Beyond Higher Ed Marketing: Unsanctioned User Generated Conten

The impact of User Generated Content (UGC) on higher-education marketing is an entirely untouched area of marketing research, therefore the current study aims to better understand how widely disseminated this content is among students, how they perceive this content and its impact upon their university, as well as what kinds of students are drawn to participate in and consume this content. A sample of 238 university students at a large public institution were surveyed regarding their engagement with UGC content associated with their school, the reasons for their interest in this content, and the ways in which it may effect their perception of the institution

Utilitarian and Hedonic Shopping Behavior in the Face of Natural Disaster

Terror management theory suggests that events which make one’s mortality salient also lead to compensatory processes and behaviors meant to alleviate existential anxiety. Applications within the field of consumer behavior have led to the proposal that any such event may also impact materialism and consumption decisions as a protectant from such anxiety. With this in mind, the current study sets out to investigate the personal experiences and subsequent shopping behavior of those impacted by Hurricane Matthew in the coastal southeastern region of the United States. While Hurricane Matthew had nowhere near the destructive impact of Katrina within the continental United States, as the most powerful Atlantic tropical storm in nearly a decade, Hurricane Matthew caused widespread disruptions to services and difficulties for consumers over a very large area, to include Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas. A survey (n = 268) was administered in this region within two weeks from the time the hurricane subsided, regarding both utilitarian (preparation) shopping and hedonic (enjoyment/stress-reduction) shopping activity, both at times directly before and directly after the hurricane. Several scales such as fear during the storm, general tendency for risk aversion, and present temporal presentation were also administered to investigate the relationships between individual differences and their influences on consumer’s perception about the impact of natural disaster on consumers. Results reveal that respondents in our sample engaged in significantly more utilitarian shopping than hedonic shopping both before and after the hurricane. However, initial findings reveal that groups with higher levels of fear during the storm, general tendency for risk aversion, and those with present temporal presentations were more likely to report feeling that they must purchase more ‘of everything’ during the storm, delay purchase of unnecessary/luxury goods, and show concern about crowded shopping areas and becoming a more conscious shopper than low-fear participants

Seeking Complex Health Services in the Age of Self-referral

This study investigates the relationship between consumers’ information search and service satisfaction, specifically focused on the search for mental health professionals. The selection of a mental health provider is of interest because practitioners work from a highly diverse set of theoretical bases, may hold a wide range of different credentials and provide drastically different therapeutic approaches, therefore making the selection complex and difficult for consumers to self-navigate. Data sampling from patients of mental health suggest that consumers selecting a provider based on self-performed searches, rather than receiving external input (referrals from physicians, relatives, or friends), report lower satisfaction with their mental health provider. The results reveal the importance of understanding the consumer search, particularly the use of the internet as a search tool

Georgia’s Community Improvement Districts

Lindsay Kuhn, a fellow at the Center for State and Local Finance, presented “Georgia’s Community Improvement Districts” on June 24, 2016, at the Andrew Young School

Seeking Complex Health Services in the Age of Self-referral

This study investigates the relationship between consumers’ information search and service satisfaction, specifically focused on the search for mental health professionals. The selection of a mental health provider is of interest because practitioners work from a highly diverse set of theoretical bases, may hold a wide range of different credentials and provide drastically different therapeutic approaches, therefore making the selection complex and difficult for consumers to self-navigate. Data sampling from patients of mental health suggest that consumers selecting a provider based on self-performed searches, rather than receiving external input (referrals from physicians, relatives, or friends), report lower satisfaction with their mental health provider. The results reveal the importance of understanding the consumer search, particularly the use of the internet as a search tool

Georgia’s Community Improvement Districts (CIDs)

Community improvement districts (CIDs) are an increasingly popular method of promoting economic growth in Georgia, with 25 active CIDs currently. CIDs have influenced the development of the metro-Atlanta region significantly and have since expanded to other parts of the state. Georgia CIDs are a type of business improvement district (BID). This report examines Georgia’s CIDs and then compares CIDs to another type of BID model used in Georgia, as well as BID entities in neighboring states

Body Language and Sales

Utilizing professional sales competition videos taken from a university Sales program, the current study investigates the link between nonverbal gestures made by salespeople and performance scores given by professional sales recruiters watching their role plays. The results of this study may suggest a relationship between gesture use and perceptions of sales ability

The Effect of Antecedent Mood On Customer Loyalty Intentions: A Mood-By-Gender Interaction

This study suggests that induced antecedent moods may, in a systematic manner, influence subsequent levels of loyalty intention within consumer scenarios. Furthermore, this research finds that there exists differential responses to induced mood states by gender, which fall in line with research on the underlying gender differences in cognitive processing, levels of risk aversion, motivation, and the experience of emotion while shopping. Past studies in this area have shown only a mild connection between induced antecedent mood state and loyalty intentions, which may be due in part to the issue of an emotion by gender interaction. This paper reinforces previous work and extends this relationship to include gender as moderator. With a better understanding of the way in which different mood states influence customer loyalty intentions, a new approach to managing customer mood-states emerges

Online and In-Store Compulsive Buying Among Metrosexuals and Other Male Consumers

This paper presents an exploratory study of compulsive buying behavior among males, specifically metrosexual consumers. These men represent significant purchasing power, but to date they have not been studied in both online and in-store environments. The current research has significant importance for public policy, consumer behavior and marketing. The literature has largely ignored male compulsive shopping behavior, especially how this behavior manifests itself in different shopping environments and among different subsets of male consumers. For the current research, data was gathered via an online survey of 193 males. The study discusses both online and in-store compulsive buying by various product categories. The results of this study show that metrosexuals have higher levels of compulsive behavior than other males, but these differences do not seem to vary significantly by shopping environment

Five-Year Cost of Dementia: Medicare

About 5.5 million older adults are living with dementia, a chronic, progressive disease characterized by severe cognitive decline. This number will likely grow significantly as the U.S. population ages, which has cost implications for the Medicare program. A full accounting of these additional expenses will help policymakers plan for them in their Medicare budgets. In this study, Norma Coe and colleagues examined survival and Medicare expenditures in older adults with and without dementia to estimate dementia’s incremental costs to Medicare in the five years after diagnosis