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TWO ESSAYS ON SCREENING STRATEGIES
Title
TWO ESSAYS ON SCREENING STRATEGIES.
Creator
Ganesh Pillai, Rajani, Xin He, Raj Echambadi, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Consumers form consideration sets by screening from all available alternatives. Consumers typically utilize one of two types of screening strategies: an exclusion screening strategy wherein alternatives not worthy of further consideration are rejected or an inclusion strategy wherein worthy alternatives are selected for further evaluation. Extant literature has documented the important role played by screening strategies in decision making. However, there is very limited understanding of when...
Show moreConsumers form consideration sets by screening from all available alternatives. Consumers typically utilize one of two types of screening strategies: an exclusion screening strategy wherein alternatives not worthy of further consideration are rejected or an inclusion strategy wherein worthy alternatives are selected for further evaluation. Extant literature has documented the important role played by screening strategies in decision making. However, there is very limited understanding of when and why consumers may employ one screening strategy over the other as well the impact of the screening strategy for decision accuracy. This dissertation attempts to study the antecedent and consequence of screening strategies. Essay 1 in this dissertation, investigates the role of consumers' perceived uncertainty on the choice of screening strategy. Four studies in this essay show that when consumers are highly uncertain they are more likely to choose exclusion screening strategy; whereas when they are less uncertain they are more likely to use inclusion screening. Mediation analyses in Studies 1 and 2 show that the choice of screening strategy is primarily driven by perceived accuracy of the strategy. Study 3 demonstrates that the effect of uncertainty on the choice of screening strategy is moderated by consideration set size. When uncertain consumers form smaller sets they are more likely to use exclusion screening, but this relationship flips when they form larger consideration sets. Finally, external validity for the relationship between uncertainty and choice of screening strategy is demonstrated in Study 4 using the popular TV game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Essay two in this dissertation, investigates the role of perceived uncertainty and consideration set size on the relationship between screening strategy and objective accuracy of the decision. Utilizing an experimental study with an actual choice task, I demonstrate that perceived uncertainty moderates the screening strategy-decision accuracy relationship. Further, this interactive relationship is contingent on consideration set sizes. Whereas consumers with high perceived uncertainty make higher quality decisions with inclusion while forming smaller consideration sets, their decision quality is higher with exclusion when forming larger sets. Likewise, while consumers with low perceived uncertainty make more accurate decisions with exclusion when forming smaller sets, the accuracy of their decisions increases with inclusion when forming larger sets. This dissertation contributes to literature on screening strategies by explicating perceived uncertainty as a critical factor that leads to consumers preferring one screening strategy versus the other. Furthermore, it adds to our understanding of an important consequence of using screening strategies – decision accuracy.
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Date Issued
2009
Identifier
CFE0002927, ucf:48001
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002927
MARKET-BASED ASSET MANAGEMENT AND SHAREHOLDER VALUE: INVESTIGATING THE ROLES OF HUMAN CAPITAL AND FACTOR MARKETS IN MAXIMIZING RETURNS ON CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS
Title
MARKET-BASED ASSET MANAGEMENT AND SHAREHOLDER VALUE: INVESTIGATING THE ROLES OF HUMAN CAPITAL AND FACTOR MARKETS IN MAXIMIZING RETURNS ON CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS.
Creator
Milewicz, Chad, Echambadi, Raj, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The accountability of marketing investments continues to be a key area of concern for researchers and practitioners (MSI Research Priorities, 2008). In particular, market-based assets, specifically customer relationships, and their potential impact on firm performance are a significant source of interest. Though research in this area continues to grow, little is understood about how investments in human capital and the acquisition of alliance partners through factor markets relate to customer...
Show moreThe accountability of marketing investments continues to be a key area of concern for researchers and practitioners (MSI Research Priorities, 2008). In particular, market-based assets, specifically customer relationships, and their potential impact on firm performance are a significant source of interest. Though research in this area continues to grow, little is understood about how investments in human capital and the acquisition of alliance partners through factor markets relate to customer relationship management and the impact of customer relationships on performance. This dissertation presents two studies which, together, investigate how investments in market-based assets influence on abnormal stock returns. In the first study, the resource-based view of the firm (Barney 1991) is used to posit several hypotheses related to investments in human capital. The hypotheses are tested using ten years of data from the U.S. airline industry and analyzed using a mixed-effects methodology. Results indicate that investments in customer service personnel impact abnormal stock returns through their impact on customer relationships. Moreover, these investments tend to have decreasing returns in terms of their impact on customer relationships, and the relative strength of this relationship is shown to be contingent upon a firm's service delivery capabilities, advertising expenditures, and operating focus. This study helps clarify how market-based assets are managed, how investments in specific resources used to manage them relate to stock returns, and why the same dollar invested in human capital by different firms can lead to different levels of returns. The second study also takes a resource-based view of the firm and the management of market-based assets. From this perspective, alliances are considered as external resources acquired in strategic factor markets (Barney 1986) for the purpose of complimenting a focal firm's strategy and performance. This study investigates the long-term impact of alternative types of alliances and the potential impact of alliance partners' customer relationship management capabilities on a focal firms' performance. Just as in study one, ten years of U.S. airline data are used, and a mixed-effects methodology is implemented to test hypotheses. Results indicate that the direct benefits of horizontal marketing alliances tend to be positive, but dependent upon the extensiveness of the alliance. Furthermore, it is revealed that the impact of a partner's customer relationship management capabilities on a focal firm's performance is contingent upon whether the partner's capabilities are similar or dissimilar relative to the focal firm. In short, results indicate that when differences exist, the positive impact of a focal firm's customer relationship management capabilities can be reduced to almost zero if that firm allies with a less competent partner. Taken together, these studies tend to suggest that firms which learn to successfully manage investments in customer relationships may risk nullifying expected positive returns if they simultaneously select alliance partners which are less successful at managing such investments. Similarly, firms which are not able to improve their own management of customer relationships can potentially limit the potential negative consequences by allying with more able firms. In all, this dissertation helps address the accountability issue for marketers.
