Business Commons^™

2020-April-01-Future Operations Planning, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

Dear ETSU Community, 

As the spring semester draws to a close and we finalize plans for our Virtual Commencement ceremony on May 9, advising and registration continues for our summer and fall terms.  Here in Tennessee and across the nation, conversations are also emerging about how businesses and government will begin the process of resuming operations at levels similar to how they were prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. 

The safety and health of the ETSU community remains our highest priority as we continue to closely monitor the COVID-19 pandemic. Faculty and staff will continue to work from remote locations through …

2020-April-01-Faculty And Staff Appreciation Week, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

Everyday routines have changed dramatically for many ETSU employees working remotely, as well as those conducting essential responsibilities on campus. During these unprecedented times, the ETSU campus has developed a can-do attitude and remains dedicated to our mission – to improve the lives of the people in our region. 

During spring break, our faculty and staff worked tirelessly to move courses and campus resources online. This work did not go unnoticed. Thank you for what you do each day to motivate and engage students and colleagues, multi-task in a remote work environment that may be shared by many, and for …

2020-April-01-Live Town Hall With President Noland, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

This Town Hall occurred in 2020. Click here to view a recording of the livestream. 

Join ETSU President Brian Noland for his next Virtual Town Hall on Tuesday, April 14, 2020, at 11:30 a.m. The town hall will be streamed on ETSU's Facebook page.

Send your questions to [email protected].

2020-April-01-Meet Dr Kevin Breuel, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

When ETSU Health turned its attention to setting up a drive-through testing site to increase the availability of COVID-19 testing in the region in mid-March, Dr. Kevin Breuel and his laboratory team at ETSU Clinical Labs (ECL) played a pivotal role in making it happen.  

By working with outside reference labs, they were able to ensure that ETSU Health would get enough test collection kits to provide this vital service to the community. They also worked closely with the COVID leadership team to monitor and decrease turnaround time for test results.  

Read more about Breuel, who joined ETSU in 1991 …

2020-April-01-Mentor Services For Small Businesses, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY (April 1, 2020) – The Tennessee Small Business Development Center (TSBDC) at East Tennessee State University has partnered with the College of Business and Technology’s Department of Management and Marketing to provide guidance, information, and resources to small businesses in our region amidst the COVID-19 crisis.

TSBDC is offering weekly free Zoom webinars to explain available Small Business Administration (SBA) funding and other financial assistance available.   More information is available on the TSBDC Facebook page.

“The College of Business and Technology and the Department of Management and Marketing are here to serve this region and we strongly …

How Stories In Memory Perpetuate The Continued Influence Of False Information, Anne Hamby, Ullrich Ecker, David Brinberg

Marketing Faculty Publications and Presentations

People often encounter information that they subsequently learn is false. Past research has shown that people sometimes continue to use this misinformation in their reasoning, even if they remember that the information is false, which researchers refer to as the continued influence effect. The current work shows that the continued influence effect depends on the stories people have in memory: corrected misinformation was found to have a stronger effect on people's beliefs than information that was topically related to the story if it helped to provide a causal explanation of a story they had read previously. We argue this …

Analyses Of Five Industries, Potential Job Prospects, And Expatriate Employment In Spain, Leonardo Brista

Honors Projects

This memorandum analyzes five industries of personal interest and potential job opportunities within each, as well as an analysis of Spain’s economy and identifying the process of working as an expatriate. The goal of this project is to lay out the career opportunities in various industries in and out of the United States, the situation of their environments, and rationalizing them in an evaluative method. Each industry of interest will be analyzed on their economic strength, sociopolitical environment, and geographic area of focus. The top five companies in each industry will also briefly analyzed, comparing their overall employee approval rating …

Diversity In Advertisements And Brand Perception, Aarica Z. Flowers, Charlotte Buckman, Madeleine C. Diprete, Caroline G. Regan

Student Publications

This research project examines the relationship between representation of diversity in marketing and brand perception. The debate about whether diversity in advertisements impacts how consumers perceive and purchase from brands is ongoing. Thus, this study examines whether companies are rewarded for representing diversity in their advertisements and punished for representation that is inappropriate or insensitive. We conducted an online survey among Gettysburg College students and elicited their beliefs about the importance of diversity in marketing campaigns. We found that consumers are more likely to buy from companies that represent more racial diversity in their advertisements. The same was found for …

Doing Good When Times Are Bad: The Impact Of Csr On Brands During Recessions, Valerie Good

Peer Reviewed Articles

Purpose – This paper aims to determine what the brand performance consequences of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities would be during times of recession for well-known brands.

