Antecedents and outcomes of flight attendants’ job satisfaction

This paper develops and tests a comprehensive model for job satisfaction amongst flight attendants with antecedents and outcomes that are germane in the context of airlines. The antecedents are: jetlag, role overload, emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, and depersonalization, and the outcomes are; job performance and service recovery performance. A framework was tested using structural equation modelling. A survey was conducted of flight attendants working in Malaysia found exhaustion and personal accomplishment have a direct effect on job satisfaction; emotional exhaustion and personal accomplishment affect the level of depersonalization; and role overload has a positive relationship.     

Estimating Contagion on the Internet: Evidence from the Diffusion of Digital/Information Products

Even as the Internet continues to grow as a global platform for communication and commerce, the success of new value offerings on the Internet hinges on acquisition of new customers and retention of existing customers. Central to the flow of customers in and out of trial and repeat behavior in this burgeoning and dynamic environment, characterized by diversity among both producers and consumers of value offerings, is the process of social contagion—active word of mouth that flows among customers or passive observation of others. To estimate contagion on the Internet, the authors develop a trial-repeat purchase diffusion model for successive innovations in value offerings on the Internet. The model extends the state-of-the-art diffusion modeling by incorporating (i) dynamic market potential, (ii) heterogeneity among first-time triers, (iii) heterogeneity in word of mouth due to repeat buyers and non-repeaters (i.e., positive and negative word of mouth), and (iv) dynamic repeat purchase rate. The model also incorporates the influence of product characteristics, specifically source of innovation (i.e., whether the innovation is driven by environmental needs or competitive pressures) and product bundling, and competition. The authors test the model with weekly adoption data for 11 computer software products available on the shareware system, involving over 100 new versions in the period 1991–1994, and in a market whose size grows by a factor of fifty from early 1991 to late 1994. The findings clarify the role of word of mouth effects, competition, and product characteristics in fostering the diffusion process for digital information goods.     

Allocating a Promotion Budget between Advertising and Sales Contest Prizes: An Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective

This paper develops and analyzes a normative model for allocating a fixed, short-term promotion budget between product advertising and prizes of a rank-order sales contest for a homogeneous sales force when sales are driven by both personal selling effort and advertising. The model provides insights into how the optimal budget allocations vary with the synergy between advertising and selling effort, sales force size, salesperson risk-tolerance, perceived cost of effort, selling effectiveness and sales response uncertainty. The analysis highlights the need for and value of close coordination between marketing and sales management in designing a promotion program involving both advertising and sales force incentives.     

Dynamic competitive retail pricing behavior with uncertainty and learning

When competing retailers lack full information about rivals' decision processes, how will dynamic pricing behavior vary from patterns observed in more traditional static or full-information models? We investigate this question in a dynamic alternating-moves duopoly model. Retailers update (linear) conjectures about rivals' future prices in a Bayesian fashion. We show that as observed and expected prices converge, a pricing equilibrium is always achieved, whether or not the conjectured and actual values of the slope of the rival's best response function are consistent. Assuming specific parameter values, we compare equilibrium prices and associated profits in our Bayesian learning model with those obtained under the assumptions of static Nash behavior, collusive behavior and dynamically optimal behavior with full information. We apply the notions of strategic substitutability and strategic complementarity to the analysis and find that when products are strategic complements, conjectures of higher rival price responsiveness lead to higher steady-state prices and profits. The reverse is true for strategic substitutes. We also find that learning about a rival's behavior proceeds more quickly, the less intensely related in demand are products. We find, in general, that equilibrium pricing patterns and profits can vary considerably from those in full-information environments, but that even with grossly wrong beliefs about rival behavior, competing retailers are still attracted to an equilibrium. The analysis suggests not only the value of investigating lessthan-full information situations but also the potential incremental value of signalling greater or less aggressiveness than truly characterizes one's behavior as a strategic option.     

Foodservice hygiene factors—The consumer perspective

Food safety is important to today's food industry operators as consumers have become increasingly concerned about risks related to food. Unlike foodservice operators or health inspectors, consumers can only rely on the visible cues, particularly those associated with food hygiene to judge the level of food safety in eating establishments. While previous research highlighted the influence of foodservice hygiene perception on consumer dining out decision, study examining the constructs of food safety cues that consumers employed is scant. This research aims to bridge the gap by exploring the topic from the consumer perspective. Results indicate that foodservice hygiene is one of the top three considerations when consumers select a dining place. Results of confirmatory factor analysis reveal a four-factor model encompasses staff and handling, food and location, premise and practices, and scent aspects. Further substantiation in different settings is needed for generalization purpose.     

Environments, unobserved heterogeneity, and the effect of market orientation on outcomes for high-tech firms

The interaction between market orientation and facets of the environment is theoretically compelling and is hence the primary interaction studied in market orientation literature. Yet empirical literature offers mixed findings regarding these interaction effects. We suggest that these mixed findings may result from the failure of extant research to control for unobserved heterogeneity that may mask the true relationships among market orientation, facets of the environment, and firm outcomes. Such unobserved heterogeneity might arise due to presence of higher order (e.g., three-way, four-way) moderators (e.g., firm size and innovativeness). To illustrate our assertions on unobserved heterogeneity and the role of firm size and innovativeness, we present two studies that use firm performance or new product performance as the outcome variable; the studies (1) include market orientation, two facets of the environment (technological turbulence and market dynamism), and the interactions between market orientation and facets of the environment as explanatory variables, (2) employ finite mixture regression models to estimate the relationships of interest while explicitly accounting for unobserved heterogeneity in the form of latent regimes (segments), and (3) use firm size and innovativeness as concomitant profiling variables in the finite mixture model specification. The results indicate that disaggregate models (i.e., multi-regime solutions) offer the best fit in both studies. The effects across the latent regimes differ, demonstrating the possibility of an aggregation bias in empirical literature and suggesting the need for using disaggregated analyses to study important marketing phenomena. In theoretical terms, these results also suggest the possibility of developing theories that incorporate unobserved heterogeneity and perhaps higher order (e.g., three-way) interaction effects.     

Facility location under demand uncertainty: Response to a large-scale bio-terror attack

In the event of a catastrophic bio-terror attack, major urban centers need to efficiently distribute large amounts of medicine to the population. In this paper, we consider a facility location problem to determine the points in a large city where medicine should be handed out to the population. We consider locating capacitated facilities in order to maximize coverage, taking into account a distance-dependent coverage function and demand uncertainty. We formulate a special case of the maximal covering location problem (MCLP) with a loss function, to account for the distance-sensitive demand, and chance-constraints to address the demand uncertainty. This model decides the locations to open, and the supplies and demand assigned to each location. We solve this problem with a locate-allocate heuristic. We illustrate the use of the model by solving a case study of locating facilities to address a large-scale emergency of a hypothetical anthrax attack in Los Angeles County.