EPoS Winter Summit 2024

Harald van Heerde (Ph.D., University of Groningen, the Netherlands) is a Research Professor of Marketing at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney. Harald specializes in econometric models to improve marketing decision-making. His wide-ranging research interests include endogeneity and causality, social media, mobile apps, digital marketing, strategies to build brands and brand equity, retailing, sports and entertainment marketing, and disruption caused by product harm crises, price wars, and the business cycle.

Van Heerde has widely published in the Journal of Marketing Research (22x), Journal of Marketing (10x), and Marketing Science (8x). Harald is the recipient of ten paper awards from the Journal of Marketing Research (2x), Journal of Marketing (2x), Marketing Science (2x), and the International Journal of Research in Marketing (4x). Harald has received the 2021 Churchill Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Research from the American Marketing Association (AMA), was elected as a Fellow of the AMA (2024) and as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences (2022) and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Hamburg (2024). He has 11k Google Scholar Citations and an h-index of 46.

Van Heerde served as an Editor of Journal of Marketing as an Associate Editor at Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, and international Journal of Research in Marketing. Van Heerde has chaired the Marketing Dynamics Conference (2009), the Marketing Analytics Symposium Sydney (2020, 2022, 2023), and the ISMS Marketing Science Conference (2024).

Van Heerde has attracted AU$ 1.9M in international research grants. He is also the Vice-Chairman and Program Director of the Marketing Science Hub of AiMark, a non-profit panel data provider for academic research. Van Heerde has consulted for Edeka (Germany), Unilever (the Netherlands), and Fonterra (Australia / New Zealand).

Navigating Endogeneity in Applied Research: A Non-technical Update

ABSTRACT

To obtain real-world insight, applied researchers increasingly use large data sets where the predictor (independent variable) is observed rather than manipulated. While such observational data provides opportunities for external validity and real-world relevance, they can yield biased effects due to endogeneity. Endogeneity arises if the predictor depends on an omitted cause that also relates to the outcome, and it may undermine the causality of findings and preclude any meaningful interpretation of an observed relationship with the dependent variable. To help applied researchers address this issue in observational data, we clarify why endogeneity matters and detail its underlying sources including omitted variables, simultaneity, measurement error, sample selection, and treatment choice. We provide guidelines on how to identify these sources and give a non-technical update on several remedies (including fixed effects, instrumental variables, selection models, instrument-free methods and diff-in diff), along with their requirements, assumptions, and limitations.

Kari’s research interests, as well as his international publication record, cover a wide range of management accounting as well as accounting theory and methodology topics. Kari’s teaching has focused on management accounting, but he has also given a course on the philosophy of science and research methodology for doctoral students. He served the EAA as the Editor-in-Chief of the European Accounting Review in 2000-2005; currently, he is an Associate Editor of QRAM as well as a member of the Editorial Boards of AAAJ, ABR, AOS, BAR, CPA, JAOC, and MAR. In 2015-2019, he served as the International Director of the Management Accounting Section of the AAA. He is a member of the Faculty of the EIASM, too. In that context, he founded, organized, and chaired, jointly with Prof. Michael Shields, the biannual conference on “New directions in management accounting” in 1998-2016 and was the founding and coordinating faculty member of the EDEN doctoral course on “Case-based research in management accounting”, organized biannually in 2003-2015. For several decades, Kari was actively involved in the executive education of the Turku School of Economics. He served as the Head of the Department of Accounting and Finance in 2003-2017. In addition to being a member of the Council of Turku School of Economics, from 2014 until 2021 he was the Chair of the University Collegiate Council of the University of Turku. In 2022, Kari received the Anthony G. Hopwood Award for Academic Leadership from the EAA. While now a Professor Emeritus, Kari continues as an intensively research-active scholar.

The contribution of causal thinking in interpretive research

ABSTRACT

The contemporary theory of causality, based on the notions of counter factuality and contrastive thinking, offers helpful direction on how to generate plausible causal arguments in interpretive research. Notably, regularity does not need to be seen as a necessary condition for causal claims; instead, the contemporary notion of causality appreciates context-based explanatory thinking. People’s subjective and intersubjective meanings fit finely into such an approach to causality.

For interpretive researchers, this opens a route from rich emic accounts to ’thick explanations’, just if they choose to carry out such analysis. Perhaps with some surprise, causality can be included in interpretive research framings without compromising the unique features of such research – actually, by even building on some of its strongholds. In particular, causal analysis in interpretive research is apt to look at the mechanisms and processes at work – to open up the ’arrow’ from the postulated explanatory ’factors’ towards the explanandum.

Examples from interpretive research (from the field of management accounting, for instance), where the analysis is essentially causal (often without its explication), can be found. The presentation argues that there is no need to shy away from the explicit use of the weapons for causal analysis that the contemporary accounts of causality offer.