Improvised Marketing Interventions in Social Media

Online virality has attracted the attention of academics and marketers who want to identify the characteristics of online content that promote sharing. This article adds to this body of research by examining the phenomenon of improvised marketing interventions (IMIs)—social media actions that are composed and executed in real time proximal to an external event. Using the concept of quick wit, and theorizing that the effect of IMIs is furthered by humor and timeliness or unanticipation, the authors find evidence of these effects on both virality and firm value across five multimethod studies, including quasiexperiments, experiments, and archival data analysis. These findings point to the potential of IMIs in social media and to the features that firms should proactively focus on managing in order to reap the observed online sharing and firm value benefits

Seeding as Part of the Marketing Mix:Word-of-Mouth Program Interactions for Fast-Moving Consumer Goods

Seeded marketing campaigns (SMCs) have become part of the marketing mix for many fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies. In addition to making large investments in advertising and sales promotions, these firms now encourage seed agents or microinfluencers to discuss brands with friends and acquaintances to create further value. It is thus critical to understand how an FMCG seeding program interacts with traditional marketing tools when estimating the effectiveness of such efforts. However, the issue is still underexplored. The authors present the first empirical analysis of this question using a rich data set collected on four brands from various European FMCG markets. They combine advertising and sales promotion data from FMCG brand managers with sales and retail variables from market research companies as well as firm-created word-of-mouth variables from SMC agencies. The authors analyze the data using several approaches, confronting challenges of endogeneity and multicollinearity. They consistently find that firm-created word of mouth through SMC programs interacts negatively with all tested forms of advertising but positively with promotional activities. This phenomenon has significant implications for understanding the utility of SMCs and how they should be managed. The analysis implies that SMCs may increase total sales by approximately 3%-18% throughout the campaigns

Consumer behavior in a multichannel context and its managerial implications

The dissertation project consists of four papers. Two papers are concerned with multichannel customer behavior: (a) drivers of competitive webrooming and (b) profitability effects of offline channel additions. The remaining two papers deal with consumer reactions towards different website cookie notifications

Effect of brand social media adoption on brand performance

The continuous emergence and decline of social media platforms present challenges for businesses in planning, investing, and justifying their investments in these platforms. Observations have noted that social media often underperforms compared to firm expectations. While existing academic marketing research typically assumes social media adoption and focuses on the deployment of tactical decisions (e.g., when to post, what to post, achieving virality, or managing brand firestorms), the causal impact of social media adoption on firm performance as a strategic decision has not been addressed. Drawing on theories such as the resource-based view (RBV), and organizational learning, this study aims to address three questions related to a firm's strategic decisions: (1) What is the causal impact of social media adoption on short- and long-term firm performance (i.e., financial performance, including abnormal stock returns, sales growth, ROE, Tobin's Q, total Q, and non-financial performance, such as firm innovativeness)? (2) What are the mechanisms that drive short- and long-term performance? (3) What factors influence the effectiveness of a company's social media adoption? Utilizing event studies in both short-term and long-term windows, this research examines stock market performance at the time of social media adoption by firms. Additionally, the causal impacts of social media adoption on firm performance are investigated through an instrumental variable fixed effect, where the number of social media adoptions is considered treatment intensity, and the instruments include peer effects on social media adoption and platform popularity. Drawing on a unique dataset specifically curated for these research questions, this study discovered a positive long-term impact of social media adoption on firm performance. However, this effect materializes only after a firm has adopted multiple platforms, more specifically, after the third adoption. This result can be attributed to the learning effect and risk diversification that firms must endure to experience the reversion of the adoption effect (from negative to positive), in line with the organizational learning theory and RBV. Furthermore, the findings reveal that in the short run, regardless of the number of platforms adopted, firms consistently yield positive returns. The differential results between the long-term and short-term effects help explain the social media paradox, wherein firms expect positive results from social media adoption but often face underperformance. Lastly, an intriguing finding emerged that B2C firms do not experience the initial negative adoption effect of social media (compared to B2B firms), but the final adoption effect magnitude (i.e., the fourth adoption) is smaller than that of B2B firms. This study offers valuable insights into the strategic decision-making process of firms regarding social media adoption and its effects on firm performance.Includes bibliographical references

