Business Commons^™

Exploring The Effect Of Logos With Animals, Can Trinh

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2024

Even though the use of logos that feature animals is prevalent (e.g., Porsche, Lamborghini, Hollister), there is a scant number of empirical works that examine the effect of such logos on marketing outcomes. This research represents a pioneering attempt to address this critical theoretical gap. We propose that logos that feature animals (i.e., animal logos) can influence product perceptions. Empirical evidence from two studies supports our propositions. The findings provide meaningful implications for both theory and practice.

Images In Service Marketing: Does Presentation Style Matter?, Can Trinh

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This research presents a pioneering attempt to examine whether the use of abstract images would be more effective than the use of concrete images in the case of service marketing. Based on construal level theory, we hypothesize that relative to the use of concrete images, the use of abstract images in service marketing will better match the intangible nature of services and will thus increase communication effectiveness. Two studies in this research provide evidence to support these propositions by showing that relative to the use of concrete images, the use of abstract images can enhance ad visuals, which in turn …

The Effect Of Nondiagnostic Information On Internal Auditor Skepticism: Capturing The Dilution Effect, Joseph Anthony Giordano

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Internal auditors assigned to assess internal controls over financial reporting incorporate irrelevant information into their judgment, showing decreased skepticism when irrelevant information contradicts preconceived stereotypes of management, known as the dilution effect and attributed to the representativeness heuristic. Irrelevant information consistent with preconceived stereotypes does not decrease skepticism. In this experiment practicing internal auditors are provided an irrelevant description of the Chief Information Officer portrayed as either gregarious or introverted then subsequently receive relevant internal controls information. When the Chief Information Officer is described as gregarious, counter to common stereotypes, internal auditors assess risk as less likely to occur compared …

Standing Out While Fitting In: Exploring The Differential Roles Of Belonging And Distinctiveness In Team Choice, Tommy Derossett, Daniel L. Wann

Findings in Sport, Hospitality, Entertainment, and Event Management

Belonging and distinctiveness are considered innate motivators for human behavior and decision making. Satisfaction of both needs is often associated with increased levels of well-being and personal agency. Both belonging and distinctiveness have been examined as successful motivators for sport fandom, but research is needed to determine the differential roles of either trait in choosing a specific team or sport to follow. The current study asked participants to report their needs for belonging and distinctiveness and to choose a fictional sport team to cheer for upon moving to a new country. One team was described as being the “mainstream” team …

Manipulating Common Method Variance Via Experimental Conditions, Alison Wall, Marcia Simmering, Christie Fuller, Brian Waterwall

IT and Supply Chain Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Research data collected from single respondents may raise concerns regarding common method variance (CMV), which is believed to threaten the validity of findings. The primary concern is that CMV can inflate substantive relationships, such that they appear statistically significant when they are not. Thus, understanding the nature of CMV is critical, especially when one considers the popularity—and sometimes necessity—of using self-report data. Research examining CMV has found conflicting evidence about the impact of CMV. Researchers who believe CMV influences findings have proposed solutions to combat any real or perceived potential bias, including changing survey instructions and using marker variables, but …

The Use Of Data Analytic Visualizations To Inform The Audit Risk Assessment: The Impact Of Initial Visualization Form And Documentation Focus, Rebecca N. Baaske (Becca)

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although data analytic technologies provide auditors with powerful tools for identifying high-risk areas during an audit (Austin, Carpenter, Christ, and Nielson 2019), they are not a substitute for necessary interpretation and judgment (Brown-Liburd, Issa, and Lombardi 2015). A major barrier for making better use of data analytic techniques and tools is the skillset needed to make necessary interpretations and judgments based on data visualizations within the tool (Appelbaum, Kogan, and Vasarhelvi 2017; Earley 2015; PwC 2015). Default visualizations provided to auditors could be suboptimal in relation to the underlying data, which could limit auditors’ ability to identify anomalies without some …

