Business Commons^™

Untangling Influence: The Effect Of Follower-Followee Comparison On Social Media Engagement, Yi Peng, Liling Lu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Social media platforms and marketers are keen on identifying truly influential creators. Number of followers (i.e., those who follow creators) and number of followees (i.e., those who are followed by creators) serve as cues to infer creators' influence. However, a cue of creators' actual influence is under-addressed and its effect on social media engagement remains to be explored. This research fills the gap in the literature by investigating how the cue of creators' actual influence (i.e., follower-followee comparison) may affect followers' engagement behavior. The study further examines the moderation effects of media-, topic-, and creator-related factors. The present work leverages …

The Persuasive Effect Of Ai-Synthesized Voices, Hannah H. Chang, Anirban Mukherjee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Artificial intelligence (AI) technology seeks to emulate humans. One aspect is AI-synthesized voices, used in voice assistants (such as Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, and Google Assistant) to assistive technologies (such as voiceover narration in product videos). For example, there are currently more than 3.25 billion voice assistants; a number that is expected to touch about 8 billion by next year (i.e., 2023) (Statista 2022). With the extensive availability and enhanced accuracy of AI-synthesized voices, consumer research is starting to examine the impact of AI-synthesized voices on consumer information processing and decision making. The extant literature, however, is relatively limited because …

Exploring The Operationalization Of Market Sensing In A Higher Education Organization, Ashish Bhardwaj

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Market sensing is a dynamic capability of an organization that enables management to understand the market environment and develop strategic plans that best position the organization to continue to be relevant to the marketplace and sustain an advantaged competitive position. Extant research has explored the difference between ordinary and dynamic capabilities and proposed the role of dynamic capabilities as enabling the configuration and reconfiguration of the organization’s assets in response to or in anticipation of a rapidly evolving market environment, to maintain competitive advantage.

Market sensing dynamic capability has been hypothesized to consist of three key organizational processes – sensing, …

Immersive Retailing: The In-Store Experience, Henrik Hagtvedt, Chandukala, Sandeep R.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This conceptual article explores why consumers visit physical stores—despite living in a digital-first world—and presents potential ways for retailers to further encourage offline shopping. Although online retailing tends to offer the greatest convenience, brick-and-mortar outlets can offer an immersive in-store experience that combines convenience and interest. The present exposition considers store features within a 2 × 2 typology of convenience and interest and illustrates how these features contribute, or fail to contribute, to immersive in-store experiences. Other factors, such as ambient stimuli that elicit sensory- and aesthetic pleasure, provide additional paths to immersion. The notions raised may serve as a …

How Does Advertising Salience Impact Conversion Rates? The Mediating Role Of Consumer Engagement, Yu Cheng

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Previous studies have mainly analyzed the relationship between advertising salience and conversion rates using subjective data from questionnaires or experiments. However, existing researches have not provided a clear explanation of how advertising salience affects conversion rates. In contrast to the existing literature, this study utilizes objective data from advertising agencies and establishes a mediation model to investigate how advertising salience influences conversion rates in news feed advertising. Empirical research shows that consumer engagement serves as a mediating variable between advertising salience and conversion rates, while market share, regional marketization level, and regional income level play moderating roles in the relationship …

More Voices Persuade: The Attentional Benefits Of Voice Numerosity, Hannah H. Chang, Anirban Mukherjee, Amitava Chattopadhyay

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The authors posit that in an initial exposure to a broadcast video, hearing different voices narrate (in succession) a persuasive message encourages consumers’ attention and processing of the message, thereby facilitating persuasion; this is referred to as “the voice numerosity effect.” Across four studies (plus validation and replication studies)—including two large-scale, real-world datasets (with more than 11,000 crowdfunding videos and over 3.6 million customer transactions, and more than 1,600 video ads) and two controlled experiments (with over 1,800 participants)—the results provide support for the hypothesized effect. The effect (1) has consequential, economic implications in a real-world marketplace, (2) is more …

