WHU Research Team Receives Amazon Research Award

In an international research proposal competition, Christina Reh, Beatrice Martin, and Professor Christian Schlereth, Chair of Digital Marketing at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management, received the Amazon Research Award (ARA) in the category "Breakthroughs in online advertising“. The award, which comes with $20,000 in research funds and an $8,000 credit to Amazon Web Services, supports the execution of the team’s research proposal “The power of the climate pledge friendly badge: Quantifying the effectiveness of sustainability endorsements in advertising“. In five categories, Amazon aims to support research on customer-centricity-related topics. The quality of the research proposals was assessed by a jury consisting of Koen Pauwels (Distinguished Professor of Marketing at Northeastern University, Boston; Principal Research Scientist on the Amazon Advertising Analytics & Insights Team), Michael Peran (Sr Analytics and Insights Manager, Associate Editor of Learning White Paper, Amazon), and the Amazon Research Award team.

Since consumers are showing an ever-growing interest in the sustainable manufacture of products, the planned study is intended to shed light on how sustainability endorsements influence people's purchasing decisions. There has been little research to date on how sustainability endorsements, like those displayed under products on Amazon's platform, affect the effectiveness of advertising and purchase decisions. In addition, the study will investigate how such endorsements interact with other advertising elements. Finally, recommendations should be made available to managers on how they can use sustainability endorsements most beneficially in online advertising.

Learn more about the program on the @AmazonScience website: amzn.to/3Hi43Cs #AmazonResearchAwards