The Effects Of Critical Audit Matter Recurrence And Reporting Treatment On Investors’ Information Processing, Judgments, And Decisions, Hilda E. Carrillo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A new auditor reporting standard requires auditors to disclose critical audit matters (CAMs) in the auditor’s report. CAMs highlight accounts or disclosures that involved especially challenging, subjective, or complex auditor judgment. As one of few audit-related disclosures, CAMs act as an important signal of qualitative aspects of recognized (i.e., items shown on the face of the financial statements) or disclosed (i.e., items shown in the footnotes of the financial statements) financial statement items. While certain accounts or disclosures will consistently rise to the level of a CAM, other accounts or disclosures may only rise to the level of a CAM …

High Bmi Predicts Attention To Less Healthy Product Sets: Can A Prompt Lead To Consideration Of Healthier Sets Of Products?, Christopher Gustafson, Kristina Arslain, Devin Rose

Department of Agricultural Economics: Faculty Publications

While the food environment has been implicated in diet-related health disparities, individuals’ ability to shape the food environment by limiting attention to a subset of products has not been studied. We examine the relationship between BMI category and consideration set—the products the individual considers before making a final choice—in an online hypothetical shopping experiment. Specifically, we focus on the healthiness of the consideration set the individual selected. Secondly, we examined the interaction of a health prompt (versus a no-prompt control) with BMI category on the healthiness of the consideration set. We used linear probability models to document the relationship between …

Decipher The Effect Of Gamification In Harnessing Boredom And Improving Performance, Zhuoyi Zhao

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

My thesis investigates the effectiveness of gamification in harnessing boredom and improving performance in a repetitive work process. In video games, “loot” rewards are unpredictable, intermittent gains used to motivate players to repeat boring actions. In a 2 X 2 experiment, I examine how loot rewards in point form may impact 1) disengagement, which is an immediate outcome of boredom, and 2) performance in settings where the points have and do not have cash value, respectively. More specifically, I manipulate the level of point reward unpredictability (fixed versus loot) and whether point rewards have cash value (absent versus present).

In …

Being Watched In An Investment Game Setting: Behavioral Changes When Making Risky Decisions, Z. Tingting Jia, Matthew J. Mcmahon

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

We design a laboratory experiment to test for behavioral differences due to observation within a novel arena: investment games. We find that fund managers are more risk-averse when investors can observe their investment allocations. This effect is more pronounced when investors, in addition to observing the allocations, can also observe the investment outcomes. Interestingly, allowing investors to observe how their investment is allocated does not impact how much they invest. Last, when the outcome of the risky investment is public knowledge, disclosing managers’ allocations leads them to return more tokens to investors and to expropriate fewer tokens for themselves at …

Integrity According To Whom? An Experiment Of The Effects Of Gender, Moral Integrity, And Behavioral Consistency On Evaluations Of Leaders, Benjamin J. Thomas

Organization Management Journal

Organizational stakeholders place great importance on leaders’ integrity, which, current theory indicates is a multidimensional construct. Drawing from leadership categorization theory and multidimensional leadership perspective, this research offered novel tests of the independent and interactive effects of a leaders’ behavioral consistency (the alignment between a leader’s words and actions) and moral integrity (doing right and not doing wrong) using experimental methods. The results of the 2x3x3 between-subjects (N = 781) factorial design reveal the moderate-strong magnitude of the effects of leader integrity on followers’ evaluations, and indicate the two dimensions of leader integrity—behavioral consistency and moral integrity—interact in fascinating ways. …

Enhancing Public Speaking Confidence, Skills, And Performance: An Experiment Of Service-Learning, D. Brian Mcnatt

Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Much of service-learning research has been characterized as anecdotal and testimonial with widespread calls for more empirical data to support the claimed benefits of this pedagogical tool. The present longitudinal experiment answered these calls by testing the effect of service-learning projects on several oral communication skills during a 4-month period, as well as some boundary conditions affecting this impact. The intervention consisted of involvement in 1 of 20 different team-developed service-learning projects compared to traditional research projects. This was hypothesized to boost management students' public speaking self-efficacy, lower anxiety, and improve public speaking mechanics competence along with actual public speaking …

