Business Commons^™

Emotional Versus Functional Attributes Of Delight-And Satisfaction-Mediated Effects On Customer Loyalty, Ipshita Ray

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

This study presents a model in which delight and satisfaction mediate the effects of store characteristics on store outcomes. It is proposed that the impacts of hedonic stimuli and utilitarian stimuli on attitudinal and behavioral loyalty intentions are mediated by customer delight and customer satisfaction simultaneously in a dual process model. To represent various retail-store categories based on the North American Industry Classification of retail categories, data were collected from 8 types of retail stores located in the Northeast United States. Using multi-group structural equation modeling, the author examines the mediating effects of delight and satisfaction on loyalty outcomes. The …

How Customer Shopping Motivation Influences Perceived Design Of The Retail Environment, Julie C. Steen

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Previous research shows that the decisions retailers make about the retail environment influence the amount of time customers spend in retail stores and the total amount of money spent in the retail store (Turley & Milliman 2000). One recent example of a retailer’s efforts to influence customers through the retail environment is Walmart’s Project Impact. In 2009, Walmart embarked on a five year plan to remodel seventy percent of its stores (Gregory 2009). Based on feedback from customers, Walmart sought to change several aspects of the retail environment, including reducing clutter, reducing crowding, wider aisles, clearer sight lines, brighter stores, …

Collegiate Competition And The Propensity For Gender Bias, Deborah H. Lester, Aberdeen Leila Borders, Terry W. Loe, Keith Tudor

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Since the dawn of time gender has played a starring role in human behavior. The behavioral implications of an individual’s sex have permeated research findings in a wide variety of academic disciplines. This preliminary investigation will explore the concept and definition of gender, gender bias, and gender stereotype on actions and conduct. Specifically, this inquiry will determine the scope and types of gender bias/stereotypes that exist in the business world with a primary concentration on the area of professional sales. The ultimate objective is to discover the type and level of influence a person’s gender contributes to evaluation, performance and …

The Impact Of Social Media On The Sales Cycle And Prospecting, Mike Serkedakis, Gary L. Selden, R. Keith Tudor

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Sharing information and networking with business contacts are the crux of social media in sales. The use of social media platforms (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter) for all phases of the sales cycle is a relatively new technique, about 20 years since the arrival of the internet and associated technologies. Research to measure the impact of social media on the sales cycle time is not adequately addressed in the current literature. Our research highlights the impacts of social media on this important business function and examines individual performance aspects associated with the use of social media.

Using Incentive To Motivate Students During A Professional Selling Class Project, Ramon A. Avila, Scott. A. Inks

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Experiential learning methods are an important part of a robust sales curriculum. Sales call role-play, an experiential learning tool, is common in introductory and advanced sales call courses. While role-plays have several advantages, they are by definition, not “real-world.” Addressing this issue, some sales courses include sales projects/exercises in which students sell real products to real customers. This paper discusses how sales incentives were incorporated into a real-world sales exercise and the impact of those incentives on sales volume.

Authenticity In Music Performance: Evidence From The Singer-Songwriter Community, Jon Littlefield

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Experiencing music provides a unique lens to study identity. The alienation resulting from increased technological mediation in both music production and consumption might drive consumption (Potter 2010), hence authenticity may be an appealing positioning strategy for marketers. Singer-songwriters, for example, write and perform their own music with minimal technological interference. This represents a direct connection with the musician that we characterize as more historically authentic (Thornton 1996), however this characterization is not universal. In this paper, I seek to gather insight into the myriad expressions of authenticity within the music consumption environment by detailing a study of performance musicians.

Narrative Engagement And The Role Of Presence, Stef Nicovich

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Presence as a phenomenon has been studied for over 20 years with an identifiable progression as to how the field has matured. Initial research explored the physical nature of what conditions were necessary to produce presence focusing on the physical representations of the experience such as vividness and interactivity. This soon segued into more of an exploration into the psychological understanding of what is to experience presence focusing more on the actual “being there” phenomenon experienced by people as they engaged in a CM event. However as our understanding of presence has matured the focus has turned to exploring the …

Music As A Positional Good: Why Market Success Might Actually Drive Away Some Fans?, Timothy J. Schibik

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

The Oxford Dictionary of Economics defines “goods” as things that people (e.g., consumers) prefer to consume more of rather than less. Further, these “goods” overwhelmingly adhere to a relationship between price and quantity known as the Law of Demand wherein consumers will purchase more of a good at lower prices than at higher prices. How the demand for these “goods” reacts to non-price stimuli is also well known and yields a place in the market system for marketing. Traditionally, the adoption of marketing techniques to alter the consumer satisfaction process and thus consumer demand has predictable impacts on the market …

The Sensoryscape Of Theaters: A Case Of Two University Associated Theaters, Peggy O. Shields

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Live theater productions, must compete with other forms of entertainment offered in the experience economy (Barlow and Maul 2000). An impressive sensory experience that entertains and excites consumers is a key element that can differentiate and distinguish one experience from another (Gobe 2001). To be competitive theater productions should use their delivery facilities to provide an immersion experience in a theater’s sensoryscape.

