Research

Our research philosophy is our reflection of why, how, and when we develop, disseminate, enhance, and preserve the knowledge of topics that are of interest to society, to the academic community, to practitioners, and to our students. Together with our industry partners, we generate beneficial outcomes for all parties. Our general research orientation is empirical, quantitative, and decision oriented. To test new and existing theories and newly developed tools and methods, especially in the context of consumer decision-making, we usually conduct a series of online and field experiments and often analyze large-scale data sets from the practice.

Our research is published in leading academic journals including Management Science, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Political Economy, Information Systems Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM), Journal of Industrial Economics, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Scientific Reports, Nature Communications, Nature Human Behaviour, National Science Review, Physics Reports, Physical Review E, and PNAS.

The research focus of the involved chairs:

• Prof. Aguiar
  Our research relies on econometric methods to examine a broad range of issues related to the management and economics of online markets. Intending to improve both managerial and policy decision-making, we study the effects of digitization in various contexts, including the creative industries, news and social media, and digital platforms more broadly.
• Prof. Algesheimer
  Our research interests lie in studying human values, consumer well-being, and social (influence) processes for sustainable living, and we have conducted extensive basic and applied research on predictive social analytics with actionable insights on (virtual) communities, social networks, social media, and technology. We focus on the ways social structures shape individuals’ behavior and in reverse, how individuals’ behavior reproduces social structures.
• Prof. Giuffredi-Kähr
  We study branding and consumer-brand relationships, examining how digitalization transforms these domains and what this means for marketing practice. Our research further investigates transparency in online retail, the practices of influencer marketing, and innovative approaches to promoting sustainable consumer behavior.
• Prof. Kaiser
  We conduct research in two areas: entrepreneurship and innovation. Main analysis tools are empirical methods, mostly applied to large-scale data sets, game theory, and experiments. 
• Prof. Natter
  We conduct innovative, theoretically and practically impactful research in the context of three thematic fields: Pricing and retailing, Targeting and positioning, Behavior change and social marketing.