Marketing Commons^™

A Survey Of Retail Trade Patterns In South Dakota: 2015-2024, Rand E. Wergin

Faculty Publications

This paper provides an analysis of retail sales and retail trade in the state of South Dakota for the ten years 2015 to 2024. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the fifteen largest communities in the state, with further analysis of each community reporting retail sales to the state Department of Revenue.

This analysis will provide information to community leaders in the cities and towns of South Dakota. Retail pull is an economic indicator that provides a measure of community’s economic health and its ability to attract shoppers, both shoppers from its own community and from other communities. A …

Customer Service Operations: A Gatekeeper Framework, Maqbool Dada, Brett A. Hathaway, Evgeny Kagan

Faculty Publications

Customer service has evolved beyond in-person visits and phone calls to include live chat, AI chatbots and social media, among other contact options. Service providers typically refer to these contact modalities as “channels”. Within each channel, customer service agents are tasked with managing and resolving a stream of inbound service requests. Each request involves milestones where the agent must decide whether to keep assisting the customer or to transfer them to a more skilled – and often costlier – provider. To understand how this request resolution process should be managed, we develop a model in which each channel is represented …

A Survey Of Retail Trade Patterns In South Dakota: 2014-2023, Rand E. Wergin

Faculty Publications

This paper provides an analysis of retail sales and retail trade in the state of South Dakota for the ten years 2014 to 2023. This analysis will provide information to community leaders in the cities and towns of South Dakota. Retail pull is an economic indicator that provides a measure of community’s economic health and its ability to attract shoppers, both shoppers from its own community and from other communities. A community that has a healthy retail economy is generally able to attract shoppers from its own community as well as surrounding communities.

Triangulating The Likelihood Of Confusion: Linguistics And Consumer Surveys, Eric D. Derosia, Jesse Egbert, Thomas Lee

Faculty Publications

This Article highlights contributions that linguistic analysis can offer in the assessment of the likelihood of confusion in trademark infringement cases. Parties in such cases often engage an expert witness to conduct a survey that measures the likelihood of consumer confusion. We show how an expert linguist can provide important, nonintuitive dynamics of corroboration. We introduce “expert triangulation” as a conceptual framework to analyze whether, and to what extent, experts in linguistics and consumer surveys can corroborate one another. That is, having two different sources of empirical evidence which lead to similar conclusions should be a benefit to the courts, …

Moral Decision-Making In Organizations, Maryam Kouchaki, Isaac Smith

Faculty Publications

Research on moral decision-making in organizations has expanded significantly over the past few decades. In this review, we build on prior comprehensive reviews on the topic to provide an updated view of the field, based on the latest findings. We first provide a brief historical overview of influential theories of moral decision-making and then describe the individual characteristics, interpersonal factors, and organizational factors that have been shown to influence people's morally relevant choices, as well as the cognitive, affective, and even physiological processes at play. We then provide a more critical view of the field and focus on what we …

Sophisticated Vs. Rugged: Examining Gendered Brand Communication Styles And Social Media Engagement, Joanne T. Cao, Jamye Foster, Gallayanee S. Yaoyuneyong, Lacey K. Wallace

Faculty Publications

Advertising and marketing managers understand that not all brands need to be on social media, but what is not clearly understood is consumers’ engagement expectations for brands that are on social media. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of brand personality, specifically sophisticated and rugged brands, and gendered communication styles on consumers’ expectations of social media engagement. A scenario-based experiment is performed to test the hypotheses using a mock brand. The main study consisted of a Qualtrics consumer panel, and a MANOVA was utilized to examine three components of social media engagement (consumption, contribution, and creation) on the two brand …

A Survey Of Retail Trade Patterns In South Dakota: 2013-2022, Rand E. Wergin

Faculty Publications

This paper provides an analysis of retail sales and retail trade in the state of South Dakota for the ten years 2013 to 2022. This analysis will provide information to community leaders in the cities and towns of South Dakota. Retail pull is an economic indicator that provides a measure of community’s economic health and its ability to attract shoppers, both shoppers from its own community and from other communities. A community that has a healthy retail economy is generally able to attract shoppers from its own community as well as surrounding communities.

