Sales and Merchandising Commons^™

Impacts Of Information Channels On Consumer Decision Journey: Evidence From An Experience Durable Goods Industry, Chih-Wei Tsai

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

With the emergence of various information technologies, how to reasonably layout in different touch points has become a crucial issue for the company in practice, especially for those experienced durable goods with greater uncertainty and decision complexity. The company seeks to leverage the limited budget to achieve the most efficient marketing strategies, and thus the most effective combination of information channels. On the other hand, consumers could be easily influenced by different information resources in the process of purchase decision-making, and their information search behavior will gradually change with their accumulation of knowledge, experience and distinctive search objectives. Therefore, this …

Happy Campers Or Unhappy Prisoners: How Materialism Punishes Us In Lockdown Times, Banwari Mittal

Atlantic Marketing Journal

COVID-19 and the resulting lockdowns created an unprecedented upheaval in consumers’ daily lives and lifestyles. The purpose of this research was to understand the psychological experience of life under lockdowns and the role of individual difference variables in that experience. Using survey data from U.S. consumers, the research identified two opposite feelings, coexisting: happy camper feeling or unhappy prisoner feeling. Younger, lower income, and less educated consumers felt more like prisoners than campers. Ability to maintain life as usual, and positive pre-pandemic life conditions (health, social network, and job satisfaction) led to happy camper feelings. In contrast, pre-pandemic materialism led …

Covid's Positive Implications On Business-To-Business Salesperson Communication And Customer Interaction, Lucy Matthews, Diane R. Edmondson, Ryan Matthews, Frances Ann Stott, Tammy Bahmanziari

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This article aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on industrial salesperson communication with buyers, specifically focusing on the positive outcomes. The authors use a qualitative data collection approach based on grounded theory. Thirteen executives, primarily from the transportation industry, were interviewed. Based on the executive interviews, this study develops the pandemic-induced customer interaction model for the industrial market, drawing from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and innovation diffusion theory. This study is the first to examine the positive impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on business-to-business sales organization communication. This study contributes to the literature through the creation …

Impact Of The Digitized Sales Work Environment On Customer Orientation, Julia Rötzmeier-Keuper, Nancy Viola Wünderlich

AMTP Proceedings 2023

Informed by appraisal theory, which highlights personal characteristics and resources as critical to the emergence of stress appraisal and adaptation (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), our study poses the following questions:

• What characterizes the DSWE?
• What is the role of the DSWE in creating salesperson distress and eustress?
• How is a salesperson’s customer orientation/ value-based selling affected by the DSWE?

In our attempt to explore the potential up- and downsides of work environment digitalization and the appraisal of the pervasive use of Information Technology in everyday work, we adopted a qualitative approach. We combined information from qualitative interviews with B2B customer …

Power Dressing And Its Importance In Modern Democracy, Mansiben R. Patel, Dr. Catherine Amoroso Leslie

Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences

This research aimed to study the significance of Power Dressing in a modern democracy, by exploring the dynamics of clothing concerning the power it portrays for women holding influential positions in public office in a variety of countries throughout the world. This research accomplished its motive by collecting, reviewing, and analyzing scholarly articles, academic journals, newspapers, and current events which formed the foundation for data collection using a survey developed by the researchers. The analysis provided a platform for procuring knowledge of the association between Fashion and Politics, the concept of Women’s Power Dressing, and its significance in a modern …

Consumer Shift: Examining Female Generation Y Consumers’ Activewear Consumption, Lauren Laporte

LSU Master's Theses

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a change to standard consumption patterns as consumers began prioritizing health and wellness, working remotely, and made a switch from material-based consumption practices to an experiential-value-based consumption mindset. Additionally, Covid-19 brought economic downturns, loss of jobs, and supply chain issues. Consequently, the activewear market demonstrated unclear results making it necessary to understand trends within the activewear market while also understanding consumer motivations to wear or not to wear activewear during these societal shifts. This research paper aims it’s focus on female members of Generation Y, a popular and growing market for activewear. …

The "Catch-22" Of Amazon's Argument To Function As An Auctioneer: The Implied Warranty Of Merchantability, Kyle A. Batson

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Exploring The Impact Of Negative Words Used In Online Feedback In Hotel Industry: A Sentiment Analysis, N-Gram, And Text Network Analysis Approach, Daniel Dan

Journal of Marketing and Consumer Behaviour in Emerging Markets

This study examines the words and situations that trigger and those that do not trigger a hotel response when customers post negative online feedback. The research explores, through sentiment analysis, bigrams, trigrams, and word networking, the valence of online reviews of five important hotels in Las Vegas. Only the feedback that has been categorized as negative by the algorithm is selected. In correspondence to this feedback, the existence of answers from the hotels is checked together with the response style. While the negative valence of the feedback can represent a mixture of subjective and objective emotions, there are common features …