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Date Issued
2009
Identifier
CFE0002769, ucf:48119
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002769
TWO ESSAYS ON SATISFACTION
Title
TWO ESSAYS ON SATISFACTION.
Creator
BINDROO, VISHAL, ECHAMBADI, RAJ, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This dissertation consists of two essays that study the relevant boundary conditions to the relationship between the customer satisfaction and loyalty. Retaining current customers is critical to a firm's performance and has been well-established in the literature. Extant literature tells us that loyal customers are typically less price sensitive, spend more than non-loyal customers, less expensive to retain, and more importantly, provide new referrals through positive word of mouth. In...
Show moreThis dissertation consists of two essays that study the relevant boundary conditions to the relationship between the customer satisfaction and loyalty. Retaining current customers is critical to a firm's performance and has been well-established in the literature. Extant literature tells us that loyal customers are typically less price sensitive, spend more than non-loyal customers, less expensive to retain, and more importantly, provide new referrals through positive word of mouth. In the first essay, drawing from decision justifiability theory, I posit that consideration set size and price-consciousness moderate the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. At higher levels of consideration set sizes, the positive relationship between satisfaction and loyalty is likely to be weakened. However, this two-way interaction effect is seen to impact high and low price-conscious consumers differently. Specifically, I show that satisfied, low price-conscious consumers with higher consideration set sizes will be more loyal vis-a-vis high price-conscious consumers with similar satisfaction levels and set sizes. These theoretical hypotheses are tested in four separate studies. Specifically, I use secondary data and three experimental studies. All my hypotheses including the mediating role of decision justifiability are supported. The second essay investigates the role of satisfaction on loyalty intentions for firms that offer both the product and the product-related augmented services. In the industry that I studied for this question, buying a product requires an extraordinarily high capital outlay; however, the profitability of the firm is dependent on the services offered to the customers. The services market is a very competitive market as well in this industry. So, how should a firm manage this portfolio that includes both products and services? I draw and extend the consumption system model proposed by Mittal, Kumar and Tsiros (Journal of Marketing, 1999). Specifically, I propose a curvilinear relationship for both product and services satisfaction on loyalty intentions and posit synergistic interactions between them. I test this model using longitudinal data spanning five years across multiple countries that were obtained from a multinational company. Analyses reveal support for the proposed hypotheses.
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Date Issued
2009
Identifier
CFE0002768, ucf:48114
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002768
TWO ESSAYS ON PRODUCT DESIGN AND CONSUMER EVALUATIONS
Title
TWO ESSAYS ON PRODUCT DESIGN AND CONSUMER EVALUATIONS.
Creator
Lee, Sangwon, Echambadi, Raj, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This paper is about the central role of product design on consumer evaluations. While the design literature has articulated two different types of design, i.e. form-based design and function-based design (Khalid 2004), most extant marketing literature has mostly focused on the impact of functional design on performance (see Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Mahajan (2007) for a notable exception). In this paper, I examine the individual and joint effects of the two design dimensions: form design and...
Show moreThis paper is about the central role of product design on consumer evaluations. While the design literature has articulated two different types of design, i.e. form-based design and function-based design (Khalid 2004), most extant marketing literature has mostly focused on the impact of functional design on performance (see Chitturi, Raghunathan, and Mahajan (2007) for a notable exception). In this paper, I examine the individual and joint effects of the two design dimensions: form design and functional design on consumer evaluations of new products. In the first essay, employing theoretical underpinnings from processing fluency theory, I investigate four major research questions. First, all else equal, does form design matter? Second, how does form design interact with functional design? Third, does the interaction between form and functionality change in an innovation context? Specifically, given a certain level of functionality, what type of form is more advantageous for a radically new product (RNP) or an incrementally new product (INP)? Fourth, is there an individual difference in consumer evaluations to innovative products with various form designs? Results from the four experiments conducted demonstrate that (1) more typical form design leads to more positive attitudes toward the product than less typical form design, (2) a more typical design compensates for the average functionality of the product and hence a product with average functionality is evaluated as well as highly functional products in the more typical design condition. In a less typical design condition, a product with high functionality leads to much lower consumer attitudes towards the product, (3) whereas the form design for incremental innovations must be closer to the incumbent products for favorable evaluations, less typical form is evaluated as good as more typical form for radical innovations. (4) Form design of an innovative product matters more to the technologically more sophisticated consumers (experts) than technologically less sophisticated consumers (novices). In the second essay, I examine the issues involved in using form design to nullify first mover advantage. Pioneers or first movers can be defined as the first firm to sell in a new product category. Despite the proliferation of the pioneering advantage research, there are few empirical studies which examined how the product design enables the later entrants to nullify the first mover advantage. Employing theoretical underpinnings from categorization theory, I investigate the following research questions. First, what type of form is more likely to enhance consumer evaluations and nullify first mover advantage when the followerÂÂ's product is featured with higher or lower functionality? Second, how does form design interact with functional design for the followerÂÂ's product? Results from the experimental study conducted demonstrate that (1) if the followerÂÂ's functionality is not superior to the pioneerÂÂ's, follower had better focus on design differentiation which can compensate for the lower functionality of the follower (2) if the followerÂÂ's functionality is superior to the pioneerÂÂ's, follower had better follow the pioneerÂÂ's design for the better product evaluation. The managerial implication is clear: Form design is a critical determinant of consumer evaluations. Form design helps create and appropriate value for firms.
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Date Issued
2010
Identifier
CFE0003249, ucf:48546
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0003249