James M Leonhardt | New Mexico State University (original) (raw)

Papers by James M Leonhardt

The present research conducted semi-structured interviews with over 1,000 Chinese migrant workers... more The present research conducted semi-structured interviews with over 1,000 Chinese migrant workers to identify factors influencing their adoption of urban consumer habits. Research on habit formation finds the process to be effortful and resource depleting. Likewise, we predicted that migrant workers with greater resources would be more likely to adopt urban consumer habits. Resources were categorized as either internal (biological and cognitive) or external (social and economic) to the consumer. Using a structural equation model, cognitive and economic resources were found to have positive direct effects on habit adoption, while biological and social resources were found to have positive indirect effects on habit adoption, through cognitive and economic resources, respectively.

Journal of Advertising, 2015

This research investigates a frequently encountered and important decision faced by advertisers: ... more This research investigates a frequently encountered and important decision faced by advertisers: how to face profile images of products in advertisements. Three empirical studies find support for a profile-fluency effect: Profile images of products facing inward (versus outward) toward the center (versus edge) of an ad are easier for consumers to process and result in more positive consumer evaluations. In addition, there is evidence that this effect depends on the shopping goal of the consumer. The results have clear implications for current practices in advertising and offer opportunities for future research.

Objective Widely popular, Twitter, a free social networking and micro-blogging service, offers po... more Objective Widely popular, Twitter, a free social
networking and micro-blogging service, offers potential
for health promotion. This study examined the activity of
Twitter quit smoking social network accounts.
Design A cross-sectional analysis identified 153
activated Twitter quit smoking accounts dating back to
2007 and examined recent account activity for the
month of August 2010.
Results The accounts had a median of 155 followers and
82 total tweets per account; 49% of accounts had >100
tweets. Posted content was largely inconsistent with
clinical guidelines; 48% linked to commercial sites for
quitting smoking and 43% had tweets on e-cigarettes. In
August 2010, 81 of the accounts (53%) were still active.
Conclusions Though popular for building quit smoking
social networks, many of the Twitter accounts were no
longer active, and tweet content was largely inconsistent
with clinical guidelines. Future research is needed to
examine the effectiveness of Twitter for supporting
smoking cessation.

To help offset the costs brought on by insuring previously uninsurable consumers, the Affordable ... more To help offset the costs brought on by insuring previously uninsurable consumers, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) needed adequate enrolments of millennials. To engage with this tech-savvy cohort, the Obama administration had to think outside traditional media and build a robust presence in social media. The present article provides a historical account of how the ACA was promoted to millennials using social media. In turn, it provides an example of how social media platforms, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and strategies, including hashtag and virality campaigns, can be used to promote public policy adoption.

This paper recounts Allstate's transition from traditional to social media marketing, including i... more This paper recounts Allstate's transition from traditional to social media marketing, including its use of the brand character, 'Mayhem'. Allstate maintained a dual-brand presence by having separate social media accounts for its brand and brand character on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Although Mayhem's popularity varied across platforms, the addition of the character to Allstate's social media presence resulted in significant increases in popularity for both the brand and Mayhem. This paper identifies factors potentially affecting the success of brand characters in social media. It closes with a discussion on managerial implications that includes three key points for managers to consider when using a brand character in social media.

Consumers are increasingly watching online video and advertisers are increasingly using video-sha... more Consumers are increasingly watching online video and advertisers are increasingly using video-sharing sites such as YouTube to promote their video advertisements. Although not typically the case, some of these advertisements go viral, quickly reaching millions of consumers. To better understand the antecedents of such virality, this paper recounts recent advertisements on YouTube that attained viral status. From these cases, several commonalities are observed, such that each ad evoked strong emotion, told a story and quickly reached 1 million views. Based on these observations, when promoting brand content on YouTube, managers are urged to focus on promoting highly emotive content, to incorporate the brand within a story, and to continually produce and promote novel brand content. Building on the present work, there are also opportunities for future research to consider how specific ad characteristics such as storytelling and schadenfreude might affect the probability of virality.