Speed-Accuracy Tradeoffs In Decision Making: Perception Shifts And Goal Activation Bias Decision Thresholds, Jeff Larson, Guy Hawkins

Faculty Publications

A fundamental aspect of decision making is the speed-accuracy tradeoff (SAT): slower decisions tend to be more accurate, but because time is a scarce resource people prefer to conclude decisions more quickly. The current research adds to the SAT literature by documenting two previously unrecognized influences on the SAT: perception shifts and goal activation. Decision makers’ perceptions of what constitutes a fast or a slow decision, and what constitutes an accurate or inaccurate decision, are based on prior experience, and these perceptions influence decision speed. Similarly, previous experience in a decision context associates the context with a particular decision goal. …

An Angry Face And A Guilty Conscience: The Intrapersonal Effects Of Fake Anger In Negotiation, David Hunsaker, Teng Zhang, Mckenzie Rees

Faculty Publications

Research on anger in negotiation suggests that expressing anger can have detrimental effects on the relationship between the parties but may also improve the expresser’s economic outcomes, resulting in the use of fake anger (i.e., anger that is expressed but not felt) as a negotiation strategy. Based on research on moral emotions, we argue that fake anger in negotiation will lead to expressers’ guilt, which in turn negatively impacts their self-perception and their overall subjective experience of the negotiation. Across three studies (two online and one face-to-face), we consistently demonstrate that fake anger lowers negotiators’ feelings about themselves as well …

The Gatekeeper’S Dilemma: 'When Should I Transfer This Customer?', Brett A. Hathaway, Evgeny Kagan, Maqbool Dada

Faculty Publications

In many service encounters, front-line workers (often referred to as gatekeepers) have the discretion to attempt to resolve a customer request or to transfer the customer to an expert service provider. Motivated by an incentive redesign at a call center of a mid-size US-based bank, we formulate and solve an analytical model of the gatekeeper's transfer response to different incentive schemes and to different congestion levels. We then test several model predictions experimentally. Our experiments show that human behavior matches the predictions qualitatively, but not always in magnitude. Specifically, transfer rates are disproportionately low in the presence of monetary penalties …

A Survey Of Retail Trade Patterns In South Dakota: 2012-2021, Rand E. Wergin

Faculty Publications

This paper provides an analysis of retail sales and retail trade in the state of South Dakota for the years 2012 to 2021. This analysis will provide valuable information to community leaders in the cities and towns of South Dakota. Along with measures such as unemployment and inflation, Retail Pull (RP) provides a measure of community’s economic health. For example, retail is often the largest employer in a city, particularly the smaller communities of South Dakota, and a robust retail sector provides a tax base to support community services. Thus, the economic health of the community depends on the viability …

Exploring Masstige Brands’ Antecedents And Outcomes, Paula Rodrigues, Ana Sousa, Marc Fetscherin, Ana Pinto Borges

Faculty Publications

This study focused on developing a new conceptual model of consumers’ perceptions of – and behaviours towards – masstige brands based on consumer-brand relationship and brand equity theory, which was then applied using quantitative data analysis. The research model facilitated an exploration of how important brand love, co-creation and need for uniqueness are as masstige brand antecedents and of whether brand happiness, brand loyalty and electronic word of mouth are outcomes. The proposed model’s generalisability was assessed based on consumer data on a total sample of 1,041 consumers from three countries: the United States, Portugal, and China. The hypotheses were …

A Review Of Sensory Imagery For Consumer Psychology, Ryan S. Elder, Aradhna Krishna

Faculty Publications

his review of mental imagery research has the core objective of fostering more research on the topic of sensory imagery. The review is organized around a conceptual framework highlighting (a) how mental imagery is formed, (b) the elicitation and elaboration of mental imagery, (c) the multi-modal nature of sensory imagery, and (d) the consumer behavior consequences of mental imagery. This conceptual framework provides many new lenses through which researchers can view prior findings, and thereby motivates innovative new research ideas. Future research directions are provided in each section of the review, with additional unexplored opportunities presented in a final section

