December 1999 SIG Newsletter
Thomas G. Brashear, Editor
Isenberg School of Management
University of Massachusetts Amherst
1999 Churchill Award Presented
The 1999 Churchill Award was presented to Vijay Mahajan of the
University of Texas at Austin. The AMA Special Interest Group
in Marketing Research gives the Churchill Award each year to an
outstanding research scholar for lifetime contribution to the academic
field of marketing research.
Vijay Mahajan is the John P. Harbin Centennial Chair in Business,
Graduate School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. He holds
a B.S. in Chemical Engineering
from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, a M.S. in
Chemical Engineering and a Ph.D. in Management from the University
of Texas at Austin.
Dr. Mahajan’s research has contributed extensively to the areas
of product diffusion, marketing strategy and marketing research
methodologies. He has published in various leading journals such
as the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Marketing
Science, Management Science, and Harvard Business Review. He served
as the editor of the Journal of Marketing Research 1995-97 and is
the co-author or co-editor of five books. He research has received
best paper awards from the Journal of Marketing (1990), Journal
of Retailing (1982 and 1985), and the International Journal of Research
in Marketing (1995). He was also awarded the 1996 “CBA Foundation
Award for Research Excellence" by the Graduate School of Business
and the College of Business Administration at the University of
Texas at Austin.
Professor Mahajan joins Seenu Srinivasan of Stanford University
(1998), Bill Perreault of University of North Carolina (1997), and
Paul Green of Wharton (1996) as recipients of the Churchill Award.
The Churchill award was established in 1995 and named after Professor
Gilbert Churchill retired professor of marketing at the University
of Wisconsin—Madison.
MR SIG Announces Web Site Contestant
Want to win a $75 Amazon.com gift certificate? It's easy!
Win a prize for submitting marketing research website links for
the new MR SIG Web page. Go to: firefly.unl.edu/mrsig/contest.html
and submit URLs for your favorite market research web sites. The
links you provide will be used to make the MR SIG Website a top
"expert" site that people all over the world will find
and use, and help us spread the word about the organization and
the discipline.
Don Lehmann Award
The 1999 Don Lehman award for the best dissertation based research
paper in the Journal of Marketing was presented to K. Sivakumar
of the University of Illinois - Chicago and his dissertation
advisor S. P. Raj of Syracuse University. Their article "Quality
Tier Competition: How Price Change Influences Brand Choice and Category
Choice," (July 1997) found that competition among brands in
different quality tiers can be asymmetric for both brand and category
choice. Using scanner panels, they found that when prices are reduced,
high quality brands gain more with regard to brand and category
choice. As prices increase, high-quality brands are not as susceptible
to losses. Professor Sivakumar’s research focuses on pricing,
international marketing, and innovation management.
AMA SIG E-Commerce Mini Conference
The AMA Special Interest Groups will hold a 1-day mini conference
on E-Commerce on Feb. 5 th , prior to the 2000 Winter AMA Educators’
Conference. The mini conference, chaired by Rajan Varadarajan
of Texas A&M. Participating SIGs include: Strategy, Services,
B2B,Advertising, Sales, Teaching, Technology, and Consumer Behavior.
The Marketing Research session will be chaired and organized by
P. K. Kannan of the University of Maryland. Please see the
conference brochure for the final schedule and plan to arrive in
San Antonio 1 day early!
Summary of the SUMMER AMA MR SIG Special Session
PK. Kannan, MRSIG Chair-Elect chaired the special session,
Frontiers of Marketing Research, at the 1999 AMA Summer Educator’s
Conference. The session included five presentations that examined
interesting market research questions in application contexts ranging
from retail settings to health care.
