Business Commons^™

Determinants Of Tipping Rates: New Findings And Extensions, Christopher Carl Olson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There is a movement underway to eliminate the practice of tipping restaurant servers that is gaining momentum (Goldberger, 2015). In lieu of gratuities, restaurants are simply raising menu prices or assessing a service charge and paying servers a fixed hourly wage (Kummer, 2016). Before restaurateurs can adopt such a strategy, they need to thoroughly understand the factors that affect tipping behavior in order to develop meaningful fixed wage rates that do not diminish service levels or employee morale. The first step in this process is a better understanding of the determinants of tipping rates.

The existing research has identified many …

The Effects Of Loneliness On Consumers’ Digital Engagement With Social Media Ads, Yu Qin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Social media has become an integral part of consumers’ lives and a popular platform for interactive marketing communication. In an age boasting of unprecedented digital connectivity, loneliness (defined as perceived social isolation) has, paradoxically, becoming widespread, affecting consumers’ preferences for products and brands in the marketplace. The present research extends the feelings-as-information theory and develops a conceptual framework in which loneliness modifies people’s cognitive processing style and induces concrete thinking in the context of evaluating social media messages. Using a mixed methods research approach, I first take a close look through the lens of a qualitative study at what it …

Product Shadows And Ad Evaluations, Nazuk Sharma

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Prior research shows that stylistic ad manipulations (i.e., the style or manner in which product visuals are presented in an ad) impact consumer perceptions (Yang, Zhang and Peracchio 2010). This dissertation explores the impact of presence (versus absence) of a product’s shadow in the ad frame, as a visual stylistic manipulation influencing consumer ad perceptions. While many stylistic manipulations have been explored in the past, product shadows in how they impact ad perceptions have not been explored.

Drawing on a holistic understanding on object shadows from the visual art, cognition and psychophysics literature streams, this dissertation investigates how product shadows …

Hate Is A Strong Word: The Influence Of Hate-Acknowledging Advertising On Brand Outcomes, Lisa Monahan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Given a lack of tactics for addressing brand hate, most managers tend to ignore brand haters, and instead dedicate their resources towards consumers who like or love their brand. Similarly, relative to the volume of research on positive brand emotions, the academic literature exploring negative brand emotions is limited. Moreover, research indicates that compared to positive brand information, negative brand information is more diagnostic, and ultimately more damaging.

In contrast to such findings and practices, this dissertation proposes a strategy whereby using advertising to openly acknowledge that a brand is hated (i.e. hate-acknowledging advertising) can be advantageous for corporate polarizing …

Essays On Sales Coaching, Carlin A. Nguyen

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In general, scholars and practitioners agree that sales coaching enhances sales performance. Sales firms continue to invest billions of dollars towards coaching endeavors. However, despite the positive benefits of sales coaching, the fact is that most sales coaches are ineffective. In three essays, this dissertation aims to offer insight that will help companies and coaching programs improve the effectiveness of their sales coaches.

The first essay explores the sales coaching process and how it is affected by factors related to the sales manager (coach) and the salesperson (coachee). Using in-depth interviews, we identified various skills, behaviors, and abilities that reflect …

Evaluating The Relative Importance Of Influencing Factors On Cruise Vacations: A Conjoint Analysis, Frida Bahja

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on exploring the relative importance of six influential factors in cruise customers’ decision-making process such as: cruise vacation price, cruise duration, distance from the cruise port, itineraries, environmental friendliness of cruise line and cruise online reviews. The decision on which influencing factors to select was made based on the review of literature.

The complexity of cruise customers’ decision-making process for these six attributes with several levels was examined with Choice-Based Conjoint (CBC) Analysis. CBC was selected due to its realistic approach to purchase decisions, in the form of trade-offs. The online survey collected data anonymously. The survey …