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Attracting the Right Partner: Signaling in Business-to-Business Relationships: In the pre-relationship exploration stage of a business-to-business (B2B) relationship, firms find it difficult to evaluate other parties because of the prevalence of information asymmetry. Firms must make informed decisions, otherwise, they end up in a contentious long-term relationship, which adversely affects the performance of both sides. While majority research on B2B relationships is focused in the post-relationship phase, very little has been done to identify strategies that firms can adopt to signal their firm characteristics in the pre-relationship phase. This is important, as such signals can help firms make informed purchase decisions by cutting through the information asymmetry. Also, sending the right signals can help firms extract a price premium from their prospective partners, contributing positively to their bottom line. Therefore, this dissertation consists of three essays with the objective to (i) identify positioning strategies that sellers can use to signal firm characteristics and test which elements of firm characteristics enable them to extract a price premium (ii) identify branding strategies that sellers can use to signal firm characteristics and test which elements of firm characteristics enable them to extract a price premium (iii) investigate signals that affect firm performance.
A Multi-Methodology Study of the Historic Impact of Soft Systems Methodology and Its Associated Data Visualization Approach in the Context of Operations and Business Strategy: The purpose of this three-essay dissertation was to expand knowledge and theory regarding soft systems methodologies (SSMs) and data visualization approaches in business, engineering, and other social sciences. The first essay depicts a bibliometric analysis study of the historic impacts of SSM from 1980-2018 on business, engineering, and other social sciences fields. This study found 285 articles that described or employed SSM for research and included outcomes such as top SSM authors, author citation impacts, common dissemination outlets, time-bound distribution of publications, and other relevant findings. This study provided a picture of who, what, why, when, and where SSM has had the greatest impact on academic thought and practice. The second essay presents research on the academic impact of Systemigrams, an associated data visualization approach, finding examples of conceptual or research development that employed Systemigrams to depict complex problem situations. Recommendations for improvement of designing these data visualizations to increase their field use resulted from this study. The final essay leverages a selection of the articles as use cases to produce a grounded theory study to identify phenomena that arose from the use of SSM for operations and firm strategy research. This study identified two broad themes including (i) scope, structure, and process challenges and (ii) performance and evaluation limitations. These themes were explained by six patterns that emerged from the publications. Each produced change recommendations for SSM process, practice, and reporting to support its continued viability and adoption in business and operations research.
A Grounded Theory Model of the Relationship between Big Data and an Analytics Driven Supply Chain Competitive Strategy: The technology for storing and using big data is evolving rapidly and those that can keep pace are likely to garner additional competitive advantages. One approach to uncovering existing practice in a manner that provides insights for building theory is the use of grounded theory. The current research employs qualitative research following a grounded theory approach to explore gap in understanding the relationship between big data (BD) and the supply chain (SC). In this study eight constructs emerged: Organizational and environmental factors, big data and supply chain analytics, alignment, data governance, big data capabilities, cost of quality, risk analysis and supply chain performance. The contribution of this research resulted in a new theoretical framework that provides researchers and practitioners with an ability to visualize the relationship between collection and use of BD and the SC. This framework provides a model for future researchers to test the relationships posited and continue to extend understanding about how BD can benefit SC practice. While it is anticipated that the proposed theoretical framework will evolve as a result of future examination and enhanced understating of the relationships shown the framework presented represents a critical first step for moving the literature and practice forward.
Three Essays on Regulatory Focus, Consumer Creativity, and Co-Creation: Co-creation has been conceptualized in a number of ways but is generally referred to as an ongoing partnership between a firm and stakeholders (i.e. consumers) to collaboratively identify and solve mutually beneficial issues. While current scholarship has deepened our knowledge about the process of including consumers in the co-production of value, much remains to be learned. This is particularly true with respect to the consumer behavior side of the discipline as it pertains to creativity and motivation. Thus, the focus of the following three essays is to investigate how customer participation in the ideation of products and advertising influences down-stream responses, depending upon an individual's regulatory focus. According to regulatory focus theory, individuals are motivated to pursue their goals based upon two distinct self-regulatory systems known as promotion and prevention. Promotion-focused consumers are most concerned with the achievement of accomplishments and aspirations, which often results in approach oriented behavior. In contrast, prevention focused individuals seek to avoid negative end states, such as losses, and therefore are concerned with their security, duties, and obligations, resulting in avoidance-related behavior. These two distinct motivational states influence the way these individuals approach creative goals, which shares commonalities with co-creation. By its very nature, the goal of co-creation is to develop novel output, which often requires creativity. However, the way promotion versus prevention consumers approach creativity significantly varies, and therefore, the purpose of the present research is to understand how regulatory focus interacts with co-creation across three specific contexts to influence consumer responses. Essay 1, titled "From Ordinary to Extraordinary: Using Analogies to Increase Consumer-Brand Outcomes," finds across two studies that when engaging in co-creation, promotion focused individuals have significantly greater purchase intentions if first given an analogical reasoning task prior to a co-creation activity. Prevention-focused consumers (who are often considered less creative) can also …
Value: An Examination of Its Key Dimensions and Elements through the Lens of Service-Dominant Logic and Beyond: his dissertation advocates that value and its creation are often misunderstood concepts since both lack robust comprehensive conceptual foundations from which to advance rigorous theoretical development and analysis. Furthermore, this dissertation characterized value as the subjective assessment of the total worth of benefits received for the price paid or costs, i.e. money, time, energy, etc. The purpose of this dissertation was to conduct a holistic examination of value through the lens of service-dominant logic (S-D) and several historical economic periods of thought. I conducted a comprehensive S-D literature review in conjunction with a conceptual Boardman Soft Systems Methodology to develop a systemigram that captured the most critical S-D concepts and interrelationships to clarify its purpose and future research opportunities. During this process, value was recategorized and simplified into five primary dimensions, i.e. nature, perspectives, measures, storage, and creation. I employed Maslow's hierarchy of needs theory to illustrate that value at the lowest level of abstraction is the efficient satisfaction of human needs. I also investigated value creation and introduced a comprehensive value creation conceptual framework. Value creation is seen as a continuum of activity of key processes, i.e. value co-production, value in exchange, and value co-creation, and key procedural elements, i.e. actors, resource integration, ecosystems, services exchange, institutions and institutional arrangements as essentials to value creation. In addition, this dissertation also presented a Leyden value concept to the S-D lexicon. This concept complements use-value to capture associate upstream co-production activities and efforts as stored potential value. This dissertation then employed this conceptual framework to perform two survey based empirical studies. The first tested Lusch et al. (2007) value-co-production framework and incorporated other constructs such as transaction cost, satisfaction, and future purchase intent into a single testable model. This study leveraged covariance based structural equation modeling with 477 respondents to simultaneously …
Supply Chain Learning: A Grounded Theory Analysis: Under the unifying theme of supply chain learning, this three essay dissertation extends scholarship by investigating these multi-tier relationships. Theory is emerged, grounded in data, gathered from functioning supply chains in an effort to provide scholars and practitioners with an increased understanding of the SCL phenomena. Essay 1, entitled "Supply Chain Learning: An Exploratory Literature Review" examines the current literature in an attempt to address the shortcomings and emerge areas that have been less explored and less understood. By exposing these areas of research opportunities using a grounded theory methodology, a framework was emerged allowing identification of the limitations of extant literature and providing a springboard for future research. This framework also allowed further investigation into the SCL processes and expansion of the current understanding by providing academia with a comprehensive review of the literature and revealing the shortcomings that exist related to SCL. Using the framework emerged in Essay 1, Essay 2 entitled "Toward Supply Chain Learning: A Focus on the Customers of Logistics Service Providers" explores the rationalization and cognitive processes of senior level executives of firms utilizing national or global supply chains. These respondents are directly engaged in creating, establishing and operating relationships with third party logistics (3PL) providers within a functioning supply chain. By examining the relationships and processes from the point of view of customers of third party logistics providers, a unique perspective provides insight into these relationships. Using semi-structured interviews with these executives, grounded theory was once again used to emerge theory explaining the phenomena of SCL. In particular, this research examines the elements studied from the perspective of customers of third party logistics providers as they seek to develop new processes and solutions in hopes of obtaining a competitive advantage by adaptive learning with the help of their providers and trading partners. In …
Supply Chain Finance: Developing a Weighted Cash Conversion Cycle to Proxy Corporate Financial Performance: The objective of this three-essay dissertation are to develop a weighted cash conversion cycle (CCC_EVA) and empirically investigate its commensurability of corporate financial performance. Essay 1, titled "Supply Chain Finance: Developing a Weighted Cash Conversion Cycle to Proxy Operations Liquidity", presents the development and supporting empirical evidence of CCC_EVA measurability of operations liquidity. This essay shows the processes of scaling capital intensity and financing cost into time intervals captured by the traditional metric. Specifically, this essay investigates how accurately CCC_EVA indexes operations liquidity captured working capital, operational cash flow-to-modified working capital ratio, and quick ratio. The sample used in this essay consists of 4,333 firm-year observations of publicly traded industry classified firms listed on the U.S. exchange markets. The results of the empirical testing have statistically supported the essay hypotheses, that is CCC_EVA is a more accurate proxy of operations liquidity in comparison to the traditional metric (CCC_D). Essay 2, titled "Supply Chain Finance: Weighted Cash Conversion Cycle and Corporate Finance", expands the first essay findings by accounting for well-known financial measurements. Specifically, this essay examines the relations between CCC_EVA and operations liquidity and leverage, Market value, operating profitably and growth, and long-term asset management efficiency. This essay paper has used a sample of 24,127 firm-year observations of publicly traded firms listed on U.S. exchange markets from 1994 to 2016. The results support and extend the previous findings, that is CCC_EVA is a robust proxy of operations liquidity and can enhance its resiliency; maximize market value of corporate equity and debt; identify strategies to improve corporate profitability and credibility. Essay 3, titled "Supply Chain Finance: An Advanced Weighted Cash Conversion Cycle", advances the accuracy of CCC_EVA by differentiating between cash and credit forms of corporate sales and purchase transactions, and introducing operational cash flow into CCC_EVA. The advanced metric allows …
Creating Supply Chain Resilience with Information Communication Technology: Supply chain resilience refers to the capability of a supply chain to both withstand and adapt to unexpected disturbances. In today's turbulent business environment, firms are continually seeking to create more resilience within their supply chain through increased information communication technology use and enhanced business-to-business relationships. The focus of this dissertation is the investigation of how information communication technology creates resilience at the differing process levels of supply chain operations. Past research into information communication technology use within supply chains has often been conducted at the macro-level of supply chain phenomena. As such, there is still much to understand about how decision-makers interact with information communication technology at the micro-level of supply chain decision-making. A more in-depth, broad coverage of this interaction will provide both practitioners and academics a better understanding of how to leverage information communication technology in achieving supply chain resilience. To meet this aim, this dissertation contains three essays that re-orient conceptual thinking about supply chain phenomenon, explore how advances in information communication technology influence business-to-business relationships, and identify how information communication technology effects the decision-making of supply chain managers.
