Robert Meyer

Robert Meyer
  • Frederick H. Ecker/MetLife Insurance Professor
  • Professor of Marketing
  • Co-Director, AI at Wharton

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    770 Jon M. Huntsman Hall
    3730 Walnut Street
    University of Pennsylvania
    Philadelphia, PA 19104

Research Interests: adoption of artificial intelligence, behavioral game theory, consumer decision analysis, decision making under uncertainty, dynamic decision making, text analysis

Links: CV

Overview

Robert Meyer is the Frederick H. Ecker/MetLife Insurance Professor and Co-Director of AI at Wharton.   He is a noted scholar whose research focuses on consumer decision-making and analysis in a wide range of areas including responses to new technologies and AI, behavioral economics, and marketing research methods. Professor Meyer’s work has appeared in a wide variety of professional journals and books, including the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Marketing Science, Management Science, and Risk Analysis. He is the former editor of the Journal of Marketing Research and Marketing Letters. He has served or currently serves as an associated editor for the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Marketing,  and Marketing Science.

Professor Meyer’s most recent research has focused on the study of biases that arise in consumer communication.  This work includes the use of natural-language processing tools to study how sensationalist news stories develop and spread on social media platforms, and how warnings messages are perceived by residents faced with natural disaster threats.  For example, Professor Meyer and his colleagues have been able to show that failures of preparation that often precede catastrophes such as Hurricane Katrina, Sandy, and the 2008/09 housing and equities collapse are consistent with a number of hard-wired biases in how people respond to risk. This includes a tendency for people to fail to learn as much as they should from near-misses, and under-invest in instruments whose value can only be realized in the long run.  These ideas form the basis of his recent book, co-authored with Howard Kunreuther,  the Ostrich Paradox: Why we under-prepare for Disasters.

At Wharton Professor Meyer has served as chair of the Marketing Department and  Vice Dean of Wharton’s doctoral programs. His teaching interests include courses in New Product Management, Research Methods, and Marketing Strategy, which he has taught at the MBA, executive MBA, and doctoral levels. He is also an active participant in a number of Wharton’s executive education programs.

Professor Meyer joined the marketing faculty in 1990 after spending eight years on the faculty of the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA, and two years at the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie-Mellon University. He also held appointments as  visiting professor in the school of Business Administration at the University of Miami, the University of Sydney, and the University of Tokyo.

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Research

  • Robert Meyer (2023), A Tale of Two Twitterspheres: Political Microblogging During and After the 2016 Primary Debates, Journal of Marketing Research , 56 ().

    Abstract: In this research, the authors study the process by which social media posts are created and shared during live political debates. Using data from over 9.5 million tweets posted during and shortly after four key debates leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the authors test a series of hypotheses about how tweeting evolves over time during such events. They find that (1) as the debates progressed, the content of the “Twittersphere” became increasingly decoupled from the live event, and (2) the drivers of the success of tweets during the debates differed from the drivers of success observed after the debates. During the debates, users acted akin to narrators, posting shorter tweets that commented on unfolding events, with linguistic emotionality playing a limited role in sharing. However, when the debates were over, users acted more like interpreters, with successful posts being more elaborate and visually and emotionally rich accounts of the event. Evidence for the generalizability of the findings is provided by an analysis of Barack Obama’s last State of the Union Address, where similar dynamics are observed.

  • Uri Barnea, Robert Meyer, Gideon Nave (2022), The Effects of Content Ephemerality on Information Processing, .

    Abstract: Many marketing communications, from verbal conversations to messaging and content sharing via apps such as Snapchat, limit the number of times people can view content. How do such restrictions affect consumers’ information processing? Building on the proposition that people strategically allocate cognitive resources, the authors hypothesize that consumers of content that cannot be viewed repeatedly consider the risk of failing to process it sufficiently and, consequently, allocate more cognitive resources to its processing (e.g., by increasing viewing time). The authors test this hypothesis in ten preregistered online studies (total N = 17,620), an exploratory analysis of eye-tracking data, and a field study on Facebook's advertising platform. Across the studies, they find that making content ephemeral elevates consumers’ perceived risk of missing information; consequently, it increases attention allocation, prolongs voluntary viewing time, and magnifies focus on relevant information. These effects have important downstream consequences, including improved content comprehension and recall, enhanced positive attitudes, and increased efficiency of sponsored content placement on social media. Taken together, the findings indicate that marketers can communicate information more effectively by restricting consumers from viewing it again.

  • Jonah Berger, Yoonduk Kim, Robert Meyer (2021), What makes Content Engaging? How Emotional Dynamics Shape Success, Journal of Consumer Research.

