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Cool Brands And Their Grateful Fans: A Multi-Method Exploration Of Brand Coolness And Consumer Gratitude, Melanie Moore Koskie

Doctoral Dissertations

Over the course of three essays, this dissertation explores brand coolness, gratitude, and the relationship between the two. In the first essay, cool brands and their marketing outcomes are viewed through the lens of standing out and fitting in—two paradoxical motivations held together in the concept of cool. Utilizing structural equation modeling, I examine the relevant relationships between consumer’s motivations to stand out and fit in, the corresponding brand coolness attributes of subcultural and popular, the consumer emotional response of gratitude, and a consumer’s willingness to pay more for cool brands. Importantly, this essay finds that the consumer emotion of …

New Geographies Of Electronic Commerce: An Appraisal Of Omni-Channel Strategies In The United States Grocery Industry, Connor Reed

Doctoral Dissertations

This body of doctoral research investigates the unique geography of e-commerce [electronic commerce] offerings among major grocery chains in the contiguous United States. Prior research has made efforts to understand the demographic and spatial dynamics that may influence consumers’ decision to shop online or in-store. Far less emphasis, however, has been placed on how firms have made key strategic decisions across space regarding e-commerce. This work leverages spatial econometric modeling and machine learning to understand how the characteristics of trade areas inform grocery chains’ decisions about whether to offer pickup, delivery, both, or no offering at a given store location. …

Two Essays On The Board Of Directors, Dipesh Bhattarai

Doctoral Dissertations

The board of directors plays a crucial role in corporate governance, serving as a vital mechanism to oversee and guide firms towards achieving their goals. Given the importance of boards in the corporate governance framework, we still do not have clear understanding of how directors' characteristics influence the governance and performance of firms. This dissertation ties together two chapters that contribute to this area of research, each focusing on different aspects of directors' influence on corporate governance and firm value.

The first chapter, "The Effect of Director Wealth on Corporate Governance and Firm Value," examines the impact of a director's …

How To Bridge Materialism And Ethical Behavior: Exploring The Influence Of Scarcity Appeal, Minjeong Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

This paper explores the complex dynamics of consumer behavior, particularly focusing on materialistic individuals' propensity towards unsustainable consumption practices and their reluctance to engage with brands' purpose-driven initiatives. Drawing on existing literature, the study highlights strategies to minimize the detrimental effects of materialism on environmental concerns. It also aims to enhance ethical product preferences by examining consumers' consumption patterns. Materialistic consumers prioritize product acquisition for status display rather than practical utility. They often overlook the societal and environmental implications of their choices.

In response to this challenge, the research aims to investigate scarcity strategies as a means to incentivize materialistic …

An Examination Of The Incentives To Issue Spring-Loaded Equity Awards, Kory Davis Maag

Doctoral Dissertations

A spring-loaded equity award is an award granted to an employee while the firm possesses non-public, positive information that is released shortly after the equity award is granted. Generally, shareholders oppose these awards, but firms see them as valid rewards for executives. In my study, I examine factors associated with the issuance of spring-loaded awards. I identify potential spring-loaded awards (SLAs) issued to Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) by examining returns shortly following the grant date of equity awards to CEOs. I assign awards to differing levels of potential to be spring-loaded based on these returns. I find that firms are …

Essays On Salesperson’S Motivation And Job Satisfaction-Performance, Claire H. Cha

Doctoral Dissertations

Salesforces are important to firms as they drive a significant part of the firm’s brand, financial, and relational performance. Salesforce performance, job satisfaction, and motivation have remained key topics of interest to practitioners as well as researchers (Hansen & Levin, 2016; Pullins, 2001; Williams & Plouffe, 2007). This dissertation includes three essays. Essay 1 aims to address a lingering question theoretically and managerially. What is the relationship between satisfaction and performance? That question is assessed with a unique longitudinal simultaneous design to test four leading hypotheses of the causal relationship between salespeople’s job satisfaction and performance. The study’s design addresses …

