Conjoint measurement experiment of consumer complaining behavior

What factors influence whether a consumer voices a complaint, given a dissatisfactory product purchase and/or consumption experience? This limited, experimental research suggests that the greatest propensity to complain occurs when purchase price is high, the product is available from only one retailer, and the social risk of product consumption is high.     

Branch plant location and the product cycle in computer manufacturing

This paper examines the implications of changes in product and process technology in the computer industry for the regional location pattern of production facilities. Emphasis is placed on the different locational needs of research and development activities as opposed to volume production of components. Using establishment data, the existing pattern of location is analyzed. A location model for branch plants is estimated across SMSAs; the results show that SMSA size and wage rates are repelling forces for branches. Agglomeration factors, educational level, and the supply of engineers, as well as the distance to headquarters, are positive influences on location.Manufacturing employment in the United States has grown faster outside than inside the traditional manufacturing belt for decades (Carlino 1984); this trend has accelerated in recent years. Causes of this redistribution may include surplus farm labor in the South (Cogan 1982), an attractive climate in the West, and unionization and high taxes in the North. Changes in product and process technology have also affected the location of some industries. This paper attempts to show how technology and the product life cycle influence the location of computer manufacturing.     

Factors influencing sales call frequency of industrial salespersons

Industrial sales representatives face a problem of allocating their time in deciding which customers or prospects to call on and how frequently to make those calls. These decisions directly influence the firm's costs and revenues, yet research in this area has been sparse. This article reports an empirical study of the relationship between the call frequency of salespersons and select characteristics of the market, the customer, and the salesperson-customer interaction. Data for the study were collected by a self-administered questionnaire which was completed by 83 salespersons representing 34 different firms. Respondents provided data concerning their call frequency on a particular customer, time in the sales territory, and responses to a series of Likert statements. Eight summative scales were developed from the statements. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the relationship between call frequency and the independent variables. Several predictors (Role Consensus, Important Purchase Decision, Important Customer, and Customer Disposition) were salient variables in the model. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the research findings to marketing managers and researchers.     

Alternative approaches for interpretation of multiple discriminant analysis in marketing research

Multiple discriminant analysis has proven to be a versatile and useful tool in analyzing the similarities and differences among market segments. Yet many of the marketing applications of discriminant analysis have relied on interpretive procedures that can be misleading. More generally, the full interpretive potential of this general analytical model has not been realized. This article addresses these problems, suggests a number of new and useful approaches for interpretation, and illustrates them in an innovator segment analysis.     

Measuring the performance of industrial salespersons

Sales force performance is a critical concern of most industrial firms, yet in this area of research there are difficulties in measuring salespersons performance. Issues relevant to measuring the performance of industrial salespersons are reviewed. A self-report performance scale developed and evaluated based on the responses of 200 salespersons and 42 managers from five major industrial firms is presented.     

Competition and the cost of liquidity to investors

The Congressional mandate to develop competitive securities markets in the United States has focused attention on the cost of liquidity to investors. Prior studies have emphasized the impact of external competition in the form of competing markets and/ or competing dealers on the bid-ask spread of the dealer. However, the spread of the specialist (dealer) on the NYSE may or may not be observable because of the interaction between public limit orders and the specialist's quotes. Our study develops a model of this interaction, and empirically verifies that internal competition in the form of limit orders has an important impact on the cost of liquidity to investors.     

Optimal monetary-fiscal stabilizers under an indexed versus nonindexed tax structure

This article analyzes the optimal coordination of automatic monetary and fiscal stabilization parameters in a rational expectations context. Optimal joint settings for the average level of tax rates, the progressivity of the tax structure, and the response of the money stock to the current level of the interest rate are derived to minimize the variance of output and price.     

Corporate characteristics and the corporate socialization of local (Mexican) managers of U.S. multinational corporations

This paper examines the proposition that local nationals employed as (local) managers by foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations have managerial attitutes which are generally between those of indigenous managers employed by domestic firms in both the parent and host countries. The evidence strongly suggests that the concept has validity, and that the organization attributes of capital, R&D, and marketing intensity influence the managerial attitudes of the three groups of managers and the differences among these attitudes.     

Identifying innovative behavior patterns using canonical analysis

Marketers are vitally interested in the relationships between personal attributes and consumer behavior. This study was developed to examine, using canonical analysis, the relationships of personality and socioeconomic data with innovative behavior of housewives. The Gordon Personal Profile and Inventory provided the personality variables, and socioeconomic variables used were age, marital status, income, and number of children living at home. All respondents were women who represented middle-class housewives in the Columbia, South Carolina, metropolitan area. An initial sample was used to scale a list of products as to their degree of innovativeness in their effect on consumption and usage patterns. A sample of 152 middle-class housewives were then contacted and 142 of these supplied completed questionnaires suitable for analysis. A great many combinations of innovative products and personality and socioeconomic variables were run. Several strong relationships were found. The major ones were between products and socioeconomic variables. However, one analysis showed the most significant levels of association with the innovative products when personality variables were used alone. A brief analysis of the major canonical root for this analysis indicates a woman who uses more malt liquor and club cocktails and who has a microwave oven. Associated with these innovative products are the personality variables of ascendancy, slightly irresponsible, less cautious, and highly sociable. This interpretation might indicate the profile of a woman who is on the way up and likes to socialize without regard to what others think. Many other interesting profiles are also described. The study is exploratory in nature but provides stimulus for additional research and also provides support for previous consumer behavior findings.     