The session started with Richard Durand presenting the paper
“Matching Attitudinal and Scanner Data to Explain Consumer
Purchases of Multiple Items” (co-authored
with Gabriel Biehal, P. K. Kannan, and Venky Shankar). The
presentation focused on the issue of consumers’ multiple item
purchases – transactions in which more than one item (of the
same UPC, or an assortment of different UPCs within a product category)
is bought on a given shopping trip. Durand presented a framework
of
multiple item purchases that matches survey based attitudinal data
with scanner based behavior data to understand consumer purchase
of multiple items in a
category. The illustration of the application of the framework using
survey data and scanner data for the salty snack product category
showed how the synergistic merger of the two data types provides
useful insights into consumers’ multiple purchases. For example,
the preliminary analysis revealed that consumers are more
likely to buy multiple items on their shopping trips as against
singles as: (1) more dispersed their consideration sets are (more
acceptable brands and less focused on a
single manufacturer), (2) more non-loyal they are in orientation
while shopping for salty snacks, and (3) more involved they are
in the product category and have positive attitude towards the category.
The consumers also tend to variety-seek in their multiple purchases
if their consideration sets are relatively less dispersed among
those buying multiples and focused on national brands and they have
positive attitude towards national brands. The variety-seekers also
tend to consider preferences of others in the household as they
shop and show stronger preferences for salty snack brands. This
presentation was followed by a novel application in the health care
setting by Donald Morrison who presented the paper, “A
Baby or Your
Money Back: The Marketing of In Vitro Fertilization Procedures”
(co-authored with David Schmittlein).
The presentation examined the marketing practices of a large number
of clinics that offer in vitro fertilization (IVF). These clinics
aggressively market the following options to couples seeking to
have a genetically related baby: (1) an a la carte program where
the couple pays $7,500 per attempt regardless of the outcome; or
(2) a money-back-guarantee program where the couple pays a $15,000
up-front fee that
covers up to three attempts – however, if after three cycles
there is no live birth delivery, then the full $15,000 is refunded.
If the couple contemplating these two choices knew the success probability
for each attempt, then a simple analysis would show whether the
a la carte or money-back-guarantee program is better. Unfortunately,
it is difficult for couples to gather the relevant data and even
more daunting to adjust the aggregate data to their own situation.
Morrison and Schmittlein use the most recent available data and
develop a model that allows patients, clinics, and public policy
advocates to assess the a la carte vs. money-back-guarantee programs.
The most surprising result of their analysis is that the money-back-guarantee
program appears (for the patients) to be “too good to be true.”
That is, with reasonable projections from the most recent data,
the money-back-guarantee yields a substantial negative expected
profit per couple for the clinics. More importantly from the patients’
perspective, the money-back-guarantee
turns out to be the better option for all couples with less than
0.5 success probability per cycle. (The break-even probability is
even higher if risk aversion is considered).
Virtually all traditional IVF patients can be considered to have
per-cycle success probabilities well below 0.5. Can it be that clinics
are offering money-back-guarantees that both lose money for the
clinics and give the patients a deal that is far better for them
then the traditional a la carte payment method? Morrison showed
scenarios under which this is not the case and how money-back-guarantees
can be profitable
for the clinics.
In his presentation, “The Joint Spatial Representation of Multiple
Data Sets Collected in Marketing Research,” Wayne DeSarbo
(with co-author Jianan Wu) proposed a
new latent structure MDS procedure devised to jointly represent
the structure in multiple batteries of variables collected across
the same set of respondents.
Marketing research studies concerning market segmentation, competitive
market structure, and positioning, often involve the collection
of multiple batteries of measurements from the same set of respondents
(preferences, attribute ratings, demographics, proximity judgments,
etc.). While various multidimensional scaling
(MDS) methods have been utilized in the analysis of these variable
batteries separately, not much effort has been expended in attempting
to relate the different derived structures. DeSarbo presented the
new procedure and the technical structure of the maximum likelihood
based model and conceptually compared it to other related spatial
MDS models. An application of the procedure with respect to proximity
and preference data collected from the Netherlands concerning some
twelve major grocery food stores highlighted the usefulness of the
new methodology. Understanding how satisfaction impacts search,consideration
and choice is the key to studying the relationship between satisfaction
with a prior consumption experience and the current choice, a topic
of considerable importance given the popularity of customer satisfaction studies. In his presentation,
“The Impact of Satisfaction on Search, Consideration and Choice,”
Brian Ratchford
discussed the estimation of an econometric model of the linkage
between satisfaction with the previously-owned car, time spent with
various information sources, models
considered, and choice of a model from the consideration set. The
model was estimated using data from a survey of automobile purchasers
that contained information on each of these variables, as well as
ratings of the models considered on a number of attributes. Thus,
unlike studies of consideration and choice done on scanner data,
this model includes information on the actual composition of the
consideration set without having to infer it from the data. The
results showed that satisfaction has a strong effect on whether
a model is considered again, and on the size of the consideration
set – consistent with other work, consideration sets of size
one are common, and significantly related to satisfaction with the
previous model. Ratchford also shared his findings on the determinants
of choice given consideration, and how satisfaction affected these
determinants.
