About

Rosellina Ferraro is an Associate Professor of Marketing and the Associate Dean of MBA Programs at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. She received her Ph.D. in Marketing from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in 2005. Her research interests include social influence, branding, and identity. Her work has been published in top marketing journals such as the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Marketing. She currently serves as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Consumer Psychology and the International Journal of Research in Marketing, and is a member of the Editorial Review Board for several other journals. Professor Ferraro teaches courses including Consumer Behavior and Brand Management.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Business
• Advertising
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Sociology
• Engineering
• Operations research
• Public relations
• Communication
• Marketing
• World Wide Web

Selected publications

• Why Consumers Boycott More Than Buycott: The Role of Perceived Instrumentality and Self-Enhancement

  Journal of the Association for Consumer Research · 2024 · 2 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Advertising

  Consumers can voice their values by avoiding purchase from brands that oppose their values (boycotting) or deliberately purchasing from brands that support their values (buycotting). Prior literature has found that consumers are more likely to boycott than to buycott, but it has not yet provided a clear answer to why this is the case. Drawing from the literature on boycotting, we argue that this difference is, in part, because consumers perceive boycotting versus buycotting: (1) to be more instrumental in influencing brands’ actions and (2) to better satisfy self-enhancement motives. In our context, we show that self-enhancement motives are stronger than instrumental ones in influencing activism engagement intentions. Three experiments provide support for the predictions. The findings offer implications for activists calling consumers to engage in activism and for brands responding to boycotts and buycotts.

  PublisherDOI

• Interpersonal Influences in Consumer Psychology

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2023-03-30 · 1 citations

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Consumption is inherently a social activity. Interpersonal influences derive from exposure to others’ communications and actions and can affect the motivations, thoughts, emotions, or behaviors of a given focal consumer. Such influences arise from direct interaction between two or more individuals or from indirect exposure to other individual(s), such as via social media, social norms, or thinking about others. This chapter highlights and integrates the large body of interpersonal influence research from approximately the last five years (published between 2014 and 2021) using an organizing framework built around the customer journey. We also offer thoughts on where we see opportunities for moving interpersonal influences research in new directions.

  PublisherDOI

• The impact of facial emotional expression on the effectiveness of charitable advertisements: the role of sympathy and manipulative intent

  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making · 2022 · 15 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Psychology

  Abstract In charitable advertisements, organizations often display the image of a person in need with different facial emotional expressions. Prior research showed the positive effect of using a sad‐ (vs. happy‐ or neutral‐) faced image in evoking sympathy from viewers. Across five studies ( N = 2141), we demonstrate that a sad‐faced image evokes not only sympathy but also an inference about the organization's manipulative intent. Moreover, we show that inference of manipulative intent and sympathy simultaneously mediate the effects of facial expression on donation and on attitude toward the advertising campaign, but in opposing directions. While greater sympathy leads to larger donation, greater inference of manipulative intent lowers donation, together contributing to a null effect of facial expression on donation. In contrast, using a sad‐faced image reduces attitude toward the advertising campaign because the mediating effect of inference of manipulative intent tends to be larger than the mediating effect of sympathy in absolute size. The negative effect of a sad‐faced image on attitude toward the advertising campaign is attenuated when the prominence of the image is low (vs. high). Finally, we show that these effects also emerge in the cause‐related marketing advertising context.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Traveling with Companions: The Social Customer Journey

  Journal of Marketing · 2020 · 279 citations

  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Marketing

  When customers journey from a need to a purchase decision and beyond, they rarely do so alone. This article introduces the social customer journey, which extends prior perspectives on the path to purchase by explicitly integrating the important role that social others play throughout the journey. The authors highlight the importance of “traveling companions,” who interact with the decision maker through one or more phases of the journey, and they argue that the social distance between the companion(s) and the decision maker is an important factor in how social influence affects that journey. They also consider customer journeys made by decision-making units consisting of multiple individuals and increasingly including artificial intelligence agents that can serve as surrogates for social others. The social customer journey concept integrates prior findings on social influences and customer journeys and highlights opportunities for new research within and across the various stages. Finally, the authors discuss several actionable marketing implications relevant to organizations’ engagement in the social customer journey, including managing influencers, shaping social interactions, and deploying technologies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• When the Face of Need Backfires: the Impact of Facial Emotional Expression on the Effectiveness of Cause-Related Advertisements

  ACR North American Advances · 2018-01-01

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

• Social Influence in Marketing

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2016-01-19 · 9 citations

  bookSenior author

  Much of consumer behavior is socially based, involving public consumption of products, exposure to individuals or groups engaging in consumption, and discussions about products with family, friends, acquaintances, and strangers. We examine research on the effects of social influence on consumer behavior, focusing on articles from the top journals in the field. A large part of this work applies and expands on theories developed in the field of psychology; however, given the interdisciplinary nature of marketing, consumer research incorporates findings from other fields, including economics, sociology, anthropology, and communications. Some topics unique to consumer research include gift giving, brand community, and word of mouth. We close the chapter with a discussion of social influence research opportunities in the consumer behavior domain.