Resource Allocation In Subsidy Welfare Programs: Managerial Insights For Nonprofits, Governments, And Service Providers, Wei Wei

Doctoral Dissertations

Subsidy welfare programs provide financial assistance to economically disadvantaged individuals and families to access essential and life-altering services (e.g., education, child care, and housing) that they might not otherwise have access to. Access to these services is considered critical to achieving a better and more sustainable future for all. As such, these high-quality services are directly related to several United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which were adopted as a universal call to action to end poverty, save the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere." In particular, the need for these affordable and high-quality services has been …

Women’S Professional Sport And Stigma, Risa Isard

Doctoral Dissertations

Women’s sport has recently seen historic growth across the United States as new leagues launched and existing leagues reached new heights. Despite notable wins, sport remains a male-dominated institution and women’s sport does not always receive the respect it deserves. Indeed, evidence suggests women’s sport is devalued, enduring a unique stigma. Thus, the purpose of this dissertation is to explore the impact of stigma on fans of and employees working in women’s sport. I do this through three studies. In Study 1, I use reflexive autobiography to begin to develop a theoretical understanding of women’s sport fans’ experiences with stigma …

A Collaborative Autoethnography: Your Passport To Immigrant Women Of Color Leader's Stories Of Identity Exploration And Leadership Barriers And Possibilities, Fraylanie Adan Aglipay

Doctoral Dissertations

The study of the personal and career narratives of immigrant Women of Color can lead to more appropriate standards in mainstream work environments and to the expansion of professional leadership opportunities for immigrant Women of Color. The experiences of immigrant Women of Color leaders are varied and complex, with each leader’s experience offering unique perspectives on their leadership journey. Additionally, it is important to analyze their identities because they contain multiple layers, serving as the foundation that has shaped them into the authentic leaders they are today. As scholars, researchers, and activists, we have a duty to address the lack …

Local Ipos And Retail Investor Trading, Guanhuan Wang

Doctoral Dissertations

This paper examines how salient events affect retail investors’ trading behavior. Using data on households’ trading records from a large discount broker between 1991 and 1996, I find that Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) significantly increase the trading activities of local retail investors of stocks in the same industry over the subsequent year. The effect is stronger for less sophisticated investors and investors who live closer to the IPO firm’s headquarters, consistent with salience as the channel. I also find that retail investors are net buyers of stocks right after the local IPOs and become net sellers after a year and …

The Role Of Data (Deletion) Permission Frames, Data Sensitivity, Audiences, And Defaults On Consumers’ Willingness To Share Personal Information, Smriti Kumar

Doctoral Dissertations

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and California Consumers’ Protect Act (CCPA) provide a set of provisions to regulate marketers’ processing of consumers’ personal data. One of these provisions is to offer consumers the ‘right to erasure' or ‘right to be forgotten.’ These regulations recommend that firms enable consumers to delete some or all of their personal information from the firm’s databases permanently if desired (Palmer 2019). Firms are struggling to figure out how to give consumers options to delete their data. Moreover, managers are not sure to what extent will consumers delete their data, if given an option to delete. …

Hospital-Physician Integration And Physician Collaboration: Implications For Care Efficiency And Outcomes, Hui Jia

Doctoral Dissertations

This thesis focuses on healthcare operations management and consists of two essays that investigate empirically how the relationship between physicians and hospitals and the relationship between peer physicians, respectively, affect clinical care outcomes and care efficiency.

