Richard L. Gruner

Smiling in influencer marketing: how smiles shape authenticity and consumer engagement

Purpose Many influencer marketing campaigns feature smiling influencers. However, whether smiling is always beneficial, and under which circumstances it might not be, remains underexplored. This paper aims to examine how an influencer’s smile (vs no smile) affects consumer engage...

Playful Theorizing

Management and organization scholars increasingly call for research that is more creative, societally relevant, and capable of addressing complex grand challenges. Yet such future-oriented inquiry often unfolds under conditions of uncertainty, where ambiguity, incomplete knowledg...