    Abstract: Some cultural products (e.g., movies and books) catch on and become popular, but less is known about why certain succeed and others fail. While some have argued that success is unpredictable, we suggest that period-to-period shifts in emotional tone—what we term emotional volatility—plays an important role.  Automated sentiment analysis of thousands of movies demonstrates that more emotionally volatile movies are evaluated more positively.  This relationship holds controlling for a range of other factors, and, consistent with the notion that emotional volatility makes experiences more stimulating, is stronger in genres where evaluations are more likely to be driven stimulation (i.e., thrillers rather than romance). By manipulating emotional volatility in a follow up experiment, we underscore its causal impact on evaluations, and provide preliminary evidence for the role of stimulation and engagement in driving these effects. Taken together, these results shed light on why things become popular, the time dynamics of emotion, and the psychological foundations of culture more broadly.

  • Shiri Melumad and Robert Meyer (2020), Full Disclosure: How Smartphones Enhance Consumer Self-Disclosure, .

    Abstract: Results from three large-scale field studies and two controlled experiments show that consumers tend to be more self-disclosing when generating content on their smartphone versus personal computer. This tendency is found in a wide range of domains including social media posts, online restaurant reviews, open-ended survey responses, and compliance with requests for personal information in web advertisements. The authors show that this increased willingness to self-disclose on one’s smartphone arises from the psychological effects of two distinguishing properties of the device: (1) feelings of comfort that many associate with their smartphone and (2) a tendency to narrowly focus attention on the disclosure task at hand due to the relative difficulty of generating content on the smaller device. The enhancing effect of smartphones on self-disclosure yields several important marketing implications, including the creation of content that is perceived as more persuasive by outside readers. The authors explore implications for how these findings can be strategically leveraged by managers, including how they may generalize to other emerging technologies.

  • Uri Barnea, Robert Meyer, Gideon Nave, You Only Get One Shot: Restricting the Number of Times Consumers Can Access Content Increases Their Resource Allocation During Information Processing.

    Abstract: Many social media platforms, including leading apps such as Snapchat, Facebook Messenger and Telegram, limit the number of times audience can view content. We investigate how this restriction affects processing of received information. Building on the notion that people strategically allocate cognitive resources (Schneider and Shiffrin 1977), we propose that receivers increase resource allocation when processing information that they cannot reexamine. In six pre-registered studies (N = 7,048) we demonstrate that restricting people to a single view (vs. multiple views) leads to increased attention, better content recall (both cued and free recall), improved comprehension, and more favorable attitudes towards the content, as well as longer voluntary viewing time, both of the content and of ads preceding it. These results suggest that marketers can affect meaningful metrics by communicating with consumers via channels that limit their repeated access to the message.

  • Robert Meyer (2018), Failing to Learn from Experience about Catastrophes: The Case of Hurricane Preparedness, .

  • Robert Meyer (2018), Dynamic Simulation as an Approach to Understanding Hurricane Risk Response: Insights from the Stormview Lab, .

  • Robert Meyer (2018), Consumer Dynamic Usage Allocation and Learning under Multi-part Tariffs, .

  • Robert Meyer (2018), Decision Science Perspectives on Hurricane Vulnerability: Evidence from the 2010–2012 Atlantic Hurricane Seasons, .

  • Robert Meyer (2018), Using simulations to forecast homeowner response to sea level rise in South Florida: Will they stay or will they go?, .

Teaching

Current Courses (Fall 2024)

  • MKTG9420 - Research Methods Mktg A

    This course provides an introduction to the fundamental methodological issues that arise in experimental and quasi-experimental research. Illustrative examples are drawn from the behavioral sciences with a focus on the behavior of consumers and managers. Topics that are covered include: the development of research ideas; data collection and reliable measurement procedures; threats to validity; control procedures and experimental designs; and data analysis. Emphasis is placed on attaining a working knowledge of the use of regression methods for non-experimental and quasi-experimental data and analysis of variance methods for experimental data. The primary deliverable for this course is a meta-analysis of a research problem of the students choosing that investigates the effects of research methods on empirical results.

    MKTG9420301 ( Syllabus )

All Courses

  • BDS5999 - Behavioral Science Ind Cap

    Behavioral Science Individual Capstone for cohorts before 2022.

  • MKTG6110 - Marketing Management

    This course addresses how to design and implement the best combination of marketing efforts to carry out a firm's strategy in its target markets. Specifically, this course seeks to develop the student's (1) understanding of how the firm can benefit by creating and delivering value to its customers, and stakeholders, and (2) skills in applying the analytical concepts and tools of marketing to such decisions as segmentation and targeting, branding, pricing, distribution, and promotion. The course uses lectures and case discussions, case write-ups, student presentations, and a comprehensive final examination to achieve these objectives.

