Sandy Jap

Sarah Beth Brown Professor of Marketing Emory University, Goizueta Business School

  • Atlanta GA

Global expert on partnering relationships, B2B routes-to-market, omnichannel, franchise, and ecommerce management

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Emory University, Goizueta Business School

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Biography

Sandy Jap is the Sarah Beth Brown Endowed Professor of Marketing at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Her research focuses on strategic partnering, business-to-business management, channels of distribution, and go-to-market strategies. She has published widely across the top academic journals in marketing and management science. She is among the top 2% of most cited scholars and scientists worldwide across 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields.

She has received numerous awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Marketing Association (AMA) Interorganizational Special Interest Group, the Innovative Marketing Award from the Marketing Management Association, and many paper awards for her contributions and service to the academy. She is an AMA and Marketing Science Institute (MSI) fellow as well as at Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) at the Pennsylvania State University and the Direct Selling Education Foundation (DSEF). She is currently an MSI board member, and a former editor-in-chief at Marketing Letters.

She is the author of Partnering with the Frenemy, and co-author of A Field Guide to Channel Strategy; both are how-to books on going to market strategy. She is a former faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Wharton School. Her PhD is from the University of Florida (Go Gators!).

Education

University of Florida

PhD

Marketing

University of Florida

BSc

Marketing

Areas of Expertise

B2B Routes to Market
Strategic Partnerships
Omnichannel Strategy
B2B and Channel Analytics
Social Media Selling
Direct Selling

Publications

Guardians of Trust: How Review Platforms Can Fight Fakery and Build Consumer Trust

Journal of Marketing Research

2024

As customers increasingly rely on online reviews for making consumption decisions, the dangers arising from misinformation and fakery have become an acute source of concern for consumers, firms, and society at large. Many online review platforms claim a role as guardians of trust in the information exchange process. Yet, little is known about the practices firms can utilize to design platforms that build and safeguard consumer trust. The authors draw on governance and identity disclosure literature streams to propose five practices that mitigate fakery and build trust in the platform: monitoring, exposure, community building, status endowment, and identity disclosure.

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Winning the new channel war on Amazon and third-party platforms

ScienceDirect

2022

The top online marketplaces in the world, such as Alibaba, Amazon, eBay and others, sold $2.7 trillion in 2020, or 62% of global web sales that year. Despite the promise of unfettered access to customers, the reality is that most sellers struggle with unprecedented unauthorized “rogue resellers.” These often anonymous, third party individuals and firms may not provide the quality experiences aligned with customers’ expectations of a brand and often market their goods in competition with trusted partners.

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Can Encroachment Benefit Hotel Franchisees?

SAGE Journals

TI Tongil Kim, Sandy D. Jap

2021

Franchise encroachment is the addition of an outlet in the vicinity of existing franchisees. It is a highly contentious issue resulting in revenue cannibalization of incumbent locations. Against this backdrop, we consider the possibility that the addition of same brand outlets can in fact, create positive effects via customer utility and ultimately, benefit franchisees. This may be due to a range of mechanisms such as quality signaling, learning, or brand awareness, resulting in a positive pathway on franchisee performance.