Managing cyber risk in organizations and supply chains

In the Industry 4.0, modern organizations are characterized by an extensive digitalization and use of Information Technology (IT). Even though there are significant advantages in such a technological progress, a noteworthy drawback is represented by cyber risks, whose occurrence dramatically increased over the last years. The information technology literature has shown great interested toward the topic, identifying mainly technical solutions to face these emerging risks. Nonetheless, cyber risks cause business disruption and damages to tangible and intangible corporate assets and require a major integration between technical solutions and a strategic management. Recently, the risk management domain and the supply chain literature have provided studies about how an effective cyber risk management process should be planned, to improve organizational resilience and to prevent financial drawbacks. However, the aforementioned studies are mainly theoretical and there is still a significant lack of empirical studies in the management literature, measuring the potential effects of cyber threats within single companies, and along networks of relationships, in a wider supply chain perspective. The present thesis aims at filling some of these gaps through three empirical essays. The first study has implemented a Grounded Theory approach to develop an interview targeting 15 European organizations. Afterwards, the fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) has been performed, in order to ascertain how managers perceive cyber risks. Results contradict studies that focus merely on technical solution, and con\ufb01rm the dynamic capability literature, which highlights the relevance of a major integration among relational, organizational, and technical capabilities when dealing with technological issues. Moreover, the study proposes a managerial framework that draws on the dynamic capabilities view, in order to consider the complexity and dynamism of IT and cyber risks. The framework proposes to implement both technical (e.g. software, insurance, investments in IT assets) and organizational (e.g. team work, human IT resources) capabilities to protect the capability of the company to create value. The second essay extends the investigation of the drawbacks of cyber risks to supply chains. The study conducts a Grounded Theory empirical investigation toward several European organizations that rely on security and risk management standards in order to choose the drivers of systematic IT and cyber risk management (risk assessment, risk prevention, risk mitigation, risk compliance, and risk governance). The evidence gleaned from the interviews have highlighted that investments in supply chain mitigation strategies are scant, resulting in supply chains that perform like they had much higher risk appetite than managers declared. Moreover, it has emerged a general lack of awareness regarding the effects that IT and cyber risks may have on supply operations and relationships. Thus, a framework drawing on the supply chain risk management is proposed, offering a holistic risk management process, in which strategies, processes, technologies, and human resources should be aligned in coherence with the governance of each organization and of the supply chain as a whole. The \ufb01nal result should be a supply chain where the actors share more information throughout the whole process, which guarantees strategic bene\ufb01ts, reputation protection, and business continuity. The third essay draws on the Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) to ascertain whether and how different types of cyber breaches differently affect the corporate reputation, defined as a multidimensional construct in which perceptions of customers, suppliers, (potential) employees, investors and local communities converge. Data breaches have been categorized into three groups by the literature, meaning intentional and internal to the organization (e.g., malicious employees stealing customers\u2019 data), unintentional and internal to the organization (e.g., incorrect security settings that expose private information), and intentional and external to the organization (e.g., ransomware infecting companies\u2019 software). However, this is among the first study to analyse the different reputational drawbacks these types may cause. Moreover, the study considers that, in the industry 4.0 era, social media analysis may be of paramount importance for organizations to understand the market. In fact, user-generated content (UGC), meaning the content created by users, might help in understanding which dimensions of the corporate have been more attacked after a data breach. In this context, the study implements the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) automated method, a base model in the family of \u201ctopic models\u201d, to extract the reputational dimensions expressed in UGC of a sample of 35 organizations in nine industries that had a data breach incident between 2013 and 2016. The results reveal that in general, after a data breach, three dimensions\u2014perceived quality, customer orientation and corporate performance\u2014 are a subject of debate for users. However, if the data breach was intentional ad malicious, users focused more on the role of firms\u2019 human resources management, whereas if users did not identify a responsible, users focused more on privacy drawbacks. The study complements crisis communication research by categorizing, in a data breach context, stakeholders\u2019 perceptions of a crisis. In addition, the research is informative for risk management literature and reputation research, analysing corporate reputation dimensions in a data breach crisis setting

