Business Commons^™

How Do Consumers In General Evaluate, Judge, And Act Toward Shoplifting? The Moderating Effects Of Personal Characteristics And Motives Shoplifting?, Juehui Shi, Ngoc (Cindy) Pham, Claudio Schapsis, Tofazzal Hossain, Arturo Z. Vasquez-Párraga

WCBT Faculty Publications

Despite the seriousness of shoplifting, consumers’ evaluations, judgements, and intentions toward shoplifting remain underexplored by scholars from business ethics, marketing, retailing, and consumer behavior. We propose a new shoplifting ethics model, which integrates Hunt and Vitell’s theory of ethics with Nadeau, Rochlen, and Tyminski’s typology of shoplifting, by incorporating the moderators of consumers’ personal characteristics (i.e., age, gender, marital status, income) and shoplifting motives (i.e., social, experiential, economic, emotional) onto the relationships among deontological evaluation, teleological evaluation, ethical judgment, and intention. Based on a two-by-two randomized experimental design, two shoplifting cases (i.e., swapping price tags, stealing products) are investigated in …

Bet You Can’T Eat Just One: Binge Eating Disorder Promotion In American Food Advertising, Debbie Danowski

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

"Eat Like Andy“; "What Would You Do For A Klondike Bar?“ For well over a century, American food manufacturers have been competing for consumers’ attention through the use of catchy jingles, iconic characters and celebrities. At the same time, the products being advertised contain greater amounts of addictive ingredients, which encourage binge eating resulting in an unprecedented obesity epidemic. Combine this with the full-scale commercialization of the culture today“. Jhally identifies and the powerful impact of food advertisements becomes clear as does the need to evaluate these ads. As Kilbourne noted nearly a quarter of a century ago, the majority …

The Introduction Of Virtual Reality To Education: Should The Marketing Discipline Engage?, Enda Mcgovern

WCBT Faculty Publications

This position paper explores whether faculty should embrace the use of virtual reality as a medium of academic engagement with the future intake of digital native students. In recent years there has been a tremendous surge in the use of digital device platforms to extend the reach of education to the wider student populations. As a result, the positive engagement by students of multimedia objects, including video, sound clips and data in a more integrated, multi-sensory digital medium has gained significant traction in the learning environment. Students are moving faster into this digital space and it is not long before …

Exploring The Use Of Twitter Opinion Mining (Tom) In Marketing Courses, Cuauhtémoc Luna-Nevarez

WCBT Faculty Publications

This paper discusses the use of social media mining (and more specifically, Twitter opinion mining) in marketing courses in order to help students understand current marketing events or phenomena. Social media mining refers to “the use of basic concepts and principal algorithms suitable for investigating massive social media data; it discusses theories and methodologies from different disciplines and encompasses the tools to formally represent, measure, model, and mine meaningful patterns from large-scale social media data” (Zafarani et al. 2014, p. 16). Social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram provide opportunities to explore consumer preferences, opinions and behaviors through …

Apps For Enhancing Student Engagement And Learning, Chrissann Ruehle, Mary Martin, Cuauhtémoc Luna-Nevarez, Nick Barnes

WCBT Faculty Publications

Individuals in todays on the go society frequently rely on mobile devices and apps to manage their daily business. Common uses for apps include entertainment, online banking, travel planning and ecommerce in addition to a host of other activities. Factoring in the proliferation of mobile devices, marketing educators are searching for innovative tools and techniques to boost student engagement through the use of apps. The purpose of this paper is to outline a framework for integrating apps into the curriculum as well as provide specific examples that educators can utilize to strengthen engagement and learning.

"(Don’T You) Wish You Were Here?”: Narcissism, Envy And Sharing Of Travel Photos Through Social Media: An Extended Abstract, David G. Taylor

WCBT Faculty Publications

Consumers are increasingly relying on user-generated content on social media for their awareness and subsequent decisions regarding travel destinations. This user-generated content – photos, comments, narratives and stories – is perceived by consumers to be more trustworthy and reliable compared to traditional sources of tourism information. ). Thus, understanding consumer motivations for sharing their travel through social media may provide tremendous advantage for tourism marketers.