In the first essay, I study hospital-physician integration as a type of organization-service provider relationship. Many prior studies have provided insights into the benefits of a tight collaboration between hospitals and physicians. However, neutral and even negative effects of this relationship on healthcare performance have been observed and discussed in the literature. This mixed evidence points to a need for further study to elucidate …

Playing The Game: Video Games And Video Game Streaming Platforms As Marketing Communication Channels, Roman Welden

Doctoral Dissertations

While video games are generally viewed as a form of entertainment for a small subset of people, in reality they provide a channel for nearly 3.2 billion people to interact with others and offer multiple pathways for marketers to interact with consumers. Pair this alongside 140 million unique consumers who consumer nearly 24 billion hours of content on video game streaming platforms (VGSPs), such as Twitch, and there is a deep need for marketers to understand how to engage consumers in these environments. This dissertation provides a conceptualization of the video game ecosystem as well as the types of influencers …

The Unexplored Impacts Of Communication Elements In Marketing, Can Trinh

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation includes two essays that examine how the use of different marketing communication approaches influences consumers. In the first essay, I propose that the use of human silhouettes, when compared to images of attractive human models, enhances marketing communication effectiveness by reducing the extent to which consumers experience self-threat when viewing an ad. In addition, I predict this effect holds for appearance-related products only and strengthens as consumers’ level of appearance-related self-esteem decreases. Five studies reported in this essay provide converging evidence in support of these expectations.

In the second essay, I investigate into how the use of puns …

Les Deux Jeannots: An Investigation Of Firm Behavior In Corrupt Environments, Howard Jean-Denis

Doctoral Dissertations

Historically, members of the African Diaspora have endured the brunt of slavery, colonization, economic challenges, and corruption which was imposed on them by their colonial rulers. As a proud descendant of these original, indigenous African groups of people, I embarked on this dissertation to explore the role of the managerial perceptions and indigenous philosophies held by this focal group on their ultimate organizational strategy. Strategic management research has established that organizations with valuable resources and relevant competencies, as well as those which are dynamically capable, will perform better than firms that do not have these capabilities (Barney, 1991; Teece, 1997, …

The Esport Points Of Attachment Index (Epai): Exploring Psychological Connections Of Esport Consumers On Behavioral Intentions Toward Esport Organizations, Se Jin Kim

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the literature gap in understanding the different psychological mechanisms of eSport consumers, as determined by their various points of attachment they possess depending on different sport contexts. The electronic sports (eSports) industry has been growing rapidly in popularity, but exploration of eSport fandom has been limited. Especially, a better understanding of the eSport consumers’ behavior and their psychological connection to particular eSports and teams is necessary. The first study in this dissertation identifies the points of attachment in eSport fans, based on an extensive literature review. The second study develops and validates the eSport Points of Attachment …

“It's Like You're Trying To Get A Meeting With The Pope”: A Narrative Inquiry On Experiences Of Social Work Field Staff Establishing Field Placements In Sport, Lauren Beasley

Doctoral Dissertations

Social work in sport is a growing subspecialty of social work practice. However, there is limited research on the training of social work students to work in a sport setting. As field education is considered the signature pedagogy of social work education, more insights are needed on social work field internships in sport organizations. To fill this gap in the literature, the purpose of this narrative inquiry was to understand social work field staff's narratives of their experiences establishing sport-specific field placements through their lived stories. The study was guided by three research questions: (1) What narratives do social work …

Effects Of Economic Development Status And Eco-Product On Consumption Values: From The Perspective Of Us Consumers, Mostafa Zaman

Doctoral Dissertations

Consumers select a product based on numerous product characteristics. Numerous studies conducted earlier revealed that consumers in developing countries preferred products made in western or developed countries because their product quality is better than the quality of local products (Lee & Nguyen, 2017; Dao & Heidt, 2018; Rodrigo et al., 2019). Moreover, consumers are increasingly concerned about manufacturers’ environmental issues. Although ethical consumers believe that eco-products could save the environment, some consumers are not concerned about the eco-products and thus select products based on other product attributes (Joshi & Rahman, 2015). Hence, it becomes very challenging for retailers to select …

Fintech Lending In Consumer Credit Market During Risky Times: Evidence From The Marketplace Lending Platforms, Miaoyin Zhang

