Exploring the effects of "what" (product) and "where" (website) characteristics on online shopping behavior

Understanding factors that influence online shopping and managing consumer relationships is not a trivial task for firms, considering the many pertinent factors that influence behavior, including the product being shopped (i.e., the “what”) and the context of the website itself (i.e., the “where”). This study investigates the impact of these characteristics on an online transaction's basket value, after incorporating the role of other aspects of the browsing process including page views and visit duration. The authors estimate a multivariate mixed-effects Type II Tobit model with a system of equations to explain variation in shopping basket value, using data involving 773,262 browsing sessions resulting in 9,664 transactions across 43 product categories from 385 unique websites. The results support the assertions that contextual factors are associated with online browsing. For example, a website's scope in terms of product variety is associated positively with visit durations and basket values but negatively with page views. Furthermore, a website's communication functionality is positively associated with basket value for hedonic products. Insights suggest managerial implications involving product and website strategies for online retailers. </jats:p

Impact of political television advertisements on viewers’ response to subsequent advertisements

Political advertisements on television can affect viewers and may, consequently, influence the effectiveness of subsequent ads. Such ad-to-ad spillover effects—where one ad influences how viewers respond to a subsequent ad—have drawn concerns from nonpolitical advertisers, raising the question: how do political ads on television impact viewers’ response to subsequent ads? We empirically investigate this question using two outcomes of ad response: ad viewership and online conversations about ads. We use data on 849 national political television ads from the 2016 election and leverage a quasiexperimental design to delineate the effect that a political ad has on the subsequent ad. We show that, counterintuitively, political ads spur positive spillover effects. Specifically, ads that follow a political ad, compared with ads that follow a nonpolitical ad, experience an 89% reduction in audience decline and thus air to larger audiences. Additionally, we find evidence that viewers engage in more positive online ad chatter about ads that air after political ads, with these ads experiencing a 3% increase in positive chatter after the ad. Our investigation contributes to research on advertising that has yet to explore ad-to-ad spillover effects and, more broadly, provides insights into how political messages influence consumers

Marketing Channels in Foreign Markets: Control Mechanisms and the Moderating Role of Multinational Corporation Headquarters–Subsidiary Relationship

To manage marketing channels, subsidiaries of multinational corporations (MNCs) must balance mandates from headquarters (HQ) with the local realities of the foreign markets. The performance implications of subsidiary–distributor relationship efforts thus are contingent on the HQ–subsidiary relationship. Drawing on marketing channels, economics, and organization theory literature streams, the authors (1) describe the complex performance properties of output and process control mechanisms that MNC subsidiaries deploy to manage foreign distributors and (2) conceptualize the HQ–subsidiary nexus along three attributes that should moderate the performance effects of control mechanisms: task coordination, or HQ's central coordination of processes across subsidiaries; subsidiary decision involvement, or two-way communications and consensual decision making between HQ and the subsidiary; and relational disharmony, or the extent of the HQ–subsidiary conflict. The authors test the hypotheses using field data from German and Japanese MNCs in the United States and Bayesian models that account for measurement error, endogeneity in the control mechanisms, heterogeneity in country of origin, and nonlinear and interactive terms for the latent constructs. The results demonstrate the importance of the HQ–subsidiary relationship for managing the subsidiary–distributor relationship

Location, Location, Location: How Network Embeddedness Affects Project Success in Open Source Systems

The community-based model for software development in open source environments is becoming a viable alternative to traditional firm-based models. To better understand the workings of open source environments, we examine the effects of network embeddedness--or the nature of the relationship among projects and developers--on the success of open source projects. We find that considerable heterogeneity exists in the network embeddedness of open source projects and project managers. We use a visual representation of the affiliation network of projects and developers as well as a formal statistical analysis to demonstrate this heterogeneity and to investigate how these structures differ across projects and project managers. Our main results surround the effect of this differential network embeddedness on project success. We find that network embeddedness has strong and significant effects on both technical and commercial success, but that those effects are quite complex. We use latent class regression analysis to show that multiple regimes exist and that some of the effects of network embeddedness are positive under some regimes and negative under others. We use project age and number of page views to provide insights into the direction of the effect of network embeddedness on project success. Our findings show that different aspects of network embeddedness have powerful but subtle effects on project success and suggest that this is a rich environment for further study.network embeddedness, open source software, affiliation network, latent class analysis

Corporate Board Interlocks and New Product Introductions

Firms’ boards of directors affect many strategic outcomes. Yet the impact of boards on new products, a key organizational adaptation mechanism, has been overlooked. Addressing this gap, the authors consider the effect of the firm's board interlock centrality, the extent to which board members are connected to boards of other firms, on its new product introductions. They propose that board interlock centrality provides firms access to market intelligence, creating opportunities to introduce incremental new products. Applying the motivation-opportunity-ability theory, the authors propose that two aspects of board leadership moderate this relationship: internal (vs. external) leadership and marketing leadership. They test the hypotheses using a panel of publicly listed U.S. consumer packaged goods firms, in which most new products are incremental innovations. As hypothesized, board interlock centrality increases new product introductions. This effect is stronger when firms have high internal leadership, internal marketing leadership, and a marketing CEO; it is weaker with high intra-industry external leadership. The findings highlight the unexpected role of board interlocks on innovation outcomes and advance the literature on marketing leadership, board interlocks, and social networks