Personalized Priority Policies In Call Centers Using Past Customer Interaction Information, Brett A. Hathaway, Seyed Morteza Emadi, Vinayak Deshpande

Faculty Publications

Companies are increasingly personalizing their product or service offerings based on their customers' history of interactions to increase revenue or improve customer service. In this paper we show how call centers can improve customer service by implementing personalized priority policies. Under personalized priority policies, managers use customer contact history to predict individual-level caller abandonment and redialing behavior and prioritize them based on these predictions to improve operational performance. We provide a framework for how companies can use individual-level customer history data to capture the idiosyncratic preferences and beliefs that impact caller abandonment and redialing behavior, and quantify the improvements to …

Beverage Bottle Capacity, Packaging Efficiency, And The Potential For Plastic Waste Reduction, Rafael Becerril-Arreola, R. E. Bucklin

Faculty Publications

Plastic pollution is a pressing issue because authorities struggle to contain and process the enormous amount of waste produced. We study the potential for reducing plastic waste by examining the efficiency with which different polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles deliver beverages. We find that 80% of the variation in bottle weight is explained by bottle capacity, 16% by product category, and 1% by brand. Bottle weight is quadratic and convex function of capacity, which implies that medium capacity bottles are most efficient at delivering consumable product. Local data on PET bottle sales and municipal waste recovery validate the findings. A 20% …

Moving Beyond Traditional Sponsorships: Understanding The Structure And Dynamics Of Minority Equity Sponsorship Agreements, Furkan Amil Gur, Adrien Bouchet, Brian Walkup, Jonathan A. Jesen

Faculty Publications

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to understand the structure and dynamics of minority equity sponsorship agreements and the motivations for organizations to go beyond traditional sponsorships by acquiring minority equity in the sponsored organization.

Design/methodology approach - This paper adopts a qualitative methodology and presents interview data from key actors involved in minority equity sponsorship agreements. Findings - The findings of the paper include major characteristics of minority equity sponsorship agreements including the motivations, dynamics, and resources exchanged by sponsoring firms and clubs in these relationships, based on the experiences of key actors from firms, clubs, and …

Beverage Bottle Capacity, Packaging Efficiency, And The Potential For Plastic Waste Reduction, Rafael Becerril Arreola, R. E. Bucklin

Faculty Publications

Plastic pollution is a pressing issue because authorities struggle to contain and process the enormous amount of waste produced. We study the potential for reducing plastic waste by examining the efficiency with which different polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles deliver beverages. We find that 80% of the variation in bottle weight is explained by bottle capacity, 16% by product category, and 1% by brand. Bottle weight is quadratic and convex function of capacity, which implies that medium capacity bottles are most efficient at delivering consumable product. Local data on PET bottle sales and municipal waste recovery validate the findings. A 20% …

Joint Innovation Investment And Pricing Decisions In Retail Supply Chains With Customer Value, Jiali Qu, Benyong Hu, Chao Meng

Faculty Publications

In the retail industry, customer value has become the key to maintaining competitive advantages. In the era of new retail, customer value is not only affected by the product price, but it is also closely related to innovations, such as value‐added services and unique business models. In this paper, we study the joint innovation investment and pricing decisions in a retailer–supplier supply chain based on revenue sharing contracts and customer value. We first find that, in the non-cooperative game, equilibrium only exists in the supplier Stackelberg game. However, revenue sharing contracts cannot coordinate the supply chain in the non‐cooperative game. …

Don't Call Us, We'll Call You: An Empirical Study Of Caller Behavior Under A Callback Option, Brett A. Hathaway, Seyed Morteza Emadi, Vinayak Deshpande