Use Of Online Or Traditional Job Search Tools: Which Do Sales Students Prefer When Searching To Begin Their Post-College Graduate Careers-A Study Revisited, Linda G. Mullen, Randy S. Stuart, Michael Lee Thomas

AMTP Proceedings 2023

In 2019, a study was conducted to see if college students who studied/majored in professional sales, preferred digital media over face-to-face interactions for post-graduation careers searches. Results showed sales students used multiple methods during these searches. Although sales students engaged with digital media to land entry-level career positions, they still relied heavily upon traditional methods (i.e., college/university career fairs/services, internships, etc.). In March of 2020, as Covid-19 moved just about everyone online, the authors were interested in seeing whether the increased use and familiarity with digital media changed sales students’ preference for and use of job search tools.

This follow-up …

Predicting Mobility Using Limited Data During Early Stages Of A Pandemic, Michael T. Lash, S. Sajeesh, Özgür M. Araz

Department of Marketing: Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed consumer behavior substantially. In this study, we explore the drivers of consumer mobility in several metropolitan areas in the United States under the perceived risks of COVID-19. We capture multiple dimensions of perceived risk using local and national cases and death counts of COVID-19, along with real-time Google Trends data for personal protective equipment (PPE). While Google Trends data are popular inputs in many studies, the risk of multicollinearity escalates with the addition of more relevant terms. Therefore, multicollinearity-alleviating methods are needed to appropriately leverage information provided by Google Trends data. We develop and utilize …

Consumers’ Preferences For Ethical Entertainment Consumption: Conceptualization, Development, And Validation Of A Scale, Avirupa Basu, Tamas Makany, Pratap Chandra Mandal, Ashutosh Bishnu Murti

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Our study describes the conceptualization, development, and validation of a reliable scale to measure the Consumers’ Preferences for Ethical Entertainment Consumption (CPEEC) in the context of OTT platforms. Past literature has addressed Ethical Consumption in various contexts that hold significant importance among consumers. However, there is limited literature on the Ethical Consumption in the domain of OTT entertainment, which is a new and burgeoning field of literature. Conceptualizing and developing a measurement scale for CPEEC will help measure the ethicality of entertainment like films, web shows and reality shows. The CPEEC scale is developed and validated by performing 33 in-depth …

Forecasting Airport Transfer Passenger Flow Using Realtime Data And Machine Learning, Xiaojia Guo, Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Bert De Reyck

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Problem definition: In collaboration with Heathrow airport, we develop a predictive system that generates quantile forecasts of transfer passengers’ connection times. Sampling from the distribution of individual passengers’ connection times, the system also produces quantile forecasts for the number of passengers arriving at the immigration and security areas. Academic/Practical relevance: Airports and airlines have been challenged to improve decision-making by producing accurate forecasts in real time. Our work is the first to apply machine learning for predicting real-time quantile forecasts in the airport. We focus on passengers’ connecting journeys, which have only been studied by few researchers. Better forecasts of …

Shaping Millennials’ Attitudes Towards Luxury Brands In International Cities: The Case Of Abu Dhabi, Zeina Mazloum

BAU Journal - Society, Culture and Human Behavior

This study aims to investigate the impact of two intrinsic motives (perceived self-identity and perceived self- status) and two other extrinsic motives (celebrities and social media presence) on millennials' attitudes towards luxury brands; ultimately reflecting on their buying intention. Illustrated through a conceptual framework model, results reveal that intrinsic motives strongly influence millennials' attitudes while extrinsic motives slightly influence their attitudes towards luxury brands; both resulting in molding millennials' buying intention correspondingly.

Provision Of Helpful Review Videos: Effects Of Video Characteristics On Perceived Helpfulness, Kyungmin Park, Stephanie Lee, Shahryar Doosti, Yong Tan

Business Faculty Articles and Research

With the rapid growth and popularity of YouTube, an increasing number of consumers rely on online product review videos to obtain product-related information. As the provision of online review videos grows and consumers increasingly rely on them for their purchase decisions, understanding factors that contribute to the perceived helpfulness of video reviews becomes critical for video review management. This paper examines how various visual and vocal characteristics of online review videos are associated with the perceived helpfulness of videos. We collect detailed observational data on 13,840 electronic product review videos posted on YouTube and employ video content analysis, speech recognition, …

Factors Affecting Consumers’ Purchase Intentions Towards Recycled Products, Sherine Esmat

Theses and Dissertations

The work executed addresses the status of recycling industry in Egypt and its relation to the current sustainability trends as well as climate change issues. It also identifies the main concerns of consumers when purchasing recycled products. Consequently, identifies the key pillars that need to be applied or communicated with the target consumers to enhance the concept of selling recycled products and increase its market share. Since this industry is significantly broad, the focus of the study was only on recycled PET plastic bottles (rPET), this is to ensure attaining accurate and reliable results.