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Research Spotlight

5 min

Expert Insight: Fake News, Fake Reviews: Building Trust with Online Shoppers

Online customer reviews have become a critically important cog in the sales conversion process in recent years. Studies show that 97 percent of consumers read product reviews and ratings, and that positive reviews can almost triple the likelihood of making a purchase. As customers do more and more of their shopping online, they are turning in droves to the likes of Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Google Reviews to seek out opinions, recommendations, and feedback from other users before pushing through the final part of the sales funnel. As a result, these third-party review sites have experienced exponential growth. But there’s a caveat: and it’s trust. The success of Yelp and its competitors is wholly contingent on how trustworthy their users perceive them to be; on the transparency and authenticity of the content published and the sources of that content. In an era of disinformation with fake reviews and AI mass-generated content precipitously on the rise, securing—and keeping—user trust is paramount. The Five Keys to Fighting Fakery Goizueta Business School’s Sandy Jap has some suggestions. Together with colleagues Ben Beck of Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business and Stefan Wuyts of Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, Jap, who is the Sarah Beth Brown Professor of Marketing, put together a series of studies to test the kinds of measures and mechanisms that platforms can deploy to win user confidence. And it turns out there’s one tactic that works more effectively than any other: actively monitoring the authenticity of user reviews. That and being open and transparent about doing so. Jap and her colleagues scoured the latest research and data on marketing, governance, and identity disclosure to pinpoint the mechanisms that best mitigate online fakery, while simultaneously building trust among platform users. They identified five. “We worked through the literature and were able to whittle these down to five core practices that are robustly effective at building trust,” says Jap. “They are monitoring, exposure, community building, status endowment and identity disclosure. Doing these five things can signal to your users that you are committed to being a guardian of their trust, so to speak.” Monitoring or evaluating reviews for their authenticity and exposing firms that pay for and propagate fake content are mechanisms directed at the rogue firms that spread fakery and misinformation, explains Jap. Meanwhile community building and status endowment focus on reviewers. Community building is about enabling authentic, transparent interactions between consumers and reviewers. An example of this might be allowing consumers to ask questions and reviewers to respond directly. “Status endowment is where a platform verifies and acknowledges the credibility or helpfulness of a reviewer in some way. Yelp and others use things like badges or reviewer ratings which are earned over time and which make it hard for fake reviewers to game their systems,” says Jap. Identity disclosure is the practice of having reviewers provide personal information—their name, picture, or location, for instance—before they can post content. And while this approach can keep fabrication and false profiles in check, it also raises certain tradeoffs, says Jap. “Anonymity online has long been understood as something of an un-inhibitor—a factor that enables users to speak more freely and openly. It can be democratizing in the sense that it removes or lessens prejudice and bias around things like race, social class, or physical appearance,” she says. “Of course, having people share personal data on your platform can also open up a can of worms around privacy and identity theft which are major considerations; so there’s a balancing act needed with this.” To test the efficacy of all five trust building policies, including identity disclosure, Jap and her colleagues ran a series of experiments and studies. They invited volunteers to rate how the presence or absence of these mechanisms impacted the trustworthiness of a platform. One study saw them parse things like domain authority and traffic across 25 online review sites against how many (or few) of the five mechanisms each deployed. Elsewhere, the team used surveys to assess how users ranked the different mechanisms in terms of platform trust, above and beyond other factors such as the quantity of reviews published say, or the expertise of different reviewers. The Bottom Line: Bust Bogus Reviews After crunching the data, Jap and her co-authors found that while all five trust-building mechanisms were valued and important to platform users, the practice of monitoring for fake reviews and reviewers—and broadcasting the fact clearly—was by far the most effective. “Doing all of these five things—monitoring, exposing, community building, status endowment and ID disclosure—are important if you want to earn and keep the trust of your users,” says Jap. “We found that the more of these mechanisms that platforms incorporate, the better their domain authority, Alexa site ranking, backlinks, and organic site traffic.” Based on our findings, monitoring your content and communicating that you’re doing this is by far the most powerful cue that you are trustworthy. So that’s where we’d say platforms might want to focus their spend. Many of the biggest review platforms have already taken note of these insights. Yelp recently shared a post to its official blog welcoming the finding that of the 25 sites analyzed in Jap’s study, theirs is one of two platforms that actively implement all five mechanisms. “After examining 25 review platforms, the study found that Yelp is one of two platforms that applies all five mechanisms and as the research states, has become a guardian of trust for review information.” Meanwhile, Jap stresses that these findings should be relevant to any business that is focused on “combating online review fakery.” “All businesses today face the challenge of managing their word-of-mouth reputation. Any firm interested in sharing and leveraging points of view around its products or services, be it a small online retail store or an Amazon, is going to want to go the distance—and be seen to do so—in going to war on fakery and disinformation.” Are you a journalist interested in learning more about the importance and trustworthiness of online reviews? Sandy Jap is available to speak with media simply click on her icon now to arrange an interview today.

Sandy Jap

3 min

Product Returns Represent Billion-Dollar Strategic Blind Spot for Major Retailers

