The use of celebrity endorsements varies across countries; does their effectiveness similarly vary across cultures? The authors propose that power distance beliefs (PDB), a cultural orientation ...related to the extent to which people expect and accept differences in power, moderate the effects of celebrity endorsements. A positive effect of celebrity endorsers on evaluations of advertising should be more potent with greater PDB; source expertise and trustworthiness likely underlie this effect. To test the hypotheses, the authors use moderated mediation analyses, with corrections for measurement error and endogeneity of the mediators (source expertise and trustworthiness). The results of three studies, using both manipulated and measured PDB for respondents in different countries and with a variety of endorsers, demonstrate that PDB determine the effectiveness of celebrity endorsements on attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand. In support of the moderated mediation model, perceptions of source expertise and trust mediate the effect of celebrity endorsements, conditional on PDB. The results hold for nondurables but do not generalize to durable products.
The paper examines the opportunities in and possibilities arising from big data in retailing, particularly along five major data dimensions—data pertaining to customers, products, time, (geo-spatial) ...location and channel. Much of the increase in data quality and application possibilities comes from a mix of new data sources, a smart application of statistical tools and domain knowledge combined with theoretical insights. The importance of theory in guiding any systematic search for answers to retailing questions, as well as for streamlining analysis remains undiminished, even as the role of big data and predictive analytics in retailing is set to rise in importance, aided by newer sources of data and large-scale correlational techniques. The Statistical issues discussed include a particular focus on the relevance and uses of Bayesian analysis techniques (data borrowing, updating, augmentation and hierarchical modeling), predictive analytics using big data and a field experiment, all in a retailing context. Finally, the ethical and privacy issues that may arise from the use of big data in retailing are also highlighted.
•Adding an online channel may lead to cannibalization of offline sales.•Adding an offline channel would have a complimentary effect of the existing channels.•Adding mobile channel has a positive ...effect on the retailer's overall performance.•Better cross-channel integration increases retailer's performance.•Marketing mix strategies have cross-channel effects and need to be optimized taking into consideration these cross-effects.
The authors review 50 empirical retailing research papers that have appeared over the last 20 years to take stock of what we know, need to know better, and do not know yet about within-retailer cross-channel effects of omnichannel retail marketing strategies on (a) consumer responses over their purchase journeys, i.e., online and/or offline search, purchase intention, frequency, amount, returns, loyalty, and (b) the retail firm's aggregate outcomes (e.g., sales, costs, profits, product returns) by channel and overall. Specifically, the authors focus on five strategies: (1) the addition of online channel by an offline retailer; (2) the addition (or subtraction) of offline channels by an online retailer; (3) addition of mobile shopping channel (website and/or app) by offline and/or online retailer; (4) cross-channel integration strategies; and (5) retail marketing mix strategies. The author/s integrate findings from empirical research on these strategies into a number of ‘insights’ about ‘what we know’. Prominent among these are the following: Adding a transactional online channel to an offline channel improves the retailer's overall sales even though offline channel sales can be cannibalized to some degree. Adding an offline channel by an online retailer, however, boosts online channel sales as well as overall sales of the retailer. Similarly, adding a mobile shopping channel usually increases customer purchase frequency and amount and overall sales of the retailer in the long-term. Strategies for greater cross-channel integration generally have a positive effect on a retailer's overall performance while online advertising has positive effects on offline channel consideration and sales as well as overall sales of a multichannel retailer. Other insights or findings that need further study or open questions are also identified. The paper closes with managerial implications of the derived empirical insights, and suggestions for future research.
The routines-based approach to operations management emphasizes the role of routines in operational performance. However, little is known about how gender diversity in teams could alter coordination ...and change behaviors of team members, potentially impacting performance. In this study, we report on two laboratory experiments that induce routines to assess the stability of coordination and adaptability to organizational changes across mixed-gender teams of varying diversity and empirically examine operational performance via routines. Based on frequentist and Bayesian statistical approaches, our findings reveal that compared to other mixed-gender teams, balanced-gender teams (a) attain stability in routines faster, (b) exhibit varying levels of adaptability to internal and external changes, and (c) deliver better economic benefits via resource- and time- efficiencies under normal and change conditions, and this is attributable to their higher pace of routine formation. We find the operational-performance effect more prominent in situations of change than in normal conditions. Alongside our theoretical contributions, our study has several implications for management and effective operations management in terms of team composition, hiring, and staffing decisions.
