Marketing professor honored for consumer behavior research

Julio Sevilla, assistant professor of marketing, is one of two winners of the inaugural CBSIG Research in Practice Award from the American Marketing Association’s Consumer Behavior Scholarly Interest Group.

The new award recognizes published research that contributes to marketing practice in the field of consumer behavior.

Sevilla and his co-author, Claudia Townsend of the University of Miami, earned the distinction for their article, “The Space-to-Product Ratio Effect: How Interstitial Space Influences Product Aesthetic Appeal, Store Perceptions, and Product Preference,” which appeared in the October 2016 issue of the Journal of Marketing Research.

The paper examines how the staging of products in a store affects consumer behavior. It finds that consumers perceive products as more valuable when more space is devoted to their display.

Articles had to meet five criteria to be considered: address an important marketing managerial issue, have an explicit objective of contributing to marketing practice, include strong and compelling marketing implications, with potential applicability across a range of products, services or industries, and include rigorous scholarly research.

The awards will be presented in February at the 2018 AMA Winter Educators’ Conference in New Orleans.