Dr. Ann-Kristin Kupfer and Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hennig-Thurau have been selected as recipients of the prestigious Sheth Foundation Best Paper Award, which honors the best article published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, one of marketing’s A journals. The MCM scholars win this year’s Sheth award for their article “Pre-Release Consumer Buzz”, which they have co-authored with WWU’s Visiting International Prof. Dr. Mark B. Houston (Texas Christian University, Texas) and Prof. Dr. Martin Spann from LMU Munich. For Prof. Hennig-Thurau, this is the second time he receives this award, after winning it in 2016 for the article "Does Twitter matter? The impact of microblogging word of mouth on consumers’ adoption of new movies" (see our previous news release).

Despite being an often quoted concept in the context of entertainment and also other hedonic industries, the concept of buzz has lacked a thorough scholarly investigation. In their award-winning article, the authors use qualitative research and an extensive review of the literature to define pre-release consumer buzz as the “aggregation of observable expressions of anticipation by consumers for a forthcoming new product”. At the heart of their work is a conceptualization of the dimensions and facets of buzz – the scholars argue that buzz is being manifested in three distinct types of behaviors (communication, search, and participation in experiential activities) along two dimensions (amount and pervasiveness). The paper also provides empirical evidence from the movie industry that buzz matters economically and illustrates the paths through which it impacts movie success.

The article was selected for the award by the members of the journal’s Editorial Review Board, after the Area Editors selected a shortlist of the top 10 papers published in 2018. This shortlist features impressive work by Marketing’s leading scholars, including Kevin Lane Keller, Donald R. Lehmann, Dhruv Grewal, and V. Kumar, among others. The award is presented at the Awards Ceremony at the annual Academy of Marketing Science Conference in Vancouver, Canada.

You can obtain a copy of the award-winning article here.