Design/methodology/approach – Based on signaling theory, this paper investigates if CSR activities serve to signal higher brand value for consumers via perceptions of better quality and greater differentiation, specifically during recessions. This study incorporates a representative longitudinal sample of known US firms for the analyses, which is accomplished through generalized method of moments estimations.

Findings – The findings empirically demonstrate that CSR initiatives during recessions are actually associated with increased perceptions of brand …

2020-April-01-Etsu Health To Transition Drive-Through Covid-19 Testing Site To Health Department, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY (April 1, 2020) – With an increase in regional COVID-19 testing capacity, ETSU Health will close its drive-through COVID-19 testing site, located at 325 North State of Franklin, effective April 1, 2020. While the drive-through site will no longer be open, ETSU Health will continue to administer COVID-19 testing in its clinics.

“The local health department has just opened their drive-through testing sites in Washington County and the surrounding counties,” said Dr. Jonathan Moorman, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine. “These new sites are open to the public …

2020-April-01-Our Covid-19 Story, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY – The Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University is asking local residents to document their personal experiences of living through the COVID-19 pandemic here in the region.

The Center for Appalachian Studies and Services, which includes the Archives of Appalachia, will collect materials during the duration of the COVID-19 crisis and permanently house them within the center.

“Our project, ‘Telling Your Story: Documenting COVID-19 in East Tennessee,’ will chronicle how the people of our region journeyed through these unprecedented times,” said Dr. Jeremy Smith, director of the Archives of Appalachia.  “We want to hear from our …

The Moderating Effect Of Buying Impulsivity On The Dynamics Of Unplanned Purchasing Motivations, Jacob Suher, Wayne D. Hoyer

Business Faculty Publications and Presentations

Previous studies of in-store decision making have assumed that motivations for unplanned purchases are homogeneous throughout a shopping trip. In response to this assumption, the authors develop a conceptual framework to explain how consumers’ internal (i.e., intrinsic) and external (i.e., extrinsic) motivations for unplanned purchases actually vary during a shopping trip. Two field studies and five online experiments provide evidence that the personality trait of buying impulsivity predicts differences in whether a shopper initially focuses on internal motivations (e.g., “because I love it”) or external motivations (e.g., “because it is on sale”) for unplanned purchases at the beginning of a …

2020 Ijbe Front Matter

International Journal for Business Education

1. Editorial Board
2. Letter from International President
3. SIEC-ISBE International

2020-April-01- 2020 Deans Distinguished Awards, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

Every year, the faculty advisory committee and the Dean select faculty members to be recognized for their outstanding contributions to the College of Medicine in teaching, research, and service. This year’s recipients were Dr. Reid Blackwelder, Dr. Mark Young, and Dr. Ken Ferslew.

Dr. Reid Blackwelder, Professor and Chair of Family Medicine, received the Dean’s Distinguished Award for Teaching.

Since 2000, Dr. Blackwelder has received 37 ETSU/Quillen teaching honors and awards. Throughout his time at Quillen, he has also been frequently recognized for his strong commitment to humanism and patient-centered care in medicine and has been recognized at the …

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 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, …

When And How Frontline Service Employee Authenticity Influences Purchase Intentions, Lynn Matthews, Meike Eilert, Les Carlson, James W. Gentry

Department of Marketing: Faculty Publications

In this manuscript, we investigate the central role of perceived frontline service employee (FSE) authenticity and the process by which it impacts purchase intentions, taking into account the represented brand's authenticity. While brand authenticity has previously been shown to enhance consumer outcomes, we find that FSE authenticity is a separate significant predictor of purchase intentions. Further, we find that FSE authenticity enhances purchase intentions by increasing perceived trust and perceived quality. However, this finding only holds for brands that do not emphasize their authenticity, indicating that brand managers should differentially emphasize FSE authenticity based on their brand's positioning. Furthermore, we …

The Importance Of Disclosing Cybersecurity Risks And Incidents In A Company’S 10-K, Anna Duplechin

Honors Capstones

No abstract provided.

The Effectiveness Of The Counter Marketing Strategy Of The Truth® Campaign, Maura Castronuovo

Senior Theses

The counter marketing strategy of the truth® campaign is unique. They use a voice that does not talk down to the teens in their target market; instead, they talk to teens in their own voice. Throughout this paper, I work to determine the effectiveness of the truth campaign’s counter marketing strategy. I do this through my own research, in which I utilize a survey and two focus groups, in addition to secondary research. As many of the studies I looked at were from the time of the launch of truth®, conducting my own research allowed me to gain a better …

2020 April, Morehead State University. Office Of Communications & Marketing.

Morehead State Press Release Archive, 1961 to the Present

Press releases for April of 2020.

2020-March-31-Enjoy Retirement, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

Congratulations to the following members of the East Tennessee State University family who retired in March.  Thank you for your service!

