Mary Pittman
Biographic Data
| ID | 228936 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mary Pittman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mary |
| FAMILY NAME | Pittman |
| SIGNATURE | PITTMAN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tennessee at Knoxville |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8719-7605 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 193 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Just for fun
Fun-seeking permeates the everyday human experience. While advertising research has focused on implicit, fun-related cues (colors, characters, fonts, and imagery), no research has examined fun’s meanings and manifestations. The current research adopts a holistic, cross-discipline perspective to develop a foundational framework for advertising fun. Phenomenological interviews reveal three core characteristics of a fun brand that intersect to creat…
Green Advertising on Instagram Versus TikTok
Green advertising is essential for brands who want to keep up with consumers’ increasing expectations of sustainability, and social media accounts for larger and larger portions of advertising budgets. TikTok is the fastest-growing platform globally, yet little is known about how it compares to other platforms, specifically Instagram, which is the most similar competitor. In this study, we use construal level theory and processing fluency to expl…
Should travel influencers be human or virtual? Comparing effectiveness for material and experiential products
Virtual influencers (VIs) are computer-generated characters that serve as influencers and offer novel advertising strategies for travel and tourism brands. Virtual influencers are gaining prominence as a way of attracting people's attention on social media, but limited research has been conducted on this subject. In the present study, we explore the effects of VIs versus traditional human influencers (HIs) for material and experiential products o…
Altercast framing with assertive sustainability messages
Advertisers often use assertive messages because they minimize ambiguity, are attention-grabbing, and encourage behavioural compliance, making them a popular message design strategy in sustainability advertising. However, assertive messages often backfire for ‘non-green’ or lower environmental concern (LEC) consumers, generating more negative attitudes toward the ad sponsor and entrenching existing behaviours. Advertisers employ subtle phrasing t…
Using the FCB grid to understand privacy concerns in social media advertising
Online behavioral advertising (OBA) is now the norm for social media advertising campaigns. Brands use detailed consumer data points to customize product placement, but extant research has found mixed results about the efficacy of OBA given increasing consumer privacy concerns. This research attempts to address this conflict by using the FCB grid to investigate how different product types (high vs. low involvement, thinking vs. feeling) might inf…
Why a Single Pro-Environmental Appeal Works to Promote Behavioral Change
Some brands, not-for-profit organizations, and social media influencers post tips to encourage prosocial behaviors. This is particularly prevalent in the context of environmental sustainability. Through a series of three studies, including a field experiment using a real brand to investigate click-through rates and cost per click, this research finds that a single green tip (versus many tips) enhances brand attitudes among consumers with low envi…
They Can't … They Won't … They Did
In this essay Brian R. Sevier, Joanna Bruno, Karol Gates, Stephanie Hartman, Mary Ellen Pittman, Vince Puzick, Phyllis Reed, and Beverly Reimer describe their effort at the Colorado Department of Education to recruit and engage educators in authoring free and open-source curriculum samples for preK-12 academic content areas. The story of Colorado9s Sample Curriculum Project illuminates how this team navigated constraints to foreground teachers as…
When Sports Fans Buy
While sports fandom and social media advertising have been widely studied, and all major, professional teams use social media campaigns for direct sales, there is surprisingly little research on the relationship between fans’ social media engagement behavior (SMEB) and their purchase intention (PI), and none that differentiates PI across different platforms and sports contexts. This study addresses those gaps by exploring (a) how different kinds …
Remembering the FCB Grid
The Foote, Cone, and Belding (FCB) grid was developed to help advertising practitioners think strategically and situationally about the way consumers make purchase decisions. It was a prominent theoretical perspective for scholars in the 1980s but has been neglected in recent years. Moreover, what little research does exist on the FCB grid seems to misunderstand one of its primary tenets: that its axes of thinking, feeling, and involvement do not…
More Trust in Fewer Followers
Digital marketing campaigns increasingly utilize social media influencers. Research in influencer marketing has investigated popularity metrics but found conflicting results on how the number of followers and likes on posts might influence consumers’ behaviors. The present research investigates green living orientation of influencers as a moderating characteristic that leads to differential interpretation of popularity metrics in the context of g…
Distinguishing feast-watching from cringe-watching
This study seeks to add nuance to the definition of binge-watching by identifying the subtypes of the general practice that reflect viewer rituals, motives, and outcomes. The two subtypes are (1) the healthy practice of ‘feast-watching’ and (2) the unhealthy practice of ‘cringe-watching’. While binge-watching as a singular behavior has been associated with anxiety, depression, and loneliness, a survey ( N = 800) finds that binge-watching which is…
Ewom anatomy of online product reviews
Consumers encounter many cues when making online purchases, particularly when reading product reviews. When competing heuristics are triggered, which emerges as more persuasive? This study explores online reviews of an Amazon-like platform to see how star ratings, numbers of reviews, and review valence provide cues to consumers which influence perceived credibility. Two experiments utilizing different samples provide converging evidence that nega…
Transportation or Narrative Completion? Attentiveness during Binge-Watching Moderates Regret
