Informedness and Customer-Centric Revenue management

The recent pervasive adoption of modern IT in the marketplace has profoundly changed information availability to customers and firms. This improved information endowment results in changes in consumer behavior and corporate strategy. This dissertation proposes new theoretical perspectives – firm informedness, customer informedness, and informedness through learning – to re-conceptualize the decision making process of customer-centric revenue management. It consists of three studies. First, using multiple cases in which firms adopt smart cards and mobile technologies in America, Europe, and Asia, we examine the value creation process of the firm using the explanation of firm informedness and investigate how it advances revenue management. Second, we test the theory of consumer informedness and examine heterogeneity in consumer preferences using stated choice experiments. We find the evidence for trading down and trading out behavior and show that the use of mobile ticketing technologies can help firms to build a hyper-differentiated transport market. Finally, using a computational simulation, we explore the opportunity for devising service offerings to capture profitable consumer responses, considering demand-driven revenue and capacity-management. Overall, this research introduces methods, models, and guidelines for organizations to strategize the informational challenge, make informed decisions, and create transformational values to win in today’s competitive network environment

Product Reviews and Competition in Markets for Repeat Purchase Products

This paper examines how information provided by online reviews influences firms\u27 pricing strategy for repeat purchase products. It is commonly understood that online reviews can reduce consumer uncertainty about product characteristics and, therefore, have the potential to increase product demand and firm profits. However, when considering repeat purchase products, online reviews have an additional effect in that they can alter consumers\u27 propensity to switch among products, which can intensify price competition and lead to lower profits. The strength of these potentially offsetting effects depends on the informativeness of consumer reviews, which is a function of both objective review accuracy and the ability of consumers to obtain information from reviews when their idiosyncratic preferences over product characteristics might differ from the preferences of reviewers. The interplay of these competing effects results in an S-shaped relationship between the quality of reviews and firm profits. There exists an optimal level of consumer informedness from the firms\u27 perspective, and competing firms may have incentives to facilitate consumer reviews in some markets but not in others. Given firms\u27 strategic pricing, consumers may also be worse off as review informativeness increases

Administrative burdens in the European food industry : with special attention to the dairy sector

This report investigates the relationship between administrative burdens and competitiveness in the European dairy industry. A firm perspective is used. The relationship between administrative burdens and competitiveness has been broken down into four aspects: innovation, deployment of food safety and quality systems, food labelling and supply chain transparenc

The Influence Of Mobile Channel On Customer Behavior In Omni-Channel Banking Services

As mobile phones and tablets are in widespread use, the emergence of mobile channel is changing the way customers interact with financial institutions. In this research, we empirically examine how the use of mobile devices can improve customer informedness and affect customer behavior in financial transactions. We use a large-scale customer transaction data obtained from one of the largest commercial banks in the United States. Specifically, we investigate: (1) whether the use of mobile phones and tablets is associated with a higher level of customer informedness and demand for services; and (2) compared to customers that only transact through a PC, whether mobile phone and tablet users are less likely to incur overdraft and credit card penalty fees. This paper contributes new knowledge in omni-channel banking services by examining post-adoption customer behavioral changes using transaction-level observations. We also discuss insights for banks’ managers related to the design of new mobile channel, and strategic management of existing digital and physical channels

Using comsumer informedness as an information strategy

__Abstract__ Consumer informedness describes the degree to which consumers are aware of the specific attributes of products or services offered in the marketplace. Understanding how this level of informedness can amplify consumer behaviour provides firms with the opportunity to develop information-based strategies that can encourage their target segment make purchases

Corporate Twitter Channels: The Impact of Engagement and Informedness on Corporate Reputation

We examine communication via a corporate Twitter channel and its effects on corporate reputation. We identify the importance of user engagement and informedness in explaining corporate reputation and examine three design factors that likely affect user engagement in a corporate Twitter channel. We conduct an exploratory 2 x 2 x 2 experiment among Twitter users to collect data. We find that the depth of the relationship among users, the level of corporate involvement, and the purpose of the channel interactively influence user engagement. Our findings suggest that deeper relationships among users of a corporate Twitter channel lead to higher user engagement when the level of corporate involvement with the channel is high and when the channel has a specific purpose, but not when the level of corporate involvement is high and the channel has a generic purpose. Surprisingly, when the channel has a generic purpose, a high degree of corporate involvement actually decreases user engagement. This finding implies that, under certain circumstances, a lower degree of corporate involvement in a social media channel may be more desirable. We also find that channel credibility positively influences user informedness. This is the first study that examines the dynamics of communication through a corporate Twitter channel. It contributes to the previous research related to social media by identifying engagement and informedness as two major factors that influence firms' reputation. Our research can help marketing and social media managers to decide on channel design aspects, such as whether to require users to register with an identity or to allow anonymous participation, whether to allocate dedicated employees to respond to user requests, and whether to set up different channels for different purposes

