Pandemics and marketing: insights, impacts, and research opportunities.

Pandemics have been an unfortunate but consistent facet of human existence over centuries, threatening lives as well as livelihoods globally. Disconcertingly, their frequency persists, with four "major" pandemics disrupting the planet in the last 65 years and more expected in the future. While many of the economic and health consequences of pandemics are well-documented, their marketing implications are less understood. Addressing this gap, we develop a broad, conceptual framework to highlight the characteristics and impacts of pandemics as they relate to marketing. We first identify four macro-level forces that characterize pandemics and highlight their marketing implications. Next, using the 7P marketing mix model as the organizing structure, we discuss these implications at a micro-level and identify a set of research questions to stimulate further inquiry, not only to generate deeper insights pertaining to pandemics' marketing implications but also to envision new developments in these areas. Finally, we identify pandemics' disproportionate impacts on and implications for some industry sectors, including healthcare, retail, education, hospitality, and tourism.

The effects of salience of the sound of food on consumption.

In order to promote their products, food marketers use labels (e.g., crunchy) to make salient the sound created by the food when it is eaten. Will merely making the sound of the food salient (without changing its actual sound) affect consumption? The extant literature is silent on this question. Addressing this gap, we propose that the mere salience of the food's sound can impact consumption. In three studies, we find that the salience of the food's sound increases consumption because it enhances consumers' auditory experience of the sound of food and increases taste evaluations. However, the salience of the food's sound decreases consumption when experience of the food's sound is impaired or when consumption monitoring is high. The paper's findings advance research on auditory perceptions of food, food labeling, and food consumption, and offer guidance on how to enhance enjoyment and prevent overeating of sound-salient food.