The formulation of the oral bioadhesive Aminophylline Anhydrous tablet, various hydrophilic polymers and their combinations were used in varying concentrations of mucoadhesive polymer like HPMC K4M, ...Carbopol 934, Ethyl Cellulose, Aspartame, Talc and Magnesium Stearate added to the formulation are essentially required to achieve in-vitro buoyancy, desirable drug release, and excellent bioadhesive strength. Tablets were subject to various evaluation parameters such as Hardness, Friability, Drug content, Weight Variation and in vitro drug release study. It was revealed that tablets of all batches had acceptable physical parameters. Tablets of batch F8 have good mucoadhesion along with in vitro drug release. It was observed that tablets of all batches followed the equation of Zero, 1st Order Release Kinetics, Korsmeyer and Peppas drug release profiles. Tablets of Batch F8 were selected as an optimum batch. Stability studies revealed that there was no significant change in the hardness, friability, drug content, and dissolution profile of formulation F8. Thus, this formulation was stable at different conditions of temperature. The present study shows that can be used for designing a mucoadhesive CR drug delivery system. Various hydrophilic polymers and their combinations were used in varying concentrations of mucoadhesive polymer like HPMC K4M, Carbopol 934; hence it may increase the therapeutic efficacy of the drug by increasing the bioavailability and patient compliance and stimulates the skeletal muscles
Many firms are adopting an “everything or anything” as a service—“XaaS”—model to sell goods and value‐added services. Buyers for such goods are heterogeneous both in the number of units they desire ...and the valuations for each unit. Suppliers designing such revenue models can offer either a usage‐based per‐unit fee or an access‐based per‐period fee, often combining them both as a nonlinear two‐part tariff plan that imposes both types of fees on all buyers or let buyers self‐select from a menu of per‐unit and per‐period plans. We develop a theoretical model to analyze the economic implications of alternative designs for mixing per‐unit and per‐period fees. Our analysis produces the following practical insights on these plans' profitability and market coverage. First, the menu is generally a better way of combining access and usage fees for a firm selling digital goods with zero variable costs. Second, the preferred design switches to a two‐part tariff if the firm's production environment resells or runs on top of a back‐end infrastructure or data service provider that imposes nonnegligible variable costs. Third, we show that the revenue advantage of these two designs (which employ both fees) over a simple plan that employs only one fee (best of per unit and per period) is most significant when the rate of change in marginal valuation is relatively similar across buyers.
•Examine AI technologies in marketing via a global lens.•Global lens focuses on three levels of analysis: country, company, and consumer.•Country-level analysis emphasizes the heterogeneity in ...economic inequality across countries.•Company-level analysis focuses on glocalization.•Consumer-level analysis examines consumer ethics and privacy concerns in relation to AI.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has captured substantial interest from a wide array of marketing scholars in recent years. Our research contributes to this emerging domain by examining AI technologies in marketing via a global lens. Specifically, our lens focuses on three levels of analysis: country, company, and consumer. Our country-level analysis emphasizes the heterogeneity in economic inequality across countries due to the considerable economic resources necessary for AI adoption. Our company-level analysis focuses on glocalization because while the hardware that underlies these technologies may be global in nature, their application necessitates adaptation to local cultures. Our consumer-level analysis examines consumer ethics and privacy concerns, as AI technologies often collect, store and process a cornucopia of personal data across our globe. Through the prism of these three lenses, we focus on two important dimensions of AI technologies in marketing: (1) human–machine interaction and (2) automated analysis of text, audio, images, and video. We then explore the interaction between these two key dimensions of AI across our three-part global lens to develop a set of research questions for future marketing scholarship in this increasingly important domain.
Two- (2PTs) and three-part tariffs (3PTs) are widely used for selling goods, to compensate workers, and in procurement contracts. They are practical alternatives to complex nonlinear tariffs in ...on-demand services and technology industries and are more profitable than the restrictive per-unit and unlimited-use pricing. A 2PT imposes both a fixed (access) fee and a per-unit (usage) fee, and a 3PT generalizes it by bundling some free units (an allowance) into the fixed fee. Intuitively, bundling free allowance provides an additional lever to the firm, enabling it to charge differential marginal rates to improve profitability. However, designing a 3PT is a challenging problem, and the optimal solution is known only when the market has homogeneous consumers or two discrete segments. We advance theory about optimal 3PT design by developing a reformulation that simplifies the solution procedure for the general case and generates new theoretical and practical insights. Our analysis reveals, surprisingly, that when the market demand follows an increasing price elasticity (or, approximately, when consumer distribution follows an increasing hazard rate), the optimal 3PT outcomes are identical to optimal 2PT outcomes. This result generalizes to a menu of tariffs. By contrast, the free allowance in a 3PT may be truly impactful when market demand is multimodal or corresponds to distinct segments with sharp across-segment differences, or when consumers have certain tariff biases. Our results help explain how and when 3PT matters, and they can help managers make informed decisions about how to design and employ nonlinear pricing.
An examination of brand prices in several categories reveals that the distribution of prices is multimodal, with firms offering shallow and deep discounts. Another interesting feature of these ...distributions is that they may have holes in the interior of the support. These pricing distributions do not occur in extant theoretical models of price promotions. We develop a dynamic model of competition in which some price-sensitive consumers stockpile during periods of deep discounts. A game-theoretic analysis of our model generates a multimodal pricing distribution with a hole in the interior of the support. Consumer stockpiling in our model also gives rise to negative serial correlation in prices. This is consistent with our empirical observation of the pricing distribution of several brands across multiple categories in the IRI marketing data set.
We generate several interesting insights into firms' optimal promotional strategies and their interplay with the clientele mix, market structure, and other market factors. We find that, in equilibrium, stockpiling by price-sensitive consumers neither harms nor benefits firms when they adopt equilibrium strategies. Interestingly, when price-sensitive consumers stockpile, even increased consumption as a result of stockpiling does not lead to higher profits for firms.
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