News Releases

BALTIMORE, MD, August 5, 2024 – In spring 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, one of Germany’s 16 federal states instituted an ad ban, forcing retailers to stop all print advertising in that state for three weeks. The state did so under the assumption that such a ban would limit contacts during the pandemic. However, banning print advertising is also being discussed as a way to conserve natural resources, including the paper and water required to produce printed advertising materials, and a way to help reduce carbon emissions.

BALTIMORE, MD, July 29, 2024 – Generative artificial intelligence (AI) platforms such as Open AI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 have provided many new ways for researchers to better understand consumer behaviors and preferences, but one question that has yet to be answered is whether these large language models (LLMs) can accurately mimic human responses on matters of consumer preference.

BALTIMORE, MD, June 18, 2024 – Advertising has long been known to depict a virtual reality of life leading some people to expect more out of life than is practical. This is driven by idyllic imagery and storytelling, among other techniques such as an emphasis on materialism.

BALTIMORE, MD, May 8, 2024 – Because public health experts have determined that menthol-flavored cigarettes pose higher health risks to smokers than non-menthol varieties, policymakers for years have considered banning menthol. Most of the measures taken to date have been at the state level, but new research suggests that this approach has backfired. The better alternative, researchers suggest, is a higher tax on menthol cigarettes, or a national ban at the federal level.

BALTIMORE, MD, April 09, 2024 – Do market researchers still need to conduct original research using human participants in their work? Not always, according to a new study, which found that thanks to the increasing sophistication of large language models (LLMs), human participants can be substituted with LLMs and still generate similar outputs as those generated from human surveys.

BALTIMORE, MD, March 25, 2024 – Four INFORMS members have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Antonio Conejo is a professor in integrated systems engineering at The Ohio State University. Martha Grabowski is the McDevitt Distinguished Chair in Information Systems, Information Systems Program Director and professor of information systems in the Madden College of Business and Economics at Le Moyne College. Patricia Mokhtarian is a Clifford and William Greene Jr. Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Stephen Wright is a George B. Dantzig Professor of computer sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

BALTIMORE, MD, March 11, 2024 – In business and in life, the power of mentorship has long been understood, but how important is it that your mentor look like you? This question was at the center of a new study, which specifically found that mentor gender has a powerful impact on female entrepreneurs.

BALTIMORE, MD, March 5, 2024 – New research in the INFORMS journal Marketing Science has found that companies and brands that have aligned themselves with Black Lives Matter (BLM) suffered a negative impact at the hands of consumers.

BALTIMORE, MD, February 28, 2024 – Delivering childhood vaccines via drone could be a triple whammy – saving lives, saving money and improving health outcomes – according to new research in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science. The authors developed optimization models to strategically design a distribution network for drones to deliver vaccines. Their proposed approach was evaluated using real-world data from the Vanuatu region, where vaccine delivery by drones was tested in a UNICEF-sponsored project.

BALTIMORE, MD, February 21, 2024 – Artificial intelligence (AI) has made great strides in the past few years, even months. New research in the INFORMS journal Management Science finds that AI agents can build trust – like that of humans.