Digital Marketing Research Cluster (DMRC)
The Digital Marketing Research Cluster (DMRC) brings together researchers exploring how digitalisation transforms consumer behaviour, organisations, markets, and society.
About DMRC
The Digital Marketing Research Cluster (DMRC) was founded in 2019 to foster exchange among researchers interested in digital marketing. The cluster brings together scholars who analyse different aspects of digital marketing.
Core Focus
The DMRC examines how digitalisation shapes consumer behaviour—for example purchase behaviour in multichannel environments, responses to digital marketing across the purchase funnel, and brand perceptions.
The cluster also explores how digitalisation affects organisations through areas such as digital advertising, influencer marketing, and sales.
Wider societal concerns, including privacy and its influence on the use of online channels, form another important focus area. Finally, members investigate digitalisation in higher education, including interactions between teachers and students in the digital space.
Vision
The vision of the DMRC is to position the Department as a leading environment for digital marketing research in Scandinavia and to build international awareness. The cluster aims to address questions that matter from managerial, academic, and societal perspectives.
People and Expertise
The DMRC has attracted members with diverse academic and methodological backgrounds, reflecting the cluster’s focus on transformation and interdisciplinary exchange. Established in 2019 with four members, the cluster expanded to eleven members within its first year.
Members work with qualitative methods, experiments, dynamic modelling, and quantitative approaches. Their research spans areas such as sales, consumer behaviour, tourism, innovation, and online advertising, and the cluster includes scholars at many stages of the academic career.
Current projects cover topics such as online promotions and customer value, risks of programmatic advertising, adoption drivers of voice assistants, the impact of social media on decision-making and purchasing behaviour, influencer marketing, marketing in the platform economy, digital platforms, Internet of Things and smart product–service systems, and digital decision-making tools.
All these themes relate to the transformation of the business environment driven by digitalisation. Research projects examine this transformation from different perspectives—individual consumers, organisations, and specific industries and markets. The cluster also excels in digital data collection and analytical methods.
The DMRC’s diversity fosters exchange across marketing subfields and supports collaborations with scholars outside the discipline. It provides essential perspectives for understanding how digitalisation affects businesses, markets, and society. The cluster also contributes to attracting, developing, and retaining highly talented staff and internationally recognised scholars.
DMRC research aims to address questions that are relevant for managerial and academic audiences and to demonstrate societal impact. The strategy emphasises connections across individuals, organisations, and society by breaking down silos and addressing pressing issues related to digital transformation, in line with Copenhagen Business School’s strategy.
Research Activities and Excellence
The DMRC brings together researchers who have demonstrated excellence through publications in leading marketing journals, including Journal of Marketing Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Service Research, and Journal of Interactive Marketing.
The cluster organises activities that support exchange and collaboration within the group and enable dialogue with external scholars and companies. DMRC hosts a research seminar series with invited speakers each term. Past speakers include Michel Clement (University of Hamburg) in 2019 and Gianfranco Walsh (University of Jena) in 2020, with a seminar by Michael Haenlein (ESCP Business School) planned for April 2021. All seminars are open to CBS employees.
The cluster also organises brown-bag lunch meetings for collegial feedback on ongoing projects. In spring 2020, the DMRC hosted an online talk on geo-locational methods by Szilvia Gyimóthy, and an additional brown-bag session is planned for fall 2020.
Academic Community Engagement
DMRC members collaborate with researchers from universities around the world, including UC Davis, Tuck Business School, University of Groningen, University of Hamburg, WU Vienna, University of Edinburgh Business School, University of Southampton Business School, Aalto University, ESCP Business School, University of Auckland, University of Münster, Lund University, and Rovira i Virgili University.
Members regularly participate in major marketing conferences such as Marketing Science, EMAC, and AMA, and contribute to organising or chairing special sessions. To engage with interdisciplinary perspectives on digitalisation, members also attend conferences in related fields such as sociology, media and communications, and information systems, including the Association of Internet Researchers Conference.
Cluster members serve as reviewers for leading journals, including Journal of Marketing Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Business Research, and Information Technology & Tourism.
Esprit de Corps
Members of the DMRC are proud of having built the cluster within a short timeframe and of the strong level of activity achieved. Researchers investigate digitalisation from different perspectives and with different methods, and this diversity of viewpoints both drives and unites the cluster.
A shared objective is to increase awareness of the cluster within and beyond Copenhagen Business School and to strengthen the Department’s position as a knowledge hub in digital marketing research.
Projects and Research Focus (Panel content)
The cluster brings together researchers with different backgrounds and interests and aims to strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration, including work with information systems and geo-statistics.
Transformational capabilities and excellence in the educational portfolio
DMRC members teach across various CBS programmes, and the diversity of their research is reflected in their teaching topics, methods, and formats. Many members develop blended and online teaching formats that support students’ digital learning skills and lifelong learning.
Members teach and supervise students at all levels in areas including big data commercial strategies, business models for digital platform ecosystems, AI for sales management, intelligence and customer insight, social media marketing, digital consumer behaviour, and influencer marketing.
The DMRC is also involved in CBS’s pilot project “Online Modularization of Course Material in Marketing,” with one member serving as project manager and four members contributing to the project.
Societal relevance, impact, and value
Digitalisation affects consumer decision-making, organisational practices, and market dynamics. DMRC research therefore has significant societal relevance. Members have shared insights in public and industry media on topics such as influencer marketing and teacher–student interactions in digital environments.
Data-driven analyses of digital preferences and behaviour are relevant to authorities, service providers, and NGOs. The cluster aims to strengthen collaboration with these stakeholders in the future.