Managing The Creative Frontier Of Generative Ai: The Novelty-Usefulness Tradeoff, Anirban. Mukherjee, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, drawing inspiration from the human creativity literature, we explore the optimal balance between novelty and usefulness in generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. We posit that overemphasizing either aspect can lead to limitations such as hallucinations and memorization. Hallucinations, characterized by AI responses containing random inaccuracies or falsehoods, emerge when models prioritize novelty over usefulness. Memorization, where AI models reproduce content from their training data, results from an excessive focus on usefulness, potentially limiting creativity. To address these challenges, we propose a framework that includes domain-specific analysis, data and transfer learning, user preferences and customization, custom evaluation metrics, …

Does Disclosure Of Advertising Spending Help Investors And Analysts?, Sungkyun Moon, Kapil R. Tuli, Anirban Mukherjee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Publicly listed firms have the discretion to disclose (or not) advertising spending in their annual (10-K) reports. The disclosure of advertising spending can provide valuable information because advertising is a leading indicator of future performance. However, estimates of advertising spending are available from data providers, arguably mitigating the need for its formal disclosure. This study argues that firms’ disclosure of advertising spending provides more complete and public information and therefore lowers investor uncertainty about future firm performance (idiosyncratic risk). Empirical analyses show this effect is largely driven by the negative effect of disclosure of advertising spending on analyst uncertainty. Consistent …

Smart Vending Machines: The Minimarts In The Near Future?, Ramaswami, S.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Marketing (Education) Seshan Ramaswami discussed how the vending machine has stood the test of time even as e-commerce shook the retail industry. He noted the advantages of the vending machine and how it could be an alternative to a brick-and-mortar store and become the minimart of the future. Assoc Prof Ramaswami believes vending machines could get smarter and better as companies have begun using artificial intelligence to build smart vending machines to provide more personalised and interactive features for customers.

The Persuasive Design Of Ai-Synthesized Voices, Hannah H. Chang, Anirban. Mukherjee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the impact of AI-based, machine-synthesized narrating voices on consumer cognitions and behavior in media-rich environment. Across four studies (plus pretests), we show that the design of AI voices systematically and predictably affects consumer cognition and behavior. Specifically, the designs of AI voices have differential effects in early versus later stages of consumer purchase journey. In situations where the consumers’ attention is already directed to the message, we find that marcomm with more AI voices generates a smaller proportion of favorable thoughts, which leads to a lower purchase likelihood. These results support our conceptualization that hearing more AI voices …

Covid Time: How Quarantine Affects Feelings Of Elapsed Time, Minju Han, Guy Voichek, Gal Zauberman

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The lockdowns imposed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly upended people's lives and daily structure. In this survey of 1,506 Americans conducted in June 2020, we test how quarantine affects feelings of elapsed time (the subjective temporal distance from an event). We find that feelings of elapsed time are determined either by how people spent their time in quarantine or by how much time since an event was spent in quarantine, depending on whether people are still in quarantine at the time of evaluation. Specifically, whether people quarantined alone and the extent to which they maintained a temporal structure …

Harnessing The Power Of Video Ads, Linyi Li

Asian Management Insights

In digital advertising, video ads as a top-of-funnel function have a longer-lasting efect than display and search ads on a consumer's consciousness.

The Future Of Private Label Markets: A Global Convergence Approach, Katrijn Gielens, Marnik G. Dekimpe, Anirban Mukherjee, Kapil R. Tuli

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Private-label (PL) shares are characterized by considerable heterogeneity across both countries and categories, not only in their current level, but also in the rate at which they are growing. This creates ambiguity about their remaining growth potential. To offer insights into the likely long-run PL shares, we take a forward-looking perspective by means of a convergence model. We apply the model to two unique datasets that together span more than 50 countries, both emerging and developed, across more than70 CPG categories. We find evidence of partial PL convergence: even though PL shares will become more similar, part of the currently …

Boosting Persuasion: The Attention Benefits Of Multiple Narrating Voices, Hannah H. Chang, Anirban Mukherjee, Amitava Chattopadhyay

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The "Voice Numerosity Effect”: When hearing different voices narrating a marketing video facilitates persuasion. In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Marketing Research, we investigate the role of voice (narrator) numerosity in marketing videos (Chang, Mukherjee, and Chattopadhyay 2022). For example, consider the following two real-life examples: a product video introducing Apple’s AirPods Max had two narrating voices while a product video introducing Apple’s new Macbook Pro had a single narrating voice. Does the difference in the number of narrating voices influence consumers’ attention and subsequent behaviour?