Bert C. Bach – Special Assistant to the President, Provost/Vice President for Academic Affairs

Lorena Alice McKinley Burton – Medical Education Coordinator, Academic and Faculty Affairs, Quillen College of Medicine

Patrick Cronin – Professor and Director of Arts Outreach, Theatre and Dance

Angela Dawn Finney – Internal Auditor, Internal Audit

Larry Thomas Gourley – Custodian, Facilities Management

Ricky Lynn Holmes* – Painter Lead Worker, Plant Maintenance and Repairs

Jerry Lee Keplinger – Coordinator, Biomedical Sciences

Stuart Leicht – Professor, …

2020-March-31-Going Places, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

ETSU welcomes the following new faculty and staff to the university family:

Makayla Barrett is a dispatcher in Public Safety. She holds a B.S. degree in psychology and criminal justice from ETSU.

Jonathan Michael Briest is a custodian with Facilities Management after serving as a temporary employee. He is a graduate of University School.

Elizabeth Graham is assistant director for Dual Enrollment Programs in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. She holds a master’s degree in college student personnel from the University of Tennessee.

Amanda L. Hixson is an executive aide in the Multicultural Center. She was previously a compliance specialist …

2020-March-30-Finance And Administration Committee Meeting, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY (March 30, 2020) — East Tennessee State University’s Board of Trustees will hold a called meeting of the Finance and Administration Committee on Wednesday, April 1, at 3 p.m.

The meeting will be conducted permitting participation by electronic or other means of communication if necessary. Due to extraordinary circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, public attendance to the meeting will be available via livestream at www.etsu.edu/trustees/livestream.php. 

When they become available, the agenda and accompanying materials for the meeting will be posted online at www.etsu.edu/trustees under “Meeting Schedule & Materials.”

For more information, call 423-439-4317.  For disability accommodations, call …

2020-March-30-Covid-19 Response, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

Despite the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak, the East Tennessee State University community remains united and committed to our mission to improve the lives of the people of our region. Our students, faculty and staff are discovering new ways to connect with one another virtually and to help our neighbors across the region.

Our ETSU family continues a legacy of resilience. In light of the many disruptions to daily life, students and faculty have embraced online course delivery and the University remains dedicated to the academic achievements of our students and ensuring they remain on track to graduation. The …

2020-March-27-College Of Nursing Ranked Nationally For Online Nursing Degree Programs, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY (March 27, 2020) – East Tennessee State University’s College of Nursing was ranked 11^th among the top accredited online nursing programs and schools in the country by Learn.org.

The list included the top 50 online nursing programs and schools according to Learn.org. ETSU was the only institution in Tennessee listed in in the top 20.

“This ranking is another affirmation of the high quality we provide our students through all of our programs – including our online programs,” said Dr. Wendy Nehring, dean of the ETSU College of Nursing. “Our online programs allow nurses to continue their …

2020-March-25-Etsu Health Begins Offering Telemedicine Appointments, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY (March 25, 2020) – Beginning next week, ETSU Health is bringing medical care closer to home for its patients by offering telemedicine appointments. Telemedicine is the use of electronic audio and video communication to provide remote health care services to patients.

“ETSU Health has partnered with VisuWell, a telehealth company, to provide patients access to our health care team using a web-based portal,” said Dr. Timothy Canavan, a professor at East Tennessee State University’s Quillen College of Medicine and chair of the Department of OB/GYN.

While plans for the telemedicine service at ETSU Health were in place before …

2020-March-25-Manufacturing Face Shields, University Marketing And Communication, East Tennessee State University

ETSU News

JOHNSON CITY (March 25, 2020) – Health care workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 outbreak need personal protective equipment to reduce exposure and limit spread of the disease. East Tennessee State University and community partners are addressing the shortage of medical equipment by developing and manufacturing face shields.

In March, Gov. Bill Lee and the Tennessee Higher Education Commission requested assistance in meeting the increased demand for face shields. The 3D-printed headband for the shield can take a long time to produce, so Dr. Keith Johnson and Bill Hemphill from the Department of Engineering, Engineering Technology and Surveying …

A Qualitative Study: Military Veterans And Franchise Ownership, Martin J. Mcdermott 4384520, Jason Jackson

The Qualitative Report

This study focuses on the military experience and motivation to become a franchise business owner. Previous research indicated franchisees who were military veterans had a significantly higher level of job satisfaction in owning and operating a franchise compared to franchisees with no military background.This study attempts to provide answers to important research questions like how and why military experience influences satisfaction in owning a franchise.Seven franchise business owners who served in the military participated in this qualitative study using a process of surveying, coding, and thematizing to answer this research inquiry. The findings of this follow-on study indicated veterans had …