Extant results on the binge-watching outcomes have been mixed. This study sought to examine the crucial factor of attentiveness that might help to enhance viewer experience and mitigate post-binge regret, as well as differentiate the motivation of narrative transportation from narrative completion. While narrative transportation involves a viewer getting unconsciously swept away by the story, the motivation of narrative completion is a more self-…
Reclaiming, Sustaining and Revitalizing Hawaiian Education through Video-Cued Makawalu Ethnography
A Hawaiian adaptation of Tobin et al.'s (2009; 1989) video-cued ethnography (VCE) illuminates the possibilities and challenges of implementing culturally sustaining and revitalizing Indigenous education in contemporary Hawaiian schools. Findings highlight (1) the successful classroom integration and transmission of Indigenous interactional styles and (2) the potential of VCE as a collaborative professional/curriculum development model to support …
Social media and loneliness
Thou Shalt Kill … Carefully
This article uses the television series Dexter as a space to explore the practice of religion in a secular society. Employing critical discourse analysis, which focuses on the causal relationships between discursive practices or texts and sociocultural processes, we situate the habitual killing activity of protagonist Dexter Morgan in what Charles Taylor calls the “immanent frame.” By using the concepts of ritual provided by anthropologists Roy A…
With or without you
Social networking services like Twitter have changed the way people engage with traditional broadcast media. But how social is “second screen” activity? The purpose of this study is to determine if patterns of connected viewing (augmenting television consumption with a second screen) and co-viewing (watching television together) are different for traditionally broadcast, “appointment” television shows versus streaming, asynchronous television rel…
Sprinting a media marathon
“Binge-watching” represents a radical shift for twenty-first century media consumption. Why do people select this method of television viewing? A survey administered to 262 television binge-watchers identified factors that influence binge watching, several of which are somewhat different than factors impacting other types of television viewing. Factors salient for regular bingers are relaxation, engagement, and hedonism. For those who plan ahead …
Entertainment Theology
Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy." The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 27(1), pp. 87–88
Video as a tool for fostering productive discussions in mathematics professional development
Video as a tool for fostering productive discussions in mathematics professional development
Social media and loneliness
Transportation or Narrative Completion? Attentiveness during Binge-Watching Moderates Regret
Extant results on the binge-watching outcomes have been mixed. This study sought to examine the crucial factor of attentiveness that might help to enhance viewer experience and mitigate post-binge regret, as well as differentiate the motivation of narrative transportation from narrative completion. While narrative transportation involves a viewer getting unconsciously swept away by the story, the motivation of narrative completion is a more self-…
Reclaiming, Sustaining and Revitalizing Hawaiian Education through Video-Cued Makawalu Ethnography
A Hawaiian adaptation of Tobin et al.'s (2009; 1989) video-cued ethnography (VCE) illuminates the possibilities and challenges of implementing culturally sustaining and revitalizing Indigenous education in contemporary Hawaiian schools. Findings highlight (1) the successful classroom integration and transmission of Indigenous interactional styles and (2) the potential of VCE as a collaborative professional/curriculum development model to support …
Video as a tool for fostering productive discussions in mathematics professional development
Thou Shalt Kill … Carefully
This article uses the television series Dexter as a space to explore the practice of religion in a secular society. Employing critical discourse analysis, which focuses on the causal relationships between discursive practices or texts and sociocultural processes, we situate the habitual killing activity of protagonist Dexter Morgan in what Charles Taylor calls the “immanent frame.” By using the concepts of ritual provided by anthropologists Roy A…
With or without you
Social networking services like Twitter have changed the way people engage with traditional broadcast media. But how social is “second screen” activity? The purpose of this study is to determine if patterns of connected viewing (augmenting television consumption with a second screen) and co-viewing (watching television together) are different for traditionally broadcast, “appointment” television shows versus streaming, asynchronous television rel…
Sprinting a media marathon
“Binge-watching” represents a radical shift for twenty-first century media consumption. Why do people select this method of television viewing? A survey administered to 262 television binge-watchers identified factors that influence binge watching, several of which are somewhat different than factors impacting other types of television viewing. Factors salient for regular bingers are relaxation, engagement, and hedonism. For those who plan ahead …
Entertainment Theology
Entertainment Theology: New-Edge Spirituality in a Digital Democracy." The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, 27(1), pp. 87–88
Social media and loneliness
Transportation or Narrative Completion? Attentiveness during Binge-Watching Moderates Regret
Extant results on the binge-watching outcomes have been mixed. This study sought to examine the crucial factor of attentiveness that might help to enhance viewer experience and mitigate post-binge regret, as well as differentiate the motivation of narrative transportation from narrative completion. While narrative transportation involves a viewer getting unconsciously swept away by the story, the motivation of narrative completion is a more self-…
Reclaiming, Sustaining and Revitalizing Hawaiian Education through Video-Cued Makawalu Ethnography
A Hawaiian adaptation of Tobin et al.'s (2009; 1989) video-cued ethnography (VCE) illuminates the possibilities and challenges of implementing culturally sustaining and revitalizing Indigenous education in contemporary Hawaiian schools. Findings highlight (1) the successful classroom integration and transmission of Indigenous interactional styles and (2) the potential of VCE as a collaborative professional/curriculum development model to support …
