Om Van Laer

Tom van Laer is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at Cass Business School. He studies storytelling, social media, and consumer behaviour. His research is published in premier and leading academic journals, including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, International Journal of Research in Marketing, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, et cetera. His work has been covered by the BBC, Newsweek, Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, the Independent, Financial Times, the Sydney Morning Herald, and national TV and radio stations in Austria, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands, among other news outlets.

Previously, he has been a consultant of the European Commission, Assistant Professor at ESCP Europe Business School, and a visiting scholar at the Universities of Sydney and New South Wales in Australia. He holds a doctorate in marketing (PhD) from Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Though Tom has won awards for his academic research, teaching, and media exposure, he still counts winning his high school's story-reading competition in 1995 as his most impressive accomplishment.

Qualifications

PhD.

Visiting Appointments

• Visiting Scholar, Discipline of Marketing, University of Sydney, Australia, Dec 2014 – Apr 2016
• Visiting Scholar, School of Marketing, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, Jan 2010 – Dec 2012

Memberships of Professional Organisations

• Member, Australian & New Zealand Marketing Academy, Nov 2010 – present
• Member, Association for Consumer Research, Oct 2009 – present

Awards

• Cass Business School (2015) Academic Staff Prize
• Academic Staff Prize for outstanding contribution to Teaching and Learning (£ 375)
• Australian & New Zealand Marketing Academy Conference (2014) Best Paper in the Sustainable Marketing Track
• prize for Best Paper in the Sustainable Marketing Track
• Syntec (2014) Academic Management Research Award
• Prix Académique de la Recherche en Management Catégorie Marketing / Sciences de la Décision Academic Management Research Award Category Marketing / Decision Sciences

Languages

Dutch; Flemish, French, German and Italian.

Expertise

Primary Topics

• Consumer Behaviour
• Digital Economy
• Digital Marketing
• Narratology
• Social Media
• Storytelling

Industries/Professions

• communications
• e-commerce
• film & entertainment
• internet
• media

Geographic Areas

• Americas - North
• Australia & Oceania
• Europe

Research

Narratology

Storytelling of various forms can change people’s behaviour. For example, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is cited for its important role in galvanizing public opinion against slavery. Abraham Lincoln is reported to have called Stowe when he met her “the little woman who wrote the book that made this great [Civil] war!” Consumer behaviour examples include the persuasive power of Latin American telenovelas, which influence family planning choices and enrolment in adult literacy programs, as well as Internet users posting written stories, photos, and videos about themselves and their market experiences, which influence other consumers’ decisions.

Despite a widespread belief in the persuasive power of storytelling though, we still know little about how and why these effects occur. In contrast to novels and soap operas, stories in social media moreover rarely beguile consumers with happy endings or encourage them to forget that the setting is pure fiction. Moments of joyful release from stress are relatively rare in social media, yet they still may induce persuasive effects. Tom conducts research into how this process works and why certain stories are more persuasive than others.

Tom addresses storytelling, social media, and consumer behaviour with a multidisciplinary orientation. He puts conscientious effort into incorporating ideas and findings about storytelling that hail from diverse disciplinary orientations and tries to build a conceptual bridge between the cognitive psychology perspective of consumer behaviour and a cultural view, as represented by Consumer Culture Theory (CCT). For instance, integrating previous literature derived from fields as diverse as anthropology, marketing, psychology, communication, consumer, and literary studies, his 2014 article in the Journal of Consumer Research offers a review of two decades worth of research on narrative persuasion. The article provides not only a comprehensive model that includes the antecedents and process of narrative persuasion but also a multidisciplinary framework in which cognitive psychology and CCT cross-fertilize this field of inquiry.

Research Topics

• Storytelling
• Trust
• Social media

Chapters (5)