Impact of Relational Incongruity on Customer Ownership and Sales Outcome Performance: A Resource-Advantage Theory Approach: There exists heightened research attention afforded to the pivotal demands - both internal and external - that exist within the salesperson role set. Unprecedented pressures on salespersons to acquire, retain, and build enduring customer relationships to enhance the firm's bottom-line performance coincides with increasing complexities within the work environment. This relevant and timely research introduces an original construct derived from the long-standing attention afforded to relationship selling, relational incongruity that exists within the buyer-seller exchange. Relational incongruity, defined, is the relational tension spawned between the salesperson, the customer, and the firm when situational psychological incongruity exists within the buyer-seller exchange itself. Framed in resource-advantage theory, this research investigates divergent demands and the increasing complexity of sales relationships through the lens of relational incongruity. A research program based on minimizing relational incongruity will augment the sales management and B2B literature by looking at how he salesperson and the customer build strong relationships as well as the antecedents that can undermine these relationships by generating realtional incongruity.
Size Framing: Conceptualization and Applications in Consumer Behavior: Size information is vital in many consumer contexts, but currently, no central framework or conceptual model exists for a thorough understanding of the underlying process of how consumers interpret size information and form size judgments. Thus, the purpose of this three-paper dissertation is to introduce such a framework, discuss future research directions based on that framework, and pursue a few of these directions in the second and third papers, both of which focus on a vanity sizing context. The resulting work and findings illustrate the process through which consumers go in forming size judgments and collectively present both scholars and practitioners with a common basis for future study and implementation of findings in contexts in which size information is salient.
The Evolution of Brand Co-Creation: Models and Exploration of Stakeholders' Motivations: Co-creation is an emerging phenomenon that occurs when two or more parties work together to create value. Co-creation, which is a key component to service dominant logic, is present in business to business, business to consumer, and consumer to consumer processes. This dissertation will focus on the business to consumer (and consumer to business) co-creation relationship. Much of the current business to consumer co-creation literature is qualitative in nature, with quantitative work just now beginning to emerge. As such, there is still much about the phenomenon of co-creation that is not understood. When looking at co-creation in the context of brand management, even less is known. In today's age of digital interaction where consumers are gaining more power on a daily basis, practitioners and academics should understand the motivations for consumers to engage brands in co-creation and what the outcomes of these co-creation partnerships are. Because of this, the dissertation contains three essays with the purpose of (1) identifying the motivations for co-creation from consumer and brand perspectives, (2) exploring each of these motivators on their individual relationship to the outcome of co-creation, and (3) understanding how the perceived ability to influence a brand impacts the outcomes of co-creation. Essay 1, titled "Co-creation of brand identities: consumer and industry influence and motivations," aims to develop an understanding of the phenomena of co-creation and how the practice is used in shaping brand identities. Two studies are undertaken to provide insight into co-creation. First, a qualitative study is used to gain insight from key decision makers with responsibility for a brand. Second, a study of millennial consumers is used to develop the antecedents of consumer motivations of co-creation of brand identities. This essay then presents a comprehensive framework that encompasses two models (industry and consumer) of brand identity co-creation. Much of the …
Understanding Antecedents and Outcomes of Co-Creation in Service Innovation Setting: This dissertation uses service-dominant logic to understand customer value creation in service innovation context. Although co-creation became an interesting phenomenon among marketing scholars, the underlying mechanisms of co-creation process are still vague. To fill the gaps in the literature, we draw from S-D logic to understand antecedents and outcome of co-creation to service innovation context. The results of this study show that most of the hypotheses are supported, thus finding support for the overall model of value co-creation.
Framework to Evaluate Entropy Based Data Fusion Methods in Supply Chain Management: This dissertation explores data fusion methodology to deduce an overall inference from the data gathered from multiple heterogeneous sources. Typically, if there existed a data source in which the data were reliable and unbiased, then data fusion would not be necessary. Data fusion methodology combines data form multiple diverse sources so that the desired information - such as the population mean - is improved despite redundancies, inaccuracies, biases, and inflated variability in the data. Examples of data fusion include estimating average demand from similar sources, and integrating fatality counts from different media sources after a catastrophe. The approach in this study combines "inputs" from distinct sources so that the information is "fused." Another way of describing this process is "data integration." Important assumptions are 1. Several sources provide "inputs" for information used to estimate parameters of a probability distribution. 2. Since distributions for the data from the sources are heterogeneous, some sources are less reliable. 3. Distortions, bias, censorship, and systematic errors may be more prominent in data from certain sources. 4. The sample size of sources data, number of "inputs," may be very small. Examples of information from multiple sources are abundant: traffic information from sensors at intersections, multiple economic indicators from various sources, demand data for product using similar retail stores as sources, polling data from various sources, and disaster count of fatalities from different media sources after a catastrophic event. This dissertation seeks to address a gap in the operations literature by addressing three research questions regarding entropy base data fusion (EBDF) approaches to estimation. Three separate, but unifying, essays address the research questions for this dissertation. Essay 1 provides an overview of supporting literature for the research questions. A numerical analysis of airline maximum wait time data illustrates the underlying issues involved in EBDF methods. This …
Goodbye Seems to be the Hardest Word: Investigating Why, When, and How to Delete Brands: Branding dates back to centuries ago when traders were trying to distinguish their products from others in order to promise a higher quality to their consumers. Today, brands are considered as intangible resources that can have a significant contribution to the firm performance. Based on the Resource-Based Theory (RBT), valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable brands are strategic resources that create superior value and play a key role in achieving a sustainable competitive advantage over rivals. In the process of developing and maintaining strong brands, brand managers constantly need to make multiple decisions. Whether to add, delete or retail brands are among the routine decisions that brand managers face in managing their brand portfolios. Brand managers need to regularly assess their brand portfolios in order to make sure they are not selling redundant brands. Through brand portfolio assessment, brand managers can recognize weak brands and delete the unprofitable brands from the portfolio in order to free up resources and reinvest them in their stronger and more successful brands to gain competitive advantage in the market. This admonition is in line with the RBT of competitive advantage. This dissertation builds upon and extends previous literature on RBT in the context of brand deletion to achieve three main objectives. The first objective is to find the answer to why companies decide to delete brands from their portfolios. Thus, the focus of the first objective is to identify the organizational (i.e., firm, managerial, and brand) factors that drive the brand deletion strategy in a company. The second goal is to find the answer to the when question through identifying the environmental (i.e., market) factors associated with brand deletion decision making in a company. Finally, the third objective is to go deeper and investigate the different types of brand deletion strategy (i.e., merge, sell, milk, …
Brand Management Capability and Brand Performance: Brands are intangible assets that provide companies with the potential to extract higher rents or prices from customers. However, only few organizations are able to build and sustain brands over a long period of time. Brand management capability - the organization's ability to build and sustain brands becomes important for achieving sustainable competitive advantage. Despite the importance of brand management capability to organizations, majority of the brand management literature has primarily focused on the consumer perspective of brands. This gap in knowledge about the components of brand management capability impedes firms from replicating brand successes, and makes them reliant on brand managers. More recently, there have been multiple calls in literature to identify marketing-related organizational capabilities, which can provide organizations with a sustainable competitive advantage. The focus on developing marketing-based capabilities comes at a time when marketing is losing its influence in organizations. To this end, the current dissertation uses organizational capability theory and literature on brand management to identify the primary resource (intellectual capital comprising of structural, human, and relational capital), organizational culture type (clan, adhocracy, hierarchy, and market), and processes (strategic brand management, internal branding, and market information processes comprising of information acquisition, information transmission, conceptual utilization, and instrument utilization), that constitute the brand management capability. This dissertation also examines the association among various components of brand management capability and brand performance. A survey-based technique was used to gather data from individuals responsible for managing brands. The data was analyzed using PLS-SEM. The results indicate that human capital, relational capital, market and hierarchy culture types, internal branding, strategic brand management, and instrument utilization are positively associated with brand performance. Structural capital, clan and adhocracy culture types, information acquisition, information transmission, and conceptual utilization are not associated with brand performance. From a research standpoint, this dissertation contributes to the …