The final presentation in the session, “Pleasant Surprises:
Consumer Response to Unexpected In-store Promotions” by Carrie
Heilman (with co-authors Kent Nakamoto and Ambar Rao)
focused on the impact of unexpected, in-store grocery promotions
(i.e., electronic or peel-off coupons) on planned shopping behavior
of grocery store consumers. The key premise of the study was that
consumers who use an in-store coupon would make more unplanned purchases
than those who do not use one while in the store. In an in-store
experimental setting, the study tested the hypotheses that consumers
receiving an unexpected coupon while in the store would 1) make
more unplanned purchases of complementary goods of the product for
which the coupon was used, 2) make more unplanned purchases of items
in close proximity to the product for which the coupon was used
and 3) make more unplanned purchases of “treat” items
as a reward to themselves for having saved money as a result of
the coupon. The initial findings of the study support that consumers
who receive a surprise in-store coupon make more unplanned purchases
than those who do not receive one. In analyzing how these incremental
unplanned purchases are allocated throughout the store, Heilman
and her colleagues find that consumers who receive an in-store coupon
make more unplanned purchases of “treat” items and goods
that are shelved in close proximity to the one primed by the coupon.
However, consumers do not make more unplanned purchases of compliments
to the product
bought with the surprise coupon or products for other items on promotion.
Summer AMA Plenary Session
Naveen Donthu, immediate past chair of the Marketing Research
SIG, organized and chaired the Future of Marketing, Marketing Research
and Research in Marketing plenary session at the 1999 AMA summer
educators’ conference. An impressive panel
consisting of Rohit Deshpande, Don Lehmann, Jag Sheth, Bart Weitz
and Jerry Wind opined on the future of marketing, marketing
research and research in marketing. Despite summer educators’
conference being notorious for low attendance at sessions because
everyone is busyinterviewing and recruiting, this plenary session
was very well attended. The caliber of the speakers and the timeliness
of the topic seemed to attract attendees.
Rohit Deshpande spoke from his experience at the Marketing
Science Institute. His talk was based on a forthcoming article in
the Journal of Marketing. He made interesting observations based
on what has changed and what has not changed in the research priorities
of MSI. He concluded that the research priorities have emphasized
Cross-functional, Cross-disciplinary, Cross-cultural, and
Customer-centric (4 Cs) issues.
Don Lehmann expressed concern that other fields such as strategy,
operations, CIS etc have dominated relevant business issues. He
emphasized that our work has to be relevant to CEOs and CFOs. Commenting
on academic research he said, “we tend to focus on stuff we
know, not the stuff that matters....”
Jag Sheth started by saying, “I believe there will be
in fact no marketing as you know in about 25-30 years.” He
commented on issues such as age diversity, income
diversity, ethnic diversity, and lifestyle diversity and its implications
on marketing. Jag believes that marketing is going through a midlife
crisis as a result of contextual
changes. He thinks, “eventually, marketing is going to end
up with less and less marketing, and marketing will become more
and more business development.”
Similar to Don Lehmann, Bart Weitz thinks we've been ignoring
things that people care about. “It's not just they don't care
about how to measure service quality or brand equity, or quality
of a channel relation; the question is how do you actually build
brand equity, and how do you actually create these channel partnerships
and some other things like database marketing, supply chain management,
customer
loyalty programs.” Bart strongly felt that academic journal
review process needed to support people who are taking new approaches
that are focusing on substance rather than method alone.
