Research

Consumer responses to synthetic humans in advertising

The rapid evolution of generative AI has sparked enthusiasm and intrigue across various sectors. One form of generated content that has received a lot of attention is generated images of people, sometimes known as deep fakes. A FOMI team consisting of members from both Saïd Business School and WPP explored the broad question 'How do consumers respond to the use of AI-generated models in advertising?'

This research is ongoing, but you can read the research questions and preliminary findings.

Oxford: Rhonda Hadi, Andrew Stephen, Felipe Thomaz, Jason Bell, Natalia Efremova, Ewan Macdonald
Partner: WPP

No Silver Bullet

Finding the right recipe for effective brand advertising.

The largest academic study into brand building effectiveness. Aimed at identifying how successful advertisers are at building brands with their current media mix. We use a dataset of approximately 1105 advertising campaigns to discover which combinations of media channels work for achieving which types of outcomes, we move beyond channel dyads to model dense combinatorial interactions, as well as modelling multiple outcomes. Our guiding analogy is the 'recipe,' which media channels use as 'ingredients.'

Jason Bell, Felipe Thomaz and Andrew Stephen

Partner: Kantar

Social media advertising effectiveness 

This is a global study of over 200 digital advertising campaigns run by over 100 brands on Facebook and Instagram, looking to see how ads in these media channels impact brand-level metrics. Findings show that social media ads can have a positive impact on brand, particularly in generating awareness, but only for brands that act in a more social and 'human' manner in social media. 

Oxford: Andrew Stephen, Felipe Thomaz
External: Yakov Bart (Northeastern University)
Partner(s): Kantar Millward Brown, Facebook

Blame the bot, anthropomorphism and anger in customer-chatbot Interactions

Chatbots have become common in digital customer service contexts across many industries. While many companies choose to humanise their customer service chatbots (e.g., providing them with names and avatars), little is known about how anthropomorphism influences customer responses to chatbots in customer service settings. Across five studies, including the analysis of a large real-world dataset from an international telecommunications company and four experiments, the authors find that when customers enter into a chatbot-led service interaction in an angry emotional state, chatbot anthropomorphism has a negative effect on customer satisfaction, overall firm evaluation, and subsequent purchase intentions. However, this is not the case for customers in non-angry emotional states. The authors uncover the underlying mechanism driving this negative effect (expectancy violation) and delineate implications for managers. Notably, the findings suggest it is important to both carefully design chatbots and consider the context in which they are used, particularly in customer service interactions that involve problem resolution or customer complaints.

Oxford: Andrew Stephen, Cammy Crolic, Felipe Thomaz, Rhonda Hadi

AI Ethics for Business: A management framework

Digital transformation and the fourth industrial revolution are increasingly impacting all aspects of everyday life, including the business dimension. The use of AI comes with substantial advantages in the short, medium and long term, but also creates substantial new risks that must be appropriately addressed. These risks can hinder innovation and progress if they constitute an obstacle for the adoption of AI technologies. An ethical adoption of AI can encourage progress and innovation and therefore benefit both business and society at large. For this reason, this project aims to provide a clear and understandable thought starter for stakeholders to adopt AI safely within their activities, and emphasise the leadership role that firms can have in this process.

This project is in partnership with the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and the ICC Research Foundation. ICC is the institutional representative of more than 45 million companies in over 100 countries with a mission to make business work for everyone, every day, everywhere. Through a unique mix of advocacy, solutions and standard setting, ICC promotes international trade, responsible business conduct and a global approach to regulation, in addition to providing market-leading dispute resolution services. Members include many of the world’s leading companies, SMEs, business associations and local chambers of commerce.

Felipe Thomaz, Natalia Efremova, Jason Bell, Greg Clark, Ewan MacDonald, Francesca Mazzi and Andrew Stephen

IoT ecosystem brand

Traditional brand architecture and management is made more complex in an age of ecosystems, where additional customer value comes from the combination and interaction of brands outside the direct control of the manager. This white paper provides a look into the organisation of these modern ecosystem brands and an approach to their measurement and management.

Understanding Chief Digital Officers - paradoxical protagonists of digital transformation

A new report by Oxford Saïd and General Assembly reveals contradictions and insecurity behind the newest C-suite role: the Chief Digital Officer. The findings reveal that the role is paradoxically part of the organisational ‘establishment’ while being asked to disrupt it, with a digital remit that can only be fulfilled by an organisation-wide change. View the illustrated findings.

