Digital Commons Network^™

In Pursuit Of Consumption-Based Forecasting, Charles Chase, Kenneth B. Kahn

Marketing Faculty Publications

[Introduction] Today's most mature, most sophisticated, best-in-class forecasting is what we call consumption-based forecasting (CBF). In contrast, the least sophisticated companies typically do not forecast at all, but rather set financial targets based on management expectations. Companies beginning to use statistical forecasting techniques usually take a supply-centric orientation, relying on time series techniques applied to shipment and/or order history. The next stage of progression is to incorporate promotions data, economic data, and market data alongside supply-centric data so that regression and other advanced analytics can be used. Companies pursing CBF utilize even more advanced capabilities to capture, examine, and understand …

Love Is Blind: The Ironic Effect Of Fans’ Experience On Taste Perception, Jennifer L. Stoner, Maria A. Rodas

Marketing Faculty Publications

Many consumers may proclaim a love for a certain sensory experience (e.g., the taste of chocolate for “chocoholics”). These fans may have a wealth of experience consuming the product they love. In three studies, we find that these fans’ love actually blinds them in their ability to report nuances about the products they consume because of the use of top-down information processing. However, when presented with novel brand information, fans switch to a more bottom-up approach which allows greater discernment of the consumption experience. Prompting mindful consumption can also impact a fan’s ability to report a product’s nuances more accurately.

Focused On Pedagogy: Qr Grading Rubrics For Written Arguments, Ruby Daniels, Kathryn Appenzeller Knowles, Emily Naasz, Amanda Lindner

Marketing Faculty Publications

Institutional assessments of quantitative literacy/reasoning (QL/QR) have been extensively tested and reported in the literature. While appropriate for measuring student learning at the programmatic or institutional level, such instruments were not designed for classroom grading. After modifying a widely accepted institutional rubric designed to assess QR in written arguments, the current mixed method study tested the reliability of two QR analytic grading rubrics for written arguments and explored students’ reactions to the grading tools. Undergraduate students enrolled in a business course (N = 59) participated. A total of 415 QR artifacts from 40 students were assessed; an additional 19 …

How Social Media Influencer Collaborations Are Percieved By Consumers, Veronica L. Thomas, Kendra Fowler, Faegheh Teheran

Marketing Faculty Publications

Within the social media community, influencers engage in a variety of collaborative practices such as tagging, reposting content from, or forming partnerships with other influencers and brands. While such collaborative efforts are a known practice, less is understood about how influencer collaborations affect consumers' perceptions of the partnering influencers, specifically when a status differential exists within the collaboration. We suggest that such collaborative practices, specifically those where the focal influencer has a higher status than the collaborating partner, may help to weaken consumers' perceptions that the influencer's actions are purely self‐focused. A pilot study, analyzing both influencer–influencer collaborations and influencer–brand …

One Size Does Not Fit All: Understanding Differences In Perceived Organizational Support During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Ruby Daniels, Leslie A. Miller, Michael Zia Mian, Stephanie L. Black

Marketing Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 crisis forced organizations to radically rethink how to lead their workforce. Facing an unprecedented drop in consumer demand, business leaders struggled to balance staying financially solvent with the responsibility of supporting their employees during the crisis. Early surveys found many employees did not perceive their organizations communicated a clear plan of action; others questioned whether their employers cared about workers' health and safety. While researchers have examined perceived organizational support, studies are only now starting to examine workers' perceived support during a pandemic. The study used a mixed method design to collect quantitative and qualitative data from 949 …

Let All Voices Be Heard: Creating An Engaging And Inclusive Asynchronous Qr Classroom, Ruby Daniels, Kathryn Appenzeller Knowles

Marketing Faculty Publications

With the shift to remote teaching, many instructors used Zoom for synchronous work. However, this presented issues (fatigue, turning cameras off, inequitable technical hurdles) that motivated quantitative reasoning (QR) instructors to look for asynchronous alternatives. A common technique has been text-based online discussions, which can be difficult for students to find engaging. This mixed method study (N = 41) describes an inclusive video alternative, specifically for teaching QR and quantitative fluency skills, which was piloted in two asynchronous sections and one hybrid section of the same course. Students posted their video responses, watched their classmates’ videos, and wrote short …

Collecting Samples From Online Services: How To Use Screeners To Improve Data Quality, Aaron D. Arndt, John B. Ford, Barry J. Babin, Vinh Luong

Marketing Faculty Publications

Increasingly, marketing and consumer researchers rely on online data collection services. While actively-managed data collection services directly assist with the sampling process, minimally-managed data collection services, such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk), leave researchers solely responsible for recruiting, screening, cleaning, and evaluating responses. The research reported here proposes a 2 × 2 framework based on sampling goal and methodology for screening and evaluating the quality of online samples. By sampling goals, screeners can be categorized as selection, which involves matching the sample with the targeted population; or as accuracy, which involves ensuring that participants are appropriately attentive. By …

