Marketing Theses and Dissertations

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Advances in Mathematical Models in Marketing
(2007-04-18) Aravindakshan, Ashwin; Rust, Roland T; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation comprises a series of three essays that relate advances made to both theoretical and empirical issues in marketing. The first essay discusses the issue of endogeneity of market share and price in logit models and provides a theoretical procedure to solve this problem. The inseparability of demand and price make the possibility of drawing definite conclusions about either almost impossible. We employ a recently rediscovered mathematical function called the 'LambertW' to solve this problem of endogeneity and in turn yield logit models more conducive to theoretical study. We also employ this methodology to the problem studied by Basuroy and Nguyen (1998). The second essay deals with the issue of pricing implicit bundling. Implicit bundles are products that are sold separately but provide an enhanced level of satisfaction if purchased together. We develop a model that would account for the possible relationships of the products across the different product lines. We show that accounting for these relationships would decrease the amount of price competition in the market and also allow the Firm to enjoy higher profits. We also account for the endogeneity of price and market share when deriving the optimal solutions. We show that optimal prices first increase as the relationship between the firm's two products become stronger and then decrease as the two products become more exclusive to each other. Finally, we also find that a firm's prices increase as the competitor's contingent valuations increase. The third essay helps improve the efficacy of CRM interventions by analyzing the latent psychological loyalty states of the customer. We use state space models to predict these latent loyalty states using observed data. We then use the predicted values of loyalty to derive the probability of repurchase of the customer. We also identify the types of CRM interventions that play a role in improving the loyalty of the customer to the firm and those interventions that have no effect. We compare our model's predictions to those derived from two other estimation methods. We find that our predictions are better than those computed from the other methods discussed.
Antecedents of Dishonest Consumer Behavior
(2019) Kang, In Hye; Kirmani, Amna; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Consumers engage in a wide range of dishonest behaviors, such as cheating or lying to companies for financial rewards. These dishonest behaviors are costly for companies and consumers. However, relatively little research in marketing has paid attention to consumer dishonesty. In this dissertation, we enhance the understanding of dishonest consumer behavior by examining a few prominent antecedents: a company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives and construal level. The first essay examines how a company’s CSR initiatives impacts consumers’ dishonest behavior toward the company. Companies are proclaiming their values by taking stands on controversial issues in their CSR. We examine a novel way with which consumers respond to a company’s polarizing CSR: dishonest behavior toward the company. We demonstrate that when the CSR cause is congruent with the consumer’s self-concept, CSR (vs. no-CSR) decreases dishonest behavior by increasing anticipatory self-threat (i.e., if I cheat the company, I will feel like I am a bad person). In contrast, when the CSR cause is incongruent, CSR (vs. no-CSR) increases dishonest behavior by decreasing anticipatory self-threat. We demonstrate an asymmetric effect such that the effect of incongruent CSR is larger than the effect of congruent CSR. Building on the anticipatory self-threat mechanism, we identify a boundary condition in which the backfiring effect of incongruent CSR is attenuated: situational salience of moral identity. The second essay investigates how construal level—the extent to which people’s thinking about a situation is abstract or concrete—influences dishonest consumer behavior. We show that the effect of construal level on dishonest behavior is moderated by the importance of moral values. We find that compared to concrete construal, abstract construal reduces dishonest behavior when the importance of moral values is high but not when the importance of moral values is low. Importance of moral values is measured as individual differences and situationally primed. These essays provide valuable insights into consumer dishonesty by demonstrating that different types of factors (characteristics of a company such as CSR and contextual factors such as construal level) influence dishonest consumer behavior. Moreover, these essays provide practical implications for companies seeking to reduce dishonest consumer behaviors.