Lifecycle Affordability Decisions: SpaceX as aerospace manufacturer and space transport service technology company work along to make reusable rockets, their long term plan is to make spaceflight affordable routine. Elon Musk, as CEO, is involved in every step of decision making as he has mentioned in interviews. The rocket's engine has undergone a number of improvements, and to increase its efficiency and power, a number of parts has been reduced. The redesigning process involves several decisions, such as in-house or out-source production. This research provides a practical framework for contractors, suppliers, and manufacturers to build a more reliable, affordable, and low cost supply chain. As a result, the objective of my dissertation is to explore how managers can extend the useful life of their assets and reduce their total cost of ownership. The main research focus for this dissertation is lifecycle affordability (LCA) for capital intensive products when post production costs are significantly higher than production costs. Lifecycle cost is often not considered by firms in a product, service or asset when making acquisition decisions. Firm's acquisition are mainly based on the initial cost of the product. Decision making without considering the entire lifecycle cost of a product impacts the firm's profitability, revenue, pricing strategies, and competitiveness. Evaluating the trade-offs between all the costs involved in the product lifecycle can help firms to have an estimation of costs before making any acquisition decisions. To address these challenges, lifecycle affordability (LCA) considerations can enable firms to focus their decisions on their long-term investment process rather than trying to save on initial cost of purchasing a product. This dissertation presents the following research question: how has lifecycle affordability been represented in supply chain research to date? And what are constructs of lifecycle affordability? To address this research question, the dissertation is comprised of three separate …
Can Imagination Travel the Distance? Investigating the Role of Psychological Distance and Construal Level in Consumers' Elaborative Approach: Much of consumer behavior research focuses on how consumers process and evaluate information to make current decision. In contrast, many consumer choices ares are underpinned by the need to make choices that incorporate the past or future, other places, other people and other situations that are seemingly hypothetical. The imagination provides the chief means by which consumers are able to traverse this psychological distance. Construal Level Theory (CLT) explains how individuals are able to plan for the future, consider the perspective of another individual and even consider situations that are counter to reality. Construal mindsets are enacted when people form mental representations of distant objects, people, or places. In abstract construal mindsets, individuals think generally, in terms of global features of an object, person, or situation. On the other hand, concrete construal mindsets center around the detailed aspects of an object, person, or situation. These two different construal mindsets serve to help people cope with the uncertainty of the future. This is because abstract cosntruals are more likely than concrete construals to remain unchanged as distance from a future object, person, or place reduces. A number of consumer behavior settings require the use of the imagination. Sticking to a weight loss and or fitness plan, planning a vacation trip, saving for retirement and imagining what birthday gift a friend will enjoy all require imagining a psychologically distant state. Marketers generally seek to stimulate consumption by requiring consumers to imagine a consumption setting. This dissertation uses CLT to guide the hypotheses, as CLT explains how individuals deal with psychological distance by adopting a construal mindset. CLT explains differences in information processing associated with adopting a specific construal mindset and suggests how construal mindsets impact consumer information elaboration processes. This study will contribute to CLT by addressing an understudied be related area: …
Community-Based Logistics and Supply Chain Management: Developing, Testing and Validating Conceptual Models: The field of Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LSCM) suggests that transactions, collaboration, and value are important in the supply and delivery of products and services to meet the need of impoverished end-consumers. In many cases, the application of LSCM is paramount in most strategic decision-making efforts. Therefore, this research explores the applications of LSCM processes and activities within the community-based context. The methodology used to address the research questions consisted of a hybrid of mixed methods. This mixed methodology provides three essays that investigate the application and development of LSCM in the community-based context. The essays address the flow of charitable products and services through supply chains. The dissertation does not pay close attention to the first-tier suppliers’ suppliers, which is looking at the originating flow of goods and services (raw materials, manufacturing, etc.). However, the dissertation puts a focus on products and services supplied to focal organizations and how these products are then passed on to end-consumers. Essay I looks at the transaction (costs) that ensue from the supply of charitable products. Essay II analyzes a social service ecosystem and investigates how the network of organizations enable the distribution of charitable products and services. Lastly, Essay III examines the delivery of valuable services to the end-consumers, and what tools Community-Based Enterprises (CBEs) should focus on to develop and retain end-consumers in impoverished communities. The research provides conceptual models that review some fundamental LSCM achievement gaps in supplying, delivering and providing social services to end users within impoverished communities. The dissertation draws upon literature from the fields of economics, marketing, social science, and logistics and supply chain management. The dissertation uses the primary research method of unstructured and semi-structured interviews, case studies, written survey instruments and system dynamics within three studies. The studies resolve to look into the term …
Using Your Imagination to Pursue Goals: Diminishing the Effects of Visceral Temptations: Consumers consistently set goals for themselves. Despite good intentions, consumers often deviate from their goals. If consumers understand the benefits that arise from goal success, then why do most consumers fail to accomplish goals? Often, temptations are more appealing than achievement of goals; temptations are tangible while the benefits of a goal are difficult to grasp. An individual who uses his/her imagination to visualize goal success makes the goal more present-minded and attainable (Oettingen 2000). Thus, imagination facilitates self-efficacy, the belief in one’s ability to reach a goal. Higher self-efficacy, then, provides an individual with the willpower to achieve a goal (Taylor, Pham, Rivkin, and Armor 1998). Whereas previous work has examined temptations’ relationship with goals (e.g. Fedorikhin and Patrick 2010; Wilcox, Vallen, Block, and Fitzsimons 2009; Zhang, Huang, and Broniarczyk 2010; etc.), the scope of this dissertation study differs. Rather, the research aim is to identify how consumers can overcome visceral temptations. Thus, the main objectives include: contributing new perspectives on goal research by merging the literatures on imagination and visceral cues, outlining how imagination regulates the impact of visceral temptations, and identifying the underlying mechanism that explains how imagination regulates the relationship between visceral cues and ad-evoked thoughts, through self-efficacy.
Intellectual Capital (IC) and Customer Value in a Retailing Context: Intellectual Capital (IC) is the intellectual capability of an organization; it drives the usage of other productive resources and adds value to the business structure. Although the expanding literature on IC has enhanced our understanding, the effects of IC with relation to consumers have not been explored in the marketing literature. Thus, this study fills this void by approaching the notion of IC from a customer perspective. Customer value also has attracted extensive attention in recent years. However, the lack of agreement among scholars with respect to the conceptualization of customer value has resulted in inconsistent empirical measures. Furthermore, despite extensive research focus on IC and customer value separately, there is a void in the literature as far as investigating the relationship between the two is concerned. Thus, this study also empirically investigates the predictive relationships among the various dimensions of IC and perceived customer value. This dissertation delineates three dimensions of IC (i.e., Human Capital, Structural Capital, and Relational Capital) available to a retail store in creating value for customers. This study tests the psychometric properties of scale items for measuring these three resources in an apparel retailing context. It also tests the effects of IC on customer value using both a student sample and a consumer sample. This study makes several important contributions to the literature and has the potential to improve marketing practices. First, this study revisits the conceptualization of IC in relation to consumer’s perception and to value creation in an apparel retailing context. Second, this study investigates the multidimensional nature of IC and the relative influence of different dimensions on customer value. Lastly, marketing practitioners and retail managers can learn, based on these results, that the types of resources and their utilization affect the perception by consumers of the value of retail stores.
