Harvesting Growth -- An Internship Thesis, Emma Conover

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

During the Summer of 2021, I had the privilege to Intern with Harvest Group in Rogers, Arkansas. During this 12-week internship, I was placed in the Client Services division and was a part of a consumables team that served several clients. I gained invaluable experience from this internship and developed both personally and professionally.

How Do Virtual Social Media Influencers Affect Millennial And Gen Z Female Consumers’ Purchase Intention? A Comparison Of Fast Fashion Versus Luxury Fashion Brands, Lauren Bouvier

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

With the emergence and increasing prevalence of social media, the effectiveness of social media influencers (SMIs) is apparent in today’s fast-paced life. Virtual social media influencers (VSMIs), computer-generated influencers with a real human appearance, have gained popularity. The purpose of this study is to examine important VSMI’s characteristics that affect brand image and trust which lead to purchase intention (fast fashion vs. luxury fashion brand). Social exchange theory and source credibility model were adopted to develop a theoretical framework for the present study. Two Instagram ads were developed that included the post’s image and corresponding caption: VSMI endorsing H&M and …

How The Financial Services Industry Is Utilizing Social Media To Expand Their Client Base, Kristen Stewart

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

Social media is becoming an increasingly important aspect of all companies’ marketing strategies. It is almost imperative for companies to advertise through social media if they want to have a fair chance of reaching the younger generation. In fact, “the majority (97%) of Gen Z consumers say they now use social media as their top source of shopping inspiration; 65% say they use social media to find entertaining content; and 61% of them are specifically interested in watching more video content” (Kastenholz, 2021). This proves that social media can make a significant and lasting impact on a company’s success. Social …

Rainbowashing: Does It Impact Purchase Intention?, Ramon Luis Fille

Honors Projects in Marketing

Cause related marketing efforts by multiple brands have grown over the past few years. With the growth of social media and even more awareness for multiple causes, consumers are pickier when it comes to brands that supports them. While many studies have been done when it comes to “greenwashing” (the tactics of brands to show their green initiatives), there are still more that needs to be done to understand the impact of “rainbowashing” marketing methods on consumer purchase intention. The importance of this study and how it can affect businesses are discussed. To get a feel for the potential effect …

Which Attributes Separate Top-Performing Outside Salespeople From The Rest?, Paul Niemann

Dissertations

For decades, sales organizations have faced the ongoing challenge of attaining the maximum sales results from their salespeople. Whether a salesperson has plenty of skill but lacks the will to reach their potential or has the will to become a top salesperson but lacks the necessary skills to reach their potential, the failure of sales organizations to obtain maximum results from their salespeople is a problem. Some salespeople have plenty of skill but lack the will to reach their potential, while others have the will to become a top salesperson but have not yet acquired the necessary skills to reach …

Your Loyalty Program Might Be Losing You Money, Raghuram Iyengar, Young-Hoon Park, Qi Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

From Amazon Prime to Panera Bread’s Unlimited Sip Club, loyalty programs have become commonplace in a wide variety of industries. However, despite their popularity, it’s not always clear whether these programs are actually profitable. The authors analyzed data from 24,000 customers at a large Asian retailer to explore the various factors that can drive a program’s profitability, and identified three takeaways to help managers ensure their subscription programs are a net positive: They recommend that managers should go beyond averages and analyze trends on an individual level, measure the underlying factors that drive changes in revenues, and remember to account …

Mapping Consumer's Cross-Device Usage For Online Search: Mobile- Vs. Pc-Based Search In The Purchase Decision Process, Sangman Han, Jin K. Han, Il Im, Sung In Jung, Jung Won Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The ubiquity of both mobile devices and PC’s has enabled the modern-day consumer to engage in cross-platform online searches as a new norm. The accumulated knowledge on cross-device search behavior to date, however, emanates largely from industry reports and at an aggregate level. To better understand the individual consumer’s purchase decision process, we set out to investigate contingencies of what (subject of search), how (device of choice), and when (stage in the buying decision). To this end, we utilize a panel data consisting of clickstream from mobile and PC searches, coupled with entropy-based metric to chart the breadth and depth …

A Closer Look At Csr Practices In Sustainable Fashion: A Guideline For Apparel Brands, Elline Deogracias, Tracie Tung, Natale Zappia

CSU Journal of Sustainability and Climate Change

While it might be greenwashing that impedes consumers' eco-consumption, the researchers posit that this gap is also due to fashion brands’ weak CSR communication and inconsistent understanding of CSR activities. This study aims to 1) determine the ease with which consumers can navigate sustainable fashion brand websites to find corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, and 2) construct a framework that clearly identifies CSR activities, CSR dimensions, and the business operation stages at which they occur. Website content analyses were conducted on 27 sustainable fashion brands in the United States to investigate their CSR activities. A framework was proposed to better …