Corporate twitter channels: The impact of engagement and informedness on corporate reputation

__Abstract__ This article examines firm communication on a corporate Twitter channel and its effects on corporate reputation. We identify the importance of user engagement and informedness in explaining corporate reputation, and examine three design factors that likely affect user engagement in a corporate Twitter channel. We conduct an exploratory 2 × 2 × 2 experiment among Twitter users to collect data. We find that the depth of the relationship among users, the level of corporate involvement, and the purpose of the channel interactively influence user engagement. Our findings suggest that deeper relationships among users of a corporate Twitter channel lead to higher user engagement when the level of corporate involvement with the channel is high and when the channel has a specific purpose, but not when the level of corporate involvement is high and the channel has a generic purpose. Surprisingly, when the channel has a generic purpose, a high degree of corporate involvement actually decreases user engagement. This finding implies that, under certain circumstances, a lower degree of corporate involvement in a social media channel may be more desirable. We also find that channel credibility positively influences user informedness. This is the first study that examines the dynamics of communication through a corporate Twitter channel. It contributes to the previous research related to social media by identifying engagement and informedness as two major factors that influence firms’ reputation. Our research can help marketing and social media managers to decide on channel design aspects such as whether to require users to register with an identity or to allow anonymous participation, whether to allocate dedicated employees to respond to user requests, and whether to set up different channels for different purposes

CONSUMER INFORMEDNESS AND LOYALTY BENEFITS ACCRUAL PERFORMANCE

Beta regression, consumer welfare, credit cards, customer informedness, econometric Recent theoretical developments in the theory of consumer and firm informedness have brought a new perspective to understanding important business problems in IS research. In this research, we adopt the theory of consumer informedness in the context of credit card loyalty programs in the retail banking industry. Leading companies in the airlines, hospitality, retail banking and other industries have widely implemented loyalty programs, and the participation of consumers is greater than ever before. Financial services firms commonly offer credit card customers loyalty awards. A large body of research in economics, marketing, and information systems (IS) has sought to understand the roles and mechanisms in loyalty programs for the airlines, hospitality and retail banking industries. Our work suggests how banks can enhance their capability to improve consumer welfare through contextaware sharing of action-relevant information. To this end, we have been conducting a multi-year study on card loyalty that focuses on the performance of customer accrual of loyalty benefits from their card transactions. We are prohibited from providing details in this work-in-progress submission due to a non-disclosure agreement, but plan to discuss additional aspects of this work in our conference poster and presentation. s, financial services, loyalty programs, retail banking

Corporate Twitter Channels: The Impact of Engagement and Informedness on Corporate Reputation

We examine communication via a corporate Twitter channel and its effects on corporate reputation. We identify the importance of user engagement and informedness in explaining corporate reputation and examine three design factors that likely affect user engagement in a corporate Twitter channel. We conduct an exploratory 2 x 2 x 2 experiment among Twitter users to collect data. We find that the depth of the relationship among users, the level of corporate involvement, and the purpose of the channel interactively influence user engagement. Our findings suggest that deeper relationships among users of a corporate Twitter channel lead to higher user engagement when the level of corporate involvement with the channel is high and when the channel has a specific purpose, but not when the level of corporate involvement is high and the channel has a generic purpose. Surprisingly, when the channel has a generic purpose, a high degree of corporate involvement actually decreases user engagement. This finding implies that, under certain circumstances, a lower degree of corporate involvement in a social media channel may be more desirable. We also find that channel credibility positively influences user informedness. This is the first study that examines the dynamics of communication through a corporate Twitter channel. It contributes to the previous research related to social media by identifying engagement and informedness as two major factors that influence firms' reputation. Our research can help marketing and social media managers to decide on channel design aspects, such as whether to require users to register with an identity or to allow anonymous participation, whether to allocate dedicated employees to respond to user requests, and whether to set up different channels for different purposes