Date and Time: May 11, 2018 10:30 a.m. - 12:00 a.m.
Venue：SEM 218 Meeting Room
Inviter：Lifeng Yang
Abstract：
This paper shows how marketers can use language to lead consumers toward increased physical and cognitive activity. Research in social psychology indicates that action words, relative to inaction words, can lead to the activation of general action goals whereby individuals feel a need to engage in any type of motor/cognitive output (Albarracín et al., 2008). We propose that this effect can be moderated in common marketing contexts by the lexical category of the action prime—that is, whether it is a verb or a noun. Six experiments and a field study show that action verbs (vs. action nouns) are more likely to activate general action goals and lead participants to a willingness to act (i.e., engage in more physical/cognitive activity and choose high-activity products/services). We also argue and show that action verbs (vs. action nouns) make consumers engage further downstream in their action goal striving, resulting in more immediate product choices when the product is action-oriented.
Speaker Biography：
Yan MENG is an assistant professor of Marketing at Grenoble Ecole de Management in France. Her research area involves how identity, linguistic and contextual cues and cultural meanings and practices influence consumer judgment and decision making. She has published her findings as book chapters and as proceedings for marketing and psychology conferences as well as at peer reviewed journals. Yan received her Ph.D. in Marketing from Baruch College, City University of New York. She also earned an MBA degree and worked full-time in several industries prior to entering academia. Yan has lived, studied, and worked in China, Japan, the U.S., Canada, and France and is fluent in Chinese, Japanese, and English.
