Marketing Commons^™

Two Essays On The Role Of Empathy In Consumer Response To User-Generated Content, Mohammadali Koorank Beheshti

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Empathy is known to be the basis of all human interactions and an essential component of human psychology. Empathy includes a cognitive component (perspective-taking) and an affective component (e.g., emotional contagion). The two essays of my dissertation investigate how each of these components of empathy affect consumer responses to user-generated content.

Essay 1: Although both price and online review ratings are important cues in consumers’ product quality judgment, most previous studies have treated price and review ratings as separate inputs into consumer decision-making. The current research shows that the two cues are intertwined, such that consumers’ perception of the same …

Two Essays On Consumer Envy, Murong Miao

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Consumer envy, which is a two-faceted emotion (benign versus malicious), could change consumer behavior in different ways. Although research on envy is abundant in the psychology field, little attention has been paid to envy in marketing research. This dissertation composes of two essays. Based on Social Comparison Theory (SCT), these two essays examine the envy mechanism in driving consumer behavior using different contexts (social media behavior and counterfeit luxury consumption).

Essay one examines the relationship between envy and consumer’s intention to conduct different social networking sites (SNSs) activities. To test the hypothesized relationships, four experiments were conducted. Experiments 1, 2, …

Three Essays On The Roles Of Review Valence And Conflict In Online Relationships, Ran Liu

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

In the context of online marketing, product reviews and online relationships have played essential roles in determining consumer's decision making. The three essays examine how valence and volume of online reviews affect consumers' perceived relationships with a firm, as well as the boundary effect of the causal link. Previous literature has been focusing on the direct effects of word-of-mouth (WOM) on consumers' short-term purchase decisions and treating WOM solely as an outcome of a relationship. Consequently, the role of online reviews has been underestimated by contemporary literature and how electric WOM (eWOM) changes consumers' perception with an exchange partner is …

Essay 1: How We Feel: The Role Of Macro-Economic Sentiment In Advertising Spending-Sales Relationship; Essay 2: It Was The Best Of Times; It Was The Worst Of Times: The Effect Of Emotional Uncertainty And Arousal On Healthy Food Choices, Leila Khoshghadam

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Essay 1: Controversies regarding the advertising spending-sales relationship have spawned many studies in marketing. Previous research on macroeconomic influencers of this relationship has focused mostly on objective macroeconomic indicators such as cyclical contraction and expansion. Extending these previous studies, the current research argues that sales response to advertising is also contingent upon the pervasive feelings present in the macroeconomic environment, above and beyond the influence from objective macroeconomic factors. Specifically, it argues that future outlook negativity and uncertainty in macroeconomic sentiment can affect the ad spending-sales relationship. Analyzing sales and advertising spending data for salty snacks in conjunction with macroeconomic …

The Influence Of Mating Motives On Reliance On Form Versus Function In Product Choice, Seyed Hamid Abbassi Hosseini

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Through five experiments, this research examined and supported the central hypothesis that a casual mating motive promotes higher reliance on form in product evaluation and choice, whereas a committed mating motive promotes higher reliance on function. Particularly, compared to a committed mating motive, a casual mating motive was associated with the relative preference for product options superior in form attributes as opposed to options superior in function attributes (Study 1, Study 2, and Study 4). This research applied three different operationalizations of mating motives. In studies 1 and 5, contextual priming was used. Studies 2 and 3 employed chronic mating …

Two Essays On The Consumer Acculturation Process – A Need For And Development Of A Consumer Acculturation Measure, Kristina Marie Harrison

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

The United States is becoming increasingly multi-cultural and there are various new immigrant consumer groups that businesses try to reach through ethnic-based segmentation and targeting. Often, businesses offer accommodation strategies to their ethnic consumer groups through language or other cultural accommodation tactics. There are inconsistencies in the literature for the efficacy of ethnic-based targeting and accommodation strategies: often these do not have the desired results and there is evidence that ethnic identification may be fading over time for many immigrant groups.