The New Solar Kiosk Model: A Sustainable Solution To Address The Uptake And Access Of Renewable Technologies To Create Energy Kiosks That Improve Women’S Income In Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement, Kiryandongo District, Northern Uganda., Musiimenta Joy Kellen

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

This thesis was carried out in the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement in Northern Uganda to test a new model to improve access to clean energy technologies in the refugee settlement. The settlement hosts more than seventy-five thousand refugees, including the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) from the Bududa landslides in Eastern Uganda. The literature review shows the challenges faced in the humanitarian sector. The challenge is met in providing lighting and improved cooking technologies to all refugees in settlements and camps globally. The refugees tend to cut down trees in the surrounding forest, and the wood is used for firewood to cook …

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

WCBT Faculty Publications

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

Intention To Pursue A Sales Career: A Dyadic Study Of Students And Parents Extended Abstract, Joseph Little, Mark Kubik, Alexander King, Grant Weidman

AMTP Proceedings 2022

Typical career choice selection studies generally have been one sided focusing on students or parents independently. This dyadic study aims to analyze student and their parent influencers to determine what will be the strongest influencer of a student to pursue a career in sales. “Because the dyad is arguable the fundamental unit of interpersonal interaction and relations, family relations such as a parent and their child/student have a powerful dyadic component” (Kenny et al., 2006, p1). Therefore, understanding the influencers of this career choice selection may lead to interventions for increasing the number of students to pursue a career in …

When Should Sales Managers Get Involved In Their Salesteams' Transactions, Daniel E. Chavez

Theses and Dissertations--Marketing and Supply Chain

The existing literature on sales teams explores various aspects of team members and their effects on sales performance. The literature on sales management has described how managers can promote better results from salespeople. The question at the intersection of these two streams of literature – if managers should be part of sales teams -- has not been addressed and is what we explore. Using data from a Fortune 1,000 firm that operates automotive service stores across the US we test these effects. The data presents a natural experiment as sales teams with different compositions are assigned randomly to the customers. …

Artificial Empathy In Marketing Interactions: Bridging The Human-Ai Gap In Affective And Social Customer Experience, Yuping Liu-Thompkins, Shintaro Okazaki, Hairong Li

Marketing Faculty Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) continues to transform firm-customer interactions. However, current AI marketing agents are often perceived as cold and uncaring and can be poor substitutes for human-based interactions. Addressing this issue, this article argues that artificial empathy needs to become an important design consideration in the next generation of AI marketing applications. Drawing from research in diverse disciplines, we develop a systematic framework for integrating artificial empathy into AI-enabled marketing interactions. We elaborate on the key components of artificial empathy and how each component can be implemented in AI marketing agents. We further explicate and test how artificial empathy generates …

Augmented Reality In Retail And Its Impact On Sales, Yong Chin Tan, Sandeep R. Chandukala, Srinivas K. Reddy

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The rise of Augmented Reality (AR) technology presents marketers with promising opportunities to engage customers and transform their brand experience. While firms are keen to invest in AR, research documenting its tangible impact in real-world contexts is sparse. In this article, the authors outline four broad uses of the technology in retail settings. Next, they focus specifically on the use of AR to facilitate product evaluation prior to purchase, and empirically investigate its impact on sales in online retail. Using data obtained from an international cosmetics retailer, they find that AR usage on the retailer’s mobile app is associated with …

Goodwill Going Green: How Green Branding Can Generate $1m In Revenue, Elia Meltzer, Esha S. Vartak, William M. Crone, Ryan T. Richards

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Goodwill Industries is a nonprofit organization. Not only do they specialize in charity work, but they also have a chain of stores that focus on thrift shopping. Additionally, Goodwill provides other services, such as recycling clothing, electronics, and other goods. Recently, Goodwill of Akron, Ohio received a grant of five million dollars, where the money for the grant would have to be utilized in five years. The main objective of this project was to find a way for Goodwill to use grant money efficiently, to generate revenue for a new transportation initiative.

Our team has recommended utilizing the most popular …

The Impact Of Verified (Unverified) Online Product Consumer Reviews On Consumer Product Attitudes, Kathryn Cort Dr., Roland Leak Dr.

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Customer product reviews are an integral component for companies conducting e-commerce, enabling them to stay connected and engaged with their consumers. However, more important these reviews are being utilized and incorporated into the marketing plans of companies. Companies can use a mixture of verified and unverified purchase badges in their displayed product reviews. This study finds that as customers are provided with this additional information to help form impressions about the products they are reviewing, customers' need for cognition ultimately determines how they utilize the presence or absence of these badges.