Aspects of Online Reviews and their Effects on Consumer Decisions
(2018) Watson, Jared Joseph; Kirmani, Amna; Pocheptsova Ghosh, Anastasiya; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation examines different aspects of online reviews and their effects in consumer decisions. Online reviews are proliferating at a tremendous rate, with most consumers now stating that online reviews are the most important product attribute in online purchase decisions (BrightLocal 2017). As such, it is important to understand how various aspects of reviews affect consumers’ decisions, and outline the conditions by which some of these attributes may have conditional influences. To that end, we begin this dissertation by first investigating two numerical attributes of online reviews, average product ratings and review volumes. Furthermore, because online reviews are becoming such an influential tool, firms have begun to attempt exploiting consumers via fake reviews (Mayzlin, Dover, and Chevalier 2014; Luca and Zervas 2016). Thus, the second essay in this dissertation investigates how consumers respond when a website discloses that they have caught fake reviews being written for a specific brand. In Essay I, we investigate how average product ratings and review volumes influence consumers’ decisions when faced with a choice set in which there is no dominant option (i.e., when one option has a higher rating, but fewer reviews relative to another option). We argue that the diagnosticity (i.e., influence) of both average product ratings and review volumes are conditionally influenced by the other attribute, and as such, the choice between the higher-rated, fewer reviews option and lower-rated, more reviews option is dependent on the specific values of each attribute. While prior research has demonstrated the relative influence of both attributes, the findings are still debated (Floyd et al. 2014; You, Vadakkepatt, and Joshi 2015). By investigating the conditional effects of these attributes on choice, we help to rectify the divergent findings. We argue that average product ratings are inherently more diagnostic than review volumes due to the bound versus unbound nature of their scales, respectively. Whereas average product ratings have stable scale boundaries (e.g., one to five stars), review volumes do not (e.g., zero to infinity). As such, review volumes are more susceptible to relative comparisons made within the choice set. We demonstrate how the relative diagnosticity of these attributes are a function of the review volumes contained within the choice set, and how this ultimately governs choice. We conclude Essay I with the theoretical implications as well as a series of simulations demonstrating the practical implications for managers. In Essay II, we demonstrate the consequence of websites informing consumers that they have identified fake reviews for brands featured on their website. While a growing body of literature has investigated the characteristics of fake reviews (Mukherjee et al. 2013; Ott et al. 2013), as well as the firms which are likely to solicit them (Mayzlin, Dover, and Chevalier 2014; Luca and Zervas 2016), to the best of our knowledge, this is the first investigation into the effect of disclosing this information to consumers. While fake review alerts inform consumers that websites are monitoring the reviews for fraudulent information, we argue that the alerts also activate consumers’ persuasion knowledge (Friestad and Wright 1994), leading to attempts to correct for perceived biased information, as well as justice against the brand when it is the source of the fake reviews. We demonstrate that fake reviews lead consumers to not only attempt correction in their perception of the brand, but also in the information that they acquire (i.e., the reviews they read). Furthermore, we show that reducing consumers’ perceptions of inaccurate information attenuates their corrections. As such, this research holds relevance for website managers which provide reviews for their consumers. In both essays, we demonstrate the consequences of review information in consumers’ judgments and decisions. We argue that managers must carefully consider what information to provide consumers, and how to present it, in order to avoid biasing their consumers’ decisions.
ATTRIBUTION MODELING AND MARKETING RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN AN ONLINE ENVIRONMENT
(2014) Li, Hongshuang; Kannan, P.K.; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation contains one conceptual framework and two essays on the attribution modeling and marketing resource allocation in digital marketing. Chapter II presents the conceptual framework for attribution modeling and hypotheses related to the carryover effects and spillover effects of the information collected during the customer's prior visits through different marketing channels to a firm's website on subsequent visits and purchases. In Chapter III, I propose a method to measure the incremental value of individual marketing channels in an online multi-channel environment. The method includes a three-level measurement model of customers' consideration of online channels, their visits through these channels and subsequent purchase at the firm's website. Based on the analysis of customers' visits and purchases at a hospitality firm's website, I find significant carryover and spillover effects across different marketing channels. According to the estimation results, the relative contributions of each channel are significantly different as compared to the estimates from the widely-used "last-click" metric. A field study was conducted where the firm turned off paid search for a week to validate the ability of the proposed approach in estimating the incremental impact of a channel on conversions. This method can also be applied in targeting customers with different patterns of touches and identifying cases where e-mail retargeting may actually decrease conversion probabilities. Chapter IV analyzes the impact of attribution metric on the overall effectiveness of keyword investments in search campaigns. Different attribution metrics assign different conversion credits to search keywords clicked through the consumers' purchase journey, and the attribution-based credits affect the advertiser's future bidding and budget allocation for keywords, and in turn affect the overall return-on-investment (ROI) of future search campaigns. Using a six-month panel data of 476 keywords from an online jewelry retailer, I empirically model the relationship among the advertiser's bidding decision, the search engine's ranking decision, and the click-through rate and conversion rate, and analyze the impact of the attribution metric on the overall ROI of search campaigns. The focal advertiser changed the attribution metric from last-click to first-click half-way through the data window. This allows me to estimate the impact of the two attribution metrics on budget allocation, which in turn influences the realized ROI under different attribution regimes. Given the mix of the keywords bid by the advertiser, the results show that first-click leads to lower overall revenues and this impact is stronger for the more specific keywords. The policy simulation shows that the advertiser would be able to improve their overall revenue by more than 5% by appropriately changing the attribution metric for individual keywords to account for their actual contribution.
