When Plentiful Platforms Pay Off: Assessment Orientation Moderates the Effect of Assortment Size on Choice Engagement and Product Valuation

Popular digital platforms, such as Netflix and GrubHub, purposefully aggregate offerings, according to the premise that customers value products chosen from plentiful assortments. Yet academic literature provides little clarity about when, for whom, or how larger online retail assortments affect the value of the products. To provide new insights, the current article aims to address ambiguous extant findings about the effects of larger product assortments. Specifically, this research tests whether customers with high, as opposed to low, assessment orientation value products more when they have chosen them from larger, as opposed to smaller, assortments. Four experiments affirm this idea, such that customers with a high assessment orientation value products more when they have chosen them from platforms with relatively larger assortments. Sequential mediation of the effect occurs through increased choice engagement and attitude certainty. For managers, customer segmentation along the assessment dimension offers benefits, while assessment type marketing communications can increase the likelihood of product selection, like in our field study, where we find an increase of 27%

Every Step Counts: When Physical Movement Affects Perceived Value

Physical movement is an important contextual factor during customer’s decision-making. Yet, little is known about how movement can affect customer’s response to mobile promotions, or how it can influence the search and evaluation of products in a retail setting. Across three studies, this research shows that physical movement improves the perceived value of products and promotions for customers with a predominant locomotion motivation. Such effects are mediated by engagement. One implication is that retailers may increase engagement for individuals with a predominant locomotion motivation by playing mobile adverts when cellular sensors indicate movement

E1 Theme: Trust-building for collaborative win-win customer solutions. Opportunity Assessment Roadmap Report

This report proposes a five year roadmap that address the opportunities for understanding, building and measuring trust in the Australian energy sector. Providing customer education alone is not consistent with best practice. Deficits in public knowledge are not the problem; therefore, educating energy users about the energy system is not the solution. This roadmap leverages customers strengths, knowledge, and practices to cultivate trust using a shared value approach. The conceptual centrepiece of this report is the ‘ecosystem of shared value’ – an industry-wide approach to valuing consumers’ contributions to the creation of value

Seeing eye to eye: social augmented reality and shared decision making in the marketplace

Firms increasingly seek to improve the online shopping experience by enabling customers to exchange product recommendations through social augmented reality (AR). We utilize socially situated cognition theory and conduct a series of five studies to explore how social AR supports shared decision making in recommender–decision maker dyads. We demonstrate that optimal configurations of social AR, that is, a static (vs. dynamic) point-of-view sharing format matched with an image-enhanced (vs. text-only) communicative act, increase recommenders’ comfort with providing advice and decision makers’ likelihood of using the advice in their choice. For both, these effects are due to a sense of social empowerment, which also stimulates recommenders’ desire for a product and positive behavioral intentions. However, recommenders’ communication motives impose boundary conditions. When recommenders have strong impression management concerns, this weakens the effect of social empowerment on recommendation comfort. Furthermore, the stronger a recommender’s persuasion goal, the less likely the decision maker is to use the recommendation in their choice

Die isometrische Zungenprotrusionskraft und feinmotorische Fähigkeiten von Kindern mit orofazialen Dysfunktionen (OFD) - objektive quantitative Untersuchung des motorischen Systems (Q-Motor)

