Research co-authored by Alisha Horky, assistant professor of marketing, examines both annoying marketing and creepy marketing from a consumer’s perspective.
Alisha Horky, assistant professor of marketing in the Martha and Love School of Business, co-authored the paper “Creepy Marketing: Has Marketing Technology Gone Too Far?,” which is published in the “Marketing Management Journal.”
Horky and co-authors Robert Moore, Kevin Shanahan and Melissa Moore developed three dimensions of a new construct, Creepy Marketing (CM), in the explorative paper. They discussed the impact of online personalized marketing on consumers, and further conducted a qualitative study examining both annoying marketing and creepy marketing from a consumer’s perceptive.
The study’s results distinguish annoying marketing, defined primarily as tactics, from CM, defined predominately as feelings. Based on the study, the authors found that CM consists of three dimensions: invasion of privacy, stalking behavior and violation of social norms.
The paper was previously presented at the Society for Marketing Advances Conference.
The paper’s abstract reads:
“In this explorative paper we develop three dimensions of a new construct, Creepy Marketing (hereafter CM). First we discuss the impact of online personalized marketing on consumers. Based on this discussion a qualitative study examines both annoying marketing and creepy marketing from a consumer’s perceptive. Results distinguish annoying marketing, defined primarily as tactics, from CM, defined predominately as feelings. Based on the study, CM consists of three dimensions: invasion of privacy, stalking behavior and violation of social norms. Each of these dimensions is discussed and directions for future research are provided.”