The gaze direction effect is the finding that observers are typically faster at detecting or iden... more The gaze direction effect is the finding that observers are typically faster at detecting or identifying a target when it appears in the direction indicated by the gaze of a centrally presented face as compared to other locations. The present research investigated whether the gaze direction effect would occur in accuracy when the target was visually degraded and accuracy was emphasized. In two experiments, the targets were easy to identify correctly, and reaction time (RT) was the dependent variable. In similar experiments, the targets were made difficult to identify and accuracy was the dependent variable. Gaze direction affected RT, but not accuracy. A theoretical mechanism for the gaze direction effect that accounts for these findings is presented.

When marketing researchers perform field experiments, it is crucial that the experimental locatio... more When marketing researchers perform field experiments, it is crucial that the experimental location and the control location are comparable. At present, it is difficult to assess the comparability of field locations because there is no way to distinguish differences between locations that are due to random versus systematic factors. To accomplish this, we propose a methodology that enables field researchers to evaluate and select optimal field locations by parsing these random versus systematic effects. To determine the accuracy of our proposed methodology, we performed computer simulations with 10,000 cases per simulation. The simulations demonstrate that accuracy increases as the number of data points increases and as consistency increases.

reported that involuntary attention increased perceived contrast. We replicated Carrasco et al. a... more reported that involuntary attention increased perceived contrast. We replicated Carrasco et al. and then tested an alternative hypothesis: With stimuli near threshold, a peripheral cue biased observers to believe a stimulus had been presented in the cued location. Consistent with this hypothesis, the effect disappeared when we used higher-contrast stimuli. We further tested the guessing-bias hypothesis in three ways: (1) In a detection experiment, the cue affected bias, but did not increase d′; (2) when the cue followed the stimulus, we obtained the same results as when the cue preceded the stimulus; (3) in one experiment, some trials contained no stimulus, yet observers responded that the cued blank stimulus had higher contrast than the uncued blank stimulus. The results suggest that the effects of a noninformative peripheral cue are best described in terms of nonperceptual biases.

This paper investigates the possible complementary effects that training in empathy and nonverbal... more This paper investigates the possible complementary effects that training in empathy and nonverbal communication may have on persuasion capabilities. The narrative considers implications from the literature and describes an exploratory study in which students, in a managerial setting, were trained in empathy and nonverbal communication. Subsequent evaluations of these students by faculty evaluators and the students themselves provide preliminary evidence that training in empathy, on the one hand, and nonverbal communication on the other can be effective, but concurrent training in both of these is superior to concentration in only one. This is the first research report which deals with such concurrent training and its impact on persuasion effectiveness in business communication. chievement in organizations often requires selling one's ideas to others, convincing others that particular courses of action have positive or negative consequences, and leading others to actions that will be beneficial to the employer. Persuasive ability can be used to convince company employees and others outside the firm, such as customers, to accept suggestions and proposals. On the other hand, if an organization member is ineffective in persuading others, he or she may be unsuccessful at large (Hodler, Loertscher, & Rohner, 2014). Research is needed that identifies methods capable of enhancing the persuasive abilities of marketing and other personnel. The objective of this paper is to consider the possible complementary effects that training in both empathy and nonverbal communication may have on persuasion effectiveness in business communication. This objective is unique and fills a knowledge gap by offering preliminary evidence to support the notion that training in both of these areas may be superior to training in only one—the two may be complements to one another. In particular, in an exploratory study, MBA students (N = 192) were assigned to one of four training conditions in which they received training in nonverbal communication, empathy, nonverbal communication and empathy, or in general presentation skills. Faculty evaluators A

Uncertainty-seeking behavior is currently understood as the result of loss aversion which motivat... more Uncertainty-seeking behavior is currently understood as the result of loss aversion which motivates a preference for the possibility to avoid or lessen an otherwise sure loss. However, when choosing among negative options on behalf of others, we offer responsibility aversion as another possible motive for uncertainty-seeking behavior. Within our conceptual model, responsibility aversion is defined as the preference to minimize one's causal role in outcome generation. Compared to certain options, uncertain options lessen the decision maker's causal role in outcome generation because the outcomes are partially determined by chance. The presence of chance increases indirect agency on behalf of the decision maker and lessens his or her perceived risk of responsibility. The results of five studies support a responsibility aversion motivation behind uncertainty-seeking behavior.

Marketing Letters, 2015

Journal of Advertising, 2015

Marketing Letters, 2015