Consumption and the Dynamics of Consumer Choice
(2012) Arens, Zachary Glenn; Hamilton, Rebecca; Rust, Roland; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation includes three essays that investigate how aspects of the choice process influence consumption, attitudes and motivation. The first essay explores how the stage of consumption of the chosen alternative influences the attractiveness of a forgone alternative. Dozens of studies over the past fifty years have consistently shown that after making a choice between two attractive alternatives the forgone alternative decreases in attractiveness. However previous research has only compared the value of the forgone alternative before and after making a choice. This essay demonstrates that this devaluation effect only lasts until the chosen alternative has been consumed, at which point it rebounds in attractiveness. We show that this devaluation provides a way to avoid distraction while pursing the chosen alternative, supporting recent views on cognitive dissonance theory. The second essay demonstrates the importance of measuring the dual processes by which consumers make consumption decisions. Although most firms measure customer satisfaction, this metric only reflects an explicit decision-making process. The implicit process can be captured by measuring the impulsiveness with which consumers make decisions. Impulsiveness metrics are just as strongly related to firm value and customer behavior as satisfaction metrics, and in combination they provide a more comprehensive prediction. The third essay explores substitution effectiveness. Consumers often consume replacement products as substitutes for an unattained product. This research investigates how the similarity between the products influences how effectively products substitute for each other. Consumers tend to believe that replacement products become more effective substitutes for an unattained product as they increase in similarity. However in contrast to this belief, this research shows that moderately similar replacements are more effective than highly similar products at satisfying the desire for the unattained product. This relationship reverses at low levels of similarity where moderate similarity replacements are more effective substitutes than low similarity replacements.
DERIVING HAPPINESS FROM CONSUMPTION: TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF ENJOYMENT IN CONSUMER CONSUMPTION
(2019) Wu, Yuechen; Ratner, Rebecca K; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation includes three essays that investigate factors that influence how much enjoyment consumers derive from their various daily consumption. The first essay examines whether and when shared experiences are more or less enjoyable than solo experiences. Whereas prior research has primarily focused on the social benefits of having an activity partner in leisure activities, we propose that sharing experiences requires coordination with others, which can take the consumer’s attention away from the consumption activity, potentially reducing their enjoyment of the activity compared to those who engage in the experience solo. We demonstrate that lack of clarity about a partner’s level of interests in the activity can make it difficult for consumers to coordinate and focus on a shared activity, and ultimately enjoy the experience, relative to solo experiences or shared experiences for which clarity is high. The second essay speaks to consumers’ inhibition that prevents them from deriving happiness from rewarding solitary leisure experiences. Prior research shows that consumers are inhibited from engaging in public leisure activities alone because of negative evaluations on social connectedness they anticipate from others. This essay examines how people actually evaluate consumers who engage in these activities solo versus accompanied. We demonstrate that though observers indeed perceive solo (vs. accompanied) consumers to be less socially connected, observers also make more positive inferences for solo consumers on the trait of openness, and overall view solo consumers as favorably as accompanied consumers. The third essay examines the effect of ownership status (i.e., whether a consumer owns the product or not) on consumers’ adaptation to a product. We demonstrate that consuming a product for which consumers do not have ownership (vs. have ownership) prolongs happiness derived from the product. We propose that when consumers do not have ownership of a product, they experience an elevated arousal, which could help to slow down the otherwise natural process of hedonic adaptation.
DYNAMIC CONSUMER DECISION MAKING PROCESS IN E-COMMERCE
(2011) Shi, Wei; Wedel, Michel; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation studies the dynamic decision making process in E-commerce. In the first essay, we use eye tracking to investigate how consumers make information acquisition decisions on attribute-by-product matrices in online choice environment such as comparison websites. Hierarchical Hidden Markov Model is used to describe this process. The model consists of three connected hierarchical layers: a lower layer that describes the eye movements, a middle layer that identifies product- and attribute-based information acquisition modes, and an upper layer that flexibly captures switching between these modes over time. Findings of a controlled experiment show that low-level properties of the eye and the visual brain play an important role in dynamic information acquisition. Consumer switch frequently between two acquisition modes, and higher switching frequency increases decision time and reduces easiness of decision making. These results have implications for web design and online retailing, and may open new directions for research and theories of online choice. The second essay investigates how usage experience with different types of decision aids contributes to the evolution of online shopping behavior over time. In the context of online grocery stores, we categorize four types of decision aids that are commonly available, namely, those 1) for nutritional needs, 2) for brand preference, 3) for economic needs, and 4) personalized shopping lists. We construct a Non-homogeneous Hidden Markov Model of category purchase incidence and purchase quantity, in which parameters are allowed to vary over time across hidden states as driven by usage experience with different decision aids. The dataset was collected during the period when the retailer first launched its web business, which makes it particularly suited to study the evolution of online purchase behavior. We estimate the model for the spaghetti sauce and liquid detergent categories. Results indicate that four types of decisions influence evolution of purchase behavior differently. Findings from this study enrich the understanding of how purchase behavior may evolve over time in online stores, and provide valuable insights for online retailers to improvement the design of their store environments.