The Impact of Cloud Based Supply Chain Management on Supply Chain Resilience: On March 2011 a destructive 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami along with nuclear explosions struck northeastern Japan; killing thousands of people, halting industry and crippling infrastructure. A large manufacturing company operating outside of Japan received the news in the middle of the night. Within a few hours of the tsunami hitting Japan, this manufacturer’s logistics team ran global materials management reports to communicate the precise status of the products originating from Japan to their entire global network of facilities. With this quick and far reaching communication the manufacturer was able to launch a successful contingency plan. Alternative suppliers, already existing as part of their global network, were evaluated and used to mitigate Japan’s disruptive impact. The resiliency of this manufacturer’s trusted network of supply chain trading partners allowed for minimum disruptions, saving countless money and maintaining continuity for its end-to-end supply chain. This manufacturer was part of a cloud-based supply chain that provided the catalyst to quickly shift its resources to allay the impact of no longer being able to receive product from Japan. Today's supply chains are global and complex networks of enterprises that aim to deliver products in the right quantity, in the right place, and at the right time in an increasingly volatile and unpredictable environment. To cope with internal and external supply chain instability and disruptions, supply chains need to be resilient to survive. A supply chain's ability to collaboratively share information with its supply chain partners is one of the most important factors that enhance a supply chain’s resilience. Cloud based supply chain management (SCM) creates a platform that enables collaborative information sharing that helps to identify, monitor and reduce supply chain risks, vulnerabilities and disruptions. However, supply chain academics and practitioners are at its infancy in understanding the capabilities of cloud based supply chains and …
Internal and External Drivers of Consumers’ Product Return Behaviors: Product return is a necessary part of the exchange process between companies and customers. It accounts for approximately 16% of total sales and a reduction in retailer / manufacturer profits by 3.8% on average. However, industry data also indicates that a significant portion of products are returned for reasons other than product failure – e.g., change of mind, found a lower price elsewhere, or fraudulent and unethical reasons. Consequently, many firms (e.g., REI) have altered their generous return policies to protect their profits. However, it’s been found that the restricted return policy could also reduce customer satisfaction, increase the perceived risk, and thus negatively affect customers’ loyalty towards a particular store or firm. Thus having a restrictive return policy does not help either. Extant literature mainly focuses on return policies. Little attention has been devoted to the product return behavior itself, thus missing the consumer’s perspective. This study, therefore, focuses on understanding consumers’ return behaviors, including different types of return behaviors, and the drivers and consequences of these different return behaviors. Towards this goal, this study first categorizes all possible types of consumers’ return behaviors into two broad categories - legitimate return behaviors and opportunistic return behaviors. Second, both internal (i.e., variety seeking, impulsiveness, perceived uniqueness, materialism, level of morality, and self-monitoring) and external drivers (i.e., product compatibility, returning cost, perceived risk, complexity of procedure, and social group influence) of consumers’ product return behaviors are identified. Third, the relationship between these drivers of return behavior and the type of return behavior are examined. Finally, the influence of these two different types of return behaviors on consumer’s re-patronage intention is examined. This study uses a survey method to collect data in two phases - pilot phase and main study. In the pilot phase, data were collected from students and used to …
Belief Transfers in Co-branding and Brand Extension and the Roles of Perceptual Fit: Existing co-branding and brand extension research generally coalesces around two important constructs: perceptual fit and attitude toward the brand. Studies in co-branding and brand extension to date have generally emphasized the transference of affective elements of attitude from parent brand to the extension. Researchers and practitioners clearly need to learn more about the transfer of belief, the cognitive elements of attitude. Too little is currently known about whether and how beliefs are actually transferred in co-branding and brand extension applications, particularly in terms of perceptual fit. This dissertation investigates belief transfer and the effect of perceptual fit on belief transfer in co-branding and brand extension scenarios and develops answers to the following research questions: 1.Are different categories of beliefs transferable from parent brand to theextension? 2.How do various sub-dimensions of perceptual fit affect belief transfers fromparent brands to the extension? 3.How do different categories of beliefs affect consumers’ intentions to purchasethe extension products? Categorization Theory was used as the fundamental theory to build the hypotheses. This dissertation involved qualitative studies, belief scale development, and experimental design studies. The results revealed that aesthetic and functional beliefs are positively transferred from parent brand to the extension. The transfer of aesthetic beliefs is affected by the level of brand fit while the transfer of functional beliefs is independent upon the level of any perceptual fit construct. Finally, cognitive structure based on the strength of extension beliefs is more predictive upon the purchase intention. Findings will extend the co-branding and brand extension literature, especially in terms of the pattern of belief transfers that unfold subject to the influence of various perceptual fit constructs. The results will also provide additional insights about the role that perceptual fit plays in influencing categories of consumer beliefs as those beliefs are also influenced by the specific perceptual fits …
The Impact of End-user Decision-making in the Supply of Public Transportation: Efficient public transportation provides economic and social opportunities that increase accessibility to markets and employment as well as providing investment benefits. Key challenges to the U.S. public transportation industry include developing modes and increasing the availability of public transportation in a manner that meets the needs of individual users in a cost effective manner. A problem facing public transportation officials is the need to understand the factors that influence consumer decision-making and consumer attitudes toward public transportation. Feedback regarding experiences as well as expectations from commuters provides information for developing and improving public transportation. Thus, decision-making factors of end-users are keys to improving supply, growth, and understanding utilization of public transportation. Public transportation officials seek to improve the public transportation experience for commuters by increasing modes and benefits of the systems. The decision-making factors of the end-users require identification and examination in order to provide a high quality and efficient experience for commuters. The research questions of interest in the current dissertation are: (1) What are the decision-making factors affecting commuters’ attitudes toward public transportation? and (2) How do the end-user decision-making factors affect the supply of public transportation? The purpose of this research is to extend the current body of knowledge about decision-making factors by developing and testing a new theoretical model to measure the attitudes of public transportation end-users. This study has its theoretical foundation in the theory of planned behavior, theory of reasoned action, and rational choice theory. To understand how public transportation is affected by decision-making factors, it is necessary to analyze the relationships among the decision factors and attitudes. The findings of this study contribute by building theory and having implications for practice. This study employs a mixed methodology of qualitative and quantitative research. More specifically, the development of a framework and testing of that …
Co-Creating Value in Video Games: The Impact of Gender Identity and Motivations on Video Game Engagement and Purchase Intentions: When games were first developed for in-home use, they were primarily targeted almost exclusively at children and males. However, today’s marketplace manifests a more diverse population plays Internet-enabled games that can be played virtually anywhere. The average gamer is now 30 years old. Many gamers, obviously, are much older. Yet more strikingly, and more germane to this study’s purpose, 47% of the U.S. gamer population is female, as compared to 40% in 2010. Despite these trends the gaming industry remains a male-dominated culture. The marketer’s job is to facilitate game engagement and to motivate gamers to play. The notion of “engagement” is not new in business. The term was developed in the last decade. Many studies were devoted to understand, explain, and define the term. It suggests that within interactive, dynamic business environments, consumer engagement (CE) represents a strategic position that companies can use to enhance their sales growth, competitive advantage, and profitability. Moreover, there are three levels of engagement in any experiential consumption (i.e., playing video game): presence, flow, and psychological absorption. The findings of this study affirm that consumer engagement, including presence, flow and psychological absorption are explanatory factors that impact gamer’s purchase intentions. Our results show that consumers experience different mental engagement in an interactive environment (i.e., playing video games) compared to passive environments (i.e., visiting a website). These findings change our understanding of consumers’ engagement and flow state. We also found that male and female gamers experience different engagement level. However, we did not find a significant result that masculinity and femininity traits impact gamers’ engagement or intention. We argue that macroeconomic factors results in sales fluctuation may have resulted in reject in this hypothesis. Thus, marketers shed a light into the consumer’s interactive environment and flow states in that environments. Consumers not only determine the …
Resource Utilization of Salespeople and Prospecting Performance: Every day, salespeople span boundaries, coordinate internal and external expertise, leverage social capital, mobilize the tangible and intangible resources of their firm, and try to create value for all stakeholders. Recognizing the important roles of salespeople, Evans et al. (2012) and Lassk et al. (2012) call for more research on the usage of skills, knowledge, people, strategies, expertise, and other resources of salespeople to produce the desired outcomes. Responding to their calls, this study specifically focuses on how salespeople utilize their available and finite resources across four types of customers (new customers, short term customers, long term customers, and win-back customers) to identify and qualify new sales opportunities during the prospecting stage. The dissertation focuses on seven types of resources (capturing both internal and firm related resources) available for salespeople: (1) firm tangible, (2) firm intangible, (3) firm market based, (4) present resources, (5) skills, (6) knowledge, and (7) accumulated successes. The study further explores the moderating roles of organizational identification, competitive intensity, and customer dependence on the relationship between resources utilized and performance during the prospecting stage. The resource utilization scale is developed and tested for robustness. Next, using a final dataset of 346 responses from salespeople, the results reveal that salespeople adaptively utilized various resources across new customers, short-term customers, long-term customers, and win-back (lost) customers. Overall, performance during prospecting stage are more strongly influenced by utilization of internal resources (presence, knowledge, skills and success) than firm related factors. Further, successful prospecting performance requires the usage of skills and knowledge resources with new customers, only skills resources with short-term and long-term customers, but present resources, knowledge, and firm tangible resources with win-back customers. In addition, organizational identification and competitive intensity moderate the relationship between resource utilization and prospecting performance for all customer types, whereas customer dependence is an …
