University of Texas at Arlington
University of Texas at Dallas
Yiyi Li and Ying Xie have been selected to receive the 2025 Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award for their article, “Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words? An Empirical Study of Image Content and Social Media Engagement,” which appeared in the February 2020 issue (Volume 57, Issue 1) of Journal of Marketing Research (JMR).
The annual Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award honors the JMR article published five years ago that has made the most significant, long-term contribution to marketing theory, methodology, and/or practice. The award committee this year included Raghuram Iyengar (University of Pennsylvania), Tulin Erdem (New York University), and Kapil Tuli (Singapore Management University). The committee provided the following statement about their choice:
This study is one of the early attempts in Marketing to apply machine learning techniques for analyzing image content and its downstream impact on social media engagement. The authors develop a theory-based approach drawing on extant literature in visual marketing, with a scalable empirical framework to convert the large quantity of unstructured image data into more structured, quantifiable measures e.g., image quality, colorfulness, human presence, and image-text fit. They apply their modeling framework to a comprehensive dataset of social media posts related to major airlines and SUV brands from Twitter and Instagram. The results provide actionable recommendations regarding the association between pictures and engagement.
The paper has had a significant impact on the academic audience. It has gathered more than 400 citations since its publication (based on the Social Science Citation Index, accessed on April 10, 2025). In addition, the paper has had more than 100,000 views according to Sage journal tracking metrics, demonstrating its wide-reaching appeal and influence. What is particularly notable is the interdisciplinary relevance of the paper as many citations stem from multiple disciplines, including Information Systems, and Computer Science.
The paper also has significant appeal for Marketing practice. In only a short span of five year since publication, the documented results have become a part of “best practice” for enhancing engagement on social media. For example, the authors find that high-quality, professionally shot images consistently yield higher engagement across platforms. In addition, the influence of colorfulness varies by product category, highlighting the need for context-specific design strategies.
In sum, the paper nicely bridges theory and practice, which makes it a very worthy recipient of the 2025, Weitz-Winer-O’Dell award.
Four other excellent papers were named finalists for the 2025 Weitz-Winer-O’Dell Award:
- “Should Your Brand Pick a Side? How Market Share Determines the Impact of Corporate Political Advocacy,” by Chris Hydock, Neeru Paharia and Sean Blair
- “Bayesian Synthetic Control Methods,” by Sungjin Kim, Clarence Lee and Sachin Gupta
- “The Polarity of Online Reviews: Prevalence, Drivers and Implications,” by Verena Schoenmueller, Oded Netzer and Florian Stahl
- “The Positive Effect of Not Following Others on Social Media,” by Francesca Valsesia, Davide Proserpio and Joseph C. Nunes
Congratulations to the winners and the authors of the finalist papers! Yiyi and Ying will be recognized during the awards luncheon at the 2025 AMA Summer Academic Conference in Chicago (August 22–24).
Go to the Journal of Marketing Research