Jerry Wind spoke passionately about the Internet, E-commerce,
data mining, customization etc. He expressed concern that the gap
between academics research and industry research was increasing.
He urged people to do more relevant research and hoped that the journal
review process and academic tenure process change accordingly.
Finally, the audience has several interesting questions for the panelist.
Internet marketing and e-commerce seemed to be a favorite topic. Naveen
observed that interestingly all of the panelists were male, from the
East Coast, not surprisingly chaired professors, and more importantly
they had profoundly influenced the thinking and research in marketing
over the years.
Call For Papers: Marketing Research SIG Track (2000 AMA Summer Educators’ Conference)
The Marketing Research Track of the 2000 Summer AMA seeks papers and
special sessions that deal with innovative methods in marketing research
and data analysis or
approaches that improve our understanding of existing methods. Papers
that not only advance the state of the art of marketing research methodology,
but also emonstrate the benefits of these advances for the analysis
of substantive marketing issues are encouraged. Topics may include,
but are not limited to, the following: methods of analyzing or presenting
marketing data, imputation of missing data,measurement methods for
marketing, marketing information systems and the use of information
within organizations, obtaining primary or secondary data via the
Internet, mathemati -cal models of marketing phenomena, normative
marketing decision models, and marketing research across cultural
and national boundaries. Conceptual, empirical,
analytical, and qualitative approaches are welcome.
Send papers and special session proposals to:
Naveen Donthu (ndonthu@gsu.edu)
Department of Marketing
J. Mack Robinson College of Business
Georgia State University
Atlanta, GA 30303
Phone: (404) 651-1043
Fax: (404) 651 4198
P. K. Kannan (pkannan@rhsmith.umd.edu)
Department of Marketing
The Robert H. Smith School of Business
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
Phone: (301) 405-2188
Fax: 301-405-0146
Call for Papers for the IJRM-2001 Special
Issue on MarketSegmentation
The International Journal of Research in Marketing has scheduled a
special issue on Marketing Segmentation to appear in 2001. This special
issue will be guest edited by
Wagner A. Kamakura, University of Iowa and Michel Wedel,
University of Groningen. The deadline for the submissions the 1 st
of February, 2000. Contributions should conform to the regular IJRM
requirements, are subject to a regular IJRM review process. For more
information please contact Wagner A. Kamakura (wagner-kamakura@uiowa.edu)
or Michel Wedel (M.Wedel@eco.rug.nl).
2001 Winter AMA Research SIGTrack Chairs Announced
Kusum L. Ailawadi, Tuck School, Dartmouth College and K. Sivakumar,
University of Illinois, Chicago will chair the Marketing Research
Track of the 2001 Winter AMA Educators’ Conference. The conference
will be held in Scottsdale, Arizona. More information will be provided
in the Spring 2000 edition of the MRSIG Newsletter.
MR SIG Officers for 2000
Chair: Praveen K. Kopalle, Dartmouth College
Immediate Past Chair: Wagner Kamakura, University of Iowa
Chair Elect: P. Kannan, University of Maryland
Vice Chair for Special Sessions: Frank Mulhern,Northwestern University
Vice Chair for PR and Finance: Thomas G. Brashear,University of
Massachusetts Amherst
Newsletter Editor: Gary J. Russell, University of Iowa
Webmaster: Dwayne Ball, University of Nebraska
Support the MRSIG
Encourage your colleagues and graduating students to join and become
involved in the MRSIG. Remember…
Marketing Research is SIG(NIFICANT)!
SIG(NIFICANT) RESEARCH NEWS is the official newsletter of the
Marketing Research Special Interest Group (MR SIG) of the American
Marketing Association (AMA). For more information please contact Praveen
Kopalle (kopalle@dartmouth.edu)
or Gary J. Russell (gary-j-russell@uiowa.edu).
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