thing Pixar needs — an “incredible distribution mechanism.”

Adding more fuel to the drive to oust Michael Eisner as chairman of the board of the Walt Disney Co., five more state pension funds plan to withhold their votes for Eisner at Disney’s shareholders meeting.

Advance publicity is key to record albums’ success, states Wharton marketing professor Peter Fader “and by trying to stamp out peer-to-peer music trading, record companies are shooting themselves in the foot.”

Who cares what Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert think? An old Hollywood saw is that movie critics are out of sync with the ticket-buying public. Consider L. A. Confidential, a police drama set in the 1950’s starring Kim Basinger and Kevin Spacey. All the reviewers’ talk about Oscar-level performances and four-star quality didn’t matter at the box office, where the film noir has thus far bagged a so-so $33 million.

Wondering what movies to see this summer? Worried you will not receive your full $7.50 worth of shadowy sex, high-gloss pyrotechnics and spilled viscera?

The secret to Hollywood’s blockbuster box office sales so far in 1993. is simple: The movies are good.

Philip J. Hilts (2003), "Epilogue: Greed and Goodness," Protecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Full Text – Refers to J. Scott Armstrong (1977), "Social Irresponsibility in Management"