Digital Commons Network^™

Zoomer Generation: Used Car Automobile Purchasing Behaviors, Scott E. Whitaker, Joe Spencer, Giovanni Calise

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2024

There is a growing trend of online automobile purchasing that is altering the relationship between consumers and automobile dealerships. Consumers are more informed and seek a larger variety of inventory and options when shopping for used vehicles. The online marketplace provides a viable alternative to local dealerships who have hereto dominated much of the market. This research shows the current generation of Zoomers is helping to drive this trend which has significant marketing implications toward the industry. There remains a gap in the academic body of knowledge examining this behavior in relation to large online purchases such as automobiles. This …

Whose Opinions Do We Trust? Some Thoughts On Online Product Ratings And Consumer Decision Making, David Ackerman, Barbara Gross, Jing Hu

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2024

User-generated reviews play a crucial role in assessing market offerings and informing consumers’ purchase decisions. This study applies extant theory to examine the influence of online product ratings and reviews on consumers. The findings from experiments suggest that the impact of online ratings is heightened for higher-priced products in comparison to their lower-priced counterparts during both the information search and product evaluation stages of consumer decision making. Results also indicate that consumer ratings on social media may have more of an impact on consumers than do the ratings of experts. Consumers demonstrated a greater purchase intention for products that received …

Consumer Attitude Toward Physician Practice Ownership: Propositions For Future Research, Gary Futrell

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2024

Employed physicians now outnumber self-employed doctors, with approximately one-third of all U.S. physicians working for a hospital-owned or hospital-affiliated practice and many others employed at larger practices with 11 or more physicians. Consequently, the number of physicians working in small independent practices (those with 10 or fewer physicians) has dropped to nearly 15%. Management literature suggests that ownership of a firm can affect consumer attitudes. Specific to health care, significant research attention has been given to the implications of practice ownership from an operational, managerial, outcomes, and human resources perspective. However, little can be found to address the implications of …

Effects Of Online Consumer Ratings On Persuasion, Magdoleen Ierlan

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2023

Online product review websites have become very important in the purchase decisions of consumers. Word-of-mouth communication was once limited to the passing of information using verbal means, however, it now extends into text messages and web dialogue, such as online profile pages, blog posts, message board threads, instant messages and emails. The type of review will influence the consumer differently. Also, the need for cognition will impact the way the type of review the consumer requires to decide.

Engaging Gen Z Through Humor, Wendy Gillis, Fred Pozin

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2023

ABSTRACT

The current generation of undergraduate students in the classroom (Gen Z) is the loneliest generation in the U.S. (Twenge, 2017), and they know it. What are they spending time on? Their phones. What are they not spending time on? Time with friends (Twenge, 2017). Gen Z has more of a life online versus offline, yet Gen Z yearns for in-person interaction, and the pandemic has only made it worse. The authors’ advice? Tell a joke. By combining theories from psychology, management, and marketing, this conceptual paper explores the relationship between humor, trust, and persuasion.

The Patient-Centric Blockchain, Sunil Erevelles, Maanasi Bulusu, Timea Honeycutt, Stephanie Seligman, Padma Bulusu

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2022

A revolution is brewing in the healthcare marketplace. In the early nineties, the World Wide Web initiated a new era for the use of the Internet in the consumption of healthcare services. This eventually led to the Big Data movement (Erevelles et al. 2016), which initiated a non-linear transformation in healthcare analytics and developed into a dominant paradigm in the healthcare marketplace. However, the World Wide Web architecture was never designed to support a marketplace in healthcare or, for that matter, a marketplace of any other kind. It was primarily designed for the sharing of information and was even referred …

The Perils Of Using Self-Deprecating Humor: Customer Evaluations Of The Firm After A Service Failure, Hyunju Shin, Lindsay R. Levine

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2022

The current study investigates the firm’s potential use of self-deprecating humor in response to a service failure and examines resulting consumer evaluations. This study utilizes two scenario-based experiments conducted in the contexts of online retailing and restaurant service. The findings indicate that self-deprecating humor leads to customers’ negative evaluations of the company by decreasing forgiveness intentions toward the company. The mechanism which explains low forgiveness intentions is found to involve heightened perception of dishonesty. Moreover, when perceived benignness of the failure is low (vs. high), self-deprecating humor has a stronger adverse effect on perceived dishonesty. This study suggests that firms …