Commentaries On “Scale Use And Abuse: Toward Best Practices In The Deployment Of Scales”, Constantine S. Katsikeas, Shilpa Madan, C. Miguel Brendl, Bobby J. Calder, Donald R. Lehmann, Hans Baumgartner, Bert Weijters, Mo Wang, Chengquan Huang, Joel Huber

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Five comments below provide strong and interesting perspectives on multi-item scale use. They define contexts and research areas where developed scales are valuable and where they are vulnerable. Katsikeas and Madan begin by taking a global perspective on scale use, demonstrating how the use and transferability of scales become even more problematic as researchers move across languages and cultures. They provide guidance for scale use that is particularly relevant to international marketing and marketing strategy research. Brendl and Calder acknowledge the use of well-formed scales as measured variables in psychological experiments, both as independent and dependent variables, but critique the …

Optimal Channel Strategy Of Luxury Brands In The Presence Of Online Marketplace And Copycats, Sarah Yini Gao, Wei Shi Lim, Ziqiu Ye

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The strategic interaction between authentic luxury brands and their copycats has evolved since the proliferation of online marketplaces. Using a game-theoretic framework, we examine how an authentic luxury brand, observing the strategic behavior of its competing copycats, should make its optimal entry decision to a third-party online marketplace. Our findings reveal that the authentic luxury brand does not sell on the online marketplace when either the quality or the physical resemblance of the copycat to the authentic luxury brand is high. This contributes to the related literature by offering an explanation for the increasing quality of copycats amid the e-commerce …

Arts Marketing, David Ocon

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although there are hundreds of resources on traditional and commercial marketing, the materials available specifically for arts marketing are scarce, posing additional challenges for Gillian. Furthermore, while some focus on arts management, few of them address marketing from the perspective of a small-to-medium (often financially struggling) arts organization. An organization like Gillian’s often has limited resources, both financial and human, and can only approach marketing informally. However, it experiences the same pressures to perform well as larger arts institutions. Often, survival depends on how well it implements the marketing strategies that marketing staff create on their own. This chapter is …

The Impact Of Subscription Programs On Customer Purchases, Raghu Iyengar, Young-Hoon Park, Qi Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Subscription programs have become increasingly popular among a wide variety of retailers and marketplace platforms. Subscription programs give members access to a set of exclusive benefits for a fixed fee upfront. In this paper, we examine the causal effect of a subscription program on customer behavior. To account for self-selection and identify the individual-level treatment effects, we combine a difference-in-differences approach with a generalized random forests procedure that matches each member of the subscription program with comparable non-members. We find subscription leads to a large increase in customer purchases. The effect of subscription is economically significant, persistent over time, and …

Artificial Intelligence, Consumers, And The Experience Economy, Hannah H. Chang, Anirban Mukherjee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) was first used by McCarthy, Minsky, Rochester, and Shannon in a proposal for a summer research project in 1955 (Solomonoff, 1985). It is widely and commonly defined to be “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines” (McCarthy, 2006). Recent technological advances and methodological developments have made AI pervasive in new marketing offerings, ranging from self-driving cars, intelligent voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, to burger-making robots at restaurants and rack-moving robots inside warehouses such as Amazon’s family of robots (Kiva, Pegasus, Xanthus) and delivery drones. There is optimism, and perhaps even over-optimism, of the …

Using Machine Learning To Extract Insights From Consumer Data, Hannah H. Chang, Anirban Mukherjee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Advances in digital technology have led to the digitization of everyday activities of billions of people around the world, generating vast amounts of data on human behavior. From what people buy, to what information they search for, to how they navigate the social, digital, and physical world, human behavior can now be measured at a scale and level of precision that human history has not witnessed before. These developments have created unprecedented opportunities for those interested in understanding observable human behavior–social scientists, businesses, and policymakers—to (re)examine theoretical and substantive questions regarding people’s behavior. Moreover, technology has led to the emergence …

Misunderstood Menu Metrics: Side-Length Food Sizing Leads To Quantity Underestimation And Overeating, Thomas Allard, Stefano Puntoni

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This research highlights consumers' failure to understand food sizing communicated using side-length metrics (e.g., 12-inch pizza, 8-inch cake, 2-inch cookie), which are ubiquitous in menus and online interfaces. A series of studies show that describing food size options using side-length metrics leads to food quantity underestimation and food intakes misaligned with consumers' objectives. This robust effect arises because of a linearization heuristic where people do not adequately adjust for the exponential difference in the surface area associated with linear changes in side-length metrics. Choice architecture interventions that replace side-length information with metrics varying linearly with quantities (e.g., surface area, numbers …

The Disappearing Convenience Of Convenience Stores, Ramaswami, S.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The article describes post-Covid challenges to the convenience store format in Singapore, and the ways in which some of these challenges can be mitigated.