Exploration of big challenges and wicked problems
DMRC members work on major challenges related to digitalisation, including:
- How consumers perceive companies’ use of personal information
- How consumers perceive algorithmic decision-making
- Artificial intelligence utilisation and implementation
- Improving the effectiveness of charitable organisations’ marketing through analytics and AI
- The effect of technology and digitalisation on consumer–brand relationships
- Influencer marketing
- Digitalising analogue design tools
- Use of digital platforms in mobile and collaborative consumption
Publications (Panel content)
These selected publications highlight DMRC’s contributions to digital marketing, consumer behaviour, organisational transformation, analytics, and related fields.
- Shehu, Edlira, Dominik Papies and Scott A. Neslin, S. (2020). Free Shipping Promotions and Product Returns, Journal of Marketing Research
- Leban, Marina, Thyra Uth Thomsen, Sylvia von Wallpach, & Benjamin Voyer (2020), “Constructing personas: How high-net-worth social media influencers reconcile ethicality and living a luxury lifestyle”, Journal of Business Ethics, 1-15.
- Leban, Marina, Yuri Seo, & Benjamin Voyer (2020), “Transformational effects of social media lurking practices on luxury consumption”, Journal of Business Research, 116, 514-521.
- Cziehso, Gerrit Paul, Tobias Schaefers, & Monika Kukar-Kinney (2019). Free no more - investigating customer reactions to unexpected free-to-fee switches. Journal of Business Research, 101, 229-242.
- Marder, Ben, Antonia Erz, Rob Angell, & Kirk Plangger (2019), “The Role of Photograph Aesthetics on Online Review Sites: Effects of Management- versus Traveler-generated Photos on Tourists’ Decision Making”, Journal of Travel Research, Online first: December 30, 2019
- Marder, Ben, David Gattig, Emily Collins, Leyland Pitt, Jan Kietzmann, and Antonia Erz (2019), “The Avatar’s New Clothes: Understanding Why Players Purchase Non-Functional Items in Free-to-Play Games”, Computers in Human Behavior, 91 (February), 72-83
- Marder, Ben, David Houghton, Antonia Erz, Lloyd Harris, and Ana Javornik (2019), “Smile(y) – and your students will smile with you? The effects of emoticons on impressions, evaluations, and behaviour in staff-to-student communication”, Studies in Higher Education, Online first: April 8, 2019
- Schulz, Petra, Edlira Shehu, & Michel Clement (2019). When consumers can return digital products: Influence of firm- and consumer-induced communication on the returns and profitability of news articles, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 36(3), 454-470.
- Van der Borgh, Michel, Ad de Jong, & Edwin J. Nijssen (2019). Balancing Frontliners’ Customer- and Coworker-directed Behaviors when Serving Business Customers, Journal of Service Research, 22(3), 323-344.
- Erz, Antonia and Anna-Bertha Heeris Christensen (2018), “Transforming Consumers Into Brands: Tracing Transformation Processes of the Practice of Blogging”, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 43 (August), 69-82
- Erz, Antonia, Ben Marder, and Elena Osadchaya (2018), “Hashtags: Motivational Drivers, Their Use, and Differences between Influencers and Followers”, Computers in Human Behavior, 89 (December), 48-60
- Prostka, Tim, Edlira Shehu, & Michel Clement (2018): Cannibalization Effects in the Early Market Stage of E-books: An Analysis of the German Book Market, Journal of Media Business Studies, 16(2), 108-126.
- Schaefers, Tobias & Julia Schamari (2016). Service recovery via social media: The social influence effects of virtual presence. Journal of Service Research, 19(2), 192-208.
- Shehu, Edlira, Tammo Bijmolt, & Michel Clement (2016): Dynamic Likeability Effects on Virality of Online Video Advertisements, Journal of Interactive Marketing, 35, 27-43.
- Schamari, Julia & Tobias Schaefers (2015). Leaving the home turf: How brands can use webcare on consumer-generated platforms to increase positive consumer engagement. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 30(0), 20-33.
- Dredge, D. & Gyimóthy, S. (2015). Collaborative Economy and Tourism: Critical perspectives, questionable claims and silenced voices. Tourism Recreation Research, 40(3) 286-302.
- Gyimóthy, S., & Larson, M. (2015). Social Media Co-creation Strategies: the 3Cs. Event Management. 19 (4)
- Gyimóthy, S. (2017). Business models of the collaborative economy. I D. Dredge, & S. Gyimóthy (red.), Collaborative Economy and Tourism: Perspectives, Politics, Policies and Prospects (s. 31-39). Springer. Springer Tourism on the Verge, Bind. 6
- Gyimóthy, S. (2017). Networked Cultures in the Collaborative Economy. I D. Dredge, & S. Gyimóthy (red.), Collaborative Economy and Tourism: Perspectives, Politics, Policies and Prospects (s. 59-74). Springer. Springer Tourism on the Verge, Bind. 6
- Dredge, D. & Gyimóthy, S. (2017). (eds.) The Collaborative Economy: Tourism Social Science Perspectives. Springer, Tourism on the Verge Series. Cham: Springer.
- Munar, AM, Gyimóthy, S & Cai, L. (2013). (eds.) Tourism Social Media: Transformations in Identity, Community and Culture. Tourism and Social Sciences Series, vol. 18. Elsevier Science, Bingley.
DMRC Members
Other DMRC Members
Siv Pedersen, Ph.d. Fellow
Affiliated Members
Rob Angell, Associate Professor, Southampton Business School
Gerrit Cziehso, Assistant Professor, University of Münster
Michel Clement, Professor, University of Hamburg
Tomas Falk, Professor, Aalto University School of Business
Mia Larson, Associate Professor, Lund University
Ben Marder, Associate Professor, Edinburgh Business School
Nadia Abou Nabout, Professor, WU Vienna
Julie Wilson, Associate Professor, Open University of Catalonia