Robert Meyer

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?, .