Empowering Female Entrepreneurs Through Mentorship In Medellin, Colombia: Results From The Field, Theresa Solenski

Master's Theses

Utilizing the power of local knowledge and peer networking, this study attempts to quantify the impacts of mentorship among female micro-entrepreneurs in Medellin, Colombia on empowerment. Developing countries such as Colombia have disproportionately high rates of unprofitable micro-businesses, many of which are managed by women. Internal constraints, such as disempowerment, play a central role in perpetuating poverty. We implement a 6-month mentoring intervention by pairing 18 successful entrepreneurs with 52 disadvantaged female, micro-entrepreneurs in Medellin, Colombia to measure the additional benefit of localized knowledge to micro-borrowers. Using a process of random assignment, I measure the change in female empowerment, measured …

Dividend Payments And Excess Cash: An Experimental Analysis, Z. Tingting Jia, Matthew J. Mcmahon

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

There is an observed positive correlation between the size of firms’ dividends and the amount of cash they keep on hand. We specify a new channel of precautionary cash holdings as related to dividend-smoothing, which predicts that increased dividends should cause firms to keep more cash on hand. In the reverse direction, theory’s predictions depend on the source of the increased cash on hand. General dividend smoothing theory predicts that temporary increases in cash due to natural market fluctuations should not affect dividends. If the increased cash is due to a permanent increase in profitability, both the marginal benefit and …

How Does Energy Matter? Rural Electrification, Entrepreneurship, And Community Development In Kenya, Antoine Vernet, Jane N. O. Khayesi, Vivian George, Gerard George, Abubakar S. Bahaj

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the impact of rural electrification on individuals and businesses within a community in order to test a resource-based theory of entrepreneurship. We show that access to electricity increases average households’ income and entrepreneurial activities. The impact of electricity on entrepreneurial activity has wide-ranging implications for development policy in countries where access to electricity is sparse. Results show a significant difference in entrepreneurial opportunities with respect to firm formation, with the electrified site reporting more new micro-enterprises than the control site after implementation. Electrification affects both households’ income, individuals’ perceptions of their social position, and opportunities for business development. …

Are Nudges For Alternative Transit Persistent?, Mitchell J. Allan

CMC Senior Theses

The benefits of converting single-person drivers to alternative transit options are well-established. One option to accomplish this is for employers to provide alternative commute incentive programs. However, the research on the implementation of such programs is lacking. To provide a test, this research analyzes data obtained from a field experiment on daily alternative transit commute choices for a seven-month period. Participants are divided into four treatment groups in a two-by-two design for the first three-month period: incentives with either loss or gain framing, and messaging nudges with either the private or public benefits of alternative transit commute choices. The participants …

Shareholder Protection And Agency Costs: An Experimental Analysis, Jacob Lariviere, Matthew J. Mcmahon, William Neilson

Economics & Finance Faculty Publications

Two competing principal–agent models explain why firms pay dividends. The substitute model proposes that corporate insiders pay dividends to signal and build trust with outside shareholders who lack legal protection. The outcome model, in contrast, surmises that when shareholders have legal protection, they demand dividends from insiders to prevent them from expropriating corporate funds. Either way, dividends represent an agency cost paid to align the interests of shareholders and insiders. Expropriations by insiders and reduced investment by shareholders are also agency costs, but they are difficult to identify with archival data. Using a laboratory experiment, we identify the impact of …

Smart Or Shirking? The Effect Of Aggressive Tax Avoidance On Corporate Repuation, Jennifer Mcgarry

College of Business Theses and Dissertations

In this study, I investigate how news that a company has engaged in aggressive tax avoidance affects the company’s reputation. If the general public believes companies have a responsibility to pay their “fair share” of the national tax burden, then they will likely view aggressive tax avoidance negatively. If instead the public believes companies have a responsibility to shareholders to maximize profits by minimizing tax, then they will likely view aggressive tax avoidance positively. I examine these two possibilities by conducting an experiment. I find that people tend to view aggressive tax avoidance negatively and thus companies suffer reputational damage …

Three Essays On Digital Annual Reports For Nonprofessional Investors: The Impacts Of Presentation Formats On Investment-Related Judgments And Decisions, Yibo Zhang (James)

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The goal of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of presentation formats on nonprofessional investors’ impressions of firm performance in the context of digital annual reports. The dissertation implements a three-essay approach.

