Keller Center Research Report text

The Center's team of faculty, staff, and graduate assistants engage with academics and consultants from around the globe to highlight the latest research in the areas of marketing and sales, management, technology & ethics, among others, with implications for today's real estate professionals.

Recent Stories

INSIDER: Misbelief

Dan Ariely’s Misbelief provides valuable insight into the reasons why people fall into certain beliefs. With a combination of emotional, cognitive, personal, and social factors, it is possible for anyone to become a misbeliever. In the real estate industry, one can adopt some of these same strategies to get to the core of people’s beliefs and desires in order to best serve customer needs.

INSIDER: Healthy Boundaries

Humans are most often enriched by the vibrancy of having social connections. Simultaneously, however, these connections can also be detrimental to our well-being. In Healthy Boundaries, Chase Hill outlines how to identify when boundaries are disregarded by our families, friends, and coworkers and offers solutions that can enable us to live healthier, more fulfilling lives.

Crafting Connections: The Impact of Slogans on Brand Identity Alignment

As consumers' perceptions of brand messages evolve, advertisers respond by revisiting their messages and investing more heavily, with North American advertising spending projected to exceed $370 billion by 2024. In this context, brand name, logo, and slogan's semiotic components gain strategic importance in enhancing brand equity. This paper focuses on slogans and examines slogan-related factors that enhance alignment with brand identity.

Facial First Impressions: The Influence of Babyface Overgeneralization on Agents’ Online Profiles

Have you ever noticed how platforms like Zillow and Rover prominently display profile pictures? Our faces are powerful communicators, even online. Facial cues act as potent first impressions, shaping judgments of trustworthiness, competence, and likeability. We investigated whether online profile photos have this effect, demonstrating how perceived facial characteristics influence consumer engagement with real estate agents.

Knowledge is Power: Can Consumer Knowledge Limit Perceptions of Sales Pressure?

Our research seeks to better understand consumer perceptions of sales pressure through the exploration of consumer entitlement, self-perception of high levels of product knowledge and persuasion knowledge, and awareness of sales persuasion tactics.  Hopefully, this understanding will help firms prevent situations in which consumers feel pressured to buy and instead will create mutually beneficial sales exchanges.

Effects of Depression on Salesperson Performance

Due to its prevalence, depression has been called the “common cold” of mental health. Depression has direct negative effects on employees such as increased deviant workplace behavior and decreased productivity, and this relationship extends to the salesperson role. We studied how certain personal resources—work adaptability and family work support—along with supervisor support can mitigate the consequences of depression on salesperson performance.

Competitive Cohesion: Success in the Sales Force

Competitive salespeople are driven to achieve their goals, which is associated with high sales performance. However, competition can also be a threat to cohesion as salespeople may become more focused on individual success than the success of the team. We examine the challenge sales managers face of creating a work environment that fosters both competitiveness and cohesion in order to improve both performance and sales force retention.

INSIDER: Cleaning Up Your Mental Mess

Understanding one's own mind has never been more critical for well-being. Dr. Caroline Leaf's Cleaning Your Mental Mess serves as a guiding light through the landscape of mental health, offering readers a clear path to harness the power within each of us. This power allows us to shape our thoughts, emotions, and ultimately, our lives.