Market performance of options on the Chicago board options exchange

Unproven assertions about potential option returns have accompanied increased interest in option trading since formation of the CBOE. This paper presents an analysis of return distributions from buying and selling CBOE options. Generally, buying options resulted in returns that were negative and lower than returns from buying the underlying stocks. Average returns from writing covered options exceeded returns from buying both options and stocks. Commissions and taxes shifted location of return distributions for all three investments, particularly reducing returns from buying options.     

Organization technology and the media and purpose dimensions of organization communications

Data collected from field research using structured observations indicate for task communications significant relationships between organization technology certainty (using Perrow's typology) and use of verbal and sign media and no significant relationship with use of object and written media. These data also indicate relationships between technology certainty and stimulus and problem solving communications purposes. Directionality of communications moderates these technology-purpose relationships, even exposing some additional relationships. The last section of this article proposes a reconceptualized model of organization communications, considering technology certainty, member mobility, and leadership style as independent variables and directionality as a moderating variable.     

Managerial pay and financial performance of small business

The purpose of this study is to examine empirically whether managerial pay of small-firm executives is more closely related to profitability or generation of sales. Conventional economic doctrine supports the hypothesis that chief executives are paid primarily to advance profitability. The contrary hypothesis, given impetus by Baumol [2] and Galbraith [8], asserts a closer relationship between compensation and sales. Previous studies of large corporations have produced conflicting results. Regression analysis of the 78 small firms in this study reveals managers receiving compensation correlating fairly closely with both profitability and sales. The cumulative forces at work in these firms impacting upon managerial pay appear to have wrought a linkage conductive toward motivating managers to be both “bottom line” and marketing oriented.     

Perceived situational effects on price sensitivity

In this article, the multidimensionality of price as perceived by members of a consumer panel is examined. Respondents are first classified as price-sensitive or non-price-sensitive with respect to a durable and a nondurable product. Several dimensions of price are then described within the framework of brand purchase decision situations, and consumer evaluations of the importance of each situational dimension are measured. Dimensions perceived as important by price-sensitive persons are different from those considered important by non-price-sensitive consumers. Variations exist in the importance of price dimensions based on type of product.     

Competitive position effects and market share: An exploratory investigation

This paper investigates the relative competitive position of a firm with a view toward determining those marketing effort dimensions that significantly influence market share. The study differs from previously published reports in that it utilizes the Profit Impact of Marketing Strategy (PIMS) data base on relative marketing effort to identify key marketing effort variables for two broad classes of goods: consumer nondurables and capital goods. The framework for a competitive positive effects model is developed in terms of nine relative marketing effort dimensions expressed along categories roughly corresponding to competitive superiority, parity, or inferiority. Hypotheses for the two classes of goods, gleaned from the available marketing literature, were empirically tested with use of linear regression models. Though the sets of coefficients relating to the nine marketing decision variables significantly differed ac across industries, similar patterns were found in both groups with respect to the relative breadth of product line and relative product quality dimensions. The results also tended to (a) support the claim of Buzzel et al. [Product Quality, Strategic Planning Institute, Cambridge, 1978] that for product quality to matter, improvements relative to competition must be substantial, and (b) show that for certain effort dimensions striving for competitive superiority may not generate sizable increases in relative market share.     

Reliability and cross-validity of trade-off analysis in an industrial setting

More than 200 applications of trade-off analysis now have been completed. A review of the literature uncovers only four sources that evaluate the reliability or validity, or both, of trade-off analysis using the concept evaluation approach. Detailed evaluations of trade-off analysis based on trade-off grid data are unavailable. This paper reports reliability and cross-validity experience using this approach.     

Operating leverage as a determinant of systematic risk

Since the development of the capital asset pricing model, a number of studies have examined the effect of a firm's operating leverage on its systematic risk. The essential conclusion of these studies is that operating leverage affects systematic risk through either the contribution margin or unit variable costs. In this paper, the models derived in previous research are refined and extended to demonstrate that, for either a single-product or multiproduct firm, the degree of operating leverage measures the full effect of a firm's operating leverage on its systematic risk. In addition, it is shown that a sales variability measure should also be an important differentiating factor among the systematic risk of common stocks. Thus, the results have important practical implications for financial managers when estimating project or divisional risk for investment decisions, and for security analysts when predicting the systematic risk of common stocks.     

Stationarity test for the beta binomial model

The beta binomial model has been successfully applied to describe brand switching, television viewing, and magazine readership behavior. However, long-term projections from this model tend to have systematic biases. These biases can be explained by violations of the stationarity assumption of the model. A statistical test for stationarity is presented. A transition matrix upon which the test is based provides a useful diagnostic tool for detecting shifts in preference structures versus equilibrium switching behavior.     

Marketing information system utilization: An application of self-concept theory

The impact of marketing information systems (MIS) has not been substantial and developed systems have not been highly utilized. Borrowing the theory of self-concept from the behavioral sciences, 46 system users' self-images, ideal self-images, and the images of a significant other (one who facilitates usage of the MIS) are measured and related to the image of a heavy user of the information system. The results shed some light on the system usage problem and provide some direction for marketing the MIS to marketing managers/ system users.