Supporting data for “Two Essays on Irrelevant and Contextual Marketing Information on Advertising Effectiveness<i>”</i>

<p dir="ltr">Digital and situational contexts profoundly shape how consumers interpret marketing information and make decisions. In this thesis, I examine two distinct phenomena where elements peripheral to a product's core utility—one embedded in the digital interface and the other inherent to the purchase context—fundamentally alter its perceived value and advertising effectiveness. These essays explore how marketers can leverage seemingly irrelevant digital cues and navigate the psychological nuances of purchase contexts to better connect with consumers.</p><p dir="ltr">In the first essay, I investigate an emerging feature of social media marketing: the geotag. While geotags are a common digital function for denoting location, their impact on consumer psychology has been largely overlooked. I propose that this ostensibly irrelevant piece of information is far from neutral; it acts as a powerful cue that stimulates vivid mental imagery. Across a series of studies, I demonstrate that geotags significantly boost consumer engagement on social media by enabling consumers to mentally simulate experiences. This work contributes to the literature on mental imagery and digital communication by identifying a novel mechanism through which a standard platform feature can enhance advertising effectiveness, offering managers a low-cost tool for improving social media marketing.</p><p dir="ltr">In the second essay, I turn to a critical contextual factor in consumers’ everyday lives: the gift-giving occasion. Previous research on payment methods has focused primarily on personal purchases, extolling the benefits of installment plans. This essay shifts focus to show how the same financial information is interpreted differently within the symbolic context of a gift. I argue that introducing the pragmatic, financial lens of installment payments undermines the gift's core purpose of expressing thoughtfulness and care. Through a multi-method approach, including large-scale transactional data and controlled experiments, I demonstrate a robust aversion to using installments for gifts and identify key boundary conditions. This research contributes to the literature on payment methods and gift-giving by introducing purchase context as a crucial moderator of financial decision-making, providing managers with insights for tailoring payment options to different consumer motivations.</p><p dir="ltr">Together, these essays illuminate the powerful roles that both digital cues and situational contexts play as invisible architects of consumer behavior, demonstrating that information is never processed in a vacuum.</p>