Marketing Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2790
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Item Online Social Influence(2014) Zhang, Yuchi; Moe, Wendy W; Godes, David; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation studies the behaviors of consumers in an online, social context. In the first essay, we jointly model the drivers of social media rebroadcasting behavior. Our goal in this research is to propose a framework and model of social media rebroadcasting behavior that integrates the various factors shown to influence rebroadcasting behavior. These include the role of message content and influence, factors that have been studied separately with very little integration. The results from our proposed model show that not only does rebroadcasting activity vary with the content of the original message but also that individuals are more likely to rebroadcast content that closely fits with their own interests. In the second essay, we ask whether online opinions impact consumers' decision quality and assess whether this impact occurs immediately or requires one to undergo learning first. We focus on a setting where consumers have multiple learning episodes based on their experiences with opinions from both uni- and bi-directional ties (i.e. weak and strong ties). We find that the dynamic effects are dependent on the strength of the tie. Additional strong ties (operationalized as bi-directional links) lead to immediate positive effects on decision quality. In contrast, additional weak ties (uni-directional, follower relationships) as a source of information lead initially to lower decision quality. However, highly-experienced consumers receive, ultimately, higher positive effects on decision quality from weak ties as compared with strong ties. Finally, in the third essay, we propose a new framework and model for identifying dimension specific influentials. We explicitly model individuals' preferences by estimating their locations on a market map to disentangle purchase behavior due to homophily from that due to influence. Our results show that it is important to estimate dimension specific influence, based on a comparison of model fit with a baseline model that measures influence along one dimension. We also show that individuals have varying levels of influence across dimensions, and an influencer for one dimension is not always influential on all dimensions.Item 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.