Investigating E-servicescape, Trust, E-WOM, and Customer Loyalty: Old Spice cleverly used a handsome actor to play the Old Spice Man character for a Super Bowl commercial in 2010. After the game, this Old Spice commercial was viewed more than 13 million times on YouTube, a social media video-sharing site. This viral marketing campaign, also known as electronic word-of-mouth (E-WOM), propelled the Old Spice brand into the forefront of consumers’ minds, increased brand awareness, and inspired people to share the video links with their family, friends, and co-workers. The rapid growth of E-WOM is an indication of consumers’ increased willingness to convey marketing messages to others. However, despite this development, marketing academics and practitioners do not fully understand this powerful form of marketing. This dissertation enriches our understanding of E-WOM and how e-servicescape may lead to E-WOM. To that end, stimulus-organism-response theory and the network co-production model of E-WOM are applied to investigate the relationships between e-servicescape, trust, E-WOM intentions, customer loyalty, and purchase intentions. Two forms of E-WOM were examined, namely emails and social network postings. E-servicescape is defined as the online environmental factors of a marketer’s website. E-servicescape is composed of three main dimensions, including aesthetic appeal, financial security, and layout and functionality. This study used cross-sectional customer data from a single e-tailer. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the responses. Customer reviews was added as an additional sub-dimension of e-servicescape. The findings suggest e-servicescape positively impacts trust, which in turn positively influences E-WOM and customer loyalty. Moreover, two groups of customers were compared using multi-group analysis, where one group of users received emails and the other group received social network postings from the same e-tailer. Overall, the results indicated emails had a stronger impact on e-servicescape, E-WOM, and customer loyalty. Social networking site postings had slightly greater influence on trust, and two sub-dimensions of …
Creating Value by Enhancing Innovative Capability: the Role of Absorptive Capacity and Institutional Framework: Innovations as a source of economic wellbeing and social prosperity has been well researched, albeit primarily done in the context of developed economies. However, of late, interest in the effect of innovation on economic performance and quality of life has been renewed as the world observes the rise of emerging economies, and at the same time, the prolonged recession in the more developed economies (i.e. North America and European countries). There has been a marked increase in the quantity and quality of research and development, spawn by innovative companies from emerging economies that are making their mark in global marketplace. These phenomena challenge the traditional concept that innovation flows from the resource rich developed countries to less developed countries, and that the latter are at a disadvantage in terms of knowledge, technology and competitiveness. Existing studies on national innovation highlight the relationships between innovative capability and its outcomes; however, few have tried to explain the determinants of a nation’s innovative capabilities. Using a sample of 95 countries and panel data analysis covering 28 years of observation, this study attempts to model the determinants of innovative capability at national level, and focuses on absorptive capacity and institutional framework as the main determinants of innovative capability. Further, this study identifies different aspects of absorptive capacity: creation and exploitation of innovation. Findings offer support on the importance of various sources of external knowledge in the creation of innovation, with FDI inflow and High Technology Export as the strongest sources. Corruption as institutional factor has negative effect on innovative capability, whereas openness shows no effect. National absorptive capacity moderates the effect of external knowledge on innovative capability, except on FDI outflow in which a negative effect on trademark application as a measure of innovative capability. The findings suggest that innovative capability and moderating role …
Dining at Ethnic-themed Restaurants: an Investigation of Consumers' Ethnic Experiences, Preference Formation, and Patronage: Given unprecedented shifts in the U.S. demography marked by rapid growth in Hispanic, Asian and other ethnic market segments, marketing scholars and practitioners are confronting ways to cultivate ethnic consumers' brand preference formation, retail patronage and their ensuring consumption choices. Food is cited as a common signifier for consumers’ ethnic/cultural identity because food itself is a cultural symbol. However, little research has examined the influences of ethnic identities on consumers’ patronage behaviors of ethnic-themed restaurants. Thus, this dissertation critically explores the impact of ethnic identity and motivational factors to better understand consumers' choices of ethnic-themed restaurants with a mix-method approach. The present research investigates how ethnic identity and consumers’ need for uniqueness interplay with perceived authenticity in consumers’ patronage intention of ethnic-themed restaurants. The findings advocate the interplay among ethnic identity, consumers’ need for uniqueness, and perceived authenticity of general consumers in decision making choices of patronizing ethnic-themed restaurants. The findings have important implications for market segmentation guiding the owners of ethnic-themed restaurant the choice of environmental cues to encourage patronage intentions among general consumers. Furthermore, this study provides additional insights about motivating factors affecting decision making of patronizing ethnic-themed restaurants and contributes to the stream of research by enhancing understanding of marketing ethnic-themed restaurant in a multi-cultural society.
Phantom Menace: the Effect of Narcissism on Word-of-mouth Communications: Previous empirical research and anecdotal accounts suggest that “subclinical narcissism” or “average Joe’s narcissism” is one of the most prevalent social phenomena in many parts of the world. Research also suggests that there will be an unprecedented escalation “in average Joe narcissists” among future generations of consumers. The objective of this study is two-fold. The first objective of this study is to explore the moderating effect of the individual’s level of narcissistic personality on their word-of-mouth (WOM) communications. The second objective of this study is to explore the boundary conditions of the first objective. The data were collected from a large number of consumers through Amazon Mechanical Turk. The results support many of the hypotheses accordant with the characteristics of the subclinical narcissistic individual. Specifically, the moderating effect of an individual’s level of narcissistic personality trait on the decision to engage in different types of WOM communications varies across the tested contexts. This study is intended to respond to social scientists' recent call for studies that investigate the fundamental motives behind the individual’s propensity to engage in WOM communication as a function of individual characteristics. The results of this study provide some prescriptive guidance to help companies target appropriate consumers to increase the effectiveness of WOM communication. In addition, this study explores the effect of individual and contextual differences on consumers’ willingness to engage in different types of WOM communication.
A Scientometric Analysis of a Marketing Theoretician: “Good Will Hunting”: Albert Einstein notably asserted that “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” Cast against the backdrop of Einstein’s assertion, the present research critically examines the enduring yet unresolved controversy regarding marketing as a science. Consider that the marketing discipline is nearing its first-century of inception, the Journal of Marketing is approaching its eighth decade of publication, and yet marketing academicians still debate the epistemology of marketing itself. Virtually all theories in marketing are adaptations of theory-development from other social science disciplines. The overarching research mission is to critically review a body of marketing theory using a meta-analytic approach to illuminate gaps in the epistemic foundations of marketing knowledge development. Grounded in the theory of composition, an entire body of Shelby D. Hunt's marketing literature – more than 130 effects encapsulating five of the most widely-cited marketing theoretical streams to date – is critically evaluated. Using scientometric analyses, the impact factors, citation indices, and the domain of references across the allied behavioral science literatures are empirically assessed. An epistemic inquiry to the marketing discipline is the only way that a discipline may be viewed as a science, and its importance lies in this being the way for a discipline to advance in theory and practice. Second, this study seeks to identify a body of theoretical development emanating from the marketing discipline that has been proffered by a single academician. The research aspiration was to potentially link the theoretician to the epistemic process in the marketing discipline. Toward this end, this dissertation empirically explored the impact of three marketing scholars who have the highest number of publications in the Journal of Marketing and compared their scientometric indexes …
Nonprofit Advertising and Behavioral Intention: the Effects of Persuasive Messages on Donation and Volunteerism: Nonprofit organizations are dependent on donations and volunteers to remain operational. Most rely on persuasive communications to inform, educate, and convince recipients of their messaging to respond in order to raise funds and generate volunteers. Though the marketing and psychology literature has examined charitable giving and volunteerism, the effectiveness of persuasive messages to affect philanthropy, gift-giving, and fundraising is a gap in the cause marketing literature (Dann et al. 2007). Because consumers rarely enter a situation without preexisting attitudes or beliefs, it is expected that individuals exposed to an advertisement by a nonprofit organization will look for ways to compare the messages within the ad to their own beliefs and attitudes. Two theories help explain the processing that takes place in relation to attitudes, beliefs, and persuasive communications – elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The research presented here combines these theories to answer questions regarding behavioral intention related to donating and volunteering when individuals are exposed to certain persuasive messages from a nonprofit organization. Results show that one’s involvement with the advertisement combines with one’s attitude toward donating to help determine propensity to donate and the amount of the donation. However, this is dependent upon the message in the ad. When messages indicate that others are supportive of the cause, donations increase when one is more involved with the ad and is generally agreeable to donating. But these messages have the opposite effect when one is not involved with the ad – donations decrease when the message indicates others support the cause. And when messages indicate that even a minimal donation is possible, the attitude driver has no effect on donation behavior. However, when involvement is low, one’s age plays a role in driving individuals toward action, with older people more driven to give …
