Recursive Effects to Study Feature-Based Capabilities in Supply Chain Management

This paper explores the benefits that firms obtain when investing in feature-based capabilities. We investigate the external pressures when deciding their feature-based strategy. In addition, we analyze the consumers\u2019 customization options and the needs for facilitators to mitigate the negative effects of excessive features. We assess the influence of feature-based capabilities on performance and search for an economically feasible loop that feature-based capabilities might entail. This latter is carried out by investigating the recursive effects in structural equation modeling. Our findings reveal that feature-based capabilities entail an economically feasible loop through competitors and supply chain partners but not also through facilitators and operational performance

Applying marketing’s new dominant logic for interpreting customer experiences with brands

The concept of customer experience is evolving to an imperative area of study within the marketing discipline. Despite its importance and the positive attention this concept is receiving in the literature, the explanation of customer experiences remains vague and a thorough theoretical foundation is lacking. This paper addresses the gap in the literature and to facilitate a brand-management understanding of the concept of customer experience and its antecedents and consequences. The paper examines the impact of customer experience on brand loyalty via a comprehensive review of existing literature on the concept of customer experience and service brand literatures. Additionally, twelve propositions describe and explain the antecedents of customer experience and impacts upon brand loyalty within a service-centered marketing logic. This paper contributes a novel customer-brand experience perspective and conceptual tools relevant for further theory development and for effectively managing customer-brand relationships

The patterns of long-term repeat-buying in Dirichlet markets

Dirichlet markets are stationary and unsegmented, and characterised by predictable patterns of split-loyal buying. This is because, across the population, individual but different household purchase propensities tend to remain stable. Although Dirichlet theory is among the most robust in marketing science, it has not yet been shown from empirical evidence how or if these purchase propensities evolve in the long run, knowledge crucial to marketers concerned with disrupting category structure. This thesis now describes the patterns of long-term repeat-buying. The research approach adopted was the differentiated replication and extension of empirical generalisations under the new condition of extended time, evaluating observations in a 26-quarter household panel of continuous reporters against steady-state Dirichlet benchmarks. In successive and non-adjacent quarters, contrary to widely held beliefs, few cases of persistent brand share growth or decline were observed and quarterly category structures retained Dirichlet characteristics even over six years. But analysis of cumulative data aggregations revealed that underlying purchase propensities were not entirely stable, leading to a gradual deterioration in model fit to longer reference periods. The main pattern observed was an unpredicted and substantial increase in brand switching, but since this remained governed by Double Jeopardy, and category purchase incidence was largely steady, no segmentation resulted and cumulative shares remained near-stationary. Findings contribute to knowledge of the nature of long-run behavioural loyalty. They establish that new uses of the Dirichlet in modelling management periods at wider intervals are possible since the effects of trending propensities are marginal when viewed in medium term data. They reveal the evolution of the DJ relationship over the long-run, and they confirm the behavioural drivers of exceptional brand dynamics. Findings also account for several well-reported systematic deviations in short term Dirichlet fit, but perhaps most importantly, the discovery of long-run equilibrium coupled with the unpredicted but systematic underlying churn of buyers between brands offers no support for loyalty strategies. Rather, it emphasises the importance for practitioners of maintaining market share transaction by transaction

Critical Education: Increasing Student Achievement through Formative Assessments

This Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) supports the use of formative assessment practices within the business department at School X. This organization is a public high school situated in an urban school board in Ontario. Bayside School Board mandates that teachers provide all students with equitable assessment practices and student-centred learning opportunities. Transformational leadership, through a critical lens, will propel a change plan to inform teachers about the oppressive nature of using summative assessments. Through Freire’s (2002) concept of critical pedagogy, a case is made to implement more opportunities for using formative assessments, which allow students to feel empowered. Formative assessments can allow students to become critical thinkers and become inspired to change their community. To help diagnose the organization’s willingness to change, I use Cawsey et al.’s (2016) change readiness questionnaire in conjunction with a force field analysis. Once a critical organizational analysis is conducted, Duck’s (2001) five-stage Change Curve will be used to provide a framework for implementing change. Gentile’s (2010) Giving Voice to Values (GVV) leadership approach is used to propel change by empowering teachers and encouraging them to use formative assessment to help empower students. In addition, a campaign to inform the school about critical pedagogy will be the starting step to ignite change in teachers’ assessment practices. Teacher collaboration, empowerment, and resource sharing will enable the creation of an educational community that views formative assessments as an optional approach to promote social justice within School X