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses evidence from Marketplace Lending (MPL) platforms to examine how newly emerged Fintech lending performs during risky times. In the first chapter, I use the COVID-19 pandemic as a setting to examine the role of marketplace lending (MPL) as an alternative credit provider during a long-term and market-wide economic crisis. Using data from LendingClub, I find that marketplace lenders extend more credit to counties with larger COVID-19 exposure, as measured by its local economic impact and an area’s infection rate. This relation is more prominent in areas with fewer banks, suggesting that marketplace lenders fill borrowing needs in …

Sunny Days Ahead: Messages During A Pandemic: Creative Strategies And Themes In Health And Wellness Public Service Ads By The Ad Council, Meenakshi Trichur Venkitasubramanian

Doctoral Dissertations

Public Service Advertising is an essential field of study because of its ability to impact and shape public behavior and community changes. Historically, the advertising industry has come together during the times of world war to form an association, the Ad Council, to help create awareness to the public. Over the past 75 years, the Ad Council has contributed to the various causes by communicating and advertising to encourage better habits and behavior. The Ad Council has collaborated with CDC and COVID Collaborative to communicate the right messages about coronavirus response and COVID-19 vaccine during this pandemic. The purpose of …

Essays On Size Asymmetry In Supply Chain Disruptions, Yu Chu

Doctoral Dissertations

While size asymmetry (e.g., large buyer and small supplier) has been discussed in a no-disruption operation context (Lee & Johnson, 2012), little is known whether, how and why a large buyer reacts differently when different-sized suppliers cause different types of disruptions. Extant research suggests in a supplier-induced disruption supplier’s recovery actions yield various effects in a dependence-unbalancing setting, indicating a need for a deeper understanding of what buyers prefer in order to resolve disruptions caused by facing different sized suppliers and the rationales behind the decisions. Accordingly, this dissertation examines whether and how the supplier size and supplier-induced disruption type …

He Said, She Said: Investor Reactions To Ceo Gender And Earnings Guidance Disclosure In The Presence Of Shareholder Activism, Scott C. Jackson

Doctoral Dissertations

This study addresses concerns from the SEC and examines the trend of shareholder activism and its impact on financial players. Specifically, I examine how the nature of the shareholder activism (Profitability-focused versus Environmental/Social-focused) interacts with CEO gender to create perceptions of match or mismatch within nonprofessional investors, in terms of perceived ability to address the shareholder activism. Drawing on role-congruity theory, I predict and find that when a perceived match exists, investment willingness is increased, with the greatest differences occurring when the CEO does not disclose earnings guidance information. Given recent trends that show increased disclosure of earnings guidance in …

Uncovering The Gendered Sport Workplace: A Field Study In Men’S Professional Sports, Lauren C. Hindman

Doctoral Dissertations

Women working in sport management are underrepresented and face sexism and harassment. While previous research has explained such disproportions and discrimination through examining the behaviors of individual men and women, in this dissertation, I instead examined ways in which sport organizations are “gendered;” that is, how ideas and norms about gender are embedded into sport organizations’ structures and social processes in ways that create and reproduce organizational inequalities. Taking a critical approach grounded in gendered organization theory, I conducted an ethnographic study inside the administrative offices of two men’s professional sports teams. Data include 165 hours of field observations, 29 …

Multiple Identities In Sport Fandom: Balance, Conflict, & Negotiation, Aaron Mansfield

Doctoral Dissertations

Simultaneous to the sport industry’s ascent, obesity has become an issue of growing societal concern. Scholars have explored the role of social-psychological identification in both fandom and physical health, but have not yet explored the intersection of the two. Throughout life, individuals must negotiate all of their identities, including their attachment to sport teams, yet understanding of role identity within sport management is limited. Likewise, scholars have noted the need for greater illumination of the relationship between fandom and physical well-being. I address these gaps through three studies. In Study One, I completed semi-structured interviews with individuals who consider both …

