When do women prefer to drink Heineken? – Award-winning articles in Budapest Management Review

Since 2017, it has become a tradition for the journal to recognize the best article of the year and grant two prizes to two other excellent articles, said Márta Aranyossy, editor-in-chief of the journal. One of the criteria for the selection is objective, i. e. download statistics: this year’s awards were given to articles from 2022 to allow enough time to assess which materials are attracting the most interest. These works will then be shortlisted and the editorial board will select the best of them. The novelty of the topic, the methods and the integration in the literature are important criteria. The awards were presented at the Corvinus Research Week on 18 June, and the winners gave a presentation summarising the content of their publications. 

The best article is titled “Examining the impact of femvertising and traditional advertising on advertising attitudes and willingness to buy”, written by Zsuzsanna Orehóczki, a current Master’s student and Anna Török, an assistant professor at the Institute of Marketing and Communication Sciences of Corvinus. Anna Török presented her research online. “The topic of femvertising is curious and methodologically exciting, I am glad that many people downloaded it,” said Török. But what is femvertising? In fact, we’ve been talking about this concept since 2014 in the context of the rise of the 4th wave of feminism, and it’s about advertising breaking away from the traditional way of portraying women in stereotyped contexts. So, instead of seeing young women of great beauty happily cooking in a beautiful kitchen, we see more diverse portrayals – both sexes, by the way. Femvertising is liberating women from exaggerated expectations about their bodies, because in reality women have better opportunities than before. These opportunities are reflected in their financial situation, which allows them to move more freely and to take on leadership roles.  

In their study, Török and Orehóczki conducted an experiment in which female subjects in a male-dominated industry were asked to watch two types of Heineken beer advertisements. One was a traditional commercial (Holidays as usual) and the other was a femvertising type (Cheers to all). They investigated how the two types of commercials affected the respondents (244 university students, mainly at Corvinus), how much they influenced their advertising attitudes and purchase intentions. The authors concluded that femvertising influenced them in a more positive direction than traditional advertising. Anna Török added that it would also be worthwhile to research men’s opinions on this topic. In response to a question, the author said that in her experience, Generation Y and Z are more open to femvertising. She added that this is of course influenced to a large extent by the culture of the country, for example, in the Arab world, women who advertise sports equipment appear in Hijab. This is quite different in Iceland, where she has also researched before, where the consumers are very aware. 

Are jobs at risk? 

Dávid Reisinger (currently working in a family business), his brother Viktor Reisinger (also a former Corvinus student, now studying law at Pázmány Péter University) and Judit Nagy, assistant professor at the Institute of Operations and Decision Sciences of Corvinus, wrote the award-winning paper “The impact of artificial intelligence and digitalisation on logistics jobs – are jobs at risk?”. The Reisinger brothers said that their paper, which has received the excellent article title, sought to answer the question of how far occupations in this field can be automated. They interviewed logistics and transport professionals, and found that, in general, managerial positions cannot be automated, while some lower positions can. “Those with higher education have a much lower potential for automation,” was one of the lessons learned. It is also true that those who earn more are less likely to be automated. As the authors argue, for every industrial revolution, the question of which workers’ jobs are threatened by new technology is a serious one. However, the research on the subject is unanimous in stating that it is the tasks that require high cognitive skills, creativity and human sensitivity that are the most difficult to automate. 

In answer to the question – what should workers who might lose their jobs because of digitalisation or even artificial intelligence, who are likely to be doing very monotonous jobs, do? -, the authors replied that the lofty goal is a knowledge-based society. In their opinion, it is important to be well aware of digital opportunities, but it is also important for workers to value perpetual renewal and lifelong learning. 

The doctor should be human 

The importance and timeliness of the emergence of artificial intelligence is best demonstrated by another paper with “excellent” certification, entitled: The impact of artificial intelligence on the labour market: how to prepare? The authors are Bettina Boncz, a PhD student at the Corvinus Doctoral School of Economics and Business Informatics, and Roland Zs. Szabó, who teaches management at several universities, including Corvinus. Szabó said that artificial intelligence is more productive than humans in the labour market, it is faster, more accurate, can be used in 0-24 hours, thus reducing costs. What can come in between? At most, the cleaning lady accidentally closes the laptop. But the author believes that there will be jobs that remain, because in some cases the consumer demands personalisation: for example, a doctor should be a human being, and he believes that full automation in some jobs – senior managers, chefs, researchers, creators of individual masterpieces – is impossible or uneconomic. But he added that even this is not entirely certain, as IBM’s chess machines have beaten even the greatest chess players. He mentioned that the ChatGPT has an intelligence quotient of 155, much higher than the average human.  

The authors write in their article, “Growing inequality in the world is also amplifying these processes, with a small elite and a growing number of disadvantaged groups taking on a particular division of labour. The elite will only do the highly skilled jobs because they will be able to afford the education to do them, and those on the other side of the income divide will serve the elite, cooking and washing for them”. The authors argue that workers who will not be able to make structural changes in the future will be willing to work for less, perhaps only 6 hours a day. There is therefore likely to be increasing polarisation in society, although there is also a theory – the invisible hand theory – that this problem will solve itself. 

Katalin Török 

Photos: Krisztofer Szabó