Effects of Performance Schedules on Event Ticket Sales
(2009) Tseng, Peggy Hui-Hsing; Moe, Wendy W.; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Event scheduling is one of many important decisions facing event marketers in the entertainment industry (i.e., how should multiple performances be scheduled across markets, across venues, and over time?). While there is ample research examining the issues of costs and constraints associated with such a decision, virtually no research exists to examine the impact of these decisions on consumer demand. Hence, the objective of this dissertation is to examine how consumers respond to event marketers' scheduling decisions. First, a scheduling effect may arise from performances within a market. When performances are scheduled closely in distance or time, their similarity in venue locations or performance dates may result in a stronger relationship and influence ticket sales. This relationship may have a positive effect on ticket sales because the similarity could signal the quality of an event and suggest the desirability of these performances. Thus, these performances attract more consumers and sell more tickets. However, the relationship could be negative. When performances are close in distance or time, they become direct substitutes and compete for consumer patronage. Another effect arises from an event distribution across markets. When an event travels from one market to another and each market has a different performance schedule, the word of mouth of this event may accumulate and carry over to later markets. If so, market sales may be a good proxy of word of mouth. How well (or poorly) an event sells in preceding markets may affect ticket sales in following markets. This dissertation consists of three essays to examine the abovementioned scheduling effects. We contact a national ticket seller to acquire a dataset containing ticket sales of a family event traveling across 42 markets. The first essay analyzes a performance schedule in one metropolitan market and investigates the scheduling effect on ticket sales. The second essay employs all performance schedules in 42 markets to study heterogeneous market responses and propose explanatory factors. Finally, the third essay incorporates the distribution sequence of this event and examines whether ticket sales in preceding markets have a carryover effect to influence ticket sales in later markets.
Essays in Strategic Marketing
(2015) Healey, John; Godes, David; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Essay 1 focuses on purchasing behavior in the video game market, which can be conceptualized as a two-stage process where users first purchase a console and then purchase content for that console. Prior research on platform-mediated markets, which are defined by this interdependence in platform and content sales, has highlighted the relationship between installed base size (i.e. the total number of console adopters) and content sales. We extend this research by examining how two characteristics of installed bases, unrelated to size, affect content sales. First, we investigate the effect of installed base innovativeness, defined as the proportion of total adopters from early in the platform product's lifecycle, on content sales. Next, we evaluate the effect of installed base recency, defined as the proportion of total adopters that recently adopted the platform product. We find that more innovative or recently adopted installed bases purchase more content on a per user basis. These results suggest that content sales depend on more than just installed base size, providing an opportunity to increase content sales through the identification of installed bases high in either innovativeness or recency. In Essay 2, we examine how media exposures from sponsorship can impact a firm's financial performance. The extant literature has typically used aggregate expenditures as a proxy to study the financial effect of paid marketing communications. However, prior research has demonstrated that expenditures might not be an appropriate proxy for the overall effect of these marketing communications. We, therefore, study how exposures impact firm financial performance independently of firm expenditures used to obtain those exposures. Using a unique context (stadium naming rights agreements), in which the firm receives a random number of exposures, and leveraging the temporal nature of paid promotion in this context, we separately identify the effects of exposures from expenditures. In three analyses, we find that exposures increase firm stock returns and lower firm systematic risk, while promotional expenditures decrease firm stock returns and raise firm systematic risk. These results begin to bridge the gap in how promotional communications are measured between the marketing/finance interface literature and the broader literature on marketing effectiveness.