  • MKTG6130 - Stratgic Mktg Simulation

    Building upon Marketing 611, Marketing 613 is an intensive immersion course designed to develop skills in formulating and implementing marketing strategies for brands and businesses. The central activity will be participation in a realistic integrative product management simulation named SABRE. In SABRE, students will form management teams that oversee all critical aspects of modern product management: the design and marketing of new products, advertising budgeting and design, sales force sizing and allocation, and production planning. As in the real world, teams will compete for profitability, and the success that each team has in achieving this goal will be a major driver of the class assessment. The SABRE simulation is used to convey the two foci of learning in the course: the changing nature of strategic problems and their optimal solutions as industries progress through the product life cycle, and exposure to the latest analytic tools for solving these problems. Specifically, SABRE management teams will receive training in both how to make optimal use of marketing research information to reduce uncertainty in product design and positioning, as well as decision support models to guide resource allocation.

  • MKTG7120 - Data & Anlz For Mktg Dec

    This course introduces students to the fundamentals of data-driven marketing, including topics from marketing research and analytics. It examines the many different sources of data available to marketers, including data from customer transactions, surveys, pricing, advertising, and A/B testing, and how to use those data to guide decision-making. Through real-world applications from various industries, including hands-on analyses using modern data analysis tools, students will learn how to formulate marketing problems as testable hypotheses, systematically gather data, and apply statistical tools to yield actionable marketing insights.

  • MKTG8990 - Independent Study

    A student contemplating an independent study project must first find a faculty member who agrees to supervise and approve the student's written proposal as an independent study (MKTG 899). If a student wishes the proposed work to be used to meet the ASP requirement, he/she should then submit the approved proposal to the MBA adviser who will determine if it is an appropriate substitute. Such substitutions will only be approved prior to the beginning of the semester.

  • MKTG9420 - Research Methods Mktg A

    This course provides an introduction to the fundamental methodological issues that arise in experimental and quasi-experimental research. Illustrative examples are drawn from the behavioral sciences with a focus on the behavior of consumers and managers. Topics that are covered include: the development of research ideas; data collection and reliable measurement procedures; threats to validity; control procedures and experimental designs; and data analysis. Emphasis is placed on attaining a working knowledge of the use of regression methods for non-experimental and quasi-experimental data and analysis of variance methods for experimental data. The primary deliverable for this course is a meta-analysis of a research problem of the students choosing that investigates the effects of research methods on empirical results.

  • MKTG9430 - Research Methods Mktg B

    This course provides an introduction to the fundamental methodological issues that arise in experimental and quasi-experimental research. Illustrative examples are drawn from the behavioral sciences with a focus on the behavior of consumers and managers. Topics that are covered include: the development of research ideas; data collection and reliable measurement procedures; threats to validity; control procedures and experimental designs; and data analysis. Emphasis is placed on attaining a working knowledge of the use of regression methods for non-experimental and quasi-experimental data and analysis of variance methods for experimental data. The primary deliverable for this course is a meta-analysis of a research problem of the students choosing that investigates the effects of research methods on empirical results.

  • MKTG9710 - Adv Topics Mktg Part A

    Taught collectively by the faculty members from the Marketing Department, this course investigates advanced topics in marketing. It is organized in a way that allows students to 1) gain depth in important areas of research identified by faculty; 2) gain exposure to various faculty in marketing and their research values and styles; and 3) develop and advance their own research interests.

  • MKTG9950 - Dissertation

    Dissertation

Awards and Honors

  • Research Grants, 1992 Description

    Huntsman Center for Research on Technological Competition,
    1992 – 1994 (Total Funding: $15,000).

  • Principle investigator, 2002 Description

    SMU/Wharton Research Grants, 2002-4 (3 years).
    Funding: $33,000/year

  • 2001 John D.C. Little Award for best paper in an INFORMS Journal, 2000, 2000
  • 2001 Frank Bass Award for best article based on a doctoral dissertation, 2001
  • 1994 Frank Bass Award for best article based on a doctoral dissertation, 1999 Description

    Judged after five years

  • 1994 O’Dell Award for best article in Journal of Marketing Research, 1999 Description

    Judged after five years

  • Principle Investigator, 1989 Description

    “Experimental Analysis of Consumer Buying Dynamics,”
    National Science Foundation, 1989 (1 Year), Finding: $54,000

  • UCLA Chancellor’s Career Development Award, 1984
  • Eight UCLA Faculty Research Grants, 1982-1989, 1982
  • Associate Investigator (Principal Investigator: Dr. Irwin Levin), 1979 Description

    “Behavioral Processes Underlying Transportation Model Choice,” U.S.D.O.T, July to November, 1979

  • Associate Investigator (Principal Investigator: Dr. Gerard Rushton), 1979 Description

    “Elderly Migration,” Institute on Aging, August 1979 to present

  • Associate Investigator (Principal Investigators: Dr. L. Turner and Dr. J. Louviere), 1979 Description

    “Housing Decision by the Elderly,” Administration on Aging, 22 October 1979

  • Certificate in Urban Transportation Planning, 1979 Description

    Program administered by USDOT/UMTA)

  • USDOT/UMTA Fellowship 1978, 1978

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