A joint research between KATO Takumi, a senior assistant professor at the School of Commerce, Meiji University, and a business development team led by KOIZUMI Masaki, a senior professional at NEC Corporation won two Best Conference Paper Awards at the 7th International Conference on Knowledge Innovation and Invention held in Nagoya, Japan, from August 16 to 18, 2024. These results emerged from the NEC causal analysis’ workshop called Business Compass Academy.
In the first award-winning research, the researchers examined the ideal home situation of married couples depicted in advertisements for microwave ovens in various industries such as food, household goods, and home appliances. In the second award-winning research, a comparative study was made of the recruitment information of new graduates among Japanese university students and demonstrated that remote work was the number one factor in the attractiveness of the workplace among them.
Research 1：Effect of product usage scenes of married couples in home appliance ads on purchase intention
Author: Takumi Kato; Kenta Kasahara; Tomoaki Hattori; Shinya Masuda; Juyeon Park; Katsuya Watanabe
1. In marketing communications, it is fundamental to promote the brand concept of the product or service. In recent years, however, there is a concern that even if the concept is well expressed, consumers may criticize it if it lacks consideration for the values of the times.
2. In various industries such as food, household goods, and home appliances, the researchers examined the ideal home situation of married couples depicted in advertisements for microwave ovens. The results revealed that the advertisement depicting “husband doing the housework and wife doing the work outside” were more appealing for products than the advertisement depicting “husband doing the work outside and wife doing the housework” or “a married couple doing the housework together.” This result was the same whether the evaluator was male or female.
3. In addition to the perspective of communicating concepts, advertisements can be expected to be more effective if they are also examined in terms of their conformity to the values of the times.
Examples of advertising material used in the research
Even for the same product, the advertisement depicting “husband doing the housework and wife doing the work outside” is more appealing.
Research 2：Attractive workplace factors from university students’ perspective in Japan
Author: Takumi Kato; Yuto Tsukada; Atsuki Matsuda; Ryosuke Ikeda; Katsuya Hayami; Masaki Koizumi
1. Although many aspects have been promoted to attract talented human resources, such as the workplace environment, diversity of human resources, casual dress code, skill development, one-on-one methods, early career opportunities, and promotion of remote work, the comparison of their effects on workplace attractiveness has been insufficient.
2. Therefore, a randomized controlled trial was conducted on Japanese university students hired as new graduates by a major food manufacturer and a consulting firm and found that remote work was the most attractive option to increase workplace attractiveness. Since the pandemic has subsided, corporate management has rigorously pushed for a return to the office, but from the students’ perspective, they seem to have a strong negative impression of it.
3. Data science in the field of human resources has started to attract attention owing to trends such as people analytics, but the difficulty of conducting demonstration experiments has become an issue. It is important to make decisions on the design of recruitment websites and human resources systems based on demonstrated evidence.