Speaker: Dr Jeffrey Rotman
Title: The rise of the unknown brand: how marketers overvalue branding online
Date: Thursday, 24 July 2025
Time: 2:00pm – 3:30pm
Venue: Building 26C, CBE, 248, Allan Barton Forum
Toni Eagar is the host of this visitor
Abstract:
Marketers and academics place great value in the power of brands to persuade consumers to buy products. But how important are established brands to consumers as compared to higher product ratings? In contrast to academic and marketer intuitions, we draw from research on comparative judgement to argue that consumers weight product ratings more heavily than brands when choosing which product to buy. This effect is even more pronounced when one brand is unknown and brands therefore cannot be easily compared. We find support for our predictions across eleven studies using different study designs (correlational sales data, conjoint, experiments), products (pens, headphones, TVs, bags) and brands (Sony, Panasonic, Walmart, Toshiba, LG, Michael Kors). Our findings indicate that product ratings are considerably more important than branding to consumer product choice and that consumers will consistently prefer unknown brands with higher ratings over known brands with lower ratings. Ultimately, this research suggests that marketers overestimate the value of branding in contexts where product ratings are common.
Bio:
Dr Jeff Rotman is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Marketing at Deakin Business School and the recipient of the 2021 Vice-Chancellor's Early Career Researcher Award for Career Excellence. He specialises in research on consumer behaviour and psychology with a specific focus on the areas of morality, emotion, politics, and customer service. Dr Rotman's work has been published in a number of leading academic journals, including, but not limited to, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Marketing Letters, Cognition, Public Opinion Quarterly, and the Journal of Business Ethics.