Theater venues offer a sensory experience that contributes to the service offering and also provide an opportunity to contribute to the achievement of numerous marketing goals. By consciously developing the sensoryscape, not only will consumer enjoyment and satisfaction …

Motivations In The Fine-Art Market: A Self-Determination Theory Approach, J. Paul Leavell

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Fine-art marketing research experiences friction that other arenas for marketing research do not. The product moved within this arena has subjective value with many drivers that can be difficult to quantify: The motivations of sellers and buyers may be different from what other marketing arenas experience (Marshall and Forrest 2011). The end price of fine art may have no relationship to the cost of inputs relying more on the demand driven by the artist’s reputation (Throsby 1994). Due to such challenges, the Academy has struggled in its contemplation of the marketing concept within this arena.

This paper will investigate the …

Rembrandt Versus Van Gogh: A Qualitative Contrast Study Applying A Visual Arts Valutation Model, Rene Desborde, Kimball P. Marshall

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Few marketing scholars have explored the field of fine arts marketing despite its significance as an area of economic activity and human creativity. Billions of dollars change hands annually in the worldwide visual fine arts industry (Velthuis, 2007; Clark and Flaherty, 2002), defined here to include various paintings, sculptures, and ceramics. This lack of academic attention might be because marketing scholars perceive that issues related to fine arts have little to do with marketing. It could also be that the unique characteristics of fine arts marketing are thought not to lend themselves to a traditional analytical approach to explain a …

Pricing In Opaque Markets: Paintings Old And New, Sharon V. Thach

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Pricing is one of the more difficult aspects of marketing management and poses interesting problems for economists trying to account for what are really a collection of microsales that are not well reflected in aggregate macroterms. The developed models and processes work best for mass produced products but grow increasingly problematic when products are intangible services or unique goods. This paper looks at paintings as a product within a specific “industry” , but many of the issues are similar to those in the professional services (law, medicine, education) and auxiliary services (consulting, IT outsourcing, insurance). There are also aspects of …

Is Indoor Tanning The Next Tobacco?, Suzeanne B. Benet, Frederic B. Kraft

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Marketers of indoor tanning services have directed major promotional efforts toward young adults, and their tactics in pursuing this market segment have been limited by only weak regulation (Greenman and Jones 2010). Although most young indoor tanners acknowledge the link between skin cancer and tanning, they desire the immediate benefits of a tan and regard skin cancer as a distant threat, something as hard for them to imagine as old age itself (Hillhouse 2011). The authors compare the marketing practices of the indoor tanning industry with the practices of the tobacco industry prior to present day regulations.

A Typology Of Co-Branding Strategies, Suzanne B. Walchli

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

This presents a typology of co-branding (brand alliance) strategies. It reveals the complexity that is represented by the topic of co-branding, which has been researched to a relatively limited degree although the practice began to be commonplace in the early 1990s (Gibson, 1993; Helmut, Huber and Leeflang, 2008). Since then, academic research has been published on the subject, but has been somewhat limited in scope (Rao and Ruekert, 1994; Park, Jun and Shocker, 1996; Simonin and Ruth, 1998; Washburn, Till and Priluck, 2004; Voss and Gammoh, 2004; Walchli, 2007). This may in part be because most studies have interpreted co-branding …

Market Oriented Organizations And Talent Workers: Composition Of The Workforce And Its Influence On Market Orientation, Dawn Mueller, Pradeep Gopalakrishna

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Many organizations employ marketing initiatives to “assist” in launching new efforts to both internal and external audiences and weave marketing throughout as part of being “market oriented.” The primary motivation behind a market orientation is improvement of market performance, according to the literature (Narver and Slater, 1990; Kohli and Jaworski 1990).

