Jared Watson joined New York University Stern School of Business as an Assistant Professor of Marketing in July 2018.
Professor Watson’s research investigates the context-dependent nature of how consumers use information, largely in the digital economy. One stream of research investigates how consumers use various elements of reviews (e.g., average product ratings, number of reviews, text of individual reviews, etc.) to form preferences. In addition, he investigates how societal events impact product reviews. Beyond his work involving product reviews, Professor Watson also investigates the role social media plays in consumer behavior. To that end, he has projects investigating the determinants of who we choose to “follow” and why we choose to “unfollow” and the boundaries of social media influencer effectiveness as a function of language choices. His work has been presented at academic conferences worldwide and has been published in the Journal of Marketing.
Before joining NYU Stern, Jared completed his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland. Prior to entering academia, he was a sales district leader for Frito-Lay where he managed a team of 15 employees and over $10 million in annual revenue.
12:15 p.m.–1:00 p.m. Pacific Time — Thursday, June 9, 2022
This session explores current research concerning influencer effectiveness. It will cover two ongoing streams of academic research that the presenter is currently conducting. In the first stream of research, he examines how the language choices influencers choose to use (e.g., pronouns or emotional words) can slow the rate of attrition of an influencers follower-base. In a second stream of research, he explains why this occurs and how this generalizes beyond language to include characteristics of influencer promotions that can impact influencer engagement (e.g., likes, clicks, shares) and product purchase intentions. He’ll explain how influencers can cultivate a parasocial relationship with their followers, leading to lower attrition, and ultimately, higher engagement.
Managers can use this information to offer guidance in their influencer campaigns to enhance the effectiveness of their campaigns. Specifically, they will learn of some of the language choices they can ask influencers to use, as well as characteristics of the images that they should make sure to include or exclude in order to capture consumers’ attention and increase their engagement with the content.