Prof. Dr. Alexa Burmester is Associate Professor of Applied Quantitative Methods at Kühne Logistics University (KLU).
She received her PhD in Marketing from the University of Hamburg and holds a Diploma in Business Administration from the same institution. Before joining KLU in 2021, she was a Post-Doc Researcher and Habilitand at the Institute of Marketing & Media at the University of Hamburg.
She has taught various quantitative methods, marketing, and digitalization courses at the University of Hamburg and as an external lecturer at KLU. Her teaching combines quantitative methods with real-world managerial problems, preparing students for data-driven decision-making. She engages industry representatives to bridge theory and practice.
Her research focuses on solving methodological challenges in quantitative data, with a particular interest in marketing, digitalization, and sustainability. She specializes in resolving endogeneity issues using methods like instrumented variables, propensity score matching, and gaussian copula approaches. Her work has been published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing and presented at major international conferences. She received the 2nd place at the EMAC McKinsey Marketing Dissertation Award and the Best Paper Award in 2015.
Up Close & Personal
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"For me, the small classes set KLU apart."
– Dr. Alexa Burmester
Teaching
- Consumer Behavior and Marketing Principles
- Business Strategies in the European Ccontext
- Data-driven Marketing Analytics and Decision-Making
Research Areas
- Quantitative Marketing Research & Methodology
- Digital Media & Smart Technologies
- Marketing Effectiveness & Outcome Heterogeneity
- Sustainability in Marketing Contexts
- Applied Econometrics & Endogeneity Solutions
Selected Publications
The success of entertainment products such as movies or books varies tremendously, and managers strive to increase the odds by deciding on the right marketing input. Aiming to improve managerial decision making, we suggest and test a quantile regression framework to detect outcome heterogeneity effects of marketing inputs in the entertainment industry. By analyzing the spread of the .9 and the .1 conditioned quantile to the .5 (median) conditioned quantile, we study how much an increase (decrease) of an input factor (star power and quality) changes the spread of the expected outcome (revenues and sales). The spread serves as an indicator for the heterogeneity effect of the input factor regarding the outcome. In two empirical studies, we show how marketing instruments increase (or decrease) outcome heterogeneity by estimating quantile regressions and provide generalizable findings regarding the outcome heterogeneity effects of star power (increases outcome heterogeneity) and quality evaluations (reduces outcome heterogeneity) in the entertainment industry.
The rise of the Internet and new online services have led to the wide-scale illegal distribution of digital entertainment products, such as music, movies, games, and books. We analyze whether firms in the entertainment industry should fight unlicensed usage by providing specific offers that maximize the utility for segments relying on unlicensed usage, i.e., by optimizing timing and pricing strategies, or whether they should simply accept a certain level of unlicensed usage. We combine Becker's (1968) economic approach to analyzing social issues with random utility theory to develop a choice model for media products in which we account for unlicensed usage. We then apply the model in two large-scale empirical studies on movies and books. The results show that consumers who prefer unlicensed usage are sensitive to the marketing mix to some extent in both markets. However, optimizing timing and pricing only has limited impact on additional revenue generation. Thus, from a managerial perspective, it is very difficult to reduce the relative loss due to unlicensed usage by providing targeted offers.
The increasing diffusion of smart speakers results in substantial challenges for news publishers. Voice-based formats – especially news podcasts – gain significant importance via smart speakers, raising the question of displacement effects on other news media. We investigate the interplay of smart speakers and podcasts with news consumption data from 1,528 respondents collected in Germany. We control for selection effects using propensity score matching and find (I) a higher usage of news podcasts as well as (II) higher podcast news consumption intensity, both driven by smart speaker diffusion. Additionally, podcast usage increases the total cross-media news consumption intensity without displacing other media. We provide converging evidence that smart speakers are a relevant complementary news content channel to access podcasts, which subsequently contribute to strengthening news consumption through other media.
When companies launch new products, they need to understand the impact of publicity and advertising on sales. What is their relative effectiveness? Do they strengthen each other (have a positive interaction effect) or weaken each other (have a negative interaction effect)? Further, does the timing of these activities (before or after launch) affect their impact on sales? This paper develops hypotheses regarding the elasticities of pre- and post-launch publicity and advertising on sales. The hypotheses are tested on a large-scale empirical data set that tracks sales, publicity, and advertising for 3336 video games across 52 weeks covering the pre- and post-launch phases. The results demonstrate that pre-launch publicity is more effective than pre-launch advertising but that the reverse is true post-launch. Surprisingly, the analysis reveals a negative interaction effect between pre-launch advertising and publicity, which means that publicity becomes less effective when it is accompanied by higher levels of advertising for the same product. Simulations indicate that companies can gain most sales by focusing on publicity pre-launch, and that there is little benefit from increasing publicity and advertising during the same phase, which is consistent with negative (pre-launch) and zero (post-launch) interaction effects.
COVID-19 induced restrictions ordered by governments around the world have been an exogenous shock to the music industry, which we divide into two affected groups: 1) live music events and 2) recorded music. While the impact on live music events is rather obvious, it is unclear how the current pandemic is affecting the recorded music market. Hence, we study consumers’ pre- and post-pandemic shifts in consumer spending (in euros) and music consumption (in hours) across live music events, as well as the digital and physical submarkets of recorded music, in the world’s fourth largest music market, Germany. Relying on an online bi-annual panel capturing five waves between winter 2018/19 and winter 2020/21, we find that the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the continuous trend towards digitalization of the music landscape with premium streaming being the biggest beneficiary. However, total monthly consumer spending on music decreased by more than 45% compared to pre-pandemic, with live music events and physical sales being the most severely affected. Surprisingly, music consumption in hours also decreased during the lockdown even though consumers spent more time at home.
Academic Positions
| Since 08/2024 | Associate Professor of Applied Quantitative Methods, Kühne Logistics University, Hamburg, Germany |
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8/2021 - 7/2024 | Assistant Professor of Applied Quantitative Methods, Kühne Logistics University, Hamburg, Germany |
| 2019 - 2021 | External Lecturer for Statistics, Kühne Logistics University, Hamburg, Germany |
| 2013 - 2021 | Assistant Professor at the Chair for Marketing & Media of Prof. Dr. Michel Clement, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany |
9/2011 | Visiting Scholar, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands |
2006 - 2014 | Lecturer for Cinema 4D, Kunstschule Alsterdamm, Hamburg, Germany |
Education
| 2009 - 2013 | Dr. rer. pol., University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany |
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| 2005 - 2009 | Diploma in Business Administration, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany |
| 2001 - 2005 | Graphic Design Degree, Kunstschule Alsterdamm, Hamburg, Germany |