Faculty Publications

While call centers have recently invested in callback technology, the impact of this innovation on caller behavior and call center performance is not clearly understood. Using call center data from a US commercial bank, we perform an empirical study of the callers' decision-making process in the presence of a callback option. We formulate a structural model of the caller decision-making process, and impute their underlying preferences from the data. Our estimates show that callers experience substantially less discomfort per unit of time while waiting for callbacks than while waiting in queue. However, we also find that, after controlling for expected …

To Share Or Not To Share: The Optimal Advertising Effort With Asymmetric Advertising Effectiveness, Qingying Li, Hao Ding, Tianqin Shi, Yanli Tang

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we study a two-stage model in which a manufacturer expands to a new market through a local retailer and has private information on the advertising effectiveness. The manufacturer chooses the information sharing format with the retailer, either no information sharing or mandatory information sharing. Under no information sharing format, the manufacturer and the retailer play a signaling game. We derive both separating and pooling equilibria and conduct equilibrium refinements for the signaling game. Under mandatory information sharing format, the manufacturer simply informs the retailer the advertising effectiveness. We also establish the stylized model and derive the optimal …

Distribution Channel Choice And Divisional Conflict In Remanufacturing Operations, Tianqin Shi, Dilip Chhajed, Zhixi Wan, Yunchuan Liu

Faculty Publications

We consider a firm consisting of two divisions, one responsible for designing and manufacturing new products and the other responsible for remanufacturing operations. The firm will sell these new and remanufactured products either directly to the consumer (direct selling) or through an independent retailer (indirect selling). Our study demonstrates that a firm’s organizational structure can affect its marketing decisions. Specifically, a decentralized firm with separate manufacturing and remanufacturing divisions can benefit from indirect selling with higher firm profit, supply chain profit, and total consumer demand than direct selling. Moreover, this structure also induces a remanufacturable product design. In contrast, a …

Assessing The Effects Of Service Variability On Consumer Confidence And Behavior, Clay M. Voorhees, Jonathan M. Beck, Praneet Randhawa, Kristen Bell Detienne, Sterling A. Bone

Faculty Publications

This research examines the effects of service variability on consumer confidence and behavior across multiple transactions in a service relationship. This article integrates discussions of service relationships and models of service variability. Leveraging a field study, the authors track over 12,000 experiences across 3,084 consumers for a 2-year period and model the impact of variability in these experiences on consumer relationships. The results reveal variability in a service relationship can significantly impact consumer confidence and that the nature of this relationship is nonlinear, revealing that small variations in quality will have strong effects on confidence and that these effects plateau …

Affective Commitment, Trust, And The Psychological Contract: Contributions Matter, Too!, Lisa Schurer Lambert, John B. Bingham, Anna Zabinski

Faculty Publications

Employees’ receipt of inducements is associated with trust and affective commitment, and employees pay for their inducements with their contributions (e.g., time, and physical and intellectual effort). Yet this relationship does not fully mirror events as they occur in an employment relationship where employees’ promises and delivery of inducements and contributions are ongoing, and relatively continuous. Our premise is that promising and delivering contributions may enhance or reduce employees’ trust in and commitment to the organization depending on how well they fulfill psychological needs. We tested a social exchange theory model and our alternative model. Survey results favoured our alternative …

Dealing With Dysfunction: Negotiating With Difficult Individuals, Marc-Charles Ingerson, Kristen Bell Detienne, Jill M. Hooley, Nathan A. Black

Faculty Publications

Workplace negotiations often present daunting challenges. The negotiation process can test relationships and place reputations at risk. Moreover, in some situations, the difficulty and stress involved in routine negotiations become magnified. Approximately ten percent of working adults have personality styles or behavioral tendencies that can make interactions with them especially challenging. Identifying, understanding, and dealing with personality dysfunction in the negotiation process is therefore a critically important skill (Kessler et al. 2005; Eddy 2018). Today’s negotiators need to be able to recognize and interact with people who have difficult and dysfunctional personality traits.