Essays on Digital Content Provision and Consumption
(2022) Wang, Chutian; Zhou, Bobby; Joshi, Yogesh V; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Consumption of digital content has become an inseparable part of consumers' lives today. As providers of digital content, media platforms continuously seek to pursue pricing and product design strategies that increase their profits. This dissertation studies media platforms' digital content provision and consumers' consumption decisions. In the first essay, we focus on the pricing of digital content and analyze the impact of consumers' endogenous content consumption on platforms' paywall strategies. Paywalls increase subscription revenues for platforms, but they also impact content consumption and thus advertising revenues. We build an analytical model that endogenizes consumers' content consumption decisions. We find that under moderate ad rates, a metered paywall under which a limited amount of content is provided for free is optimal when consumers display sufficient heterogeneity in their costs of consuming content. We also study how the amount of free content and the subscription price vary with changes in the advertising rate and consumer preference. In the second essay, we analyze the accuracy of news reported by the news media. When consumers are seeking the truth and accurate reporting is costly, determining the optimal level of accuracy in reporting is a strategic decision for a profit-maximizing media firm. We build an analytical model to study this media firm decision. When consumers and the media firm are both initially uncertain about the true state of the world, we show that the media firm always chooses full accuracy if investigation and reporting are of low cost. However, if achieving accuracy is sufficiently costly, the media firm provides news only when consumers' priors regarding the truth are not too extreme, so that they see enough value in news consumption. Interestingly, consumers' truth-seeking and the firm's profit maximization can lead to reporting inaccuracy and exaggeration of the more likely state a priori. We also discuss the implications of polarization in consumers’ prior beliefs and the media firm’s different objectives on the accuracy of news.
Essays on Making Interdependent Decisions and Their Evaluations
(2007-04-30) Oza, Shweta S; Srivastava, Joydeep; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation comprises of two essays that investigate factors influencing interdependent decision-making and the evaluations of such decision outcomes. In the first essay, we examine the influence of time taken by a bargaining opponent to respond to an offer on bargainers' perceptions of their own bargaining outcomes. Extending previous research in several important ways, we propose and test a conceptualization where inferences of opponent's reservation price lie at the core of the underlying explanation. Second, we provide additional insight into the underlying process by showing that delay influences perceptions of bargaining outcomes only when it is related to the bargaining. Third, unlike previous work that examined the effect of delay when an offer was accepted, we extend the inquiry to situations where an offer is rejected. Fourth, we identify and test two factors - knowledge of opponent's best alternative to negotiated agreement and persuasion knowledge - that moderate the influence of response time on perceptions of bargaining outcomes. Results of five studies provide insight into the underlying process by identifying and testing boundary conditions for the effect of delay. In the second essay, we focus on generic campaigns that are funded voluntarily (rather than mandatory contributions), and examine the influence of situational factors (e.g., market trends) and solicitation appeals on voluntary contributions to a generic campaign. Viewing generic advertising campaigns as a public goods problem, a conceptual framework based on goal systems theory is developed to suggest that situational factors such as market trends induce different goals, which in turn, influence voluntary contributions. The conceptual framework also suggests that a solicitation appeal that is more congruent with the induced goal is likely to be more effective in increasing voluntary contributions relative to incongruent appeals. Consistent with the framework, three studies show that voluntary contributions to generic campaigns are higher when the market trend is declining versus increasing. Further, solicitations that make the induced goal and the means to achieve that goal salient are more effective in increasing contributions. The implications of the findings are discussed along with directions for future research.
ESSAYS ON MARKETING MODEL APPLICATIONS FOR ONLINE AND OFFLINE COMMUNITIES
(2011) Gao, Jing; Kannan, P.K.; Zhang, Jie; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Social interactions in a community influence perceptions and values of members of the community. Recently Web 2.0 technologies have stimulated rapid growth of online communities, where communications between participants are made much easier. It is important to study how participants' behaviors and preferences are affected by their communities. In my dissertation, I develop quantitative marketing models to empirically study perceptions and attitudes of participants in online and offline communities. Essay 1 examines an offline community, distributor community in multi-level marketing organizations. We propose a spatial model to understand the determinants of distributor satisfaction and simultaneously account for biases in measures in the context of cross-country marketing operations. We define an attribute-space using measures such as sales momentum and effort expended on business by distributors. The relationship between distributor satisfaction and its drivers varies within this attribute-space and across markets. Based on survey data from a large multi-national multilevel marketing firm, we empirically illustrate how marketing control variables impact distributor satisfaction scores across countries after controlling for biases. We also discuss the resource allocation implications based on the study. Essay 2 studies an online community, online bargain hunting forum. We investigate whether and how online discussions posted by active participants affect the interest and preference of the silent majority. We collect data from a major bargain hunting forum. Our analysis of the online discussions goes beyond measures of volume and valence, and delves into the specific contents of discussions posted in the forum. We classify the contents into a range of specific categories, and develop a Bayesian Poisson-Binomial model to examine how silent viewers' interest in and preference for a featured deal are influenced by the discussions, while controlling for many other factors. Our results show that the content of discussions posted by active participants indeed affects the silent viewers' interest in and preference for a featured deal, and that the effects are different across the specific categories of content. Our findings demonstrate that marketers can benefit from monitoring activities in online bargaining hunting forums, and suggest ways for them to participating in these forums.