Artificial Empathy In Marketing Interactions: Bridging The Human-Ai Gap In Affective And Social Customer Experience, Yuping Liu-Thompkins, Shintaro Okazaki, Hairong Li

Marketing Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform firm-customer interactions. However, current AI marketing agents are often perceived as cold and uncaring and can be poor substitutes for human-based interactions. Addressing this issue, this article argues that artificial empathy needs to become an important design consideration in the next generation of AI marketing applications. Drawing from research in diverse disciplines, we develop a systematic framework for integrating artificial empathy into AI-enabled marketing interactions. We elaborate on the key components of artificial empathy and how each component can be implemented in AI marketing agents. We further explicate and test how artificial empathy generates …

The Role Of Response Efficacy And Risk Aversion In Promoting Compliance During Crisis, Veronica L. Thomas, Hooman Mirahmad, Grace Kemper

Marketing Faculty Publications

This research examines consumers' compliance with behaviors that focus on preventing the spread of COVID‐19. Drawing on Protection Motivation Theory and research on efficacy, we find that, during a pandemic, consumers who have higher perceptions of response efficacy are less likely to engage in risky consumption behaviors (Study 1) and more likely to engage in protective consumption behaviors (Study 2). This effect is moderated by risk aversion, such that as risk aversion increases, COVID‐compliant behaviors increase even when consumers do not believe in their ability to effectuate change. Further, the relationship between response efficacy and COVID‐compliant behaviors is mediated by …

Improving Arts Management/Marketing Efficiency: Optimizing Utilization Of Scarce Resources To Produce Artistic Outputs, Theresa A. Kirchner, Linda L. Golden, Patrick L. Brockett

Marketing Faculty Publications

Purpose

This longitudinal research examines US symphony orchestra sector organizations to determine individual efficiencies in allocating resources (donations, governmental/private funding, etc.) for desirable outputs (concerts, educational programs, community outreach). It provides researchers and managers with a tool for identifying, assessing and mitigating organizational inefficiencies.

Design/methodology/approach

This study assesses relative efficiencies in performing arts organizations using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a widely-used nonparametric data-intensive benchmarking technique that determines an optimal “production frontier” of best-practice organizations among their peers and assesses their abilities to turn multivariate inputs into multivariate desired outputs.

Findings

This analysis highlights efficiency differences in a wide range of …

Psychological Assessment And Testing, Leslie A. Miller, Ruby Daniels

Marketing Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Linkedin Blunders: A Mixed Method Study Of College Students’ Profiles, Ruby Daniels, Sara D. Pemble, Danille Allen, Gretchen Lain, Leslie A. Miller

Marketing Faculty Publications

Although a significant need exists for college students to market their job skills effectively to potential employers, no prior research systematically analyzed the quality of information included in college students’ LinkedIn profiles. This study used a marketing framework to evaluate the effectiveness of information in LinkedIn profiles posted by current and former community college students. The mixed method study analyzed 340 publicly available LinkedIn profiles for students who reported attending 89 community colleges in the United States. The results suggest many college students may not understand how to use a LinkedIn profile to market their skills to potential employers. Key …

Abusive Supervision, Leader-Member Exchange, And Creativity: A Multilevel Examination, Changqing He, Rongrong Teng, Liying Zhou, Valerie Lynette Wang, Jing Yuan

Marketing Faculty Publications

Despite the growing attention on the topic of abusive supervision, how abusive supervision affects individual and team creativity have not yet been thoroughly investigated. Drawn from the perspective of leader-member exchange (LMX), the current study develops a multilevel model to describe the relationships between abusive supervision and creativity at both team and individual levels, with a focus on the roles played by team-level leader-member exchange (TLMX) and LMX differentiation (DLMX). Based on data collected from 319 team members and their team leaders in 71 teams, the results show that abusive supervision has a negative relationship with TLMX, a practice that …

Leveraging Linkedin: How Can Educators Help College Students Market Themselves?, Ruby Daniels, Mark Dempsey

Marketing Faculty Publications

To successfully transition from college to career, community college students must be prepared to sell their skills to potential employers. LinkedIn, the world’s leading professional networking website, provides college students and graduates with an affordable platform to promote their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Unfortunately, students often do not know how to communicate a unique value proposition in their LinkedIn profiles. In response, the National Convergence Technology Center (CTC), based in Collin College, developed a 30-minute webinar to train community college educators about how to avoid common mistakes in LinkedIn. High interest in the webinar as well as responses to a …

Online Reviews Generated Through Product Testing: Can More Favorable Reviews Be Enticed With Free Products?, Ina Garnefeld, Tabea Krah, Eva Böhm, Dwayne D. Gremler

Marketing Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Fantasy Sports And Esports: Is Unconventional Becoming Conventional? A Case Analysis, Arne Baruca, Ebru Ulusoy

Marketing Faculty Publications

Fantasy sports and esports are relatively recent phenomena that are growing in popularity and their importance in today's society. Per their nature, they are also tightly connected with sports. In this chapter, the authors present these two phenomena and explain their importance in today's sports industry. Furthermore, the chapter analyzes fantasy sports and esports consumption patterns and discusses how the Covid-19 pandemic affected them. To conclude, the chapter suggests the possible implications for fantasy sports and esports in the future.