Ethical Branding In A Divided World: How Political Orientation Motivates Reactions To Marketplace Transgressions, Thomas Allard, Brent Mcferran

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In today's marketplace, users (e.g., purchasers, influencers) are increasingly the “face” of brands to potential consumers, increasing the risk for brands should these users act poorly. Across seven studies, we document that political orientation moderates the desire for punishment toward users of ethical (vs. conventional) brands who commit moral transgressions. In response to identical marketplace transgressions, we observe that liberals punish ethical brand users less than conventional brand users. In contrast, conservatives punish the same users of ethical brands more than conventional brand users. We document that this bias stems from how people interpret the inconsistency between the ethical branding …

“No More Uncle” And Gender-Neutral Marketing, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

How Asian men’s beauty care is shaping conception of masculinity and gender-neutral marketing

The Breadth Of Normative Standards: Antecedents And Consequences For Individuals And Organizations, Shilpa Madan, Shankha Basu, Sharon Ng, Krishna Savani

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Normative standards refer to ideals to which people, products, and organizations are held. The present research (N = 2,224) investigates a novel construct—the breadth of normative standards, or the number of criteria that normative standards need to meet. Using archival and primary data in both organizational and consumer contexts, Studies 1–2 found that Indians’ and Singaporeans’ normative standards in several domains (e.g., a good job, a good body wash) needed to satisfy more criteria than those of Americans and the British. Using incentive-compatible designs, Studies 3–5 identified two downstream consequences of broader normative standards; decision-makers with broader standards pay greater …

Reaching For Rigor And Relevance: Better Marketing Research For A Better World, Shilpa Madan, Et. Al.

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Over the past several decades, scholars have highlighted the obligations and opportunities for marketing as a discipline to play a role in creating a better world — or risk becoming irrelevant for the largest problems facing consumers and society. This paper provides a framework to enhance the relevance and rigor of research in marketing that not only contributes new knowledge to science, but also makes a positive difference in the world. To that end, we urge authors and reviewers to foster cross-fertilization from different theoretical and methodological silos, bolster robustness through multiple methods, and expand the domain of research to …

The Impact Of Line (Brand) Extension Strategies On Competition And In-Store Operational Performance In The China E-Commerce Environment, Er-Yung Stephen Chu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Line (brand) extension activity in the western markets may have tempered during the last decade, and most of the academic research that has been done is based on traditional brick and mortar stores. With the rise of e-commerce, line extension became a growth tool for brands. The study starts with the classification of line extension strategic types, which gives different tiers of Chinese e-commerce firms a good reference, especially in the rapidly changing e-commerce environment. It also seeks to give guidance for different aspects of launching new line extensions. Using this guidance, future brands can make better estimations of brand …

China: The Next Big Market For Soft-Branded Hotels?, Elisa Ka-Yan Chan

Perspectives@SMU

A wave of deal-making in China’s hotel investment sector is expected to encourage more independent hotels to rebrand as chain affiliates

Two Studies Exploring The Effects Of Ageing Cohorts And Channel Usage On The Antecedents And Consequence Of Customer Satisfaction, Yongchang Chen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

A rapidly ageing customer base, and an acceleration in the adoption of self-service technologies (SST) are two major trends which are set to have an increasing impact on how companies manage and satisfy customers. While there has been a rich body of work studying the effects of ageing and SST usage on customers, research on how they might affect cumulative satisfaction appears to be limited. The ageing literature tends to focus on cognition and decision-making processes, while SST research tends to be narrowly focused on SST evaluation and adoption. Our understanding on how ageing affects how satisfied customers are with …

Why Companies Need To Be Authentic About Brand Activism, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Companies looking to engage in brand activism need to be authentic in their campaign otherwise they run the risk of consumer backlash