Role of Trust and Involvement in the Effectiveness of Digital Third-Party Organization Endorsement

In this research, an online experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of the mere presence of digital third-party organization (TPO) endorsement and the quality of information conveyed by a digital TPO, referred to as the endorsement information value effect. Involvement and institution-based trust were tested as moderators of the endorsement information value effect. The results confirm the intuitive belief of managers that the mere presence of a digital TPO endorsement benefits websites by reducing risk perceptions, improving attitudes and increasing choice likelihood. The findings from this research revealed that effectiveness of digital TPO endorsement information value was contingent upon the level of involvement with the effects being found only among high involvement consumers but not among low involvement consumers. Similarly, effectiveness of digital TPO endorsement information value is also contingent on institution-based trust, with the effect of endorsement information value emerging only for low institution-based trust consumers but not for high institution-based trust consumers. Thus, a higher information value digital TPO will increase choice over a low information value digital TPO only if the consumer is highly involved or has low institution-based trust

Too Much Invested to Go Back: an Investigation of Sunk Cost Effects for Monetary and Non-monetary Resources

The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate sunk cost effects for both monetary and non-monetary resources. Accordingly, I conducted an extensive review of peer-reviewed literature on sunk costs. This review spanned the literature in multiple disciplines including management, marketing, organizational behavior, psychology, sociology, and accounting. While investigating sunk cost effects was an important goal for this dissertation, equally important was determining the reasons for these effects. Toward this end, I investigated theoretical explanations that have been previously proposed for the sunk cost effect. From among these and other consumer behavior theories, the theoretical explanations that seemed to best fit the context of non-monetary resources were self justification and desire to reduce waste. Accordingly, I developed process measures (context dependent scale) and a general scale (context independent scale) for both self-justification and desire to reduce waste. These scales were rigorously tested for validity and reliability and were cross-validated across multiple samples. Next, I investigated the sunk cost effect where the initial investment was monetary and the subsequent investment was non-monetary. This study was done in the context of coupons. Here, I tested a novel idea of putting a price on coupons. I found that subjects who paid for a coupon booklet were more likely to take the effort to use it rather than those who did not pay for it. The explanation for this effect lies in consumer's desire to justify their decision to pay for the coupon. Next, I investigated the sunk cost effect for effort. Here the initial investment was effort (confounded with time) and subsequent investment was money. I tried to determine if consumers would react to sunk effort in the same manner they reacted to sunk money. I found evidence that suggested the existence of a sunk cost effect for effort but only when the decision to invest effort was voluntary. This effect was explained by the subjects' need for self-justification.Business Administration (MBA

Intergenerational Influence in Consumer Deal Proneness

Although there has been ample research on the correlates of consumer deal proneness, there has been little research on how deal proneness develops. By administering a questionnaire to a sample of dyads consisting of a parent and his or her adult child, we find considerable parent-child similarity in both deal proneness and in the pattern of preferences for particular types of sales promotions. Further, we find greater parent-child similarity when children have exposure to parental shopping behavior during their teenage years and when they have a more positive attitude towards their parents' shopping habits. The results of this research provide evidence for the role of both parental modeling and the child's identification with the parent in the development of deal proneness. [to cite]

What Do Customers Consider Important in B2B Websites?

Based on prior research, we identified seven factors that customers might consider important in a business-to-business website. Using a rigorous scale development procedure and a field study with 606 business customers, we developed valid and reliable scales for measuring these factors. Results revealed that organization is the most important factor in a website. This is followed by nontransaction-related interactivity, privacy/security, and informativeness. The other factors (transaction-related interactivity, personalization, and entertainment) were found to be relatively less important. Managerially useful differences were found in the importance ratings of these factors for those who use the web for purchase versus those who use the web for nonpurchase activities. a

A customer-focused approach to improve celebrity endorser effectiveness

The current study reveals that a customer-focused approach to choosing celebrity endorsers (based on consumer-endorser identification) is a more useful predictor of endorsement success than a product-focused approach (product-endorser fit) alone. Specifically, the findings suggest consumer-endorser identification offers a potentially more consistent criterion for predicting endorsement effectiveness than fit, which is contingent upon varying consumer perceptions of product-endorser match-up. Across two studies, one survey-based and one longitudinal experiment, increased identification with both male and female endorsers led to increases in endorsement success. Most importantly, the influence of identification is significant for both high and low fit pairings between an endorser and brand. Thus, consumers who identify strongly with an endorser are likely to respond favorably to the endorsement even when fit between the endorser and brand is poor. Moreover, identification with the endorser is found to be consistently linked to purchase intentions over multiple time points