With our research agenda, we address practical and socially relevant problems in the marketing context. We are interested in identifying the effects that marketing management activities and signals have on stakeholders such as suppliers, employees, customers and consumers/citizens, and which may influence attitudes and behaviour. Through constant exchange and close cooperation with practitioners, we pursue a research approach that gives equal consideration to rigour and relevance.
In terms of content, the projects carried out at the Institute are divided into three main areas:
In innovation and technology marketing, we deal with issues relating to the acceptance of innovations and the effects of specific marketing mix instruments that help to overcome acceptance barriers. In the context of mobility, for example, we deal with issues relating to the acceptance of autonomous vehicles and mobility budgets - a comparatively new instrument that enables employees to choose their means of transport based on time and performance-related needs within the framework of a budget provided by the company.
In research and practice, sustainability marketing is only gradually gaining the status it should have from a normative perspective. In the area of incentivising sustainable (consumption, mobility or procurement) behaviour, experimental study designs are a suitable method for deriving cause-and-effect relationships. As the transformation of our economic and consumer activities can hardly succeed without the development and successful marketing of sustainability-orientated innovations, we are particularly interested in linking sustainability and innovation marketing.
Our research interest in the context of relationship marketing focuses on the impact of marketing instruments such as loyalty programmes, customer-recruit-customer programmes and sponsoring. We also deal with issues relating to the management of inter-organisational relationships, e.g. in the distribution context.