An interview and a site visit …

Bozo The Clown: An Icon As American As An Apple Pie In The Face, Gregory Kent Oswald

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

There is no single path toward the creation of an American icon, a person or item with resonance to all in the country as well as having an ability to serve as a symbol of America itself for those outside the borders. This thesis considers certain elements that propelled the journey of the entertainment for children, Bozo the Clown, into a representational figure in the minds of young and old. Like all things American, his roots include many elements from outside the country: the name derives from foreign tongues mostly in derisory terms, but in at least one instance as …

Implementing A Short-Term Field-Based Experiential Learning Activity: The Retail Scavenger Hunt, Pam Richardson, Rebeca Perren

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This article introduces the Retail Scavenger Hunt (RSH)—a short-term field-based experiential learning activity. This flexible pedagogical tool enables students to experience first-hand what is commonly referred to in the consumer-packaged goods industry as “the store check.” Although initially designed as an instructor-led activity, the authors adapted the exercise during the pandemic to be executed as a self-directed, app-based field activity. As a result, this research can compare student impressions across implementation modes.

Emotional Intelligence Training And Professional Salespeople, Tracey Honeycutt Sigler, Charles D. Shepherd Ph.D

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Emotional intelligence (EI) has long been considered a significant success factor, especcially in careers like personal selling that involve considerable social. contact (Goldman, 1995). As a result, a series of studies have investigated the link between EI and sales performance. The results of these studies indicates that EI can positively impact sales performanace. As a result, researchers (Deeter-Schmelz & Sojka, 2003) have called for its integration into sales training programs. However, to this point, no research has established an effective approach to EI training in sales. This study begins to rectify that shortcoming by indentifying best practices in general EI …

Small Business Development, Katrina Babb

2023 Spring Reports (Marshall, IL)

Introduction to the economic problems of wage earners in modern society. Labor markets; labor history; labor organizations; collective bargaining; and public policy toward labor. Econ 351 is predominately a microeconomics applications course with a unit on labor and the macroeconomy. This is a flipped course. Experiential learning activities will take us outside of the classroom; you will be participating in career readiness activities including an academic conference, working on a Marshall Sustainable Cities project, resume writing, and mock interviews.

Research On The Factors Influencing New Tobacco Consumption Behavior, Yuqing Wen

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

In the global environment of tobacco control, along with the increasing concern for health, electronic companies around the world have focused on the research and production of "non-combustible alternatives to cigarettes" to meet the psychology of consumers to quit smoking and the pursuit of fashion, and the most popular products are "Electronic Cigarette” (E-cig) and its similar products. In recent years, domestic E-cig-related products have gradually known by the public, with increasing exposure in the news media and rapid growth in sales. Among them, HnB E-cig has smoking taste closer to the characteristics of traditional cigarettes and therefore is gradually …

Small Value-Add Local Food Retailer’S Covid-19 And Post-Covid-19 Strategies, Timothy L. Schauer, Denise Ogden, Doc Ogden

Atlantic Marketing Journal

The pandemic came as a blow to retailers that were already under pressure from online competitors that offered low prices and provided the convenience of shopping from home. The media tended to cover the plight and challenges for larger chain stores and big box retailers. However, the small local food providers and retailers also faced challenges and had to manage without the luxury of having dedicated staff and deep pockets with which to navigate through the pandemic. This paper explores the experiences and strategies used by 20 small local value-added food providers and retailers as they navigated the pandemic. Additionally, …

Minimizing The Ratchet Effect: Why Reciprocity Preserves Customer Satisfaction In Service Environments, Kyle A. Huggins, Val Larsen

AMTP Proceedings 2023

This paper focuses on a fundamental problem for marketers: the ratchet effect. The ratchet effect occurs when actual service performance is perceived to be significantly higher than service expectations, causing dissonance and resulting consumer guilt. If left unattended, consumers relieve their guilt by increasing the perceived state of expectations for subsequent visits. Known as the ratchet effect, this causes a dilemma for the service business as they consistently strive to improve service performance. Using equity theory, our experimental study explores whether businesses can break the ratchet effect by providing mechanisms of reciprocity for consumers to respond at little or no …

Analyzing Effective Website Design Literature To Develop A Standard Scorecard, Karlyn Sanchez

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

No abstract provided.