Transaction-Based Cause-Related Marketing: The Role Of Consumer Trust And Self-Congruity On Purchase Intention, Dawn D. Hart, Doug Johansen

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2022

The link between corporations, their socially responsible activities, and business performance has become irrefutable (Marconi, 2002). Companies grapple with how to successfully implement their socially responsible marketing activities (Marconi, 2002). Corporate social responsibility has various initiatives including corporate philanthropy, corporate statesmanship, through-the-firm giving, and profit motivated giving (Varadarajan & Menon, 1988). Cause-related marketing includes a profit motive (Varadarajan & Menon, 1988). Several studies find cause-related marketing efforts have the potential to affect consumers’ purchase intentions (Webb & Mohr, 1998).

Blockchain And The Transformation Of Branding, Sunil Erevelles, Brian Whelan, Padma Bulusu

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2020

Blockchain and the Transformation of Branding

Sunil Erevelles

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Brian Whelan

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Padma Bulusu

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

ABSTRACT

Consumer trust in brands has reached critically low levels. While Big Data has allowed marketers to gain a rich and precise understanding of their consumers (Erevelles, Fukawa and Swayne 2016), the careless and sometimes improper use of Big Data in behavioral futures markets has resulted in a decline of trust in brands of organizations that have violated consumer trust. Driven by a trust crisis in consumer relationships with institutions …

Examining Organizational Justice In The Context Of Lmx And The Effect Of Lmx On Trust And Job Performance, Yong-Ki Lee, Sally Kim, Mun-Hyun Son, Min-Seong Kim

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2013

Services marketing and organizational behavior researchers have studied factors that have a positive influence on employees’ job performance. They viewed that the manager’s role in dealing with his/her subordinates is critical in producing the desired outcomes such as employee job performance. This study based on organizational justice and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) theory, presents and tests a model, in which relationships among justice, LMX, trust, and job performance are examined. More specifically, the study examines the impact of organizational justice on the quality of LMX and the effect of LMX on employees’ attitudinal and behavioral aspects (trust and job performance). The …

A Comparison Of Potential Student Blood Donors To Actual Donors, Harold Ogden, Kelly Campbell Lefort, Matthew Kerr, Matthew Maclellan, Zachary Briggs

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2013

With a growing need for blood and blood products, managers of blood collection agencies are interested in increasing donation rates. A better understanding of how donors are different from the general public might inform decisions on how to promote to make non-donors more like donors. A sample of 74 student blood donors was surveyed at two university blood donor clinics about their attitudes and beliefs about blood donation. A convenience sample of 134 respondents in a university student population was also surveyed for comparison. The latter was later split by level of commitment to blood donation. Differences among these three …

The Lifeblood Model: The Power Of Trust In E-Commerce Communication, Miles Clinton Coleman

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2010

Relationship marketing has been established as a valuable approach for use in business to consumer transactions. When utilized in e-commerce environments however, this approach seems to falter in light of the risk and uncertainty components inherent in electronically mediated exchange. The reluctance of a consumer to partake in an exchange with a business causes the possibility of a successful relationship to dwindle. In this paper the lifeblood model is proposed as a means to further understanding the power of trust in mitigating e-commerce communication exchanges. Practical applications of the model are also discussed.

The Role Of Cognitive Dissonance In A Service Setting, Young (Sally) K. Kim

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2010

While numerous studies used the theory of cognitive dissonance to explain consumer behavior, there is no study as of today that applied the theory to the service industry to investigate the role of cognitive dissonance in influencing important marketing-related variables such as perceived value and trust. This study examines the relationship between cognitive dissonance and relationship variables (trust and value) and proposes a model to understand how consumers process information facing a negative word-of-mouth message that is incongruent with their existing belief and how cognitive dissonance affects their behaviors. The proposed model is tested using data collected via mail survey …

The Role Of Trust In Today’S Extended Enterprise, Ken Saban, Michaela Ann Noakes

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2010

This paper explores the role that trust plays in improving the overall collaboration and business performance of firms that constitute an extended enterprise. Case studies of Eli Lilly, Airbus and Toyota Motor Company illustrate the significant economic advantages of creating and maintaining a collaborative and trusting network.