Spreading the good word : Toward an understanding of brand evangelism

The objective of this dissertation is to better understand the phenomenon of brand evangelism and the dimensions that are involved in a consumer becoming a brand evangelist. A brand evangelist is a consumer who actively “spreads the good word” of the brand while attempting to influence others’ consumption behavior. Through the development and testing of a model, this study helps to realize the concepts that are involved in a consumer becoming a brand evangelist. To date, little research has examined the dimensions of brand evangelism. It is proposed here that the attributes leading to brand evangelism include brand satisfaction, brand salience, consumer-brand identification, social motivation, and opinion leadership. The results of the study garnered some mixed results. It was found that consumer-brand identification, brand salience, and opinion leadership are all concepts that lead to brand evangelism. However, neither brand satisfaction nor sociability has a statistically significant relationship directly related with brand evangelism. It must be noted, though, that brand satisfaction does have a mediated relationship with brand evangelism through consumer-brand identification. Finally, for the overall proposed model, it was found that there is no statistical difference between males and females, income level of higher/lower than $100,000, ages of 50 years and older versus under 50 years of age, or being a college graduate versus an individual without a bachelor’s degree

(Re) evaluating Critical Care Nurse Support Program(s) in a Tertiary Care Hospital: Intersecting the Art and Science of Nursing

There is a growing critical care nurse staffing shortage with increases in nurse vacancy rates. Moral distress has been exacerbated by the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic and, in particular, impacting critical care nurses. COVID-19 is a significant contributor to staffing shortages and continued nursing crisis. Thus, the impetus for the Problem of Practice (PoP): the lack of support to address the psychological, emotional, and spiritual distress suffered by critical care registered nurses in a tertiary care hospital in Central Ontario. To comprehend the realities of working in the intensive care units, leaders must first understand nurses’ lived experiences, narratives, and what it means to work on the frontline in an intensive care unit. The Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) is underpinned by interpretive phenomenology and authentic and transformational leadership approaches. Lewin’s three-stage force field model of change theory is utilized for leading change and Burke and Litwin’s performance change model for the organizational analysis. The overall goal of the OIP is to implement a change plan that brings leaders and critical care registered nurses together to co-create support program(s) to address critical care nurses’ psychological, emotional, and spiritual distress, decrease nurse attrition, and enhance critical care nurses’ well-being

Can You Hear Me, Major Tom? Open Issues In Extra-Vehicular Activity Communications

High-reliability organizations (HRO) and organizations in isolated, confined environments (ICE) both operate under conditions where reliability is expected, but do not appear to have similar emphases placed on total reliability, based on a brief survey of the literature. A content analysis searched out a stronger relationship between HRO and ICE. Leadership and team size are hypothesized as differences between HRO and ICE, since the literature appears to show HRO as taking place in larger teams with more distinct hierarchies. This dissertation examined this postulation, based on two sub-hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 is that the error rate of a team\u27s actions is inversely related to the size of the team, based on the distinction between HRO and ICE. Hypothesis 2 is that transformational leaders in ICE reduce the number of human errors compared with transactional leaders, since Bass suggests transformational leaders better inspire their teams to improve. Two datasets were gathered to test these hypotheses. The first, in support of Hypothesis 1, was a meta-synthesis of team literature. The second, in support of Hypothesis 2, were new recordings of extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) from two crews at the University of North Dakota Inflatable Lunar/Martian Analog Habitat (ILMAH). The result for Hypothesis 1 is inconclusive, and the result for Hypothesis 2 was rejected

The influence of incentives and survey design on mail survey response rates for mature consumers

The mail survey is still the preferred research tool for the mature consumer population and questions remain about ways of boosting survey response rates. The influence of two incentives were explored, a foil-wrapped tea bag and a $1 donation for each returned questionnaire in the study design. A significant higher response rate was only achieved for the first incentive. The effectiveness of a range of incentives and survey design features were investigated. Respondents indicated that their preferred incentive was a$500 donation to a charity. With the ongoing use of mail surveys almost mandatory for populations like this one, this study shows that incentives and design features such as CEO endorsement are important elements in improving response rates

Advertising effectiveness: the role of content

Despite its long-standing history and many strong findings, research on advertising effectiveness still ranks high on the academic and practitioner agenda. With respect to the influence of advertising on sales, existing econometric response models mostly focus on the impact of advertising spending and scheduling. Comparatively less attention has been devoted to the specific advertising content. Even though, choosing appropriate content cues that grab consumers’ attention and persuade them becomes more and more important due to the increasingly cluttered media environment and consumers’ limited attention span. The dissertation at hand thus investigates how selected content cues affect advertising effectiveness. The first two papers empirically examine the moderating influence of content cues on the relationship between advertising spending and sales. Specifically, the first paper explores how firms should communicate their brands in TV advertising. The authors evaluate 17 branding cues (e.g., frequency of mentions of the brand name, duration of time the logo appears, number of communicated benefits), which are commonly used within advertising that should reinforce branding components (salience, benefits, and attributes) and investigate their influence on ad effectiveness. The second paper focuses on the impact of authenticity, one of the most prevalent buzzwords in the modern advertising industry. The authors identify four dimensions by which authenticity can be conveyed in advertising and analyze their effects on the sales performance of advertised products. Both empirical studies are based on a unique dataset of multiple advertisings and brands across six fast-moving consumer good categories and four years. Finally, the third paper develops a conceptual framework that structures and classifies different content cues, provides an overview of the relevant literature, and identifies several literature gaps