Advertising, product quality, and complex evolving marketing systems

The paper analyses the advertising as power vs. advertising as information controversy as well as its recent empirical testing. It is stressed that this distinction focuses too much on the interaction between consumer and manufacturer while ignoring the retailer as an important stake-holder. To compensate for this lack, a complex marketing system perspective is introduced in which consumer, retailer, and manufacturer interact. However, these complex marketing systems might drift towards market equilibria which are against the consumer interests: that is, firmsmight lock out brands from the market by means of trade and sales promotions and then use advertising to protect their position. Consequently brands of better quality and/or innovative brands are barred from trade shelves

Increasing Dominance - the Role of Advertising, Pricing and Product Design

Despite the empirical relevance of advertising strategies in concentrated markets, the economics literature is largely silent on the effect of persuasive advertising strategies on pricing, market structure and increasing (or decreasing) dominance. In a simple model of persuasive advertising and pricing with differentiated goods, we analyze the interdependencies between ex-ante asymmetries in consumer appeal, advertising and prices. Products with larger initial appeal to consumers will be advertised more heavily but priced at a higher level - that is, advertising and price discounts are strategic substitutes for products with asymmetric initial appeal. We find that the escalating effect of advertising dominates the moderating effect of pricing so that post-competition market shares are more asymmetric than pre-competition differences in consumer appeal. We further find that collusive advertising (but competitive pricing) generates the same market outcomes, and that network effects lead to even more extreme market outcomes, both directly and via the effect on advertising

Universal Rights and Wrongs

This paper argues for the important role of customers as a source of competitive advantage and firm growth, an issue which has been largely neglected in the resource-based view of the firm. It conceptualizes Penrose’s (1959) notion of an ‘inside track’ and illustrates how in-depth knowledge about established customers combines with joint problem-solving activities and the rapid assimilation of new and previously unexploited skills and resources. It is suggested that the inside track represents a distinct and perhaps underestimated way of generating rents and securing long-term growth. This also implies that the sources of sustainable competitive advantage in important respects can be sought in idiosyncratic interfirm relationships rather than within the firm itself

The relation between the producer and consumer price indices: a two-country study

© 2017, Macmillan Publishers Ltd., part of Springer Nature. Marketing managers are often in a dilemma about which pricing index to rely on while calculating the annual increase in the prices for their product. To provide insights that can reduce this dilemma, a critical comparison of the Producer Price index and consumer price index is called for. In this study, the relation between the Producer Price Index (PPI) and Consumer Price Index (CPI) was investigated through a comparison between Turkey and UK. Unlike many other previous studies, this study tried to determine the dominant pricing approach in an economy by examining the relation between the producer and consumer prices. In this context, VAR, impulse-response, variance decomposition, and Granger causality tests were used for the analyses of time series data. The results of study showed that there was bidirectional causality between the producer and consumer prices in both countries. Therefore, it was asserted that businesses in both countries generally apply mixed pricing approach. The results thus provide some interesting insights that can aid marketing managers in their pricing decisions

Drucker\u27s Insights on Market Orientation and Innovation: Implications for Emerging Areas in High-Technology Marketing

In 1954, Drucker boldly declared that organizations have only two basic functions, marketing and innovation. While true for any organization, this insight is particularly pertinent for technology-based businesses. The complicated environment surrounding high-tech companies creates a great need for sophisticated marketing, yet these companies continue to have under-developed competencies in marketing and in understanding customer needs. In its first two sections, this essay explores Drucker’s insights with respect to two particularly salient issues for high-tech companies: developing and implementing a market orientation, and sustained break-through innovations. We review Drucker’s insights and synthesize them with the scholarly research on these issues. In the third section, we discuss three emerging areas in high-tech marketing where academics and managers could build on Drucker’s insight to guide future research and practice: market-driving, customer co-creation, and corporate social responsibility. The illustrative examples provided by these emerging areas highlight that even today, Drucker’s writings continue to offer remarkable guidance to scholars and managers who are willing to take the time to reflect, understand, and incorporate these insights in the unique context of high-tech industries

A Novel Application of the MIRC Repository in Medical Education

Medical students on the radiology elective in our institution create electronic presentations to present to each other as part of the requirements for the rotation. Access was given to previous students’ presentations via the web-based system, Medical Imaging Resource Center (MIRC) project, created and supported by the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). RadPix Power 2 MIRC (Weadock Software, LLC, Ann Arbor, MI) software converted the Microsoft PowerPoint (Redmond, WA) presentations to a MIRC-compatible format. The textual information on each slide is searchable across the entire MIRC database. Future students will be able to benefit from the work of their predecessors.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/41390/1/10278_2004_Article_1907.pd

Bringing 'place' back in: regional clusters, project governance, and new product outcomes

We examine new product outcomes in the context of regional clusters. Based on past research on marketing relationships, clusters, and social networks, we propose that the overall configuration of a cluster helps promote particular governance practices among its members. These practices have distinct value-creating properties, and when they are brought to bear on a specific new product development project within a cluster, they promote performance outcomes like product novelty and speed to market. Ultimately, these performance effects are reinforced by the configuration of the cluster itself. In general, we propose that new product outcomes follow from complex interactions between a cluster's macro-level configuration and its micro-level governance processes. More broadly, our framework points to the importance of geographical variables and to the role of “place” in marketing decision-making

O Efeito da Sinalização de Qualidade no Contexto de Serviços

Signaling theory states that signals are firms’ actions that communicate information about the quality of a product. The main purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of signal quality in a service context, through the investigation of the signaling effects of price and responsiveness in a service context. Perceived behavior control, regarded as an individual's perception of the ability to perform a behavior, was proposed as a moderator between signaling variables and perceived quality. Two experimental studies with factorial and inter-subject designs were conducted in order to test the hypotheses formulated from the literature review. Results from both experiments show that signaling quality through price and responsiveness can affect perceived quality. The second experiment supports the hypothesis of perceived behavior control moderation between price as a signaling variable and perceived quality, but not between responsiveness and perceived quality. These results and their implications are discussed in the final section of the paper

Recent advances in organic synthesis using light-mediated n-heterocyclic carbene catalysis

The combination of photocatalysis with other ground state catalytic systems have attracted much attention recently due to the enormous synthetic potential offered by a dual activation mode. The use of N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) as organocatalysts emerged as an important synthetic tool. Its ability to harness umpolung reactivity by the formation of the Breslow intermediate has been employed in the synthesis of thousands of biologically important compounds. However, the available coupling partners are relatively restricted, and its combination with other catalytic systems might improve its synthetic versatility. Thus, merging photoredox and N-heterocyclic carbene (NHC) catalysis has emerged recently as a powerful strategy to develop new transformations and give access to a whole new branch of synthetic possibilities. This review compiles the NHC catalyzed methods mediated by light, either in the presence or absence of an external photocatalyst, that have been described so far, and aims to give an accurate overview of the potential of this activation modeL.M. acknowledges the Autonomous Community of Madrid (CAM) for the financial support (PEJD-2019-PRE/AMB-16640 and SI1/PJI/ 2019-00237) and for an “Atracción de Talento Investigador” contract (2017-T2/AMB-5037