No-thought Shopping: Understanding and Controlling Nonconscious Processing in Marketing: This dissertation explores how nonconscious thought processing might be affected and activated in ways that influence consumer decision making. To activate nonconscious thought processes, this dissertation relies on priming—the unobtrusive activation of mental representations by stimuli in a social context, which occurs without participants' conscious awareness. Three dimensions of consumer decision making are investigated: purchase intention, product evaluation and arousal. The dissertation is based on the auto-motive model of nonconscious goal pursuit and somatic marker hypothesis. The dissertation is driven by three experiments, which respectively explore crucial areas in priming effects and addresses the following research question: can primes be shaped or controlled by marketers? Specifically, the dissertation examines whether shopping behavior can be primed. Second, the dissertation also examines how facial primes displaying basic emotions (happiness, anger, contempt, disgust, fear, sadness, and surprise) can prime emotion and arousal. Finally the dissertation examines the effect of the interaction of the buying prime with the primes of faces displaying basic emotions on the dependent variables of purchase intention, product evaluation, emotion, and arousal. Results from three experimental studies show that shopping behavior can be primed, and primed participants will exhibit higher product evaluation than those exposed to a control prime. Second while exposing participants to primes of faces displaying emotions did not elicit those emotions, the priming with faces did reveal a marginal activation of arousal in the participants. Third priming with faces was not found to interact with primed buying behavior such that the interaction would affect the level of arousal. The results indicate that Bargh's auto-motive model of nonconscious goal pursuit can be applied to marketing. Thus priming shopping behavior can affect product evaluation though the effect of this prime appears to be too weak to be applied in the field. Priming with faces was found not to interact …
Regulatory Orientation, Message Framing and Influences of Fit on Customer Behaviors: Existing literature on consumer behavior has argued that an individual’s regulatory orientation interacts with message framing. If there is a match between regulatory orientation (promotion versus prevention) and message framing, this results in positive attitudes toward a given advertisement. Conversely, if there is a mismatch, the effect is opposite, i.e., attitudes toward that advertisement are less positive and less favorable. This research extends the term of compatibility by examining how regulatory focus moderates the impact of two aspects of message framing (attribute framing and risky choice framing) on customer perceptions. It also examines whether regulatory fit is created when there are interactions between individuals’ regulatory orientation and message framing and how the fit changes customer perceptions about a message. Specifically, this dissertation provides answers to the following questions: (1) does regulatory fit take place when regulatory focus is compatible with two aspects of message framing (attribute and risky choice)?; (2) does regulatory fit take place when one aspect of message framing (attribute) is compatible with the other (risky choice)?; and (3) how do customer perceptions change if customers experience regulatory fit? The results show that the effects of utilitarian attributes and national brands are dominating and that both promotion- and prevention-oriented customers have higher perceptions of these attributes and brands. The findings of this study have both theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, this study should enhance our understanding of regulatory focus theory. Practically, the results should provide marketers with more insights into the correlation between message framing and regulatory orientation and the effect of fit on message persuasion, enabling them to develop more effective marketing strategies.
The Quest for Perfect Appearance: an Examination of the Role of Objective Self-awareness Theory and Emotions: Quality of appearance is important in nature and individuals have a basic need to establish the normality of appearance to confirm their acceptability to others. In daily inter-relationships of the same species, for instance, normal-appearing members of a species group reject or kill other members who appear abnormal. In human society, appearance is considered as one of the most direct sources of information about other people, and unattractiveness is often accompanied by negative judgments, which can cause emotional distress and isolation. Accordingly, humans tend to pay great attention to their personal appearance and make improvements to enhance their self-representations. The growth of the beauty and cosmetic surgery industries is an indication of an increasing willingness to enhance physical appearance. However, despite the growing demand for cosmetic procedures, the consumer research literature on this topic is extremely sparse. In fact, little is known about the attitudinal and motivational drivers that facilitate undergoing such procedures. This dissertation enriches our understanding of factors that affect consumers’ motivation to pursue cosmetic procedures and examines the role of emotions in such decisions. To that end, objective self-awareness (OSA) theory is applied and the interplay between the state of public OSA, beauty standards, and self-conscious emotions of shame and pride is explored. The results of two experimental studies indicate that access to beauty standards coupled with the state of public OSA generates self-standard comparison thoughts that may yield self-standard discrepancies. Negative emotions experienced due to such discrepancies move individuals into a self-regulatory cycle with the purpose of discrepancy reduction and impact their motivation to undergo cosmetic procedures. Pride and shame, two central self-conscious emotions, influence self-regulatory strategies and differently impact the approach to discrepancy reduction. These findings contribute to the research advocating the role of emotions in decision making and provide more insights about self-conscious emotions …
Consumer Perception of Brand Equity Measurement: a New Scale: Brand equity is perhaps the most important marketing concept in both academia and practice. The term came into use during the late 1980s; and the importance of conceptualizing, measuring, and managing brand equity has grown rapidly in the eyes of practitioners and academics alike. This has resulted in several often-divergent view-points on the dimensions of brand equity, the factors that influence it, the perspectives from which it should be studied, and the ways to measure it. Many different definitions and ways to measure brand equity have been proposed, and most of them are based upon the definition: the added value with which a given brand endows a product. The two most influential conceptualizations of brand equity are Aaker and Keller. Aaker defines brand equity as a set of brand assets and liabilities linked to a brand, its name and symbol, that add to or subtract from the value provided by a product or service to a firm and/or to that firm’s customers. Keller defines consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. Currently, all research on brand equity has used the same conceptualization of the construct based on previously determined dimensions with no attempt to argue their validity. Given the importance of the concept of brand equity in marketing, as well as the need for the measurement of brand equity, the literature lacks an empirically based consumer-perceived brand equity scale. Since the brand is the consumer’s idea, the consumer is an active participant in the creation of equity for the brand. So if we want to understand and manage the intangible equity directly, we have to have the consumer’s help. This dissertation enriches and strengthens the current knowledge on brand equity by developing a new conceptualization and scale …
"I Speak, Therefore I Am:" Identity and Self-Construction as Motivation to Engage in Electronic Word of Mouth: To paraphrase an old bromide, "you are what you consume." Consumers derive their sense of self through products, brands, performances and a host of other meaning-laden materials that they consume. The marketing literature has long recognized possessions as an extension of the self-concept. Although hundreds of studies have examined the linkage between consumption and the self, surprisingly few have examined a related phenomenon - the relationship between the self-concept and word of mouth (WOM). A handful of studies have demonstrated the use of WOM to enhance the consumer's self-image, but most extant research focuses on how the act of engaging in WOM is used to build the self-concept. To date there has not been an extensive examination of the process by which WOM transfers the meaning of a product, brand, advertisement or narrative from one consumer to another as part of identity construction. This dissertation attempts to answer the following research questions: 1. Do self-concept and identity motivate consumers to engage in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM)? 2. Is there a conceptual model to represent the effects of message characteristics, product/brand characteristics and individual personality differences on the self-enhancement value of eWOM and resulting eWOM behaviors? A conceptual model was proposed and, using an experimental research design, hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results suggest that self-concept and identity indeed motivate consumers to engage in eWOM, and a number of brand and message traits comprise eWOM's self-enhancement value. This dissertation both contributes to the theoretical understanding of eWOM and assists managers in developing marketing strategy. The use of WOM for identity construction remains an understudied area in marketing when compared to the consumption of products as self-expression. This research provides suggestions for practitioners in harnessing the potential of eWOM as a marketing strategy through message development and targeting of …
Developing an Integrated Supply Chain Costing Approach for Strategic Decision Making: The supply chain management discipline suggests that information sharing is paramount when attempting to achieve cost reductions and quality improvements. In many cases, the traditional accounting data used to support strategic decisions reflect inaccurate supply chain costs. This research explores the applications of managerial costing techniques, and how they can be used to improve the decision making capabilities of firms in the aerospace and transportation industries. The methodology used to address the research questions consisted of a hybrid of the grounded theory and multiple-case study methods. The objective of this research was to present the antecedents and barriers associated with implementing supply chain costing, and the impact that costing approaches have on strategic decision making. The research identifies a theoretical model that can be used to explain the relationships and themes associated with supply chain costing and strategic decision making. Evidence suggests that there is some movement to implement managerial accounting techniques within these two industries to capture supply chain costing information. However, the reliance on traditional financial accounting suggests that the overarching principles of supply chain management and information sharing amongst of partner firms has yet to be realized.
