Stefan Mayer

Dr. Stefan Mayer is an Assistant Professor of Marketing Analytics (tenure track) at the School of Business and Economics, University of Tübingen since March 2019, and as of October 2024 serves as the Acting Chair of Marketing. His interdisciplinary work bridges marketing, psychology, and computer science with a focus on how visual aesthetics and processing fluency influence consumer judgments and decision-making.

His educational background includes:

• Diploma in Psychology (M.Sc. equivalent) from Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (2012)
• Studies of Psychology and Computer Science at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (2006)
• Doctoral dissertation on product design and visual aesthetics (summa cum laude) completed in 2017

Dr. Mayer's research centers on the intersection of visual aesthetics, consumer psychology, and machine learning. His foundational work developed algorithmic measures to quantify visual aesthetics based on processing fluency theory. He has pioneered the application of deep learning and image analytics to understand how product design influences consumer preferences. His research demonstrates how visual elements impact cognitive processing and subsequent consumer behavior.

His recent publications show a clear evolution from theoretical foundations to practical machine learning applications, with increasing focus on convolutional neural networks for image analysis in marketing contexts. His work spans diverse applications including fashion product sales prediction, startup pitch deck evaluation, and financial analytics, all unified by the common thread of visual information processing.

His notable achievements include:

• AMA Sheth Doctoral Consortium Fellow (2017)
• Best Paper of the EMAC Research Camp (2016)

As an academic, Dr. Mayer has developed the R package 'imagefluency' to advance methodological capabilities in aesthetic research, reflecting his commitment to open science. His research laboratory focuses on applying computational methods to traditional marketing questions, with particular emphasis on making research tools accessible to the broader academic community through open-source software development.

Dr. Mayer maintains an active research program with numerous recent conference presentations at premier marketing and interdisciplinary venues, demonstrating ongoing innovation at the intersection of marketing analytics and artificial intelligence.