What's In A Name? Public Perceptions Of Multi-Level Marketing, Robert A. Peterson, Jeffrey A. Peterson

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This paper presents the results of a nationwide survey of the American public’s general familiarity with, and perceptions of, multi-level marketing, direct selling, and social selling. Survey respondents were most familiar with direct selling; there was no substantive difference in familiarity with multi-level marketing and social selling. Respondents familiar with the three terms possessed perceptions of them that were significantly more positive than were the perceptions of respondents reporting not being familiar with the terms. Across all terms, male respondents reported being more familiar with, and more positively disposed toward, them than did female respondents. Respondents 55 years of age …

Fashion And Sustainability: Consumption And Shared Responsibility, Jie Gao Fowler, Timothy Reisenwitz, Rongwei Chu

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Indulgence in fashion has been indispensable in modern societies, as it is a crucial device for self-image and identity construction. With the advanced technology and globalization of production, the fashion industry has skewed towards fast fashion, making the latest trends available to mass consumers at affordable prices. This research aims to examine how Chinese consumers perceive sustainable consumption in the context of fashion. We endeavor to explore the factors that influence the engagement of sustainable consumption. This study aims not to argue whether sustainable fashion should mobilize or replace the current fashion system but to provide evidence on consumers' perception …

User Reviews And Their Relationship To The Online Sale Of Used Dvds, Dan Baugher, Chris Ramos

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Except for books, research on factors impacting the sale of low-priced used products is uncommon. This study examines the relationship between Netflix user reviews of DVDs and their sale on Amazon as used products. An Amazon account was created by the authors, and a broad mix of 121 used DVDs were sold between 10/15/2012 and 11/20/2015. Using a low-price strategy, all sold within 57 days of posting on the site with 17.4% selling on the first day. DVDs with lower user ratings (valence) (p < .001) and lower rating volume (p < .05) took longer to sell. Valence and volume were not correlated (p > .05). In an OLS regression that included valence, volume, price, and release date, …

Adoption And Diffusion Of At-Home Medical Tests, Savannah Campbell, Mark Mitchell, Jerome Christia, Melissa Clark

Atlantic Marketing Journal

The purpose of this study is to understand the at-home medical test market including the medical and regulatory requirements to create at-home medical tests, as well as the market factors that influence consumer adoption in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. To address testing shortages of COVID-19 tests companies created at-home tests which were rapidly approved by the FDA, bringing at-home testing to the forefront.

History of at-home health testing is reviewed, the medical requirements for creating them, and how the pandemic has affected such testing. Tables are also included to demonstrate currently available tests and potential future tests. The …

The Effects Of Received Grandmothers’ Affection On Adult Grandchildren’S Health Behaviors Using Affection Exchange Theory, Leslie Ramos Salzar, Priyanka Khandelwal, Yvette Castillo

Department of Marketing: Faculty Publications

Background: Affection exchange theory (AET) explains the value of received affection for overall wellbeing in family relationships. However, this study extends prior work by investigating AET in grandmother-grandchild relationships and grandchildren’s individual well-being. This study seeks to understand the relationships between adult grandchildren’s received grandmother affection and health-related behaviors such as diet, exercise, substance abuse, and sleep.

Methods: This cross-sectional study included 229 university student participants. Multiple regression analyses were performed to analyze received grandmother affection and grandchildren’s health behaviors.

Results: Using cross-sectional survey methods, it was found that grandchildren’s reports of received memories and humor, and celebratory affection influenced …

Seeking Stability: Consumer Motivations For Communal Nostalgia, Minju Han, George E. Newman

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Existing research has examined why consumers are drawn to things from their past (personal nostalgia). However, little empirical work has examined why consumers prefer products that were never a part of their personal history (communal nostalgia). For example, a consumer may purchase vinyl records even though she grew up listening to mp3 files. Here, we find that one reason why consumers may be drawn to communal nostalgia is that it can provide a sense of social stability. Drawing on System Justification Theory (Jost & Banaji, British Journal of Social Psychology, 33, 1994 and 1-27), we demonstrate that perceived threats to …

Tiktok Has Influenced The Way We Buy Beauty, Keira R. Wingate, Angela Palumbo

Capstones

The purpose of this capstone project is to show how the popular social media platform, TikTok, is influencing and changing the way consumers buy and the companies sell beauty products.