There is evidence that acculturation may be a better predictor of consumer behavior such as preferences for brand, services, …

Underlying Factors Behind Generation Of Different Types Of User-Generated Content - Impact Of Individual And Brand/Product Level Factors In Generation Of Brand-Oriented Content And Community-Oriented Content, Kemal Cem Soylemez

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Defined as groups of people who communicate with each other about brand and product via internet without restricted by geographical and ethnic origin constraints to accomplish collective goals, express mutual sentiments & commitments and entertainment, online brand communities are valuable source for marketing practitioners. Although content generation is heavily used in the literature, earlier studies assumes that user-generated content is monolith, and all aimed to brand. However, our experiences tell us that reality is far different from that. This study categorizes user generated content based on target audience, namely brand-oriented content and community-oriented content. Although both types of content are …

Customers’ Goal-Related Behavior In Loyalty Programs, Junzhou Zhang

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Goal plays a vital role in the purposive behavior of consumers, and goal pursuit represents an important psychological mechanism under loyalty programs. The purpose of my dissertation is to understand loyalty program members’ goal pursuit behavior and uncover the underlying psychological mechanisms.

The first essay examined how success or failure to achieve a tier goal affects consumers’ subsequent goal pursuit behavior. Specifically, utilizing two lab experiments and 5,719 customers’ flight activities data from a major airline’s multi-tiered frequent flyer program, this essay studied the effect of goal completion magnitude on individuals’ effort toward achieving subsequent goals, and how goal type …

"The Magic Formula: Scent And Brand"- The Influence Of Olfactory Sensory Co-Branding On Consumer Evaluations And Experiences, Ceren Ekebas

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation investigates the effect of co-branding efforts on consumers' responses when a sensory product is co-branded with the scent of another sensory product (sensory co-branded product). It aims to fill the gap in the literature by studying how olfactory attributes of co-branded products influence consumers' evaluations and experiences. Three experimental studies examine how these effects occur, and also analyze the influence of moderating factors that determine the magnitude of the effects.

Study 1 explored how branding strategies and different presentation methods of products (physical or denoted) interact to influence consumer evaluations and experiences. Findings showed that consumers evaluated sensory …

Three Essays On Opportunistic Claiming Behavior In A Services Setting: Customers And Front Line Employees Perspectives, Denis Khantimirov

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This three-essay dissertation integrates the literatures on opportunistic claiming behavior, customer complaining and persuasion theories to examine the following research questions: (1) what factors influence frontline employee's perceived legitimacy of consumer complaints in a services setting? and (2) what drivers impact the consumer's propensity to make opportunistic claims?

More and more customers nowadays attempt to take advantage of service failures and claim what they can, rather than what they deserve given the service encounter circumstances. Given the narrow profit margins and fierce competition, the issue of opportunistic claiming behavior has become increasingly relevant over the past few years. Firms can …

An Empirical Examination Of The Moderators Of Direct Versus Indirect Comparative Advertising, Chun-Kai Hsu

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This research examines the relative effectiveness of different kinds of comparative advertising. The effects of direct and indirect advertising are discussed and empirically tested. Extant research focuses on the differential effects of comparative and non-comparative advertising. However, with the growing popularity of comparative advertising in recent years, it becomes crucial to examine different kinds of comparative advertisements more closely to provide guidelines to marketing managers in the application of comparative advertising. In the marketing literature, very little has been known about how advertising-specific moderators may influence the effectiveness of direct and indirect comparative advertising. In this dissertation, different advertising-specific moderators …

The Effect Of Online Reviews On Attitude And Purchase Intention: How Consumers Respond To Mixed Reviews, Chatdanai Pongpatipat

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Three studies investigate how consumers respond to mixed reviews under personal and social influences. The first study looks at how individual self-construal influences the way consumers process mixed reviews from professional critics vs. regular consumers. The study finds consumers with an independent (interdependent) self construal to have less favorable attitude and to be less likely to purchase the product when the negative review comes from professional critics (consumers). Study 2 explores how consumption social context determines the way consumers respond to mixed reviews and how consumer knowledge moderates this behavior. For public consumption, the study finds that both attitude and …