There is literature on workforce composition and different types of workers and this includes concepts of talent workers and knowledge workers (Chowdhury 2003) and HEROes (Bernoff and Schadler 2010) but there is little to nothing on the type of workers employed by highly market-oriented organizations. …

Do Our Graduates Know What Companies Are Seeking In An Employee, And, Perhaps More Importantly, Do We?, Michael A. Jones, George Stone, April Kemp

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

University marketing faculty teach and embrace a concept referred to as the Marketing Concept, which places an emphasis on customer needs as a central focus in managing the marketing effort. Understanding customer needs through marketing research is thus essential to the process. If college marketing programs are to prepare students for their customers, the companies that hiring these students, the question then follows: do college marketing faculty and college marketing graduates know what qualities employers are seeking? This exploratory study reports the results of a survey of employers who were attending a Career Fair at a Southeastern US state …

Students' Attitudes Towards Textbook Types: Are Students Really Ready For E-Textbooks?, Diane R. Edmondson, Cheryl Ward

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Textbook selection is just one of the many decisions a professor has to make when teaching a class. These selection decisions are sometimes made by the individual professor while other times it is made by committee or department. In many cases, students are not taken into consideration when making these decisions. However considering many professors complain that students do not buy or use the required textbook (Kingkade 2014, Paxhia 2011, Robinson 2011), maybe it is time to think about student’s attitudes and preferences before making textbook adoption decisions. Unfortunately there are only a few studies (e.g. Daniel and Woody 2013) …

Job Shadowing Experiences As A Teaching Tool: A New Twist On A Tried And True Technique, Fred H. Mader, Deanna R.D. Mader, Elizabeth C. Alexander

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Job shadowing has a long history of utilization. It is primarily considered a way for youth to become aware of the world-of-work through programs sponsored by schools or social organizations. For example, Junior Achievement International, in cooperation with several government agencies, has sponsored Groundhog Job Shadow Day for nearly 20 years. A quick internet search for job shadowing yielded over 24 million hits with the vast majority of those focused on programs aimed at high school students. Internet offerings detail anecdotal accounts of experiences, methods for setting up and executing programs, and extolment of the virtues of shadowing as a …

The Dos And Don'ts Of Teaching Online: Practical Advice And Suggestions For Teaching Online, Anita Whiting

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Many colleges and universities are focusing heavily on online learning (Holzweiss, Joyner, Fuller, Henderson, & Young 2014). Over sixty-six percent of higher education institutions report that online learning is an important part of their long term strategy (Allen & Seaman, 2014). Over seven million students took online courses at higher education institutions in 2012 (Baran & Correia 2014).

Demand for online classes is growing. Students are expecting more online teaching and universities are requesting that more classes be taught online. According to Hart (2014), online teaching has become almost expected at most universities.

Updating A Research Tradition By Examining The Effect Of New High Tech Channels On Consumer Search And Integrated Marketing: A Framework For Teaching, Deborah Fain, Mary Long

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

As computers became more powerful in the late 80s and early 90s, large marketers began to try to push what became known as customer relationship management . Specifically, they began to evaluate various channels and how consumers navigated among them when making purchase decisions. Most of the examples at that time were anecdotal, and obviously considered traditional channels, both retail and direct. These included retail, direct mail, print, television, radio, telephone, early email, and a small amount of Internet. The impact of the Internet on new ways consumers navigate among the channels to collect information and make purchase decisions was …

Greening An Integrated Marketing Communication's Course: An Assessment Of Sustainability Literacy, Pia A. Albinsson, G. David Shows

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

This article showcases efforts of incorporating Sustainability Issues in an Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) class during three semesters during the academic years of 2013/2014 and 2014/2015. The course was re-designed using Fink’s (2013) course recommendations of designing significant learning goals. In addition to the way the course was delivered (both face-to-face and online), the instructor worked with a Higher Ed publisher to customize a textbook to include sustainability issues related to the course content (i.e., reflecting IMC topics). The course re-design included sustainability assignments such as Virtual Field Trips (visiting corporate websites and other organizations to study their CSR statements …

"You Can Count On It!" Using County Auditors' Data For Marketing Research Group Projects, Julie M. Szendrey

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Marketing educators who teach research-based courses face several challenges in the designing and teaching of analytical-based group projects. The “ideal” research project contains all the elements of the research process as shown in Figure 1 (Neuman 2009, Zeis, Shah, Regassa, & Ahmadian 2001). Fewer pedagogical limitations would exist, such as a limited 16-week semester and time constraints relating to selecting a topic, survey development and distribution, institutional review board approvals, and of course data collection to name a few.