An Assessment of Consumers' Willingness to Patronize Foreign-Based Business Format Franchises: An Investigation in the Fast-Food Sector: This study aimed to address consumers' stereotypical categorizations in the form of essentialist views about foreign cultures and their effect on individual consumers, including their negative or aroused emotions and subsequent retail patronage behaviors. The research mission was to empirically assess the salient dimensions of consumers' states of mind (positive and negative affect, psychological essentialism, epistemic curiosity), states of being (store atmospherics), and states of action (retail patronage behaviors) in a cultural context based on Mehrabian-Russell theory of environmental psychology. Specifically, the retail patronage setting was selected as foreign-based fast-food franchises because it represents both a relevant and timely situational context for consumer behavior. This dissertation makes several contributions to international retail patronage literature. First, it frames curiosity as an aroused emotional state and finds support for the relationship between consumer epistemic curiosity and retail patronage. Second, it provides support for the linkage between consumer affect and retail patronage in an international retail setting. Third, it reveals that affect has a greater impact on retail patronage than epistemic curiosity. The overarching finding of this study is an inability to tie the cultural elements in retail atmospherics, including signs, symbols, and artifacts, to consumer emotions. In addition, we were unable to frame psychological essentialism as a personality trait that would reduce the levels of affect and curiosity in retail store environments characterized by foreign-cultural elements.
An Analytical Model of the Determinants and Outcomes of Nation Branding: Nation as a brand represents the intangible assets of a country, encompassing various dimensions such as politics, economics, culture, history, and technology. However, much of extant work in nation branding has been limited to the empirical investigations of its positioning and implementation for specific countries, while other scholarly works in nation branding are conceptual. Various factors associated with nation branding are discussed in the literature, but there is no organizing mechanism to connect these factors to explore the dynamics underlying nation branding. To fill this gap, this dissertation attempts to identify the relevant factors underlying the deployment of nation branding, and to develop models to assess the association among these factors. Hunt and Morgan's resource advantage theory serves as the theoretical foundation of this dissertation's framework. After establishing panel data models that link the factors of building and developing the nation brand, the strategic implications of nation branding are discussed. Archival data were used for economic factors such as economic development, tourism, export, and inward foreign investment, and cultural, political, infrastructural, and geographical factors. The primary data were collected for qualitative factors perceived reputable brand and perceived reputable industry. The Anholt-GfK Roper's 2008 Nation Brands IndexSM was incorporated into the model as a moderating variable to test its impact on the relationship between the dependent variables and the independent variables. A total of 24 nations were analyzed to build and validate the models. This dissertation makes several contributions to the nation branding literature. First, it clarifies the definition of nation brand and nation branding. Second, it builds a predictive econometric model to connect the critical determinant and outcome factors of nation branding. Finally, it discusses nation branding strategies in terms of resource advantage theory and provides crucial insights on the development and management of a nation brand that can be …
Symbolic visuals in advertising: The role of relevance.: Relevance has been applied to various conditions in the marketing literature but no single definition has been developed. A single clear definition will be helpful to researchers investigating relevance in the marketing and consumer behavior fields. Confusion also exists in the literature regarding to what extent a symbolic visual in an advertisement is relevant. Many researchers are also calling for empirical evidence of a linkage between relevance and response through a theoretical measure of relevance. The central theory used in this dissertation is Sperber and Wilson's (1995) theory of relevance (TOR). TOR can help researchers and marketing managers by explaining how consumers may interpret visuals in advertising. TOR explains why some visuals thought to be unconnected with the product become relevant in advertising. This study makes the assertion that TOR has been underutilized and even ignored by some researchers in past marketing literature. Thus, TOR is used to provide greater explanatory power of consumers' interpretation and response to advertising visuals than what is currently realized by researchers and marketing managers. A reliable measure of relevance was developed using TOR as a foundation. Experiments were conducted to empirically test TOR and support was found for most aspects of the theory. This dissertation makes several contributions to the consumer behavior literature. These contributions include: 1) clarifying the definition of relevance in advertising, 2) developing a tentative measure of relevance, 3) providing an explanation of how non-relevant visuals produce effects expected for relevant visuals as occurred in experiments conducted by Mitchell and Olson (1981) and Miniard, Bhatla, Lord, Dickson and Unnava (1991), 4) showing how relevance of symbolic visuals in advertisements relates to specific consumer responses, and 5) offering suggestions for how the theory of relevance can be used by researchers and marketing managers to gain a better understanding of consumers' interpretation of …
Performance Implications of Multi-Channel Strategic Decisions by Incumbent Retailers: The Role of Order of Entry and Degree of Inter-Channel Coordination: The rapidly intensifying adoption of the Internet channel for marketing and sales by incumbent bricks-and-mortar retailers underscores the importance of assessing the impact of the online channel strategies on firm performance in the dynamic competitive environment. At the time when store-based retailers increasingly dominate online sales the questions of when and how an incumbent retailer should adopt an online channel to achieve and sustain a competitive advantage are of utmost interest for both marketing scholars and practitioners. This dissertation investigates the role of two strategic decisions in affecting firm performance: (a) the order of adopting an online channel by incumbent retailers and (b) the degree of coordination between store and online sales channels. The resource-based view and the dynamic capabilities approach are used as theoretical foundations for the study. Following resource-based logic and applying a contingency perspective, this research proposes that firm-specific resource endowments determine the success of the order of online entry strategy for incumbent retailers. This dissertation utilizes the dynamic capabilities approach to propose that the strategy of inter-channel channel coordination leads to higher performance when core, unique dynamic capabilities pertaining to e-commerce are developed in-house, as opposed to being outsourced. By posing and answering the research questions regarding the role of strategic decisions of order of online entry and channel coordination in enhancing long-term financial and operational performance, this dissertation contributes to the development of strategic theory in the nascent areas of electronic commerce and multi-channel retailing, provides further empirical support to resource-based theory of competitive advantage, and assists managers in formulating more informed strategic objectives for achieving multi-channel competitive advantage.
The Impact of Visceral Influences on Consumers' Evaluation of Weight Loss Advertising: The weight loss industry has come under fire from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in recent years due to consumer claims that many firms, marketing weight loss products, are using advertisements in an attempt to deceive consumers. Illegitimate weight loss claims have created so much concern that a White Paper call-to-action to investigate misleading weight loss advertisements has been filed. Despite recent interest, little attention has been garnered concerning the understanding of why consumers respond to potentially misleading weight loss claims. Intuitively, an understanding of why consumers fall prey to weight loss claims may aid academics, practitioners, and policy makers as they make important decisions relative to the weight loss industry and its practices. This study fills that void by applying a theory of visceral influences (TVI) to the context of weight loss advertising. Loewenstein's TVI was developed to aid in explaining why consumers make decisions contrary to their long-term self-interest. Visceral influences are drive states that have a direct hedonic impact, have an effect on the relative desirability of various goods and activities, and consequently, have a strong influence over the decisions consumers make. Common visceral cues (cues associated with any reward linked to a visceral factor) include proximity of reward, vividness of reward, and visual priming. To adequately test TVI in the context of weight loss advertising, a two step approach was used. First, advertiser intent was assessed through content analysis of weight loss advertisements. Second, composite advertisements were created from the content analysis to assess subject response to visceral cues common in weight loss advertising. MANOVA results show that the presence of visceral cues affected subjects' thoughts, buying impulse, affective reaction, intentions, and product evaluation. This research makes the following contributions. First, it addresses an area of public policy where there is a need for research to …
An empirical investigation of the salient dimensions of Baby Boomer and Generation Y consumers' health care decision choices.: The purpose of this research is to empirically investigate consumers' health care decision choices in a dynamic market setting. The unprecedented demands on the U.S. health care system coupled with the mounting controversies surrounding health care reform suggest that consumers' health care decisions warrant empirical research attention. Toward this end, this dissertation empirically explored (1) the characteristics of consumers who possess a willingness to use non-conventional treatments over conventional treatments, (2) the characteristics of consumers who elect self-medication in lieu of health care practitioner-directed medication, and (3) the salient dimensions of consumers' channel choice for the procurement of health care products. Each of these decision choice factors were tested across two U.S. generational segments to assess whether differences existed across Baby Boomers' and Gen Yers' health care decision choices. The conceptual framework for empirical assessment is Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theory. From Bandura's social cognitive theory, a general model of healthcare decision choice is proposed to assess consumers' states of mind, states of being and states of action (decision choice). Results indicate that social cognitive factors (e.g., self-efficacy, objectivism) play an important role in each of the decision domains explored in this dissertation. Moreover, health value was found to be an important moderator between the social cognitive factors and health care decision choices. The predictors of the health care decision choices were found to vary across the Baby Boomers and Generation Yers on several dimensions, confirming the notion that generational differences may be a salient dimension of consumers' health care decision choice. The research offers several implications for practitioners, academicians and policy makers. Both descriptive and normative implications are gleaned from the research findings. Most notably, the results indicate that consumers' social cognitive factors and health value may be mechanisms for managing health care decisions.
