Welcome to the Digital Marketing Research Group!

We’re excited to welcome you to the Digital Marketing Research Group’s website. The group is a founding member of the Institute for Customer Insights. It was established and is led by Professor Ann-Kristin Kupfer.

Our research and teaching focus on the evolving role of marketing in today’s digital landscape. As technology continues to reshape how companies and brands engage with consumers, it’s essential to develop new insights and strategies.

Our work covers a range of topics, including brand management in the digital age, the use of immersive technologies, and consumer interactions with artificial intelligence—just to name a few. We aim to advance this field through empirical research, employing diverse data collection and analysis methods, and make them part of our curriculum, fostering lively discussions with our students around these topics as part of lectures, seminars, and theses.

We’re proud that our commitment to excellence in both research and teaching has been recognized with several prestigious awards.

Some News and Updates about the Digital Marketing Research Group

March 26, 2025: Course offered by the CIN wins "Best Practice" award The course “Onlinekonzepte für Karlsruher Innenstadthändler”, originally initiated by Marin Klarmann and now taught by Ann-Kristin Kupfer, has been honored as a "Best Practice" by stadtimpulse. The initiative, which is co-organized with the City Marketing Karlsruhe, helps local retailers enhance their digital presence through student-led support in areas like website optimization, social media, and content creation. At the same time, it offers students the opportunity to put their theoretical knowledge into action and make a real impact. The award recognizes the course’s contribution to revitalizing Karlsruhe's city center. The project will continue in the next summer semester. Interested Master students are invited to participate; the enrollment for the course begins in April.

March 25, 2025: A new publication by Ann-Kristin Kupfer on entertainment science! For over four decades, scholars have developed the field of entertainment science, establishing a thorough understanding of the business behind filmed, recorded, written, and programmed media products and services, encompassing consumer behavior and strategic decision-making. In her latest article, published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Sciences (VHB-A), Ann-Kristin Kupfer and her co-authors Ronny Behrens and Thorsten Hennig-Thurau synthesize key findings from entertainment science research. The authors develop a framework that structures the research stream, highlighting the hedonic, narrative, cultural, creative, innovative, and digital nature of entertainment offerings. Leveraging the entertainment industry’s pioneering role in major cross-industry trends, including virtual worlds and generative AI, they then provide best practices for adapting to these developments. The article is freely accessible here.

February 6, 2025: Workshops. In the summer semester of 2025, the research groups Marketing & Sales and Digital Marketing are offering two interactive events. All information about the events “Digital Marketing and Sales in B2B” and “Online concepts for Karlsruhe city center retailers” as well as how to apply can be found on this set of slides. Registration begins in April.