 | Christian HildebrandExecutive Director
Christian Hildebrand is Full Professor of Marketing Analytics at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and Executive Director of the Institute of Behavioral Science and Technology (IBT-HSG). His research sits at the intersection of behavioral science and artificial intelligence, studying how AI transforms the way people think, act, decide, and collaborate with others. He directs the AI Impact Lab, which investigates four interconnected areas: how consumers experience AI systems such as robo-advisors, conversational agents, and autonomous shopping agents (ConsumerX); how speech and language reveal psychological states in human–AI interaction (VoiceX); how to design AI technologies that are emotionally resonant (DesignX); and how to build open-source tools and methods for robust behavioral AI research at scale (ToolX). His research has been published in leading journals including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and Information Systems Research, Management Science, IEEE Affective Computing, among others. Christian’s work extends beyond the academic lab. He has led multi-year industry research partnerships with organizations including Swiss Re, Logitech, UBS, Julius Bär, Roche Diagnostics, Audi, VW, and regularly teaches in executive education programs at various national and international institutions as well as in-house academies. His team has developed various open-source tools including voiceR (voice analytics), DICE (digital experimentation on social media), and MindMiner (automated text analysis). He has held visiting positions at Stanford GSB and ESADE, and serves on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Consumer Research, the International Journal of Research in Marketing, and the Journal of Retailing. See his CV for more information.
Research InterestsConsumer–AI Interaction | Conversational AI & Voice Analytics | Autonomous & Agentic AI | Human-Robot Interaction | Behavioral Analytics Tools & Open Science Selected PublicationsRoggenkamp, H., Boegershausen, J., Hildebrand, C. (2026): DICE: Advancing Social Media Research Through Digital In-Context Experiments, Journal of Marketing, Forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429251371702 Hampton, W., Hildebrand, C. (2025): Haptic Rewards: How Mobile Vibrations Shape Reward Response and Consumer Choice, Journal of Consumer Research, Forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucaf025 Zehnle, M., Hildebrand, C., Valenzuela, A. (2025): Not All AI Is Created Equal: A Meta-Analysis Revealing Drivers of AI Resistance Across Markets, Methods, and Time, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Vol. 42(3, Part B), pp. 729–751. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2025.02.005 Winder, P., Hildebrand, C., Hartmann, J. (2025): Biased Echoes: Generative AI Models Reinforce Investment Biases and Increase Portfolio Risks of Private Investors, PLoS ONE, Forthcoming. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0325459 Hostettler, D., Mayer, S., Albert, J. L., Jenss, K. E., Hildebrand, C. (2025): Real-Time Adaptive Industrial Robots: Improving Safety and Comfort in Human-Robot Collaboration, ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Forthcoming. Valenzuela, A., Puntoni, S., Hoffman, D., Castelo, N., De Freitas, J., Dietvorst, B., Hildebrand, C., et al. (2024): How Artificial Intelligence Constrains the Human Experience, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, Vol. 9(3), pp. 241–256. https://doi.org/10.1086/730709 Efthymiou, F., Hildebrand, C. (2024): Empathy by Design: The Influence of Trembling AI Voices on Prosocial Behavior, IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, Vol. 15(3), pp. 1253–1263. https://doi.org/10.1109/TAFFC.2023.3332742 Bergner, A., Hildebrand, C., Häubl, G. (2023): Machine Talk: How Verbal Embodiment in Conversational AI Shapes Consumer–Brand Relationships, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 50(4), pp. 742–764. doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucad014 Castelo, N., Boegershausen, J., Hildebrand, C., Henkel, A. (2023): Understanding and Improving Consumer Reactions to Service Bots, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 50(4), pp. 848–863. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucad023 Hartmann, J., Bergner, A., Hildebrand, C. (2023): MindMiner: Uncovering Linguistic Markers of Mind Perception as a New Lens to Understand Consumer–Smart Object Relationships, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Vol. 33(4), pp. 645–667. https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1381 Efthymiou, F., Hildebrand, C., de Bellis, E., Hampton, W. (2023): The Power of AI-Generated Voices: How Digital Vocal Tract Length Shapes Product Congruency and Ad Performance, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 59(2), pp. 117–134. https://doi.org/10.1177/10949968231194905 Tools & Open Source PlatformsvoiceR — Open-source R package for voice feature extraction and analysis. Available on CRAN. Selected Awards & Recognition
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