Ewom anatomy of online product reviews
Consumers encounter many cues when making online purchases, particularly when reading product reviews. When competing heuristics are triggered, which emerges as more persuasive? This study explores online reviews of an Amazon-like platform to see how star ratings, numbers of reviews, and review valence provide cues to consumers which influence perceived credibility. Two experiments utilizing different samples provide converging evidence that nega…
More Trust in Fewer Followers
Digital marketing campaigns increasingly utilize social media influencers. Research in influencer marketing has investigated popularity metrics but found conflicting results on how the number of followers and likes on posts might influence consumers’ behaviors. The present research investigates green living orientation of influencers as a moderating characteristic that leads to differential interpretation of popularity metrics in the context of g…
Distinguishing feast-watching from cringe-watching
This study seeks to add nuance to the definition of binge-watching by identifying the subtypes of the general practice that reflect viewer rituals, motives, and outcomes. The two subtypes are (1) the healthy practice of ‘feast-watching’ and (2) the unhealthy practice of ‘cringe-watching’. While binge-watching as a singular behavior has been associated with anxiety, depression, and loneliness, a survey ( N = 800) finds that binge-watching which is…
Remembering the FCB Grid
The Foote, Cone, and Belding (FCB) grid was developed to help advertising practitioners think strategically and situationally about the way consumers make purchase decisions. It was a prominent theoretical perspective for scholars in the 1980s but has been neglected in recent years. Moreover, what little research does exist on the FCB grid seems to misunderstand one of its primary tenets: that its axes of thinking, feeling, and involvement do not…
When Sports Fans Buy
While sports fandom and social media advertising have been widely studied, and all major, professional teams use social media campaigns for direct sales, there is surprisingly little research on the relationship between fans’ social media engagement behavior (SMEB) and their purchase intention (PI), and none that differentiates PI across different platforms and sports contexts. This study addresses those gaps by exploring (a) how different kinds …
Altercast framing with assertive sustainability messages
Advertisers often use assertive messages because they minimize ambiguity, are attention-grabbing, and encourage behavioural compliance, making them a popular message design strategy in sustainability advertising. However, assertive messages often backfire for ‘non-green’ or lower environmental concern (LEC) consumers, generating more negative attitudes toward the ad sponsor and entrenching existing behaviours. Advertisers employ subtle phrasing t…
Using the FCB grid to understand privacy concerns in social media advertising
Online behavioral advertising (OBA) is now the norm for social media advertising campaigns. Brands use detailed consumer data points to customize product placement, but extant research has found mixed results about the efficacy of OBA given increasing consumer privacy concerns. This research attempts to address this conflict by using the FCB grid to investigate how different product types (high vs. low involvement, thinking vs. feeling) might inf…
Why a Single Pro-Environmental Appeal Works to Promote Behavioral Change
Some brands, not-for-profit organizations, and social media influencers post tips to encourage prosocial behaviors. This is particularly prevalent in the context of environmental sustainability. Through a series of three studies, including a field experiment using a real brand to investigate click-through rates and cost per click, this research finds that a single green tip (versus many tips) enhances brand attitudes among consumers with low envi…
They Can't … They Won't … They Did
In this essay Brian R. Sevier, Joanna Bruno, Karol Gates, Stephanie Hartman, Mary Ellen Pittman, Vince Puzick, Phyllis Reed, and Beverly Reimer describe their effort at the Colorado Department of Education to recruit and engage educators in authoring free and open-source curriculum samples for preK-12 academic content areas. The story of Colorado9s Sample Curriculum Project illuminates how this team navigated constraints to foreground teachers as…
Green Advertising on Instagram Versus TikTok
Green advertising is essential for brands who want to keep up with consumers’ increasing expectations of sustainability, and social media accounts for larger and larger portions of advertising budgets. TikTok is the fastest-growing platform globally, yet little is known about how it compares to other platforms, specifically Instagram, which is the most similar competitor. In this study, we use construal level theory and processing fluency to expl…
Should travel influencers be human or virtual? Comparing effectiveness for material and experiential products
Virtual influencers (VIs) are computer-generated characters that serve as influencers and offer novel advertising strategies for travel and tourism brands. Virtual influencers are gaining prominence as a way of attracting people's attention on social media, but limited research has been conducted on this subject. In the present study, we explore the effects of VIs versus traditional human influencers (HIs) for material and experiential products o…
Just for fun
Fun-seeking permeates the everyday human experience. While advertising research has focused on implicit, fun-related cues (colors, characters, fonts, and imagery), no research has examined fun’s meanings and manifestations. The current research adopts a holistic, cross-discipline perspective to develop a foundational framework for advertising fun. Phenomenological interviews reveal three core characteristics of a fun brand that intersect to creat…
Psychology (16 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Advertising (13 works) · Business (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Digital Marketing and Social Media (11 works) · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification (8 works) · Political science (7 works) · Social media (7 works) · Sociology (6 works)