Intercultural Accommodation Of Ethnic Minority Consumers: An Empirical Examination Of The Moderating Effects In Service Encounters, Sarah Mady

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

The current study proposed a model of intercultural accommodation and nine emergent hypotheses grounded in three theories: Accommodation Theory, Distinctiveness Theory and the Elaboration Likelihood Model. The study expected that the offering of a service in the minority consumer's language and by an ethnically-similar service provider will lead to favorable service quality perceptions, in the absence of any intervening variables. Ethnic minority consumers were also expected to differ in their perceptions of service quality when intercultural accommodation efforts were or were not offered given a number of intervening variables. The proposed model and the nine hypotheses were assessed via a …

Warranty And Price As Quality Signals: The Effect Of Signal Consistency And Unexpectedness On Product Perception, Sultan Alaswad Alenazi

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This dissertation investigates the effect of signal consistency/inconsistency and signal unexpectedness on a consumer's evaluation of a product. It consists of two studies. Study One examines the effect of signal consistency/inconsistency on product quality, where consistent signals are those of the same valance. Prior research has found that a positive cue not only was unable to improve product quality perception, but also had a negative effect on perceived quality when a positive cue was combined with a negative one. The results of Study One indicate that when signals are inconsistent, consumers engage in an attribution process to explain inconsistency. If …

Remembering To Remember And The Consequences Of Forgetting: The Role Of Prospective Memory In Consumer Intentions, Eyad M. Youssef

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Picking up your dry cleaning after work, returning library books before the due date, picking up a friend at the airport; all of these tasks have one underlying feature that links them together. The tasks cannot be completed when the initial intention is formed. Prospective memory can be defined as remembering to remember (Winograd, 1988). It can also be defined as either remembering to do something at a particular moment in the future or as the timely execution of a previously formed intention (Kvavilashvili and Ellis, 1996). Remembering to do things (prospective memory) is just as much a use of …

Consumer Receptivity Of Foreign Products: The Roles Of Country-Of-Origin Image, Consumer Ethnocentrism And Animosity, Larry Lee Carter Jr.

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

In business, the survival of a manufacturing firm is dependent upon the consumer's acceptance and purchase of its products. Globalization and the accessibility of markets worldwide have expanded the potential customer base from purely domestic to include international customers. It is imperative for marketing managers to accurately assess consumer product perceptions to forecast foreign market entry acceptance and develop some form of competitive advantage that will be sustainable over the long run. Despite the apparent relevance and importance of analyzing consumer product perceptions, there is a lack of research in modeling the relationships between primary antecedents that influence consumers' receptivity …

The Impact Of Collective Animosity And Collective Guilt On The Judgments Of And Preferences For Japanese Products, Amro Maher

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Collective animosity and its effects on consumers' perceptions of and preferences for foreign products from the perpetrators' country of origin has received considerable attention in the marketing literature (Ettenson and Klein 2005; Klein, Ettenson and Morris 1998; Klein 2002; Nijseen and Douglas 2005). Collective animosity however is only one possible emotion that might be experienced towards other groups (Smith 1993; Smith 1999; Mackie, Devos and Smith 2000). Collective guilt is one of these possible emotions that have received considerable attention in the social psychology literature. Collective guilt refers to the distress that one might feel due to moral transgressions performed …

A Social Relational Model For Firm-Hosted Virtual Communities: The Role Of Firm Support, Tung Duy Cu

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Since the ease of participation and the usefulness of information provided by online groups continue to proliferate in the World Wide Web, people increasingly participate in different forms of virtual community (i.e. online forums, bulletin boards, message boards, chat rooms) for their purposes, such as solving problems, building social relationships, sharing passions, developing professionals.

