Senior Researcher

Dr. Michael Zürn

Dr. Michael Zürn is Senior Researcher in Applied Behavioral Science at the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions.

He holds a keen interest in consumers, comparisons, and the self. The fate of all products hinges on the market decisions of the consumers. To truly understand these decisions, the underlying psychological processes must be examined. Comparisons are particularly relevant here, because they are not only a relatively simple form of judgment, but they are also often self-relevant (e.g., we sometimes feel particularly clever when we get something at a lower price than we expected).

His research findings have been published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, the Journal of Economic Psychology, Cognition & Emotion and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, among others.

 

 

Current topics

  • Consumer Autonomy

  • Sustainable Consumption

  • Brand Perception

 

Selected publications

  • Gusmão, B., Zürn, M. K., & Topolinski, S. (2026). Contradict them softly! Contradictions of the subject feel less true than contradictions of the object. Cognition and Emotion, 40(1), 30-45.

  • Oberwegner, N., Cantner, F., Imschloss, M., & Zürn, M. K. (2025). Unpacking olfactory marketing: initial evidence for the positive effects of scented parcels on post-order consumer responses in e-commerce. Marketing Letters, 36(4), 903-916.

  • Zürn, M. K., Gerten, J., & Topolinski, S. (2021). Maybe Favors: How to get More Good Deeds Done. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied.
  • Gerten, J, Zürn, M. K., & Topolinski, S. (2021). The Price of Predictability: Estimating Inconsistency Premiums in Social Interactions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
  • Zürn, M. K., & Topolinski, S. (2017). When trust comes easy: Articulatory fluency increases transfers in the trust game. Journal of Economic Psychology, 61, 74–86.