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Marketing Science Interviews

Thank you for being a Premium Newsletter member! Below, you will find more than 20 deep-dive interviews with marketing scientists and industry experts.

🛒 CRO / E-Commerce

How to Increase Your Conversion Rate

One little tweak to your product page can make all the difference in the world — but WHICH tweak, exactly? And how much do you tweak it? The world of Conversion Rate Optimization is our topic in this week's Premium Exclusive — Tod speaks with Shaun Brandt from Oddit.co - Listen now

How Changing Your "Quantity" Field Can Get You More Sales

New research finds that marketers can dramatically increase conversions by making a simple change to the Quantity field on ordering forms. Tod speaks with the study's author in this Premium Exclusive. Listen now

How Default Tip Levels Influence Customer Response

Do I add a default tip screen to the payment flow? And if so, what options should I give the buyer? 10, 20, and 30%? 0, 15, and 20? Science has the answer. Listen now

Will Selling on Amazon Hurt Your Brand's Online Storefront?

Tod speaks with Erik Maier, Professor of Marketing and Retail at the HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management. He co-authored a recent study on the effect of marketplace sales on sales in a retailer's own channels. Listen now

How Privacy Notices Affect Consumer Purchase Intent

Tod interviews the co-author of a new scientific research study called "The Bulletproof Glass Effect: Unintended Consequences of Privacy Notices.” Listen now

Preventing Shopping Cart Abandonment

New scientific research find that asking people to review product reviews or check out other product pages may be causing people to abandon their carts. Listen now

The Perception of Chatbots in B2B and B2C

A lot of research has gone into how consumers react to chatbot conversations, but there hasn't been a lot of study into how the bots make people feel about the company itself... people like investors in the company. Tod speaks with a marketing scientist who studied that. Listen now

📈 Media Buying

Google Ads for Those Not Doing E-Commerce

In this deep-dive episode, Jyll Saskin-Gales (jyll.ca) joins me to discuss using Google Ads for B2B and other non-ecommerce tools. We go in-depth on the new ad formats, lead form extensions, how they're different from Facebook's and LinkedIn's, we talk about running ads for apps, and how Google's machine learning suggestions are doing. Listen now

"Genetic Predisposition" — The Next Targeting Option?

Are we about to enter a new world of genetics marketing — one where we might soon see "Genetic Predisposition" listed in Facebook's ads manager as a targeting criteria? Listen now

Can Too Much Ad Frequency Work in Your Favour?

Marketing scientists have discovered that if we push through uncomfortably high ad impression frequency — even if that generates short-term negative feelings — the consumer will eventually warm up to the brand. Tod interviews the paper author. Listen now

Marketing in the Metaverse

Tod speaks with Ivan Puzyrev, CIO and co-founder of AR Head, about the metaverse, marketing, and more. Listen now

🗣️ Consumer Reviews

Making Negative Reviews Work For Your Brand

You've heard the advice — avoid getting negative reviews on your product or company at all costs. Sometimes, that leads to shady practices like bribing or suing web sites that publish them. But are negative reviews ALWAYS detrimental? Listen now

Why the Religious Complain More About Your Brand

Riza Casidy, Associate Professor of Marketing at Macquarie University, is the co-author of a research paper called "Religious Belief, Religious Priming, and Negative Word of Mouth." He joined Tod to walk through his findings. Listen now

Rethinking How We Reply to Social Media Complaints

The going wisdom has been for brands under fire on social media has been to reply to comments and reviews, thanking the customer for feedback, explaining policy rationale, or sometimes apologizing. But is that the right approach? New research suggests we may want to rethink it. Listen now

The Benefits of Profanity in Product Reviews

Can leaving profanity in product reviews left by customers actually HELP our brand? Science has the answer. Listen now

How Asking for a Review First Can Hurt Tips

Tod speaks with the co-author of a study that discovered what effect asking for a review has on a consumer's willingness to tip well. Listen now

🌍 Social Media

Why You Should Publicly Praise Your Competitors

In 2017, Xbox went onto social media and congratulated its competitor Nintendo on the launch of its new Switch console. As marketers, we're taught early on that even the mere mention of the existence of a competitor is a bad idea. But... have we had it wrong all along? Listen now

🤝🏻 Branding and Partnerships

Will Having a Cute Logo Get Your Brand Out of Trouble?

So you've done something stupid. You tweeted something racy from your brand's account. Or announced proudly that interns will no longer be paid. And now, your customers are getting mad. Too bad your logo isn't a drawing of a cute kitten — because apparently that would have helped. Tod speaks to Dr. Felix Septianto — a Senior Lecturer in Marketing at The University of Queensland. He and his colleagues recently published a paper called "Too Cute to be Bad?" Listen now

Finding Potential Brand Alliances

Finding brand alliance partners isn't always easy. What if there were a measure of partnership potential — a score that would tell you which other organizations would make for great alliances. That's what Pankhuri Malhotra set out to invent. Tod spoke with her. Listen now

📝 Creative and Copy

Exploiting Consumer Psychological Distance in Your Copy

Is it possible to exploit the psychological distance between our brand and our consumers by just changing how we write our marketing copy? A new scientific study has the answers. Listen now

Exploiting the "Vicarious Hand Effect" in Marketing

How does a photo holding a product move the needle in terms of that product's consumer perception? More than you'd think. Tod speaks to a researcher who studied this effect. Listen now

⊙ Other

Social Causes: When Good Deeds Go Bad

Tod speaks with the co-author of a scientific study that questions whether supporting a popular social causes is always a guaranteed win for your brand. Listen now

When Using Science in Your Marketing Backfires

Tod speaks with the co-author of a recently published paper in the Journal of Consumer Research called “Get Your Science Out of Here: When Does Invoking Science in the Marketing of Consumer Products Backfire” Listen now

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