Making Energy Metrics Relevant To Service Firms: From Energy Conservation To Energy Productivity, Randle D. Raggio, Peter Ekman, Steve Thompson

Marketing Faculty Publications

Although energy conservation and reduction in environmental impact are on the international and most national agendas, service firms rarely include energy consumption metrics in their strategic decision-making. One reason for the omission is that for service industries, firm level energy utilization is most commonly measured in kilowatt hours per square meter of office space where changes often related to the space rather than the firm performance. The measure also presents several problems for firms in service industries. First, energy conservation and reduction may be counterproductive for service firms that are growing and require energy to sustain that growth. Second, it …

Refocusing Loyalty Programs In The Era Of Big Data: A Societal Lens Paradigm, Valeria Stourm, Scott A. Neslin, Eric T. Bradlow, Els Breugelmans, So Yeon Chun, Pedro Gardete, P. K. Kannan, Praveen Kopalle, Young-Hoon Park, David Restrepo Amariles, Raphael Thomadsen, Yuping Liu-Thompkins, Rajkumar Venkatesan

Marketing Faculty Publications

Big data and technological change have enabled loyalty programs to become more prevalent and complex. How these developments influence society has been overlooked, both in academic research and in practice. We argue why this issue is important and propose a framework to refocus loyalty programs in the era of big data through a societal lens. We focus on three aspects of the societal lens-inequality, privacy, and sustainability. We discuss how loyalty programs in the big data era impact each of these societal factors, and then illustrate how, by adopting this societal lens paradigm, researchers and practitioners can generate insights and …

Creating, Metavoicing, And Propagating: A Road Map For Understanding User Roles In Computational Advertising, Yuping Liu-Thompkins, Ewa Maslowska, Yuquing Ren, Hyejin Kim

Marketing Faculty Publications

Over the past two decades, everyday users have become a prominent force in the advertising landscape. They actively participate in conversations with and about brands by creating, amplifying, and interacting with brand-related messages. These user activities generate large volumes of structured and unstructured data that advertisers can mine to understand consumer interests and preferences. In this article, we survey insights from the user-generated content literature through the computational advertising lens to offer a road map for future research. Specifically, we discuss three roles that users play—as creators, metavoicers, and propagators. For each role, we present key research areas that can …

Who’S Got My Back? Comparing Consumers’ Reactions Topeer‐Provided And Firm‐Provided Customer Support, Lan Jiang, Matthew O'Hern, Sara Hanson

Marketing Faculty Publications

This study demonstrates that when an individual encounters a product‐related problem, fellow consumers (i.e., one’s peers) have a unique advantage in providing social support to the affected consumer. Specifically, we find that social support can be a dominant driver of consumer satisfaction when the risk of customer defection is at its highest (i.e., following an unsuccessful attempt to solve the consumer’s problem). Using real‐world data from an online support community, a pilot study finds that if the problem that a consumer faces goes unsolved, satisfaction is greater when consumers receive peer‐provided versus firm‐provided support. Study 1 replicates this finding in …

A Credit Rating Model In A Fuzzy Inference System Environment, Amir Karbassi Yazdi, Thomas Hanne, Yong J. Wang, Hui-Ming Wee

Marketing Faculty Publications

One of the most important functions of an export credit agency (ECA) is to act as an intermediary between national governments and exporters. These organizations provide financing to reduce the political and commercial risks in international trade. The agents assess the buyers based on financial and non-financial indicators to determine whether it is advisable to grant them credit. Because many of these indicators are qualitative and inherently linguistically ambiguous, the agents must make decisions in uncertain environments. Therefore, to make the most accurate decision possible, they often utilize fuzzy inference systems. The purpose of this research was to design a …

Influence Of Country And Company Characteristics On International Business Decisions: A Review, Conceptual Model, And Propositions, Kotler Philip, Lalita A. Manrai, Dana-Nicoleta Lascu, Ajay K. Manrai

