How can you boost credibility to nonprofits, who may appear to be warm, but needy? Or how do you promote warmth and admirability to for-profits, who may appear to be competent, but greedy? Marketing professor Jennifer Aaker shows how stereotypes can be reframed to influence consumer behavior - nonprofits see greater fundraising success when they highlight the effectiveness of their work rather than their need, while for-profits aligned to a social mission convey a greater sense of social consciousness than their competitors. Aaker spoke at Small Steps, Big Leaps, a special research briefing she convened with Professors Francis Flynn and their colleagues in the field of prosocial behavior. They presented practical, and cost-effective solutions for encouraging donations, volunteerism, social activism, and other responsible, caring prosocial behaviors.
Jennifer Aaker, social psychologist and marketer, is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Her research spans time, money and happiness. She focuses on questions such as: What actually makes people happy, as opposed to what they think make them happy? How do small acts create significant change, and how can those effects be fueled by social media? She is widely published in the leading scholarly journals in psychology and marketing, and her work has been featured in a variety of media including The Economist, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, BusinessWeek, Forbes, CBS MoneyWatch, NPR, Science, Inc, and Cosmopolitan.
A sought-after teacher in the field of marketing, Professor Aaker teaches in many of Stanford’s Executive Education programs as well as MBA electives including Designing Happiness, Brands, Design & Social Technology, How to Tell a Story, and The Power of Social Technology. Recipient of the Distinguished Teaching Award, Citibank Best Teacher Award, George Robbins Best Teacher Award and both the Spence and Fletcher Jones Faculty Scholar Awards, she has also taught at UC Berkeley, UCLA and Columbia.