Since the start of the pandemic, a record number of people logged into TikTok, which has become one of the top social media platforms in the world. While the app grew, so did the number of users who made videos reviewing and using makeup products. Soon, TikTok went from an entertainment platform to a marketing opportunity for large companies in the beauty industry.

Now, hundreds of influencers are paid large …

Evaluation Of Recommended Modular Email Building Approaches, Palak Sadhwani

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Customer relationship management acts as the backbone of marketing. For any company marketing is the most important sector to promote a company and attract customers. Email marketing is one of the most effective ways of digital marketing. However, the cost of design and development is time consuming and redundant. Marketers and project managers are frequently unassertive about how to solve these issues. Although there are blogs, articles and services available for marketing email development, the lack of research in the effectiveness of email building architecture bolsters the need for this study. The project presents an architecture that modularizes the way …

The Curse Of The Original: How And When Heritage Branding Reduces Consumer Evaluations Of Enhanced Products, Minju Han, George E. Newman, Rosanna K. Smith, Ravi Dhar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Heritage branding is a common marketing strategy that has been shown to increase product appeal. Here, we find that certain forms of heritage branding can also have potentially negative consequences by leading consumers to react negatively to changes made to the brand’s original, flagship product—even if those changes objectively improve it. We demonstrate that when firms engage in heritage branding that emphasizes a brand’s longevity, consumers evaluate enhanced products less favorably than the original versions of those same products due to decreased perceptions of continuity authenticity. We demonstrate this effect across a variety of product domains (e.g., cosmetics, cookware, and …

The Customer Value Model And Mobile Banking: Evaluation Of Technology-Based Self Service (Tbss) Gaps, Justin A. Moist, Ismet Anitsal, Melek Meral Anitsal

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Mobile banking has become a prevalent part of everyday banking, and almost all banks have adopted its use. This form of self-service has seen wide adoption because of its ease of use, performance, reliability, and enjoyment of use. These attributes of technology-based self-service options help both customers and businesses determine the value of the service. The proposed customer value model aims to conceptually represent how companies and customers perceive the value of a product or service and pinpoint gaps between these values. This paper presents the customer value model in the context of mobile banking. This new context is part …

Building Connections In Co-Production Environments, Kimberly D. Grantham, Kimberly R. Mcneil, Gail Ayala Taylor, Roland L. Leak

Atlantic Marketing Journal

With the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic felt around the globe, consumers look forward to once again being able to engage in communal experiences where relationships with other customers and with service providers are integral parts of ongoing service experiences. The purpose of this study is to provide a framework for service establishments to better understand the communal approach to becoming a service co-creator, helping service providers create more meaningful relationships between their customers when customers are engaging in the service experience in a group and as an individual. We distinguish individual versus group influences that emerge as a result …

The Faculty Recruitment-Retention Connection: A Strategic Linkage Approach, Mary Mobley, Richard Easley

Atlantic Marketing Journal

The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) is clear about the worsening shortage of doctoral qualified faculty. It is the proposition of this paper that business schools should consider evaluating and perhaps reinvigorating recruitment strategies in both the short- and intermediate-term, as well as developing marketing management strategies that will help alleviate business faculty shortages in the long-term. Strategic marketing guidance is set forth in this paper with a focus on the development and institutionalization of managerial linkages between recruitment-retention connections. Our major premise is that leadership robustness is needed relative to the construction and implementation of strategic …

Impact Of Different Types Of In-Store Displays On Consumer Purchase Behavior, Yoonju Han, Sandeep R. Chandukala, Shibo Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Research on consumer in-store shopping behavior does not account for the existence of different types of display locations (e.g. storefront, store rear, secondary, front end cap, rear end cap, and shelf displays). This article focuses on accounting for and understanding the impact of various displays on consumer purchase behavior based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) theory. Specifically, we study how displays closer to and farther from the main location of the focal category influence consumer purchase behavior. Furthermore, within the different types of displays we investigate the impact of specific types of displays on consumer's category purchase and brand choice and …

B Corps’ Social Media Communications During The Covid-19 Pandemic: Through The Lens Of The Triple Bottom Line, Manveer Mann, Sang-Eun Byun, Whitney Ginder

Department of Marketing Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The COVID-19 pandemic and rising demand for transparency has heightened the importance of sustainability communications on social media to generate deeper stakeholder engagement. Although B Corporations (B Corps), businesses committed to the triple bottom line (TBL), could serve as a catalyst for sustainable development, little is known about how they communicate on social media during a crisis. Therefore, we examined social media communications of B Corps to (1) identify salient topics and themes, (2) analyze how these themes align with the TBL, and (3) evaluate social media performance against industry benchmarks. We focused on the apparel, footwear, and accessories (AFA) …