Essay 1 examines whether the effect of positive/negative financial performance news on nonprofessional investors’ impressions of management and firm performance depends on whether the graphical display of that news is vivid or pallid. Conducting a 2 x 2 between-participants experiment with 470 participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk (M-Turk), I find that when the news is positive, presenting graphs vividly allows nonprofessional investors to have a more positive …

The Effect Of Corporate Social Responsibility Investment And Disclosure On Cooperation In Business Collaborations, Sukari Farrington

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

I experimentally examine whether disclosure of corporate social responsibility (CSR) investment facilitates cooperation in business collaborations. Business collaborations are essential for firms to maintain their competitive advantage. However, half of all ventures fail. A major reason for this high failure rate is a lack of cooperation among business collaboration partners, known as relational risk. Findings suggest that CSR disclosure leads to greater CSR investment, but does not result in an overall higher level of cooperation. However, CSR disclosure moderates the link between CSR investment and cooperation. When CSR investment is disclosed, cooperation is highest when both managers invest in CSR. …

A Simulation Experimental Study On The Utility Of Pay Changes, Liu Ye

Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, we conduct an experimental simulation of 131 students from a university in Hong Kong and investigate the relationship between pay changes and the perceived values (i.e., utility). Applying traditional psychophysical methods, we measure the utility of pay changes (i.e., pay raises and pay cuts) of different sizes by individual responses (i.e., happiness/unhappiness). Drawing on utility theory and expectancy theory, we examine the function that best fits this relationship by considering common function forms including linear, quadratic, logarithmic, and power functions. Using regression techniques, we find that a quadratic function best fits the data, and the utility function …

Incoterms® Use In Buyer-Seller Relationships: A Mixed Methods Study, Thomas J. Schaefer

Dissertations

The negotiation and communication of logistics management decisions between buyers and sellers of goods is critical for effective supply chain management. Incoterms® rules, a set of three character acronyms, are often used by buyers and sellers to communicate each party’s logistics management responsibilities when transacting goods. Inappropriate application of Incoterms® rules can lead to miscommunication of logistics responsibilities and expose either party to unanticipated costs and risks. This three-part mixed methods research explores the circumstances that contribute to errors in logistics management decision communication within buyer-seller dyads, the consequences of these errors, and methods to improve logistics management decision communication. …

Is Saying “Sorry” Enough? Examining The Effects Of Apology Typologies By Organization On Consumer Responses, May O. Lwin, Augustine Pang, Jun-Qi Loh, Marilyn Hui-Ying Peh, Sarah Ann Rodriguez, Nur Hanisah Binte Zelani

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Apology has been found to be the most effective strategy in times of crises. However, there is a dearth of research on the kinds of apology used and how primary stakeholders, in particular consumers, received them. This study aims to examine consumer responses to the types of apologies offered post crises against the levels of attribution of responsibility. We also assess the potential mediating role of ethical concerns by developing the Perception-Behavioral Model of Crisis Response. An experiment was conducted to ascertain consumers’ impression of the organization post-apology. The results showed that the attribution of crisis responsibility significantly influences complaining, …

Essays On Deceptive Counterfeits In Supply Chains: A Behavorial Perspective, Jillian Watson

