1,720,959 research outputs found
The Performance Measurement Trap
No full textDue to copyright restrictions full text access from Treasures at UT Dallas is restricted to current UTD affiliates (use the provided Link to Article).This paper investigates the effect of performance measurement on the optimal effort allocation by salespeople when firms are concerned about retention of salespeople with higher abilities. It shows that introducing a salesperson performance measurement may result in productivity, profit, and welfare losses when all market participants opti-mally respond to the expected information provided by the measurement and the (ex post) optimal retention efforts of the firm cannot be (ex ante) contractually prohibited. In other words, the dynamic inconsistency of the management problems of inducing the desired effort allocation by the salespeople and the subsequent firm objective to retain high-ability salespeople may result in performance measurement yielding an inferior outcome. ©2019 INFORMS.Naveen Jindal School of Managemen
Shaping Consumer Expectations through Integrated Marketing
No full textIn my dissertation, I study the managerial implications when firms can use different strategies
to influence consumers’ learning process. For example, in the first chapter, I focus on consumers’ learning about product fit, which is relevant to the frequently discussed phenomenon
of showrooming. Showrooming is the phenomenon where consumers visit a brick-and-mortar
(B&M) store to examine the products but then buy online to obtain lower prices. Though it
is usually considered a major threat to the B&M retailers, the popular arguments ignore the
strategic role of the manufacturer in the distribution channel. After all, the manufacturer’s
need for retail informational services has always been one of the essential reasons for retailers
to exist and is a means for retailers to achieve profitability. This chapter analytically shows
that when the manufacturer’s decisions are considered (i.e., when the manufacturer-retailer
contract is endogenous), consumers’ ability to engage in showrooming may lead to increased,
rather than decreased, profitability for B&M retailer(s). Thus, retail efforts to restrict showrooming behavior may be misguided. This result holds even if the manufacturer is restricted
to wholesale-only contracts and is not allowed to price discriminate between channels.
In the second chapter, I focus on consumers’ learning about product quality. It is common for
consumers to rely on opinion leaders, who presumably have a higher expertise in the product
category, to form beliefs about the product quality. At the same time, the evaluations and
product adoptions of opinion leaders are influenced both by the product quality and by their
idiosyncratic preferences (fit). When opinion leaders do not provide a very detailed review,
their followers need to form expectations of how much the opinion leader’s recommendation
is driven by product quality and how much it is driven by an idiosyncratic fit of the product
to the opinion leader. This chapter considers how the firm should adjust its optimal choice of
the product variety in the presence of word of mouth, given that the opinion leader is likely
to have more expertise and therefore, be better able to choose the version of the product that
fits her best. It shows that while the opinion leader’s presence may be a force toward either
an increased or decreased number of variants, generally speaking, the distortion is upward
if it is more difficult to satisfy the opinion leaders, which could be either due to the higher
importance of fit or due to their higher standards. I further show that the firm’s knowledge
of the true quality may increase the distortion of the number of product variants it offers
even when the equilibrium number of variants is pooling across the product qualities.
The third chapter of my dissertation looks into the effect of scalping on consumers’ expected
market structure and in turn the firms profit. Scalpers purchase the products with limited
supply for reselling them later at inflated prices. Though firms often impose restrictions
on scalping, we rarely observe actions that completely eliminate scalpers. This chapter
explains why and how an intermediate level of restrictions on scalping can be optimal for
the firm purely from the perspective of the firm’s profitability. I consider a firm with limited
capacity. Consumers decide between purchasing the product before resolving the uncertainty,
and waiting at the risk of the price increasing and the product selling out. I find that the
firm’s profitability can indeed be maximized at an intermediate level of scalping. This result
is an outcome of two opposing effects of scalping. On the one hand, the scalpers’ higher
flexibility in setting the price decreases consumers’ expected payoff of waiting, making them
more eager to pay a high price right away. On the other hand, the competition between
the scalpers and the firm can decrease the firm’s equilibrium price. This result provides an
explanation for the firms’ seemingly contradictory practices: they do impose some but not
complete restrictions on scalping
Competition in consumer shopping experience
No full textFull text unavailable until 12/31/2013. Use the DOI address to see the final published version. A subscription or fee may be necessary to view the article.This paper analyzes the competitive role of retail shopping experience in markets with consumer search costs. We examine how a retailer's advantage in providing consumer shopping experience affects its equilibrium pricing and price advertising strategies. We find that if the consumer valuation of a shopping experience is sufficiently low, its effect on retailer strategy is similar to that of quality, and the retailer with the advantage in shopping experience then deploys higher levels of price advertising. On the other hand, when the shopping experience is valuable enough for consumers, it acts akin to price advertising in that it makes it optimal for the retailer with the advantage in shopping experience to eschew price advertising. The optimal competitive investments in consumer shopping experience can be higher than that of a monopoly. The profit impact of shopping experience for a retailer depends on the level of shopping experience: for low levels, the profit impact depends on the difference in the levels between the retailers, but for high enough levels, it depends only on whether the retailer's shopping experience level is higher than that of its competitor. In this case, even small differences in shopping experience levels can result in large differences in equilibrium profits. © 2012 INFORMS.Finial published versio
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
A Model of the "It" Products in Fashion
No full textOne of the characteristics of the fashion marketplace is the unpredictability and apparent randomness of fashion hits. Another one is the information asymmetry among consumers. In this paper, we consider fashion as a means consumers use to signal belonging to a higher social rank and propose an analytical model of fashion hits in the presence of competition and consumers who can coordinate on which product to use. We show that, consistent with the observed market phenomenon, in equilibrium, consumer coordination involves randomization between products chosen, i.e., in randomness of fashion hits. Analyzing optimal consumer choice, we find that whenever low-type consumer demand for a product is positive, a price increase results in a higher probability of high-type consumers choosing this product but lower low-type consumer demand. We also show that although high-type consumers may prefer (higher) prices that would lead to complete separation of the high- and the low-type consumers through product use, in equilibrium, firms always price as to attract positive demand from low-type consumers. The equilibrium price and profits turn out to be nonmonotonic in the low-type consumer valuation of being recognized as belonging to a higher social rank. Equilibrium profits first increase and then decrease in this valuation
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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