Because It Makes Me Feel Good: Moderation And Mediation Effects In Cause-Related Marketing, Reto Felix, Arash H. Zadeh, Arne Baruca

WCBT Faculty Publications

Based on a 2x2 factorial design, advertisements for a consumer product generated higher purchase intentions when a cause-related marketing (CRM) message was present than when no such message was included in the ad. This effect was statistically significant, regardless of the type of the product (luxury versus non-luxury). However, for the specific cause used in this study (fight against breast cancer), gender moderated the relationship between the presence/absence of a cause in the ad and purchase intentions. Further, in order to shed more light on the underlying process of cause related marketing messages, two alternative mediation hypotheses were tested using …

Out Of The Building, Into The Fire: An Analysis Of Cognitive Biases During Entrepreneurial Interviews, Tianxu Chen, Mark Simon, Ph.D., John Kim, Brian Poploskie

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

A major source of failure for new ventures is the entrepreneurs’ misunderstanding of the product-market fit. Recently, researchers have suggested that to get a better understanding of the product-market fit, entrepreneurs should “get out of the building” and interview many customers. This approach, while advantageous, is not without drawbacks. This article presents a conceptual model that incorporates the characteristics of “getting out of the building” to conduct customer interviews, and the biases that can arise to influence the entrepreneurs’ misjudgment of the product-market fit. We provide recommendations to overcome these biases.

Advertising Higher Education In Romania, Anca C. Micu, Madalina Moraru

WCBT Faculty Publications

Romania, a former communist country in Eastern Europe, saw the iron curtain lifted in 1989, and started at that time the transition to a free market economy. The past couple of decades encompass extraordinary changes in the economic structure and environment, with state monopolies being dissolved and private companies entering the market and competing in western manner. The Romanian conversion from central planning to a market-oriented economy provides a fascinating laboratory for research in economic theory and practice (Hefner and Woodward 1999). With the advent of a free market economy and a competitive environment, advertising exited its dormant communist stage …

Is Neuromarketing Ethical? Consumers Say Yes. Consumers Say No, Jason Flores, Arne Baruca, Robert Saldivar

WCBT Faculty Publications

Advancements in the development of neuroscience have created the capacity for neuroscientific methods to be applied to marketing science and ultimately marketing practice. As a relatively nascent subfield in marketing, neuromarketing applies neuroscientific methods to study consumer reactions to specific marketing related stimuli. This study analyzes the use of neuromarketing by for-profit and non-profit organizations from an ethical perspective based on consumers’ point of view. The implications of consumers’ ethical judgments are also explored.

The empirical evidence indicates that consumers perceive the use of neuromarketing-based marketing tactics by for-profit organizations to be unethical, yet the same tactics are considered ethical …

Team Selling And Customer Satisfaction In The Mission Critical Sector: A Case Study Of Eyp Mission Critical Facilities Inc., Timothy J. Crader, Stephen M. Brown

WCBT Faculty Publications

This study examined the relationships between selling teams (STs) and customer satisfaction within the mission critical power design industry. The literature indicates that STs, which are considered a state of the art sales model, deserved further research. The SERVQUAL survey was used to measure customer satisfaction with EYP Mission Critical’s most strategic customers. The difference in customer satisfaction for customers serviced by STs and traditional sales personnel were compared. The investigation found support indicating that a ST approach had a positive relationship to increased customer satisfaction levels. Based on the results of the study, it is recommended that sales leaders …

Want To Enroll In A Mooc? No Thanks, My Professors Have Their Own Videos, Enda Mcgovern, Arne Baruca

WCBT Faculty Publications

Purpose: The paper explores how professors, in adopting short digital video lectures as a complementary teaching platform outside the classroom, could better enhance the learning experience for digital natives, i.e. millennial students, in challenging the growth of massive open online courses (MOOC). Specifically, the use of personalized, class-specific, video content made available on YouTube, in which the professor-of-record appears, is examined as a complementary learning platform for students required to read textbook material in preparation for class discussions.

Method / Design and Sample: Students were required to view class-specific digital videos on YouTube and thereafter complete a questionnaire to examine …

Will "Smarter" Marketing End Social Discrimination? A Critical Review, Frances Grodzinsky, Andra Gumbus, Stephen J. Lilley

School of Computer Science & Engineering Faculty Publications

Purpose - There are two claims made by the web marketing/advertising industry. 1) By collecting, managing, and mining data, companies serve consumer’s best interests and 2) by adopting sophisticated analytics web marketers avoid discriminations that disserve individuals. Although we share an interest in ending social discrimination, we are more circumspect about pronounced individualism and technological fixes. Despite its appeal, or perhaps because of it, we should not accept the claim at face value. In this paper we argue that social discrimination may not disappear under smarter marketing; more overt forms may wane only to be replaced by more subtle forms. …

Common Practices In Destination Website Design, Cuauhtémoc Luna-Nevarez, Michael R. Hyman

WCBT Faculty Publications

The Internet has become a key marketing channel for tourist destinations. To identify typical features of destination websites, a content analysis of websites for top global destinations—by number of international arrivals—was conducted. Six factors were evaluated: primary focus, navigation and interactivity, visual and presentation style, textual information, use of advertising, and use of social media and travel aids. In addition, a cluster analysis was conducted to identify homogeneous groups of websites in the sample. The findings revealed three naturally occurring groups. Inter-cluster differences suggest that DMOs use different approaches to target potential visitors, as evidenced by websites ranging from purely …

Our Celebrities Our Selves: Reconstructing Ourselves As Online Personalities, Arne Baruca

WCBT Faculty Publications

Celebrity influence on consumer behavior at the online macro level is the motivation for this study that addresses the nature of celebrity consumption and how consumers apply that consumption to develop their online self-presentation.