  PublisherDOI

• Customer misbehaviour in access-based consumption

  Surrey Research Insight Open Access (The University of Surrey) · 2015-07-20

  articleSenior author

  Customer misbehavior in service settings is problematic for two reasons: (1) because of the direct damage it causes and (2) because of additional negative effects that arise from the contagion of such misbehavior. The authors extend existing theory of customer misbehavior by studying its contagious effect. The investigation focuses on access-based services, defined as transactions in which multiple consumers successively gain temporal, short-term access to a good, while legal ownership remains with the service provider (e.g., car sharing and fashion rentals). Due to the nature of these services, they are especially prone to indirect customer misbehaviour, which is directed at the accessed product and occurs in the absence of others. Two online experiments provide the first empirical evidence for a contagiousness of misbehavior and reveal that this effect is driven by customers’ perceptions of the social norms among the customer group. Moreover, they indicate that greater strength of the accessed product’s brand as well as lower anonymity of the accessed product’s owner attenuate contagion. A field experiment shows that an increase in the communal identification among access-based service customers reverses the contagious effect, with customers more likely to remove signs of previous users’ misbehavior. The results suggest that access-based service providers should address customer misbehavior by (a) investing in the products they offer access to, (b) establishing more personal relationships with customers, and, foremost, (c) increasing communal identification among customers.

  Publisher

• Contagious Effects of Customer Misbehavior in Access-Based Services

  Journal of Service Research · 2015-07-20 · 227 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Customer misbehavior in service settings is problematic for two reasons: (1) because of the direct damage it causes and (2) because of additional negative effects that arise from the contagion of such misbehavior. The authors extend existing theory of customer misbehavior by studying its contagious effect. The investigation focuses on access-based services, defined as transactions in which multiple consumers successively gain temporal, short-term access to a good, while legal ownership remains with the service provider (e.g., car sharing and fashion rentals). Due to the nature of these services, they are especially prone to indirect customer misbehavior, which is directed at the accessed product and occurs in the absence of others. Two online experiments provide the first empirical evidence for a contagiousness of misbehavior and reveal that this effect is driven by customers’ perceptions of the social norms among the customer group. Moreover, they indicate that greater strength of the accessed product’s brand as well as lower anonymity of the accessed product’s owner attenuate contagion. A field experiment shows that an increase in the communal identification among access-based service customers reverses the contagious effect, with customers more likely to remove signs of previous users’ misbehavior. The results suggest that access-based service providers should address customer misbehavior by (a) investing in the products they offer access to, (b) establishing more personal relationships with customers, and, foremost, (c) increasing communal identification among customers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Look at Me! Look at Me! Conspicuous Brand Usage, Self-Brand Connection, and Dilution

  Journal of Marketing Research · 2013-05-13 · 209 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Conspicuous brand usage, defined as attention-getting use of a brand, causes brand dilution under certain conditions. This research examines changes in observers' attitudes toward a brand after seeing a brand user engaged in conspicuous use of the brand. The authors propose that observers infer that a consumer engaged in conspicuous brand usage is driven by an ulterior motive of impression management. When observers have low self-brand connection, they exhibit less favorable attitudes toward both the brand user and the brand. In contrast, observers with high self-brand connection maintain their favorable view of the brand in the face of a conspicuous brand user. Three studies demonstrate the brand dilution effect of conspicuous brand usage.

  PublisherDOI

• Look at Me! Look at Me! Conspicuous Brand Usage, Self-Brand Connection, and Brand Dilution

  PsycEXTRA Dataset · 2013-01-01 · 1 citations

  dataset
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• James R. Bettman

  Duke University

  18 shared

• Tanya L. Chartrand

  Duke University

  11 shared

• Rick van Baaren

  Radboud University Nijmegen

  9 shared

• Robin Tanner

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  9 shared

• Rosemary J. Avery

  8 shared

• Jennifer Edson Escalas

  7 shared

• Amna Kirmani

  6 shared

• Ted Matherly

  4 shared

Awards & honors

• Outstanding Area Editor Award 2020, International Journal of…
• MSI Scholar 2018
• Finalist for the Best Article Award 2016, Journal of Service…
• Finalist for the John D. C. Little Award 2013, Marketing Sci…
• Outstanding Reviewer Award 2011-2012, Journal of Consumer Re…