Unfortunately, many of those on the receiving …

Addressing The Gap In Consumer Protection For Small Business Consumers Through A Multiple Method Research Program, Glenn L. Christensen, Sterling A. Bone, Jerome D. Williams

Faculty Publications

For more than a decade we, as academic researchers, have investigated the experience of small business customers seeking financial products for their businesses. We have employed a variety of research methodologies to explore the “lived” experiences of small business owners seeking financing, including matched-paired mystery shopping, video ethnography, depth-interviews, controlled experiments, and surveys. From this research, we show that with limited financial sophistication, entrepreneurial small-business consumers approach the financial marketplace much more like retail financial consumers than sophisticated, corporate customers. Furthermore, we find that the customer service received by these small business customers seeking small business bank loan products is …

Antecedents And Consequences Of Self-Congruity: Replication And Extension, Eugene Cheng-Xi Aw, Leisa Reinecke Flynn, Han Xi Chong

Faculty Publications

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to propose and empirically test a framework encompassing self-congruity with its antecedents and consequences. This study also aims to test the mediating role of perceived value and its dimensions.

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire-based survey was conducted using a purposive sampling technique. In total, 310 useable responses were collected and data were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling.

Findings

A majority of hypotheses were supported. Avoidance of similarity and status consumption positively influenced self-congruity, replicating an earlier study. Self-congruity positively influenced overall perceived value and its dimensions, as well as revisit intention. Overall …

An Empirical Study Of Service Recovery Quality And Customer Retention, Kristen Bell Detienne, Joan Westwood

Faculty Publications

This article proposes and empirically tests an original model of service recovery. Customer loyalty significantly impacts a company’s profitability. Customer satisfaction influences customer loyalty, and perceived recovery quality affects satisfaction. Surveys were mailed to 1,476 customers of a large financial services firm. This study examined how customers’ perceptions of the quality of service recovery efforts differs among customer groups. Customer groups were formed according to differing levels of post-recovery customer loyalty in order to study the impact of perceived service recovery quality on customer loyalty. The results of the study indicate that high- and low-loyalty customer groups differ in their …

Moral Development In Business Ethics: An Examination And Critique, Kristen Bell Detienne, Carol Frogley Ellertson, Marc-Charles Ingerson, William R. Dudley

Faculty Publications

The field of behavioral ethics has seen considerable growth over the last few decades. One of the most significant concerns facing this interdisciplinary field of research is the moral judgment-action gap. The moral judgment-action gap is the inconsistency people display when they know what is right but do what they know is wrong. Much of the research in the field of behavioral ethics is based on (or in response to) early work in moral psychology and American psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg’s foundational cognitive model of moral development. However, Kohlberg’s model of moral development lacks a compelling explanation for the judgment-action gap. …

Exoskeletons, Entrepreneurs, And Communities: A Process Model Of Opportunity Co-Construction, Stella K. Seyb, Dean A. Sheperd, Trenton Alma Williams

Faculty Publications

Exoskeletons represent a technological breakthrough that presents a diverse range of potential opportunities to overcome human physical limitations. Drawing on data from 16 exoskeleton prototypes, we develop a model of opportunity co-construction that involves mutual adjustment between the actions and beliefs of entrepreneurs and their communities of inquiry. Our study enhances our understanding of potential opportunities as dynamic entities that are (re)constructed as entrepreneurs and community members seek to resolve key tensions throughout the process. Specifically, we identify tensions relating to technological change, shifting power dynamics, and reduced visibility, and explain how actors seek to resolve those tensions through opportunity …

To Link Or Not To Link? Multiple Team Membership And Unit Performance, Eean R. Crawford, Cody J. Reeves, Greg L. Stewart, Stacy L. Astrove

Faculty Publications

Multiple team membership is common in today’s team-based organizations, but little is known about its relationship with collective effectiveness across teams. We adopted a microfoundations framework utilizing existing individual- and team-level research to develop a higher-level perspective on multiple team membership’s relationship with performance of entire units of teams. We tested our predictions with data collected from 849 primary care units of the Veterans Health Administration serving over 4.2 million patients. In this context, we found multiple team membership is negatively associated with unit performance, and this negative relationship is exacerbated by task complexity.