Essays on New Product Development
(2005-05-17) Luo, Lan; Ratchford, Brian T.; Kannan, Pallassana K.; Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
My dissertation comprises three essays that theoretically and empirically investigate three managerial relevant issues in new product development. In the first essay, our focus is to develop a methodology that allows manufacturers to account for the impact of channel acceptance in new product development. We have developed a model to incorporate the retailer's acceptance criteria, retailer's product assortment, and competing manufacturers' potential reactions directly in the design of the new product, thereby maximizing the product's success probabilities. Our model merges a game-theoretical model with micro-level data on individual consumer preferences. Therefore, this method provides a rigorous, yet practical, solution to the problems that manufacturers face regarding channel acceptance. In the second essay, we examine the impact of subjective characteristics (such as aesthetics and ergonomics) on consumer's preferences for products. Existing studies of consumer preferences such as conjoint models are limited in incorporating the influence of these subjective characteristics into product design. We have developed a model to determine whether the subjective characteristics (such as comfort) are connected with the objective product attributes (such as switch type), and whether both the objective product attributes and the subjective characteristics jointly affect consumer's evaluations towards products. We show that our model outperforms the conjoint model in understanding and designing appealing products for consumers. In the third essay, our goal is to account for variations in product performance across different usage situations and conditions and to design robust new products. Consumer durables such as appliances and power tools tend to be used in various usage situations and conditions, in which their performance can vary depending on the operating conditions. We apply a Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) to incorporate multi-function criteria in the generation and comparison of product design alternatives. Our approach will be particularly useful for product development teams that want to obtain customers' buy-in as well as internal buy-in early on in the product development cycle. We illustrate the approaches described above in the context of a new power tool development project undertaken by a US manufacturer.
ESSAYS ON THE IMPACT OF ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH DYNAMICS ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR
(2022) Zhao, Xindi; Trusov, Michael; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Recognizing the importance of product reviews for product sales in online retail platforms, this dissertation studies the effect of electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) dynamics on consumer behavior, including information processing, review-reading behavior, product evaluation, purchase decision, and reviewing behavior. In the first essay, I focus on incentivized reviews, which are posted by reviewers who received economic incentives (e.g., free product) from the firm, and explore how their emergence in a reviewing system influences subsequent organic (i.e., nonincentivized) review contributions for the focal product. I find that the ratings of subsequent organic reviews decrease after the appearance of incentivized reviews and that the magnitude of this negative impact decreases over time and the ratings recover in the long run. This is because subsequent reviewers adjust their product evaluations downwards when faced with priorincentivized reviews. In the second essay, I study the effect of a prevalence phenomenon— repetition in e-WOM—on consumer behavior. I demonstrate that high repetition in e-WOM could have a negative effect on persuasion and that this negative effect could be eliminated by modifying consumers’ inferences about the cause of repetition. Furthermore, consumers’ information-seeking behaviors are also affected by the share and type of repetition. Both essays provide an understanding of the impact of e-WOM on consumers’ judgments and decisions and offer implications for firms and platforms on how to gather, manage, and display e-WOM effectively; they also provide interesting avenues for future research.
From One to Many: Toward an Understanding of Multiple Means and Multiple Goals
(2013) Etkin, Jordan; Ratner, Rebecca K.; Pocheptsova, Anastasiya; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Consumers often use products, services, and behaviors to help them pursue their multiple goals. They eat fresh produce to be healthy, buy suits to look professional at work, and buy movie tickets to relax and have fun. These goal-related products and services are collectively referred to as "means" to goal attainment. Prior research to-date has primarily focused on the use of a single means to pursue a single goal. This one-to-one relationship between a single means and a single goal, however, is an overly simplistic perspective. Consumers typically utilize multiple means for goal pursuit, and have multiple goals they wish to pursue at the same time. My dissertation adopts this more realistic framework for understanding how consumers use means to pursue their goals. In three essays I explore how the relationships among multiple means and multiple goals, which I define in terms of variety, impact consumer motivation. The first two essays of my dissertation examine how the degree of variety among consumers' multiple means impacts goal-directed motivation. In Essay I, I consider how the motivational impact of having more (vs. less) varied means evolves over the course of goal pursuit, as consumers move from perceiving low to high progress towards goal attainment. Relatedly, in Essay II I consider how adopting a near versus far future time horizon for goal pursuit moderates the impact of variety among means on motivation. Finally, Essay III examines how perceived variety among consumers' multiple goals influences evaluations of means to goal attainment. I identify incidental mood as one factor spontaneously influencing consumers' perceptions of variety between goals. My research has a number of implications for marketers. Highly motivated consumers are more likely to make repeated purchases within goal-related product categories, and also tend to have higher willingness to pay. Thus, from the perspective of marketers, motivated consumers are desirable consumers. These findings suggest how marketers might strategically manage consumer motivation in order to achieve such desirable outcomes. Perceptions of variety, among means and among goals, are malleable. Marketers may thus encourage consumers to perceive their product offerings, or associated goals, as more or less varied depending on consumers' position relative to goal attainment, their adopted time horizon for goal pursuit, and presence use of incidental mood appeals.