Typology Of Tweets And User Engagement Generated By U.S. Companies Involved In Developing Covid-19 Vaccines, Priyanka Khandelwal, Leslie Ramos Salazar, Soni Khandelwal

Department of Marketing: Faculty Publications

This study analyzes 295 tweets by four U.S. companies engaged in discovering a vaccine for COVID-19. Tweets were analyzed to understand how their Twitter feeds balanced corporate and product branding (vaccine, medicines, etc.) and disseminated scientific information relating to COVID-19. The results suggest that these companies were actively embedding technical information about COVID-19 in their corporate and product branding. Tweets providing technical and scientific information about the progress made toward developing a COVID-19 vaccine garnered high levels of user engagement from their target audience. Findings from this study indicate the growing importance of technical communication in corporate settings during a …

Anchorage: Visual Analysis Of Satisfaction In Customer Service Videos Via Anchor Events, Kam Kwai Wong, Xingbo Wang, Yong Wang, Jianben He, Rong Zhang, Huamin Qu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Delivering customer services through video communications has brought new opportunities to analyze customer satisfaction for quality management. However, due to the lack of reliable self-reported responses, service providers are troubled by the inadequate estimation of customer services and the tedious investigation into multimodal video recordings. We introduce , a visual analytics system to evaluate customer satisfaction by summarizing multimodal behavioral features in customer service videos and revealing abnormal operations in the service process. We leverage the semantically meaningful operations to introduce structured event understanding into videos which help service providers quickly navigate to events of their interest. supports a comprehensive …

Empowering Elderpreneurs Scommerce For Genx Consignment Store Owners In West Virginia, Joyita Sarkar

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

In an ever-evolving digital landscape, this research explores Generation X (GenX) consignment store owners in West Virginia and the transformative power of Social commerce (sCommerce). Despite the ubiquity of Social media platforms, little attention has been given to the impact of sCommerce on the consignment store industry. Drawing from the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DIT), this study examines the factors influencing sCommerce adoption decisions for GenX consignment store owners.

Through qualitative research, this study uncovers untold stories within this entrepreneurial landscape. Purposeful sampling of 11 women and 20-60 minutes of in-depth interviews reveal the …

Sales Enablement In Entrepreneurial Ventures: Essays On The Role Of Social Capital And Resilience In Disruptive Environments, Ali Anwar

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Enduring commercial success of entrepreneurial ventures is often associated with effective selling and an ability to navigate dynamic environments. However, two challenges stand out: 1) effectively managing cross-functional integration of sales with other value-creating organizational functions, given that selling in the contemporary organization is a multi-actor, strategic effort, and 2) being resilient to environmental disruptions, given the increasing frequency of their occurrence. I take a sales enablement perspective to focus on themes which are essential to optimizing sales performance in entrepreneurial ventures. The first theme focuses on internal social capital embedded in the cross-functional relationships of the sales, marketing, and …

Brides And Bridal Stores: Online Or Brick-And-Mortar, Libby C. Jones, Ismet Anitsal, Melek Meral Anitsal

Atlantic Marketing Journal

This paper explores the growing global bridal industry and the different trends, traditions, and aspects of specific countries' bridal industries. It outlines western and eastern traditions and how globalization contributes to their spread. A deeper focus is dedicated to the United States' bridal industry and the issues brick-and-mortar bridal boutiques face as more brides have started shopping at online bridal stores. The relationship between brick-and-mortar and online bridal stores is explored based on various propositions about the bridal industry's emerging challenges. These propositions include trust issues in the retail environment, convenience, selection of bridal gowns in different retail formats, incorporating …

The Impact Of Subscription Programs On Customer Purchases, Raghu Iyengar, Young-Hoon Park, Qi Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Subscription programs have become increasingly popular among a wide variety of retailers and marketplace platforms. Subscription programs give members access to a set of exclusive benefits for a fixed fee upfront. In this paper, we examine the causal effect of a subscription program on customer behavior. To account for self-selection and identify the individual-level treatment effects, we combine a difference-in-differences approach with a generalized random forests procedure that matches each member of the subscription program with comparable non-members. We find subscription leads to a large increase in customer purchases. The effect of subscription is economically significant, persistent over time, and …

How An Abusive Supervision Climate Impacts Business-To-Business (B2b) Sales Performance, And The Roles Of Leader–Members Interdependence And Team Psychological Safety, Matthew J. Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Sales supervisors can tremendously influence the sales teams they manage, and their behaviors can influence a team’s engagement and sales performance. Because of the supervisor’s influential role, their behavior, positive or negative, can ripple throughout the organization. As a result, a supervisor who role models abusive behavior within their organization also promotes a climate of abuse and incivility that can contribute to a toxic workplace. Abusive supervision (AS) is a significant problem in many business-to-business (B2B) sales organizations that negatively impacts the financial welfare and subjective well-being of organizations and their employees. This quantitative correlational study aimed to examine how …