The sample for this study is limited to consumers with active accounts at online social networks such as Facebook or Twitter. Methodology is a three-part design. A multi-factor qualitative exploratory study (n=73) reveals four celebrity-consumer relationships whose proposed measurement scales are tested in a quantitative pilot study (n=85). Finally, a large sample study (n=593) is used to test the measurement model and to test the proposed …

Self-Enhancement As A Motivation For Sharing Online Advertising, David G. Taylor, David Strutton, Kenneth Thompson

WCBT Faculty Publications

Marketers have long understood that consumers' self-concepts influence the products they purchase; conversely, products purchased influence people's self-concepts. Might the same self-enhancement framework apply in to shared online advertisements? Using the symbolic interactionist perspective of identity theory, this study empirically tests the proposition that online consumers use electronic word of mouth, and specifically the sharing of online advertising, to construct and express their self-concepts. The results suggest that self-brand congruity, entertainment value, and product category involvement increase the self-expressiveness of online ads, which then increase the likelihood of sharing those ads. These findings have both theoretical and managerial implications.

What Products Can Benefit From African American Advertising Appeals? The Moderating Role Of Product Involvement, Ivonne M. Torres, Cuauhtémoc Luna-Nevarez

WCBT Faculty Publications

With a significant spending power, the African American segment is one of the most lucrative, interesting, and complex targets for national and local advertisers. As this consumer segment continues to grow in importance, marketers need to focus on what types of products could benefit from African American-targeted advertising. Our research studies show African Americans respond to advertising targeted to them and their responses are moderated by ethnic identification and product involvement. Consistent with both theoretical frameworks, distinctiveness theory and ethnic identification theory, we found that identified African Americans prefer African American models especially when advertising low-involvement products.

Are Subcompact Cars Driving Consumers Towards Sustainable Transport, Enda Mcgovern

WCBT Faculty Publications

Access to private transport is a critical component of the modern industrialized world but it is also recognized as a major source of carbon dioxide emissions, one of the global warming gases contributing to climate change. This paper looks at increased use of subcompact cars as a key component in developing a sustainable transport policy. These cars benefit the environment by emitting reduced levels of carbon emissions due to their smaller engines. This empirical research explores the opinions of Smart car owners in a focus group study. Smart car owners are primarily focused on reducing their costs due to difficult …

Mobile Application Adoption By Young Adults: A Social Network Perspective, David G. Taylor, Troy A. Voelker, Iryna Pentina

WCBT Faculty Publications

The use of mobile applications, defined as small programs that run on a mobile device and perform tasks ranging from banking to gaming and web browsing, is exploding. Within the past two years, the industry has grown from essentially nothing to a $2 billion marketplace, but adoption rates are still on the rise. Using network theory, this study examines how the adoption of mobile apps among young consumers is influenced by others in their social network. The results suggest that the likelihood of adoption and usage of mobile apps increases with their use by the consumer's strongest relationship partner. In …

Branding America: Patriotic Products And Consumerism After September 11th, Lori Bindig, M. Bosau

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

Post-9/11 culture provided an opportunity for companies to rebrand themselves and their products as American. In doing so, they supported the president’s directive to consume, gave Americans a concrete way to express their support for their country, and made a tidy profit in the process.

Telling The Brand Story: Including News Articles In Online Promotional Strategies, Anca C. Micu

WCBT Faculty Publications

Given the growing popularity of the Internet as a promotional medium, it is crucial for brand managers to examine the effects of combining the different brand communication sources online. According to social comprehension theory and knowledge from neuroscience, people exposed to a message spontaneously construct a mental simulation. People who are exposed to images or visuals are unlikely to assign verbal labels to their observations, whereas people who read a story may spontaneously form mental pictures of the narrative content. Mental processing of stories requires more extensive elaboration than processing of visuals. In a first study, survey results indicate online …

Strategic Marketing Practice Considerations In Family Business In Nigeria, Omotayo Adegbuyi

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the literature by examining a medium-sized firm. Most modern economies are characterized by a significant group of middle-sized firms, still owner-managed, but with multimillion naira turnovers. Many of these remain family companies and constitute an important reservoir of business initiative. One such family business is the focus of this research. The results of the study suggest that neither the existing typologies of small firm approaches to marketing nor the formal models of marketing attributed to big companies necessarily characterize the marketing planning and management of family business in Nigeria.