Hintergrund: Kinder mit orofazialen Dysfunktionen (OFD) haben Einschränkungen in der Kraft und Koordination von Lippen und Zungenbewegungen. Dies führt neben Kau- und Schluckstörungen zu phonetisch-phonologischen Auffälligkeiten (Sk2-Leitlinie 2011, Böhme 2003). Ein Zusammenhang zwischen orofazialer und der Feinmotorik der Finger wird vermutet (Redle et al. 2014, Wu et al. 2014, Olivier et al. 2007).Material und Methoden: Je 30 Kinder mit OFD und 30 Kinder der Kontrollgruppe wurden mittels Q-Motor (quantitative Messung des motorischen Systems) glossomotografisch mit zwei unterschiedlichen Kraftleveln untersucht. Zusätzlich wurde die Koordination des dominanten Zeigefingers hinsichtlich Kraft, Schnelligkeit und Regelmäßigkeit überprüft. Der Gruppenvergleich erfolgte mittels Exaktem Test nach Fisher, nicht-parametrischem Mann-Whitney-U-Test, linearer Regression sowie Spearman-Korrelation.Ergebnisse: Kinder mit OFD unterschieden sich signifikant von Kindern der Kontrollgruppe: sie konnten ihre Zungenkraft bei dem Kraftlevel von 0,5 N schlechter regulieren (Kraftvariabilität p=0.009), ihre Zunge signifikant kürzer am Kraftmessfühler positionieren (Kontaktzeit p=0.005) und mit geringerer Ausdauer und Präzision steuern (Ausdauer <10% p=0.006, <20% p=0.005, <50% p=0.037; Präzision ±10% p=0.034, ±20%, p=0.015, ±50% p=0.005).Kinder mit OFD konnten mit ihrem Zeigefinger signifikant langsamer, unregelmäßiger (Frequenz p=0.047, Tap Dauer p=0.001), mit höherer Kraftvariabilität (p=0,004) und mehr Kraftaufwand (p=0,003) auf den Sensor tippen.Diskussion: Mittels Q-Motor-Messung konnten signifikant eingeschränkte Fähigkeiten der Finger- und Zungenmotorik bei Kindern mit OFD nachgewiesen werden. Dies unterstützt die Annahme, dass bei Kindern mit OFD Probleme in der übergeordneten sensomotorischen Verarbeitung vorliegen.Fazit: Bei der Diagnostik und Therapie der OFD könnten neben den orofazialen sensomotorischen Kompetenzen auch die Feinmotorik der Finger eine Rolle spielen

The Impact of Age on the Relationship Between Assortment Size and Perceived Value

The rapid growth of digital marketplaces such as Amazon, iTunes, and Google Play has increased the need for insights on how consumers react to large assortments. Many of these platforms aggregate large assortments under the assumption that customers assign more value to products chosen from a large assortment. Yet, academic literature on the topic remains controversial. Although some moderating factors have been examined in previous research, knowledge about the influence of individual differences remains limited. This study offers further insights into the moderating role of age that leads to diverse assortment size preferences. Particularly, we conduct an online experiment in online donations where participants make actual donations to charities that they choose from either large or small assortments. Our study affirms that older customers assign more value on options chosen from platforms with relatively larger assortments. Hence, this study contributes to the choice overload literature regarding perceived value by considering age. Managers of digital platforms can use the presented findings to match assortment with customer age.</p

Inhibition of the master regulator of Listeria monocytogenes virulence enables bacterial clearance from spacious replication vacuoles in infected macrophages

A hallmark of Listeria (L.) monocytogenes pathogenesis is bacterial escape from maturing entry vacuoles, which is required for rapid bacterial replication in the host cell cytoplasm and cell-to-cell spread. The bacterial transcriptional activator PrfA controls expression of key virulence factors that enable exploitation of this intracellular niche. The transcriptional activity of PrfA within infected host cells is controlled by allosteric coactivation. Inhibitory occupation of the coactivator site has been shown to impair PrfA functions, but consequences of PrfA inhibition for L. monocytogenes infection and pathogenesis are unknown. Here we report the crystal structure of PrfA with a small molecule inhibitor occupying the coactivator site at 2.0 Å resolution. Using molecular imaging and infection studies in macrophages, we demonstrate that PrfA inhibition prevents the vacuolar escape of L. monocytogenes and enables extensive bacterial replication inside spacious vacuoles. In contrast to previously described spacious Listeria-containing vacuoles, which have been implicated in supporting chronic infection, PrfA inhibition facilitated progressive clearance of intracellular L. monocytogenes from spacious vacuoles through lysosomal degradation. Thus, inhibitory occupation of the PrfA coactivator site facilitates formation of a transient intravacuolar L. monocytogenes replication niche that licenses macrophages to effectively eliminate intracellular bacteria. Our findings encourage further exploration of PrfA as a potential target for antimicrobials and highlight that intra-vacuolar residence of L. monocytogenes in macrophages is not inevitably tied to bacterial persistence.Originally included in thesis in manuscript form. </p