Marketing Faculty Publications

This research advances four propositions and a conceptual model of country and company characteristics influencing key International Business Decisions (IBDs). The IBDs in this study are country selection and evaluation, entry mode, segmentation-targeting-positioning, and the marketing mix – the first two in the international business domain, and the latter two in the international marketing field. The conceptual model and related four propositions are advanced, based on an extensive literature review and subsequent in-depth review of 169 published research papers on major IBDs and their determinants, namely, country characteristics, including opportunities, risks, and various distances between the host country and home …

A Study Of Safari Tourism In Sub-Saharan Africa: An Empirical Test Of Tourism A-B-C (T-Abc) Model, Lalita A. Manrai, Dana-Nicoleta Lascu, Ajay K. Manrai

Marketing Faculty Publications

The competition for safari tourism in sub-Saharan Africa is intense. Aside from inter-country competition, there is also intra-country competition among game viewing lodges and resorts within each country. In this context, it is important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each country for safari tourism. We empirically test the relationship between tourism performance and multiple tourism dimensions, namely, tourism Attractions (A), Basics (B), and Context (C). We test the Tourism A-B-C model (Manrai, Manrai, & Friedeborn, 2018) using data from Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The study, a first in the region, addresses tourism …

Enhancing Consumer Engagement In An Online Brand Community Via User Reputation Signals: A Multi-Method Analysis, Sara Hanson, Lan Jiang, Darren Dahl

Marketing Faculty Publications

Generating and maintaining consumers’ engagement in online brand communities is critical for marketing managers to enhance relationships and gain customer loyalty. In this research, we investigate how the type of signal used to indicate user reputation can enhance (or diminish) consumers’ community engagement. Specifically, we explore differences in perceptions of points (i.e., point accrual systems), labels (i.e., descriptive, hierarchical identification systems), and badges (i.e., descriptive, horizontally-ordered identification systems). We argue that reputation signals vary in the degree to which they can provide role clarity—the presence of user roles that deliver information about expected behaviors within a group. Across several studies, …

Society Or The Environment? Understanding How Consumers Evaluate Brand Messages About Corporate Social Responsibility Activities, Sara Hanson, Lan Jiang, Jun Ye, Nagesh Murthy

Marketing Faculty Publications

This research examines how and why consumers evaluate brand messages about corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities differently. Insights from secondary data suggest that brands may prioritize environmental activities over social activities, and vice versa, depending on the type of company. Using a field experiment and surveys, we explore whether consumers’ attitudes toward these brand decisions follow company priorities. We find that consumers perceive brands that sell goods and communicate messages about environmental sustainability activities more positively than services companies, while consumers perceive brands that provides services and communicate messages about social sustainability activities more positively than goods companies. We show …

Higher Education, Robert Ping

Marketing Faculty Publications

Research on Higher Education, including promotion and tenure, and the possibility of reusing one's data for a second paper to help reduce the "time between papers." (Perhaps surprisingly, some editors do not object to reusing data, as long as new theory is being tested.) This Higher Education web page has been substantially revised and updated in its "The Jr. Faculty Corner" section. For example, the suggestions there for Revising and Resubmitting a paper and sample "Responses to the Reviewers" have been heavily edited for clarity and, utility.

Theoretical Model Testing With Latent Variables, Robert Ping

Marketing Faculty Publications

Topics include improving Average Variance Extracted (AVE), estimating a latent variable with only two indicators, and speeding up the "weeding" (itemizing) of a measure so it is consistent ("fits the data"), is valid and reliable, yet has more than 3 indicators.

Latent Variable Interactions And Quadratics, Robert Ping

Marketing Faculty Publications

Research on interactions (XZ) and quadratics (XX) in theoretical model (hypothesis) tests using structural equation analysis (LISREL, EQS, AMOS, SIMPLIS, etc.) and real-world data. Topics include XZ and XX reliability and validity. In theory tests these are important because low reliability/validity in XZ or XX may mean that a significant interaction or quadratic will be NS or of opposite sign in its next model test. Other topics include estimating categorical (nominal) variables, and improving measures that are in serious trouble--ones with low Average Variance Extracted (AVE), or unacceptable model-to-data fit (i.e., only a 3-indicator specification fits the data, etc.)

(Buyer-Seller) Relationship Termination, Robert Ping

Marketing Faculty Publications

Research on responses to (business, e.g., buyer-seller) relationship problems: Relationship Exiting, Voice, Loyalty, Relationship Neglect, Opportunism, and their antecedents.

What Do We Know About Digital Attribution?, John B. Ford

Marketing Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Digital attribution sounds rather simple in that it involves isolating advertising tactics and assessing their impact on consumer decision making. But in a complex digital environment, advertisers must navigate through a variety of consumer platforms and touch points to find the optimal vehicles and mechanisms to cost effectively have an impact on consumer choice. And, on each research occasion, the process has to be all but reinvented.