Sydni Do

Sydni Do

She/her

Sydni Fomas Do is a fourth-year marketing doctoral student at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management. With a research focus that spans topics such as financial decision-making, stereotype threat, and brand activism, Sydni's work addresses contemporary marketing challenges, including how the marketplace can improve the well-being of underrepresented and vulnerable populations.

Publications

You can also find my articles on my Google Scholar profile.

Journal Articles

Is Laughter the Best Marketing? Why This is the Wrong Question

Published in Current Opinion in Psychology, 2023

Humor is often described as a miracle pill for marketers, yet the effects of humor on advertising, content marketing, service, and other marketing functions are wildly inconsistent. Before scholars can know whether a pun, prank, meme, or laugh will attract sales, clicks, or five-star reviews, they need to understand why the effects of humor appear to vary. Humor has different effects because scholars have treated humor as different constructs while studying how it influences different marketing outcomes with different types of stimuli in different of situations on different types of people. Only by recognizing these differences can scholars begin to understand when, why, and how humor can benefit marketers. To navigate this complexity, researchers need to develop a theory of humor that can help explain how different attempts to be humorous influence different consumers in different situations.

Recommended citation: Do, Sydni Fomas, & Warren, C. (2023). Is Laughter the Best Marketing? Why This is the Wrong Question. Current Opinion in Psychology, 54, 101694. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2023.101694
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When Brand Narratives are Written in Metaphoric Terms, Can They Weaken Self–Brand Connections?

Published in Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2023

Previous research has established that brand narratives can strengthen the connection between consumers and brands. The present investigation raises the question of whether this finding holds when narratives are written in metaphoric terms. Three studies, including a pilot study of Amazon.com brand reviews (𝑁=1,000) and two experiments (𝑁=4,017), illustrate that metaphoric (vs. nonmetaphoric) narratives can actually weaken the self-brand connection. The studies illuminate that, while metaphoric narratives are prevalent in consumer reviews, such reviews seem less likely to provide the narrative structure necessary to establish a strong connection with the brand. This work contributes to the novel insight that while consumers often use metaphors as a way to talk about brands, relying on metaphors may actually weaken the review writer’s connection with the brand. This effect remains robust even when considering high levels of brand familiarity and linguistic abilities of the brand review writer.

Recommended citation: Do, Sydni Fomas, Reimann, M., López, A., & Castaño, R. (2023). When Brand Narratives are Written in Metaphoric Terms, Can They Weaken Self–Brand Connections? Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. https://doi.org/10.1086/727831
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