• van Laer, T. and Lurie, I. (2016). The Seven Stages of the Digital Marketing Cycle.
• van Laer, (2016). Script for science fiction. In Sherry, J., Downey, H. and Schouten, J. (Eds.), Calabash Cadencé Taisgeadan (pp. 36–37). South Bend: Aire Lyre.
• De Ruyter, K. and Van Laer, T. (2014). It's the social, stupid! Leveraging the 4C markers of social in online service delivery. In Rust, R.T. and Huang, M.H. (Eds.), Handbook of Service Marketing Research (pp. 413–436). Edward Elgar Publishing. ISBN 978-0-85793-885-5.
• van Laer, T. and de Ruyter, K. (2012). In de schoenen van de klant: over de maakbaarheid van verantwoordelijke medewerkers. In Bronner, A.E., Dekker, P., de Leeuw, E., Paas, L.J., de Ruyter, K., Smidts, A. and Wieringa, J.E. (Eds.), Ontwikkelingen in het marktonderzoek: Jaarboek MarktOnderzoekAssociatie (pp. 9–26). Haarlem: Spaar en Hout.
• van Laer, T. and de Ruyter, K. (2011). Een betrouwbaar verhaal: hoe te reageren op negatieve blogs van klanten. In Bronner, A.E., Dekker, P., de Leeuw, E., Paas, L.J., de Ruyter, K., Smidts, A. and Wieringa, J.E. (Eds.), Ontwikkelingen in het marktonderzoek MA 2011 Jaarboek (Insights in Marketing Intelligence 2011 Market Market Research Association Yearbook) (pp. 43–61). Haarlem: De Vrieseborch.

Journal Articles (15)

• van Laer, (2016). Why We Love A TV Thriller Like The Missing. Huffington Post .
• Ludwig, S., van Laer, T., de Ruyter, K. and Friedman, M. (2016). Untangling a Web of Lies: Exploring Automated Detection of Deception in Computer-Mediated Communication. Journal of Management Information Systems, 33(2), pp. 511–541. doi:10.1080/07421222.2016.1205927.
• Jiang, H. and Van Laer, T. (2016). How word of mouth influences the storyteller: Does the effect replicate in China? Advances in Consumer Research, 44, pp. 315–318.
• van Laer, and Escalas, J.E. (2016). Narrative consumption in a digital world. NA - Advances in Consumer Research, 44(1) .
• van Laer, T. (2014). The Means to Justify the End: Combating Cyber Harassment in Social Media. Journal of Business Ethics, 123(1), pp. 85–98. doi:10.1007/s10551-013-1806-z.
• Van Laer, T., De Ruyter, K., Visconti, L.M. and Wetzels, M. (2014). The extended transportation-imagery model: A meta-analysis of the antecedents and consequences of consumers' narrative transportation. Journal of Consumer Research, 40(5), pp. 797–817. doi:10.1086/673383.
• van Laer, T., Visconti, L.M. and Feiereisen, S. (2014). Need for narrative. NA - Advances in Consumer Research, 42(1) .
• van Laer, T., de Ruyter, K. and Cox, D. (2013). A Walk in Customers' Shoes: How Attentional Bias Modification Affects Ownership of Integrity-violating Social Media Posts. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 27(1), pp. 14–27. doi:10.1016/j.intmar.2012.09.002.
• Van Laer, T., De Ruyter, K. and Wetzels, M. (2012). Effects of narrative transportation on persuasion: A meta-analysis. Advances in Consumer Research, 40, pp. 579–581.
• van Laer, T. and de Ruyter, K. (2010). In stories we trust: How narrative apologies provide cover for competitive vulnerability after integrity-violating blog posts. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 27(2), pp. 164–174. doi:10.1016/j.ijresmar.2009.12.010.
• Van Laer, C.J.P. and Van Laer, T. (2007). The shortage of legal dictionaries translating European languages. Terminology, 13(1), pp. 85–92.
• van Laer, and Ludwig, S. Nichts als die Wahrheit. Harvard Business Manager, 2016(10) .
• van Laer, T., Visconti, L.M. and Feiereisen, S. Need for Narrative. Journal of Marketing Management .
• Farace,, S., Van Laer, T., De Ruyter, K. and Wetzels, M. Assessing the effect of narrative transportation, portrayed action, and photographic style on the likelihood to comment on posted selfies. European Journal of Marketing . doi:10.1108/EJM-03-2016-0158.
• Gordon, R., Ciorciari, J. and van Laer, T. Using EEG to Examine the Role of Attention, Working Memory, Emotion, and Imagination in Narrative Transportation. European Journal of Marketing . doi:10.1108/EJM-12-2016-0881.

Editorial Activities (5)

• Communication Research Reports, Referee, 2016 – present.
• European Journal of Marketing, Referee, 2015 – present.
• Journal of Business Ethics, Referee, 2013 – present.
• Journal of Consumer Research, Regular reviewer, 2013 – present.
• Psychology & Marketing, Referee, 2013 – present.