“Product returns have never, to our knowledge, been explicitly included as a stage in a major customer journey model,” the authors note in their paper. “This exclusion represents a strategic blind-spot for marketers.” In December 2020, Linne Fulcher, vice president, customer strategy, science and journeys at Walmart U.S., published a blog post that outlined Walmart’s new return policy. Dubbed “Carrier Pickup by FedEx,” the service was just in time for the holidays, free, and “here to stay,” Fulcher wrote. She described the policy as “an incredibly convenient way to make that unwanted gift ‘magically’ disappear,” whether customers bought items in a store, online, or from a third party vendor. “We want the returns experience to be easy, safe and seamless,” she added. Returns are big business. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF), U.S. consumers returned an estimated $428 billion worth of merchandise last year—approximately 10.6 percent of total U.S. retail sales. The numbers for ecommerce are even more startling: online shopping accounted for roughly $565 billion of 2020 retail sales, of which $102 billion in merchandise—about 18 percent—was returned. However, retail advisory firm Optoro noted in 2019 that of 117 top retailers, not even a third of them quantify the full cost of returns. Even before the pandemic hit, Sandy Jap, Sarah Beth Brown professor in marketing, Ryan Hamilton, associate professor of marketing, and former Goizueta Business School dean, Tom Robertson, were perplexed at how little academic research existed regarding returns. “Instead of viewing returns as a nuisance and an added cost, they are an opportunity to engage with customers and build brand loyalty,” explains Robertson. “Returns are part and parcel of the new retail landscape. This has been exacerbated by the strong uptick in online.” To help retailers identify opportunities, Jap, Hamilton, and Robertson wrote “Many (Un)happy Returns? The Changing Nature of Retail Product Returns and Future Research Directions,” published in Journal of Retailing last year. The article is essentially a researcher’s road map for exploring this “strategically important area,” says Jap. Some retailers, such as Warby Parker and Stitch Fix, have built returns into their business models. Others, like Zappos and Nordstrom, have made consumer-generated returns easy, assuming that doing so engenders brand loyalty and repeat business. Yet most retailers seem “to lack a coherent philosophy” on returns and “appear not to have built return rates into their business models at all,” the trio state in their paper. “There are so many interesting and important questions to be answered around product returns,” says Hamilton. “Important as returns are, the academic marketing research has barely scratched the surface.” “Many (Un)happy Returns” highlights five specific areas where advancements in theory and practice would provide opportunity for greater understanding: 1. How product returns transform the customer journey 2. The “dark side” of returns—exploring the gray area between justified returns and outright fraud 3. The effects of returns on traditional retailer supply chains 4. Customer response to easy product returns and practices 5. The effect of retailers’ product return practices on their reputation “These questions represent a range of important directions for assembling a body of work on retailer-initiated and customer-initiated return behaviors and processes,” they write. “Ultimately, these might serve to improve the performance of return forecasting models, illuminate optimal go-to-market strategies and distribution processes in the evolving, technology-oriented marketplace that characterizes retailing today.” Each of the five points above are detailed in a piece recently published by Emory University. That article is attached here: If you are a journalist looking to cover this topic or if you are simply interested in learning more, then let us help. Ryan Hamilton, associate professor of marketing at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. Sandy Jap holds the Sarah Beth Brown Endowed Professorship of Marketing Chair at Emory’s Goizueta Business School. Both are available to speak with media, simply click on eithr expert's icon now – to book an interview today.

Sandy JapRyan Hamilton

1 min

The role of behavior in managing mergers

Despite corporate interest in M&As as a growth strategy, research indicates that financial returns on such deals often fall short of expectations. Corporate leaders spend considerable time looking at the financial and quantitative aspects of mergers and acquisitions; however, Sandy Jap, Sarah Beth Brown Professor of Marketing; A. Noel Gould (Texas State U); and Annie H. Liu (Texas State U) argue that factoring in people should also be a major consideration when it comes to a proposed deal. Their research indicates that better employee and customer management is especially critical to an organization’s M&A strategy and implementation success. The trio analyzed ANZ New Zealand’s horizontal merger with the National Bank of New Zealand to better understand the impact of employee and customer behavior on the deal. They contend that this brand and technology merger succeeded due to ANZ’s commitment to ensuring customer satisfaction and addressing employee concerns about the merger. ANZ New Zealand also focused on business efficiencies and rebranding efforts. Jap, Gould, and Liu note that collaboration became a big key to the success of the merger with ANZ’s financial, IT, marketing, and communications personnel working closely together to retain customers. Source:

Sandy Jap

In the News

FTC bans fake online product reviews

The Week  online

2024-10-22

Reviews are "increasingly important in almost all of our purchase decisions," Sandy Jap, an Emory University marketing professor, told The Wall Street Journal, and fake reviews create a "noisier environment for consumers" and muddle trust. The FTC also now prohibits hiding or suppressing bad reviews, reviews written by undisclosed company insiders, and "buying fake indicators of social media influence," like bot-generated followers or views.

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$5 for a Good Online Review? No Way, Says New FTC Rule

The Wall Street Journal  online

2024-08-29

“The role of reviews is increasingly important in almost all of our purchase decisions,” said Sandy Jap, a marketing professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. “Fake reviews are problematic because they are misleading. It’s just creating a noisier environment for consumers to figure out who and what they can trust.”

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Expert Insight: Fake News, Fake Reviews: Building Trust with Online Shoppers | Emory University Goizueta Business School

Emory University's Goizueta Business School  online

2023-10-31

Goizueta Business School’s Sandy Jap has some suggestions. Together with colleagues Ben Beck of Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business and Stefan Wuyts of Penn State’s Smeal College of Business, Jap, who is the Sarah Beth Brown Professor of Marketing, put together a series of studies to test the kinds of measures and mechanisms that platforms can deploy to win user confidence. And it turns out there’s one tactic that works more effectively than any other: actively monitoring the authenticity of user reviews. That and being open and transparent about doing so.

View More

Show All +