Essays on Information Disclosure, Healthcare Marketing & Consumption

Recent regulatory changes have introduced more transparency to healthcare practice and marketing. The intention of these regulatory changes is to help consumers make more informed decisions, to reduce healthcare costs, and to resolve conflict-of-interest issues. My work in this area aims to understand if and to what extent such regulations achieve the desired goals, and in what ways firms and physicians are impacted. In addition, my work also investigates whether there are unintended consequences of such regulation. My dissertation studies the disclosure of a specific form of information: marketing payments to physicians from pharmaceutical firms and their rivals. In two essays, I investigate how making this information public changes physician prescriptions and firm payments, as well as whether there are unintended consequences of such regulation. In the first essay of my dissertation, "Let the Sun Shine In: The Impact of Industry Payment Disclosure on Physician Prescription Behavior", I provide evidence on the effectiveness of increased transparency of physicians' industry financial ties in reducing physician prescriptions. Specifically, I use individual-level claims data from a major provider of health insurance in the U.S. and employ a difference-in-difference research design to study the effect of the payment disclosure law introduced in Massachusetts in June 2009. The research design exploits the fact that while physicians operating in Massachusetts were impacted by the legislation, their counterparts in the neighboring states of Connecticut and New York were not. In order to keep the groups of physicians comparable, I restrict my analysis to the physicians in the counties that are on the border of these states. I find that the Massachusetts disclosure law resulted in a decline in prescriptions in all three drug classes studied: statins, antidepressants, and antipsychotics. My findings are robust under alternative controls, time periods, and variable transformations. I show that the effect is highly heterogeneous across brands and physician groups, and that the decrease in prescription is unlikely due to changes in financial incentives. In the second essay, "The Effect of Information Disclosure on Industry Payments to Physicians", I seek answer to the following question: does disclosing industry payment information influence subsequent payments to physicians? I quantify the impact of information disclosure during 2014-2015 (after ACA Physician Open Payment Act) on direct-to-physician payments. In essence, I use a quasi-experimental difference-in-difference research design to find control "clones" for every physician-product pair in the states with and without prior disclosure laws, facilitated by recent advances in machine learning methods. The novel algorithm (Wager and Athey, 2017) is computationally efficient and robust to model mis-specifications, while preserving consistency and asymptotic normality. Using a 29-month national panel covering $100 million in payments between 16 anti-diabetics brands and 50,000 physicians, I find that the monthly payments declined by 2% on average due to disclosure. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in the treatment effects with 14% of the drug-physician pairs showing a significant increase in their monthly payment. Moreover, the decline in payment is smaller among drugs with larger marketing expenditure, and among physicians who were paid more heavily pre-disclosure and prescribed more heavily. Thus, while information disclosure did lead to reduction in payments on average (as intended by policy makers), the effect is limited on big drugs and popular physicians. I further explore potential mechanisms that are consistent with the data pattern.PHDBusiness AdministrationUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146018/1/tongguo_1.pd

Platform Design and Electronic Word-of-Mouth Adaptability: A Construal Level Perspective

Drawing on the construal level theory, this thesis examines how two platform design features (structural complexity and length requirement) may impact eWOM favourability. Converging evidence from five lab studies and a field study indicates that a structurally complex (vs. structurally simple) design and a high-word-count (vs. low-word-count) design each induce review content lower in eWOM favourability. This research contributes to the bourgeoning eWOM literature by highlighting the significance of review platform design

The Impact of Mobile Apps on Online and Offline Shopping Behaviors

In recent years, the penetration of mobile devices has reached unprecedented levels. Mobile apps account for 87% of mobile usage. Retail apps are among the fastest growing app categories. Do mobile apps influence shoppers’ online and offline purchases and product returns? Further, do in-app experiences, such as app failures experienced by shoppers influence their purchases? The nascent literature on mobile apps is silent on these questions. In this research, I expand the scope of mobile marketing literature by quantifying and explaining the impact of mobile app introduction and app failures on shopping across channels. Unlike prior studies that focus on only online purchases, I consider both online and in-store purchases, and product returns. In Essay 1, I quantify the impact of mobile app introduction on online and offline purchases and product returns. I leverage data on a large multichannel retailer’s mobile app introduction and use a difference-in-differences regression. I find a 37% lift in net purchases in online and offline channels due to the launch of an app over 18 months. I outline important practical mobile marketing and cross-channel strategies for retailers. In Essay 2, I quantify the impact of mobile app failures on online and offline purchases. I leverage exogenous systemwide failure shocks in a large multichannel retailer’s mobile app and related data. Importantly, I investigate the heterogeneity among shoppers based on past relationship with the retailer. My results show a 7.1% decrease in purchases in stores due to an app failure. I outline important failure preventive and recovery strategies for app providers