College Students Use Social Networking Sites For Sharing With Friends, But Guess Who Else Is Looking?, Liz Alexander, Fred Mader, Deanna Mader

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Jobvite, a recruiting platform for the social web, reports from their annual 2012 survey of recruiters that 92% of U.S. companies are using social networking sites (SNS) for hiring purposes (Jobvit, 2012). Career Builder reported in 2009 that 45% of employers were using SNS to screen and research applicants (CareerBuilder, 2009). It is important that faculty and support staff working to place students, and the students themselves, understand the developments and practices in the use of social networking sites for job search and recruiting and the best methods, as well as detriments when marketing themselves. This study examines corporate recruiters’, …

Municipal Tourism Promotion: Mid-Size Cities In The United States, Peggy O. Shields

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

The competitive environment in the tourism industry requires municipalities interested in attracting tourists’ dollars to strategically manage city resources. Often public and private sector bodies cooperate and combine their efforts and resources to promote visitation to a city emphasizing the desire to maximize the limited resources of each available for tourism promotion. To succeed cities are challenged with finding an identity, or ‘personality’ that has a unique combination of functional and symbolic attributes to differentiate themselves from countless other destination options (Hankinson 2001). A city’s distinctiveness can be built on many different characteristics, such as cultural events and institutions, sporting …

A Sad Clown Story: Mcdonald's Lack Of Support For Ronald Mcdonald Houses, Cheryl Ward, Diane R. Edmondson

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) was created in 1974 to “provide housing for the families of sick children and for children receiving outpatient care” (“McDonald’s gives little,” 2013). RMHC currently has locations in more than 60 countries and regions around the world (“Ronald,” 2015). Each Ronald McDonald House establishes their own policies, budget, and fundraising goals; therefore, assets from each house are not co-mingled (Morran, 2013).

Considering RMHC is named after Ronald McDonald from the McDonald’s Corporation, one would expect that McDonald’s makes extensive financial contributions to RMHC; however, this is not the case. The company has recently come under …

Analyzing The Effect Of Advertising On Hospital Choice And Selection: Advancing A New Truth For Hospital Selection And Its Implication For Other Service Providers, Michael A. Petrochuk, Trish Berg

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Consumerism has long-been an important driver in other industries across the globe, as industries have embraced the importance of meeting customer and consumer expectations (Bennett and Mandell, 1969; Oliver, 1980; Bolton and Drew, 1991; Peyrot, Cooper, and Schnapf, 1993; Taylor and Cronin, 1994). Firms have attempted to understand consumer expectations prior to the delivery of service or product purchase.

Within the last ten years, this consumerism movement has infiltrated into the field of global health care (Herzlinger, 2002; Grazman, & Leifer, 2007). Tenets of the consumer-driven health care include increased demands for high performance, flawless quality, data analytics to support …

Exploring Motivations And Usage Patterns Of Social Media Users, Anita Whiting

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Social media is an important aspect of marketing today. According to Hanna et al (2011), social media is not an optional part of marketing strategy but a mandatory component for most companies today. Social media usage is rapidly growing. Facebook, the largest global social network, has over 1.19 billion users with an annual growth rate of eighteen percent (Aichner & Jacob 2015).

Perceived Risk Reduction In E-Commerce Environments, C. Michael Powell, Chris Conca

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

During the past three decades, the growth of e-commerce has presented marketers with many new arenas for research and application. Certainly e-commerce has become a significant portion of the world economy and in particular the consumer sector. As previous literature has consistently considered perceived risk as a major factor consumer purchase decisions, this research identifies several major components of consumer perceived risk (PR) and their normative implications in the e-commerce environment

A Systematic Review Of Anti-Brand Website Literature: What We Know And What We Need To Know, David L. Williams, Ellen Kolbas

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

The emergence of Web 1.0 began an evolution in electronic communication. This platform resulted in a unidirectional communication flow (e.g. firm to consumer) that featured firms generating messages for public consumption. Web 1.0 gave rise to Web 2.0 and 3.0 platforms that facilitate bi-directional communication between firms and the public. This new method has resulted in an increase in consumer empowerment to create and disseminate marketing messages of their own (Williams, Crittenden, Keo, & McCarty, 2012). Third party stakeholders are disseminating electronic word-of-mouth communications about companies through the use of video, reviews, forums, microblogs and multiple other channels (Gil-Or, 2010). …

Using Focus Groups And Correspondence Analysis To Explore The Relationship Between Millennials' Online Behavior And Their Opinions Of Online Reviews, James E. Stoddard, Michael J. Dotson, Neel Das

Atlantic Marketing Association Proceedings

Consumer decision-making regarding a purchase is usually influenced by feedback received from other people in addition to prior experiences/beliefs/attitudes and marketer dominated information. Such diverse sources of influence are collectively referred to as the influence mix (Simonson and Rosen 2014). Of the different sources in the influence mix, word-of-mouth (i.e., feedback received from other people) is one of the most impactful sources of information (Duan, Gu, and Whinston 2008). With the advent of e-tailers on the Internet, the influence of word-of-mouth communication has grown significantly in the form of online consumer reviews (Schindler ad Bickart 2012). Research has shown that …