Accordingly, an increasing number of companies are now attempting to exploit this phenomenon by hosting and supporting their own online community for commercial and non-commercial purposes, such as building relationships with their customers, getting their feedback, strengthening the brand, and reducing customer service costs by enabling …

How Personal Nostalgia Influences Giving To Charity, Altaf Merchant

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Charitable organizations in the U.S. have found it increasingly difficult to raise funds from donors. With a decline in the number of donors and with the number of charitable organizations increasing, there is a greater need than ever to engage the giver and encourage him/her to increase their giving to charitable organizations. NPOs (not-for-profit organizations) can facilitate this engagement through the identification of emotional constructs that can drive donor commitment to the NPO and increase charitable giving. In a recent study, Sargeant et al. (2006) have shown that charities which engage the giver emotionally are able to create stronger commitment …

Configuration Of Market Oriented Culture, Organizational Structure And Business Strategy Types And Their Performance Implications In Service Organizations, Omer Gokus

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Understanding how organizations in service sectors create and sustain a competitive advantage in today's highly dynamic environment is of interest to both researchers and managers. It has been suggested that competitive advantages are achieved either by placing a renewed emphasis on delivering superior quality services to customers or by seeking efficiency through standardized practices aiming at the lowest overall cost for superior performance. This dissertation investigates how these strategies are implemented to produce enhanced organizational performance by utilizing both market oriented culture and organizational structure simultaneously. The model and the hypotheses are tested with data collected from 151 service businesses. …

Integration Of Market And Entrepreneurial Orientations; And Their Impact On Export Performance: A Contingency Approach, Ayse Nilgun Kaya

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Globalization has promoted worldwide exporting levels to soar and to account for more than 10% of global activity. Technological advances in information and communication technologies, production methods, transportation, and international logistics have led to the increase in the exporting activity. However, these advances have also resulted in highly competitive and turbulent markets, and sophisticated and demanding customers, which in return has required exporting firms to be both entrepreneurial- and market-oriented.

A review of the market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation and exporting literature revealed three gaps that the dissertation sought to fill. First, the relationship between market orientation and entrepreneurship was not …

Coopetition (Contemporaneous Cooperation And Competition) Among Nonprofit Arts Organizations: The Case Of Symphony Orchestras, Theresa A. Kirchner

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Coopetition was formalized as a strategic management concept in the early 1990s by Ray Noorda, CEO of Novell, who coined the term and proposed that often, in order to achieve growth in an organization or industry, "You have to cooperate and compete at the same time" (Davis 1993). Although the individual ideas of cooperation and competition in the business environment have been well-established for some time, the formal idea of contemporaneous cooperation and competition, or cooperation among competitors, is relatively new in business and academic literature. Why is this hybrid concept important? The literature to date on coopetition and its …

Relational Benefits And Costs In Channel Distribution: A Dyadic Research From Buyers And Sellers Perspective, Dung The Vu

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

The benefits from having long–term relationships with customers have become a focal topic and have been widely discussed in the marketing literature (Dwyer, Schurr and Oh 1987; Reichheld and Sasser 1990; Reichheld 1993; Morgan and Hunt 1994; Walter, Ritter and Gemuden 2001). However, careful review of the literature indicates that the literature is deficient in several ways: (1) relational benefits are mostly examined in term of economic benefits, especially in b2b and channel distribution contexts, (2) there is limited number of studies examining cost dimensions, (3) there is lack of studies examines both benefits and costs from dyadic perspective (i.e. …

The Effect Of Nutrition Information On Menu Selection When Eating Food Away From Home, Rebecca Foster Hochradel

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

As the number of Americans diagnosed with heart disease, diabetes, and excessive weight continues to increase, providing information to allow consumers to choose healthier foods becomes imperative. The number of consumers eating food away from home (EFAH) is rising. Although nutrition information is required on food products purchased for home use, it is not required when EFAH. How can a consumer know what is healthy if nutrition information is not provided? Policy makers and restaurateurs are in conflict regarding the provision of nutrition information on the menu. Policy makers want this information to be provided while restaurateurs say providing this …

The Role Of Interfunctional Market Orientation In New Product Program Success: An Exploratory Empirical Analysis, George Grady Gresham