Media recipes: channel combinations for multiple outcomes

We use a dataset of approximately 1400 advertising campaigns to discover which combinations of media channels work for achieving which types of outcomes. We move beyond channel dyads to model dense combinatorial interactions, as well as modeling multiple outcomes. Our guiding analogy is the 'recipe,' which media channels as 'ingredients.'

Oxford: Andrew Stephen, Felipe Thomaz, Jason Bell
Partner(s): Kantar

Value of creativity distinctiveness

Identify and quantify the value of Creativity (Big C - meaning large conceptual ideation) in advertising effectiveness. Large program of study with a significant potential for a large number of sub-projects to develop.

Oxford: Andrew Stephen, Felipe Thomaz, Jason Bell, Natalia Efremova, Greg Clarke
Partner(s): Google

How posting about products in social media affects offline purchase Intentions

This project examines the phenomenon of posting about desired products on social media platforms such as Facebook and Pinterest. Contrary to marketers’ hopes, we find that this can lead to consumers posting about products wanting those products less in real life. 

Oxford: Andrew Stephen
External: Lauren Grewal (Dartmouth College), Nicole Coleman (University of Pittsburgh)

A comparison of machine learning approaches for efficient advertisement budget allocation

Initial investigations demonstrated that the traditional approach to marketing mix modelling (MMM) lacks flexibility, and is highly sensitive to errors, data issues, and assumptions. The goal of this project is to develop a more accurate system for MMM, that flexibly allows for both traditional and newer marketing investments.

Oxford: Andrew Stephen, Felipe Thomaz, Jason Bell, Natalia Efremova
Partner(s): L’Oréal

Demystifying 'black box': applications of machine learning tools to marketing problems

In this work, we will take intuition from the field of computer science and machine learning and apply the most useful tools the field offers at the moment to common marketing problems, such as understanding social media content, sentiment of the discussion thread or budget allocation problem. We will create  a few datasets:  image and video data, text data, time series (sales) data and customer behaviour data.  We then apply state of the art models to the existing data or create code in Python that addresses the particular problem and publish it on GitHub to make it easily accessible to any researcher in marketing so everyone will be able to use it.

The purpose of this study is to facilitate the adoption of the most successful machine learning models by quantitative researchers in marketing and familiarise the qualitative researchers with the innovative tools, often used in real-world marketing practice.

Oxford: Felipe Thomaz, Natalia Efremova, Andrew Stephen, Cammy Crolic

How technology is reshaping the customer journey

We revisit the customer journey to explore how using technologies for detecting and interpreting such signals is fundamentally reshaping it. We identify three distinct zones based on a focal firm’s insight into customer activities and the ability of competing firms to engage the customer: Blind-Spot, Latent, and Active Zone. In addition to investigating how marketing technology may affect the customer journey at different points throughout each of these zones, we examine how new technology may shift the boundaries between these zones.

Oxford: Felipe Thomaz, Andrew Stephen
External: David Schweidel, Yakov Bart, Jeff Inman, Barak Libai, Michelle Andrews, Ana Babic Rosario, Inyoung Chae, Zoey Chen, Daniella Kupor, Chiara Longoni

Designed to go dark: an examination of incentives for digital black markets to self-terminate

We consider the financial structure of Dark Web Markets and develop a mathematical proof showing that, unlike legal counterparts, they have a built-in rational expectation to cease operations. In essence, as they grow, it becomes more likely that operators will choose to close their market and steal money from customers and vendors (termed an 'exit scam'). They are, then, designed to go dark from the onset of operations; when fee structures and transactional norms are established. The introduction of varying levels of law enforcement pressure only serves to accelerate the process. 

Oxford: Felipe Thomaz, Greg Clark
External: Alexander Wiedemann (University of South Carolina)

Memescapes / meme culture

We aim to define and measure the structure of memes and its surrounding culture as a means by which customers share complex information and meaning with others, as well as a tool for creating and shaping culture. The role (passive or otherwise) of brands is considered.

Oxford: Felipe Thomaz
External: Ana Babic Rosario (University of Denver)