Connective Technology Adoption in the Supply Chain: The Role of Organizational, Interorganizational and Technology-Related Factors.: Supply chain management (SCM) is an area that offers organizations significant opportunities for both cost reductions and revenue enhancement. In their article, "Supply Chain Management: Implementation Issues and Research Opportunities," Lambert, Cooper and Pagh defined SCM as the "integration of key business processes from end user through original suppliers that provides products, services, and information that add value for customers and other stakeholders." Adopting and implementing appropriate technology has emerged as a source of competitive advantage for supply chain member firms through the integration of business processes with suppliers and customers. It is important to understand the factors influencing an organization's decision to acquire such technology. In the context of this study, connective technologies are defined as wireless communication devices and their accompanying infrastructure and software which may enhance coordination among supply chain partners. Building on previous literature in the areas of supply chain management, marketing strategy, and organizational innovation, a model was developed to test the relationships between organizational, interorganizational, and technology-related factors and the adoption of advanced connective technology, using radio frequency identification (RFID) as the test case, in the supply chain. A Web-based survey of supply chain professionals was conducted resulting in 224 usable responses. The overall model was statistically significant with four of the predictors significantly influencing the adoption of RFID in the supply chain. Size, centralization, new product advantage and time to achieve targeted ROI were significantly related to adoption of connective technology (RFID). Interorganizational related factors were not significant predictors of connective technology adoption. The study contributes to theory by testing scales from marketing and management in a supply chain context in order to better understand behavioral dimensions of supply chain management and logistics. The conceptualization and measurement of market orientation at the interfirm level advances the market orientation literature. Finally, the study contributes …
An exploratory investigation of the effects of co-production and co-consumption on the characteristics and adoption of service innovations: the customer's perspective.: Customers play an active role throughout the marketing process. This dissertation concerns itself with customer's co-creation of value for self (co-production) and for other customers (co-consumption) during service production and delivery. With the servuction system as its overarching framework, this study explains how changes in the customer's perceived co-production and co-consumption, caused by a service innovation, influence her perceptions of service innovation characteristics and modify her adoption behavior. It draws on a multidisciplinary body of knowledge and develops a conceptual framework and a set of substantive propositions. The empirical research was contextualized in three services: self check-out at grocery stores, Build-A-Bear stores, and meal assembly centers. It focused on members of Generations X and Y who were familiar with these services. The qualitative investigations and pilot study helped adapt the extant scales and construct new scales. In line with prior works, the focal service encounters were simulated through a series of consumption scenarios. The exploratory factor analysis in the pilot study and the confirmatory factor analysis in the main study indicated that the instruments were culturally informed, internally reliable, and construct-wise valid. The results indicate that co-production and co-consumption play important roles in explaining innovation characteristics and adoption decisions. More specifically, the focal customer's co-production of the service for self (CPS), other customers' co-production of the service for the focal customer (OCP), the number and the nature of other customers (crowding and homophily) can help to explain the focal customer's evaluation of service innovation characteristics as well as her adoption decision. The focal customer's disposition to participate (DTP) and its interaction with CPS are also useful explanatory constructs. Focal customer's co-production of the service for other customers (CPO) and its interaction with DTP emerged as non-significant. In comparing the high- and low-DTP groups, it was found that the former was …
How componential factors and constraint enhance creativity in the development of new product ideas.: New product ideation is the transformation of a raw idea into a robust concept with consideration of fit and feasibility of technologies, customer benefits, and market opportunity. Although the ideation process often involves ambiguous processes, it is the most critical activity in new product development (NPD). As a creativity task, the ideation process is considered heuristic rather than algorithmic. However, managing the ideation process as either a completely heuristic or an entirely algorithmic procedure leads to just conventional outcomes. Rooted in cognitive psychology, this study proposes that ideation activities in NPD should be pursued as Simonton's "constrained stochastic behavior." An ideation task not only needs good componential factors but also requires constraint to frame the task by precluding unwieldy ideas while promoting high variability of ideas. Focusing on the inputs and attempting to strike a balance between algorithmic and heuristic ideation process may provide the mechanisms to manage the psychological perceptions with an aim to stimulate and orchestrate the ideation staff's cognitive efforts to generate the creative idea. To achieve this goal, new product idea creativity is considered as the ideas that could turn out to be products that are novel to and useful for customers, and appropriate to firms' existing production systems. In addition, the study asserts that componential factors include two factors: specialization representing idea creators' depth of NPD knowledge, experience, and skills in a product domain, and diverse expertise representing the breadth of ideation team's knowledge, experience, and skills concerning the same domain of NPD. These factors are essential and collectively can enhance creativity in the development of new product ideas. Finally, goal constraint is defined, operationalized, and incorporated in the NPD ideation framework. This constraint encapsulates the overall criteria and stylistic principle for a particular product domain and reflects the frame of reference for new product …
Stereotypes in Retail Print Advertising: The Effects of Gender and Physical Appearance on Consumer Perceptions: The retail sector spends millions of dollars each year advertising to consumers. This is a considerable investment for companies seeking effective ways to inform and persuade the consumer. Consequently, retailers need to develop creative message strategies and tactics that will positively affect consumer attitudes. One particular tactic available to retailers is the use of a spokesperson in the advertisement. Salespersons are used in numerous advertisements and can provide key benefits to an advertiser. However, to maximize these benefits, retailers need to carefully select the spokesperson that will be most effective for their store and product. This purpose of this research is to examine the characteristics that influence consumers' perceptions of print advertisements that include a spokesperson in the advertisement. Most of the past literature concerning spokespersons has concentrated on the consumer perspective of meeting and interacting with a living, breathing person. This research seeks to use the past research on salespeople to examine the spokesperson as a cue in a print advertisement. In this perspective, the consumer views the spokesperson from a visual-only perspective. The proposed experiment will utilize print advertisements from two retail businesses. More specifically the study will investigate how consumers react if the individual viewed in the advertisement is typical (matches with their preconceived stereotype) or if the salesperson is atypical (does not match with their preconceived stereotype). This research also examines how men and women are viewed differently in the spokesperson role and how changes in physical appearance may impact consumers' perceptions. The research also studies the influence of spokesperson stereotypes on consumers' cognitive responses.
The influence of sales force newcomers' met expectations on selected outcome variables: Development and testing of a model: Sales management researchers and practitioners give considerable attention to early employment expectations, attitudes, and behaviors primarily because of a desire to specify the cognition process leading to performance and retention of salespeople. While a massive body of literature exists concerning turnover of employees and determinants of employee performance, more empirical study specific to the sales force as a research population is needed to assess the nature of turnover and performance. Because the bulk of salesperson turnover occurs in early employment, particular attention needs to be devoted to the cognitive process of newcomers to the sales force. The present work examines expectation-based and perception-oriented models of performance and retention for sales force new hires. Interests of this investigation focus on the initial expectations of newly hired sales representatives and on how the degree of fulfillment of these expectations relates to subsequent performance and retention behavior. Extant research suggests that the degree to which expectations are met positively influences mediating variables such as job satisfaction and organizational commitment, and indirectly influences outcomes such as job performance and retention of newcomers. Alternatively, some researchers contend that these results are due to improper measurement of met expectations. A longitudinal research design and alternative measurement methods are employed here to better assess the role of met/unmet expectations. The proposed study is based on theoretical research from a variety of academic disciplines, and the results of the study will have multi-disciplinary implications. Contributions include: (a) replication and extension of theoretical research concerning processes leading to performance and retention of sales force newcomers, (b) a thorough examination of met expectations as a precursor to early sales force outcomes, and (c) methodological advances in the measurement of met expectations.
Alternative Information Processing Formats for Overcoming Information Processing Deficits in Senior Adults: The objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of alternative advertising presentation formats, and the quantity of information presented in advertisements in overcoming possible information-processing deficits in senior adults that could affect their recall of ad attributes and brand name, the cognitive responses generated, and attitude toward the ad. In addition, the study examined the effectiveness of retirement status as a classification or segmentation variable in comparison with the use of the more traditional classification variable, chronological age. A convenience sample of senior adult volunteers from church groups, social clubs, and civic organizations from the local area were randomly assigned to one of nine experimental conditions. The experiment utilized a simulated magazine to test the effects of presentation formats (3 levels), and quantity of information (3 levels) on senior adult's recall, cognitive responses and attitude toward the test ads. Covariates (gender, wealth, education, activity level, health, and income) were used to reduce variance. The findings clearly indicate that the presentation format of the can ad adversely affected the memory of some senior adults. In addition, the results were significantly different across the different age levels. Retirement status was less beneficial than chronological age in the current study, but did reveal a marginally significant difference between seniors due to the number of attributes contained in the test ads. The implication of findings for advertisers and those who design marketing communications for seniors are numerous, and relate to the marketer's communication goals. Senior adults may prefer print media, but the inappropriate use of presentation format and the number of product attributes in the ads could have an adverse and significant impact when communicating with senior adults. Recognition of the information-processing differences of senior adults would result in more effective marketing communications for this rapidly growing and important segment of our …

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