All Dissertations

This dissertation is comprised of three essays intended to contribute to the operations management discipline, specifically within supply chain management. The first essay provides a research agenda for studying deceptive product counterfeits, which are products that have been manufactured and/or distributed and sold by an entity in violation of another’s intellectual property rights and intentionally misrepresented by the seller as the genuine article. The proliferation of counterfeits into legitimate supply chains presents quality, health and safety and cost concerns for nearly all industries. We identify antecedents of vulnerability to deceptive counterfeits for firms and their supply chain partners using Situational …

A Theoretical And Experimental Investigation Of Efficiency, Equity, And Uncertainty In Tournaments, Nicholas Busko

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation consists of three essays centered around labor incentives that arise in relative compensation contracts. Chapter 1 poses the question: if devotion to a core competence were truly optimal, why would firms do otherwise? We argue that the behavior of drifting from the core may be motivated by the competitive incentives faced by managers who seek to rise within a firm. We find competition creates an incentive for a manager to look for less correlated opportunities that pull the firm in a new direction. In a symmetric equilibrium all managers behave this way, leading to lower expected output for …

The Choice Of Technology And Equilibrium Wage Rigidity, Haiwen Zhou

Economics Faculty Publications

In this general equilibrium model, firms engage in oligopolistic competition and choose increasing returns technologies to maximize profits. Capital and labor are the two factors of production. The existence of efficiency wages leads to unemployment. The model is able to explain some interesting observations of the labor market. First, even though there is neither long-term labor contract nor costs of wage adjustment, wage rigidity is an equilibrium phenomenon: an increase in the exogenous job separation rate, the size of the population, the cost of exerting effort, and the probability that shirking is detected will not change the equilibrium wage rate. …

Processing Popup Ads And Print Ads: A Comparative Study Between American, Brazilian, And Argentinean Consumers, Gary H. Kritz, Hector R. Lozada

Association of Marketing Theory and Practice Proceedings 2014

As more and more companies become global business entities, it will be important to find out how traditional consumer behavior processes and relationships work in different countries. A comparison of the processing of a traditional print ad and popup ad are compared within and between the United States, Brazil, and Argentina. Very little research exists regarding traditional consumer behavior and advertising model outcomes in Brazil and Argentina. Since these two Latin American countries have become large economic powers in the global economy, it is important to study how these countries’ consumers react to existing models of consumption and advertising. Could …

The Effects Of Sharing The Consequences Of Tax Evasion And Regret Salience On Taxpayer Compliance, William Douglas Brink

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines whether sharing the potential tax savings and risk of penalties associated with tax evasion with another individual and the anticipation of potential regret from an adverse IRS audit affect an individual decision maker's propensity to evade taxes. Research on risky decision making suggests that individuals will be less likely to evade taxes when the benefits and costs of evasion are shared, while research on ethical decision making suggests that individuals will be more likely to evade taxes when the benefits of evasion are shared with another individual. Using experimental data obtained from 147 experienced taxpayers throughout the …

Message Matters: Application Of The Theory Of Planned Behavior To Increase Household Hazardous Waste Program Participation, Amy Dyer Cabaniss

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Removing household hazardous waste (HHW) from the municipal solid waste stream is important to protect health, safety and the environment. Communities across the U.S. separate HHW from regular trash for disposal with hazardous waste, however nationally, participation rates are low with only five to ten percent of households estimated to participate in any given collection. This two-part study used the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to understand individuals’ beliefs and attitudes toward HHW collections, and to develop a print message intervention to increase participation. In Study 1, respondents (N = 983) completed a survey administered to homeowners in the Connecticut …

An Experiment In Testing Advertising Levels By Measuring Natural Test Market Variation, Michael Latta

Atlantic Marketing Journal

A field experiment utilizing a new experimental approach to measuring advertising exposure which provides a range of levels of exposure was conducted in eight main test market and eight fringe cities for a global Fortune 500 company consumer durable product. The results showed: a) targeted rating points of advertising delivered are strongly related to advertising effectiveness, and b) this effect is attributable to advertising level and to whether the members of the target audience live close to or far from the broadcast source.