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

A central tenet of the market orientation construct is the need for virtually all departments, not just the marketing department, to participate in gathering, disseminating and responding to market intelligence. Previous academic research provides empirical support for a positive relationship between market orientation and superior business performance. Superior business performance, for many firms, depends upon a continuous stream of new products emerging from their product development programs, yet few studies have demonstrated the link between market orientation and new product development program success. This dissertation conceptualizes market orientation below the strategic business level as interfunctional market orientation (IFMO) for cross-functional …

An Empirical Investigation Of The Link Between Market Orientation And New Product Performance: The Mediating Effects Of Organizational Capabilities, Turkan Dursun-Kilic

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

In today's business world, one of the most important problems that companies encounter is new product failure. The high product failure rate has been a major concern for practitioners for many years. It was reported that almost half of the new products introduced each year will actually fail (e.g., Sivadas and Dwyer 2000; Zirger and Maidique 1990). Given the fact that the increasing level of technological advancement, consumer expectations, and domestic as well as international competitive pressures continue to shorten the product life cycle for new products, it has become extremely important for companies to understand the critical determinants of …

An Experimental Examination Of Equivalence Failures In Multi-Cultural Comparative Research, F. Mark Case

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

As the global economy integrates, there is an increased need to understand international business phenomena. This forces a reliance upon multi-cultural marketing research, which is evidenced by a marked increase in international studies, particularly multi-cultural comparative research (Sin, Cheung & Lee 1999). Central to the usefulness of this research is the question of the validity and comparability of results, which is greatly affected by a property known as equivalence of test instruments; or the degree to which the scales and the items in them are seen to be the same across cultures.

To date, no research exists that approaches the …

Customer Relationship Marketing And Effects Of Demographics And Technology On Customer Satisfaction And Loyalty In Financial Services, Priscilla Gaudet Aaltonen

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

In today's market, financial institutions are adopting Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) as a strategy aimed at collecting and using data to deliver increased customer value (Payne, Holt, Frow 2000) and, in turn, to increase customer satisfaction and, ultimately, customer loyalty. However, as more studies are being done on the outcome of CRM strategies over time, it is becoming evident that the costs often outweigh the expected benefits and CRM projects have consistently over-promised and under-delivered (Norman and Zafar 2001). Often, customer satisfaction is increased slightly but loyalty rates do not increase at all.

To date, much of what has been …

An Empirical Examination Of The Moderators Of The Service Recovery Paradox, Vincent P. Magnini

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Some researchers (Abrams and Paese, 1993; Bitner, Booms, and Tetreault, 1990; Etzel and Silverman. 1981; Feinberg et al., 1990; Folkes and Kotsos, 1986; Gilly and Gelb, 1982; Hart, Heskett, and Sasser, 1990; Hocutt, Chakraborty, and Mowen, 1997; Kelley and Davis, 1994; Kelley, Hoffman and Davis, 1993; McCollough and Bharadwaj, 1992; Michel, 2001; Chrage, 2001; Smith and Bolton, 1998; Spreng, Harrell, and Mackoy, 1995; Tax, Brown, and Chandrashekaran, 1998) support the notion of a ‘recovery paradox’ which states that the occurrence of a failure may, if the recovery is effective, offer an opportunity to acquire higher satisfaction ratings from customers than …

An Investigation Of The Antecedents And Consequences Of Individual-Level Customer Orientation: A Comprehensive Approach, Ceyhan Kilic

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Customer orientation has been acknowledged by both practitioners and scholars as a critical element for the success of almost every business.

The primary objective of this research study is to respond to the previous research calls (e.g., Brown et al. 2002; Deshpande, Farley, and Webster 1993; O'Hare, Boles, and Johnston 1991) by investigating the antecedents and consequences of customer orientation at the individual level through a comprehensive structural model. The suggested model captures a comprehensive set of potential antecedents of customer orientation. The antecedents and consequences of customer orientation include organizational factors (i.e., organizational culture and market orientation), j ob-related …