In The Mood For A Commercial Break? A Model Of Consumer Response To Television Commercials During Sensitive News, Anca C. Micu, Esther Thorson, Michael Antecol

WCBT Faculty Publications

Marketers decided to pull over $100 million worth of commercials from network, cable, local and syndicated TV outlets on the United States market in the first 48 hours of the 2003 Iraq war. Given this loss to advertisers and media, we looked at how consumers respond to commercials during wartime. Would they change their attitude towards products that are advertised during war coverage? Would they consider advertising during such coverage inappropriate? Consistent with previous mood theory study findings, the results suggest a positive relationship between the mood generated by the interest in the program content and support for advertisements during …

Leveraging News And Advertising To Introduce New Brands On The Web, Anca C. Micu, Esther Thorson

WCBT Faculty Publications

Previous studies using the integrated marketing communications framework have examined the increased effectiveness of combining either multiple media or different tactics when promoting a brand. This study considers integrating advertising and publicity to promote an unknown brand on the Internet. Experiment results indicate that when exposure to advertising combines with exposure to objective news about a new brand, effectiveness increases in terms of both brand attitudes and behavioral intentions. For sequencing exposures for technical brands, the news-then-advertising condition offers more effectiveness than the reverse sequence. When introducing non-technical brands on the Web though, using advertising first is more effective in …

The Green Entrepreneur: How Important Are They To The Growth Of The Eu, Enda Mcgovern

WCBT Faculty Publications

This paper looks at the role of the entrepreneur in the European Union which has now expanded to include 25 nation states with a population of $450 million citizens. How important is the evolution of the Green Entrepreneur to the EU as they make every effort to promote the concept of Entrepreneurship across the various markets. The evidence would suggest that the emphasis by the EU is primarily focused on the development of the entrepreneurial mindset and skills rather than any specific effort to develop the Green or Responsible entrepreneur of the future. A number of green entrepreneurial companies from …

The Business Of Christianity: The Growing Market For Everything Christian, Peter A. Maresco

WCBT Faculty Publications

In 2008, McFarland Publishers, Inc. of Jefferson, North Carolina is scheduled to publish my book: The Business of Christianity: The Growing Market for Everything Christian. The premise of this book is to elaborate in some detail how entrepreneurs are marketing products and services to the Christian consumer that have never been marketed before. Before going into what these products and services are, I should point out that these markets have always existed. The difference is, however, that with the attention given to, Evangelism, the religious right and the growth of mega-churches, those with memberships in excess of 2,000, businessmen and …

Using Teen Chick Lit Novels To Teach Marketing, Peter A. Maresco

WCBT Faculty Publications

This paper will outline how the author uses the sub-genre of teen fiction referred to as teen chick lit to teach students the marketing concept known as product placement. The paper provides the rationale for using fictional teen focused novels as a vehicle for teaching product placement as well as an overview of the teen chick lit genre. A discussion of the value of using teen fiction in class, student project, its success and issues raised are also discussed.

Heroes In Sport: Assessing Celebrity Endorser Effectiveness, Joshua Shuart

WCBT Faculty Publications

The use of celebrities, and particularly athletes, to influence consumers and sell products is not a new practice, but one that is gaining considerable steam in the sports marketplace. However, many academics and practitioners have long questioned the means by which celebrity endorsement is measured and evaluated. Through the use of validated surveys among US students and the inauguration of the Celebrity-Hero Matrix (CHM), some of their questions are answered. Being labelled a 'heroic' athlete does, it seems, have tremendous power for marketers, and provides endorsement clout for the athlete.

Testing For A Synergistic Effect Between Online Publicity And Advertising In An Integrated Marketing Communications Context, Anca C. Micu

WCBT Faculty Publications

This dissertation examined the relationship among four exposure conditions in marketing communications (pure advertising, advertising priming, publicity priming, and pure publicity) that include either advertising or publicity or both. Also, the indirect relationship between brand communication exposure condition and purchase intent was modeled via path analysis. 634 students participated in an online experiment. Repeated measures MANCOVA analysis results indicate that the two synergistic conditions, which included an ad-article or article-ad combination, were more effective in terms of brand communications impact than the pure advertising condition. The pure publicity condition was found to be more effective than any of the other …

Just Tell Me The Rules! Or When Did The Rules Change?, Valerie Christian

WCBT Faculty Publications

Anne is an experienced direct marketer. Just promoted to CEO, Anne proves to be naïve in managing The ABC Catalog Company, despite her twenty years of experience with the company. She prefers to set simple, straightforward rules for her direct reports to follow. Her management philosophy has been influenced by advice from her mentor and by her personal experiences working with her direct reports when they were her colleagues. According to Anne “The big picture is for her (and perhaps her newly-appointed and trusted CFO, Jeff) to worry about.” Anne feels that many of her direct reports are incapable or …