Covering All Their Bases: An Investigation Into Identity Covering In The Sport Workplace, Jeffrey Maccharles

Doctoral Dissertations

The sport industry has historically struggled to diversify its workforce. However, shifting racial and ethnic demographics in the United States in the coming decades, and greater numbers of individuals identifying as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender (LGBT), will soon force its hand. Recruiting and retaining a talented workforce from a diverse labor pool will require that sport organizations ensure their workplaces are inclusive spaces where employees can present their authentic selves without fear. Unfortunately, employees from marginalized groups often face implicit and explicit pressures to downplay aspects of their stigmatized identity through identity covering, which can have negative effects for …

African American Female Law Enforcement Officers' Lived Experiences And Mentoring: A Thematic Narrative, Harold Wilson

Doctoral Dissertations

Black female officers are an underrepresented sub-group of the law-enforcement profession. The bulk of research on women’s policing has focused on the growth of women in law enforcement, barriers, sexual harassment, gender differences, why women are deterred from law enforcement, physical limitations, and instruments used during the recruitment process, and the stress endured after entry into the profession. When looking at Black female officers’ lived experience and perceptions around mentoring; research is lacking. Eight Black female officers from the San Francisco Bay Area participated in this study. Findings revealed that all of the women have faced a recurring sense of …

An Analysis Of The Local Control Funding Formula (Lcff) As An Instrument Of Recognition And Distribution Justice, Maeve Mulholland

Doctoral Dissertations

The 2013 Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) is the first substantive finance reform measure in California specifically designed to provide additional funding to targeted student groups. The present study adopts Nancy Fraser’s (1995) theory of distribution and recognition justice to examine the allocation of resources under the new formula. Critical quantitative methodology is employed to investigate if students identified as being in poverty, English Learners (ELs), and African-American students, benefit under the LCFF. Pre- and post-LCFF comparisons of district level per pupil dollar allocations from LCFF, Other State, Federal, and Local resources are conducted. The findings show that post-2013, funding …

Perceptions Of Female Veteran Military Sexual Trauma: A Phenomenological Study, Lindsey Fairweather

Doctoral Dissertations

Military sexual trauma (MST) occurs at devastating rates to service members, by service members, and is widely misunderstood, qualitatively understudied, and reporting may be procedurally biased. The purpose of this study was to phenomenologically explore the lived experiences of female veteran MST survivors with their leadership (chain of command/supervisors) and understand how military culture effects these individuals. A feminist-theory conceptual framework was applied to contextualize hegemonic hypermasculine military culture and the divide and damage it may cause to female service members before MST, when surviving an MST event, and when surviving post-MST fallout.

This study included 10 participants who were …

The Awesomeness Of Awe: The Role Of Awe In Increasing Consumer Well-Being, Begum Oz

Doctoral Dissertations

Emotions are a driving force in much of consumer behavior. Yet the breadth of emotions and their effects on consumption are only beginning to be discovered. One emotion, which has been understudied within consumer behavior, but has properties that suggest it could play an important role in improving consumer well-being, is awe. In this dissertation, I explore effects of awe on consumers’ materialist values, morality and lying behavior, and pro-environmental behavior. Essay 1 examines the role of awe in consumers’ materialist values and their product choices. Findings from three experiments support that awe decreases consumers’ materialist values and leads to …

Transformational And Transactional Leadership Outcomes On The City Of Oakland By Demographics, Jason W. Mitchell

Doctoral Dissertations

This study utilized a quantitative method, using surveys of workers in the public sector in the City of Oakland to determine the barriers that make it difficult to manage performance and tackle complex issues of that organization. Further, this study delved into the possibility for these leaders to create transactional or transformational environments in this sector. The goal was to find issues that make it difficult for public-sector executives to lead effectively; that is, the goal was to discern factors that prohibit executives from delivering high-quality and efficient services to the public and developing change management. This survey is vital …