KINGSTON, Rhode Island – December 5, 2022 – Whether it’s the importance of color in marketing or the emergence of new technologies like blockchain and holograms, Lauren Labrecque targets exciting and timely research. increase.
“I like to pick things that I’m passionate about. I don’t necessarily pick something because I think it will be published,” said Lovebrek, an associate professor of marketing at the University of Rhode Island. “But if it excites me, it tells me it’s likely that other people will get excited about it and influence it as well.
That philosophy may help explain a new milestone in her relatively young career. Exceeded. According to her Google Scholar on her website, her publications have cited her more than 4,000 times in just five years.
“The impact of my research is very important to me,” said Labrek, who holds a Ph.D. He received his PhD in Marketing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2010. I find it fulfilling that my research is relevant to many other scholars. “
Labrecque’s main research interests are sensory marketing (with a focus on color) and technology, including digital marketing, social media marketing and emerging technologies. Her work has been published in leading peer-reviewed academic journals in marketing, including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Retailing, and Journal of Interactive Marketing.
Among her most-cited publications, four of Labrecque’s have been referenced more than 700 times. Her most-cited works are “Consumer Power: Evolving in the Digital Age” (2013) and “Fostering Consumer-Brand Relationships in the Social Media Environment: The Role of Parasocial Interactions” (2014). , respectively, where she has been cited over 850 times.
Labrecque has taken an unusual path to her career in marketing academia. She originally attended Parsons School of Design in New York City, hoping to become an artist. However, she realized she could be “really lucky or an artist who starved for life.” After doing her BA in Communication Studies and postgraduate studies in Art History and French, she earned a Masters in Digital Media Studies from the University of Denver, where she became a web developer.
Both art and technology influenced her research interests when she entered the PhD program at UMass Amherst. Her initial research focused on virtual worlds, which are now a hot topic after Facebook rebranded her to Meta. For her dissertation, however, she returned to art, studying the continued importance of color in marketing.
The main result paper, “Exciting Reds and Talented Blues: The Importance of Color in Marketing” (2012), was published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and received nearly 800 citations. . Another paper derived from hers, “Marketers’ Prismatic Palettes: A Review of Color Research and Future Directions” (2013) – published in Psychology & Marketing – garnered over 400 citations. , offers a theoretical understanding of how color affects consumers. Via two routes: embodied meaning or referential meaning.
“Very few people in the region were publishing, so I thought the time was ripe for picking. We have to talk about color. It affects so many areas of marketing,” she said. I was. “The past decade has seen an explosion of research on color in marketing.
Her interest in technology includes how digital tools such as the internet are empowering consumers and how consumers and brands build relationships on social media through parasocial interactions. related to research in the field of “I’m a geek and I like looking at cutting edge technology,” she said. “It excites me.”
She is currently researching the emergence of Web 3.0 with blockchain technology and how it can revolutionize the world. She also researches other emerging technology topics such as hologram technology that can be applied to industries such as entertainment and services.
“I’m a big proponent that marketing is all-important,” she said. “From the packaging choice to the brand identity, color is obvious. But all of these technologies have a lot of implications for marketing. You can sell services such as making service encounters more fun without having to.”
Joining URI’s College of Business in 2018 and Area Coordinator for Marketing, Labrecque shares her approach to research with the graduate students she works with.
“One of the reasons I came to URI is to be able to supervise Ph.D. students,” she said. “I enjoy working with them and share with them my philosophy of choosing research topics that excite them because they are the ones that make an impact.”
of business college has been a leader in Rhode Island business, research and outreach since it was founded in 1923 by Howard Edwards, then president of Rhode Island State University. Accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the college currently enrolls over 2,300 undergraduate students and approximately 350 graduate students. 10 undergraduate majors, 9 graduate programs, and 3 doctoral degrees.Specialized fieldThis academic year marks the 100th anniversary of the university’s founding.