HOW AND WHEN SIGNALING IMPACTS CONSUMPTION
(2021) Kim, Nicole You Jeung; Ratner, Rebecca K.; Wang, Yajin; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation includes three essays that investigate the impact of signals that certain consumption choices can send to other consumers. In particular, each essay focuses on how consumers’ consumption-related decisions (e.g., choice of hedonic items, selecting low variety, and communicating that one has no preference) impact an observing audience’s perceptions of the consumer and the subsequent impacts on the observer. The first essay demonstrates that consumers strive to position themselves as attractive friends by making hedonic consumption decisions. While consumers shift to hedonic consumption, anchoring on their belief that others would heavily value fun when it comes to friendship, this essay demonstrates that consumers themselves actually value other aspects of friendship more, such as meaningfulness. As a result of this discrepancy in the belief of friendship, hedonic choice does not effectively help consumers cultivate friendship with another person. The second essay investigates the signals that selecting a low (vs. high) variety of items sends to observers. Choosing low variety signals to observers that the consumer has accumulated consumption experiences in the past, and thus has greater expertise, compared to choosing high variety. This signal of expertise endows the consumer with influence to impact observers to make consumption choices that mimic the consumer and be more willing to take the consumer’s recommendations. The third essay examines the impact of expressing no preference in a joint decision making context. While consumers expect to make the decision easier for the recipient, recipients of no preference communication (vs. explicit preference communication), experience greater decision difficulty. This unexpected negative impact occurs because recipients of no preference communication perceive that the communicator actually has preferences that they are hiding. Further, because recipients infer that these hidden preferences are dissimilar to one’s own preferences, they end up making a choice for the joint consumption that they personally less prefer.
THE INFLUENCE OF CONSUMER MOTIVATIONS ON CONSUMPTION INTENTIONS AND BEHAVIOR
(2009) Espinoza, Francine; Hamilton, Rebecca W; Srivastava, Joydeep; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This Dissertation comprises two essays that investigate how consumers' different motivations affect their cognitive responses and consumption behavior. Essay 1 shows that consumers' motivation to rely on their own opinion and correct their judgments for the influence of a product recommendation moderates source credibility effects on judgment certainty and behavioral intentions. Building upon earlier research showing that correction may decrease judgment certainty, we propose that, contrary to this unidirectional effect, correction has an asymmetric effect on judgment certainty and behavioral intentions, depending on the initial recommendation credibility. In a series of three studies, we provide support for the asymmetric effect of correction and show that when consumers correct for the influence of a high credibility recommendation, their judgment certainty and behavioral intentions decrease, but when they correct for the influence of a low credibility recommendation, their judgment certainty and behavioral intentions increase. Essay 2 examines the influence of consumers' motivations on product valuation and proposes that while buyers are intrinsically motivated to minimize what they are giving up, sellers are intrinsically motivated to maximize what they are getting. These differential goals lead to a discrepancy in product valuation of buyers relative to sellers. In a series of five studies, we provide support for the motivated valuation explanation for the disparity between buying and selling prices and show that when the goal pursuit of buyers and sellers is altered, buyers may be willing to buy for a higher price and sellers may be willing to buy for a lower price.
