Micro-level product-market dynamics: Shared knowledge and its relationship to market development

This work draws on consumer and psychology research to explain sociocognitive aspects of product-market dynamics at a higher level of specificity than prior research. The authors extend the field’s understanding of market-shaping shared knowledge through a theory-informed discussion of how shared product knowledge comes to exist and how it changes as product markets develop. They define shared knowledge as the aspects of product representations that are common across the minds of market actors, making it possible for them to understand one another. The authors also discuss ways to track shared knowledge content that is expressed in market narratives. As the characteristics of shared knowledge are explained and linked to stages of product-market development, the authors develop a set of researchable propositions to guide future research. The theoretical arguments and propositions in this article complement extant marketing strategy research by integrating individual-level consumer theory with market evolution models. José Antonio Rosa (jose.rosa@case.edu; Ph.D., University of Michigan) is an assistant professor of marketing at Case Western Reserve University. His research interests include product markets as sociocognitive phenomena, embodied knowledge in consumer and managerial sensemaking, consumer illiteracy and coping, commitment and motivation among members of network marketing organizations, and buying group satisfaction. His research has been published in marketing and management publications, including theJournal of Marketing and theAcademy of Management Journal. Before entering academia, he worked in the automotive and information systems industries. Jelena Spanjol (jspanjol@tamu.edu; Ph.D., University of Illinois) is an assistant professor of marketing at Texas A&M University. Her research interests include product market dynamics, product portfolio management, innovation, sensemaking, and organizational and managerial cognition in marketing strategy. Her research has been published in marketing and management publications, including theJournal of Marketing and several book chapters. Before academia, she worked in the scientific software industry.     

The effect of interstate highway on driving times and regional shopping center drawing power

Previous studies of the driving times of shopping center patrons have not examined the effect of limited access highways. This study analyzed the impact of interstate highways on the driving times of 204 shoppers at three medium-sized regional shopping centers. Those shoppers indicating usage of interstate highways to reach their shopping destinations were significantly more likely to incur travel times greater than fifteen and twenty minutes than those not using the available interstate roads. In predicting the drawing power of these shopping centers, factors besides mass were found to be useful. These include square footage of shopping goods, stores, and number of parking places.     

Drivers and implications of entrepreneurial orientation for academic spin-offs

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - This paper has been designed with a dual goal. On the one hand, the paper aims to examine the role of management teams, industry agents, and...     

Forecasting recovery rates on non-performing loans with machine learning

We compare the performance of a wide set of regression techniques and machine-learning algorithms for predicting recovery rates on non-performing loans, using a private database from a European debt collection agency. We find that rule-based algorithms such as Cubist, boosted trees, and random forests perform significantly better than other approaches. In addition to loan contract specificities, predictors that refer to the bank recovery process — prior to the portfolio’s sale to a debt collector — are also shown to enhance forecasting performance. These variables, derived from the time series of contacts to defaulted clients and client reimbursements to the bank, help all algorithms better identify debtors with different repayment ability and/or commitment, and in general those with different recovery potential.     

The new productivity challenge

"The single greatest challenge facing managers in the developed countries of the world is to raise the productivity of knowledge and service workers," writes Peter F. Drucker in "The New Productivity Challenge." Productivity, says Drucker, ultimately defeated Karl Marx; it gave common laborers the chance to earn the wages of skilled workers. Now five distinct steps will raise the productivity of knowledge and service workers--and not only stimulate new economic growth but also defuse rising social tensions.     

On the conceptualization of theoretical constructs

An attempt is made to bridge the gap between the theorists and modellists approaches to the conceptualization of theoretical constructs. The former approach assumes that every theoretical construct has a surplus meaning over and above its operationalization and measurement as a concept. The latter approach denies this: it only accepts theoretical constructs as functions of relations between observations, i.e. measured concepts.This gap can be bridged by explicating the definition of a theoretical construct before making attempts to operationalize and measure it. An explicated definition should cover all relevant aspects (or: facets) of a construct, systematically brought together in an ideal type model. On this basis, operationalization of the construct can be directly linked to model elements, so that any possibly remaining surplus value is made explicit. The distance between theoretical construct and the measured concept can then be made as small as seems feasible; in principle, the distance can be made zero. The manner in which conservative ideology is conceptualized in a longitudinal research project in the Dutch electorate is presented as an example of this strategy.     

An extension of mixed estimation,with an application to forecasting new product growth

This paper extends the mixed estimation technique to handle a case in which the coefficients of a set of linear constraints are known nonlinear functions of an unknown parameter vector for which an extraneous unbiased estimate is available. This novel form of the mixed estimation technique is illustrated by applying it to the Bass innovation/diffusion model of new product growth. It is suggested that this is superior to the traditional method whereby managerial intuition is incorporated into this type of model, and is an attractive alternative to recently-suggested Bayesian methods.I thank an anonymous referee for helpful comments and references.