Influencing Consumers' Preferences: The Effects of Mental Construal and Mode of Information Processing
(2006-03-27) Thompson, Debora Viana; Rust, Roland T.; Hamilton, Rebecca W.; Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation comprises a series of three essays that investigate the influence of consumers' mental construal and information processing on product evaluations. In the first essay, we examine shifts in consumers' preferences for products before and after a direct product use experience. This essay investigates how consumers balance their desire for product capability and product usability when they evaluate products with different numbers of features, before and after use. Three studies show that consumers understand that there are usability costs and capability benefits when features are added to products. However, consumers tend to give more weight to capability and less weight to usability in their product evaluations before use relative to after use, which results in choices that do not maximize satisfaction after use - an effect we refer to as "feature fatigue." In the second essay, we investigate a theoretical explanation for this discrepancy between product evaluations before and after use. Based on construal level theory, we predict that changes in product preferences before and after can be explained by changes in consumers' level of mental representation before and after a direct product experience. Results indicate that when consumers evaluate products before use, they tend to adopt a higher-level, more abstract mental representation of the product, which favors desirability aspects (such as capability) over feasibility aspects (such as usability). However, after product use, consumers tend to adopt a lower-level, more concrete mental representation of the product and are more influenced by feasibility aspects than desirability aspects. In the third essay, we investigate the influence of two modes of information processing, analytical and imagery processing, on consumers' evaluations of products that are advertised through comparative and noncomparative ads. We propose that matching ad format and consumers' mode of information processing improves ad effectiveness by enhancing information processability. Results show that when consumers are exposed to comparative ads, evaluations of the sponsor product are enhanced when consumers use analytical processing as opposed to imagery processing. In contrast, when consumers are exposed to noncomparative ads, evaluations of the sponsor product are more favorable when they use imagery processing rather than analytical processing.
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE IMPACT OF SEX ROLE IDENTITY ON THE EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE OF SALESWOMEN
(1988) Bowers Comer, Lucette; Jolson, Marvin A.; Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
Because of an increasing shortage of qualified salespersonnel, recruiters for sales positions are very receptive to female applicants. Despite this, sex-discrimination is still detectable in the market place. Some sales managers resist bringing women into male-oriented areas of selling, criticizing them for alleged weaknesses. Their criticisms stem from the belief that saleswomen will behave according to gender stereotypes on the job and that this behavior will impact negatively on selling performance. Sales managers need assurance that the saleswomen they hire will perform well on the job. This research investigated the usefulness of the concept of "sex role identity" as a basis for segmenting the pool of female applicants by their potential for effective performance. A survey was conducted of sales managers in three traditionally male areas of selling, who described saleswomen under their supervision. The relationships between sales managers' perceptions of gender stereotypic behavior, selling effectiveness, and sex role identity were examined. Saleswomen' s gender stereotypic behavior was defined as perceived weaknesses in three areas: "selling ability," "human relations," and "motivation." Selling effectiveness was measured as perceived proficiency in performance of six functions of selling and non-selling activities. Saleswomen were classified into sex role types on the basis of their sales managers' perceptions of their masculine ("instrumental") and feminine ("expressive") traits in their sex role identities on the Bem Sex Role Inventory. Seven research hypotheses were tested using univariate and multivariate analysis of variance and correlational analyses. The results showed that sales managers perceived some gender stereotypic behavior in the marketplace and that some of this behavior was associated with reduced selling effectiveness. Sex role types of saleswomen related to both perceived gender stereotypic behavior and selling effectiveness. Androgynous and masculine saleswomen were perceived 'as being the least stereotyped and the most effective performers. The findings give partial support for a two-dimensional model of selling effectiveness defined by masculine "instrumentality" and feminine "expressiveness." The results have implications for the selection, training , and supervision of saleswomen.
Investigations of Factors that Affect Consumers' Online Word Of Mouth Behavior
(2013) Chen, Yu-Jen; Kirmani, Amna; Godes, David; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation includes two essays investigating factors that affect consumers' online word of mouth (WOM) behavior. The first essay studies how consumers as online posters make an online forum choice decision when they are motivated to influence other consumers. We propose that consumers have theories about effective word of mouth persuasion, acting as intuitive media planners in making online forum choices. Specifically, consumers possess audience beliefs (i.e. how loyal to the brand) and beliefs about effective persuasion (i.e. surprising and novel things are more impactful). Across three studies, we demonstrate that posters prefer posing positive messages on a brand-neutral forum (e.g., Digital Camera Forum) to a brand-specific (e.g., Nikon Forum) because positive brand information is not surprising to the later audience. However, when posting negative brand information, posters are equally likely to choose either forum since negative brand information is perceived as diagnostic and surprising to all audience. We further offer a boundary condition in which the poster's primary motive is not to persuade and affect others but to affiliate with others. Under affiliation motive, message valence does not affect forum choice since posters are not considering message valence as a way to being impactful. The second essay investigates the role of product rating scale in a product rating task, and how it can drive WOM behavior. We argue that rating scale can affect a rater's likelihood of engaging subsequent WOM behavior. Specifically, conducting three experiments, we show that participants' WOM intention are higher after evaluating their consumption experience on a 5-point rating scale than on a 2-point rating scale. We suggest that rating scales can affect a rater's certainty belief regarding the rating score assigned (i.e., high rating certainty leads to higher WOM intention). We further provide evidence that rating certainty mediates the impact of rating scale on WOM intention.