Asymmetric Properties of Office Rent Adjustment

In this paper we use an error correction model for understanding the changes in real office rents for a panel of 15 U.S. MSA’s over the period 1990-2007. We find that office rents in all cities react positively to a rise in office employment and lagged rent changes, while lagged deviations from equilibrium rent levels exhibit a slow and partial adjustment over time. Given the non-negativity constraint of vacancy rates we extend the basic model by examining whether rents react to positive changes in employment conditional on the vacancy rate level. Our results show that office rents react significantly stronger to increases in employment when vacancy rates are below the long-term average. We also repeat the analysis for clusters of cities based on similarities in rent and employment dynamics using multi dimensional scaling. The cluster results confirm the overall conclusions and show that our results are not solely valid for the full panel of cities.     

How price complexity takes its toll: The neglected role of a simplicity bias and fairness in price evaluations

Marketing managers commonly employ complex price plans. Surprisingly, limited and conflicting evidence reports how customers perceive and react to complex prices. This study examines perceptions about price complexity and shows that customers tend to prefer simple prices. Two experimental studies show that perceived price complexity negatively affects customer perceptions of price fairness and influences product choice because customers negatively evaluate the transparency of the firm's pricing practices and infer higher total prices. Customers comparing alternate offerings may therefore prefer simple over complex prices, even when the latter are less expensive. Study results suggest limiting price plan variations positively affects customer inferences about transparency and fairness, and thus customer choice.     

Perils of Managing the Service Profit Chain: The Role of Time Lags and Feedback Loops

The tendency of managers to focus on short-term results rather than on sustained company success is of particular importance to retail marketing managers, because marketing activities involve expenditures which may only pay off in the longer term. To address the issue of myopic management, our study shows how the complexity of the service profit chain (SPC) can cause managers to make suboptimal decisions. Hence, our paper departs from past research by recognizing that understanding the temporal interplay between operational investments, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, and operating profit is essential to achieving sustained success. In particular, we intend to improve understanding of the functioning of the SPC with respect to time lags and feedback loops. Results of our large-scale longitudinal study set in a multi-outlet retail chain reveal time-lag effects between operational investments and employee satisfaction, as well as between customer satisfaction and performance. These findings, along with evidence of a negative interaction effect of employee satisfaction on the relationship between current performance and future investments, show the substantial risk of mismanaging the SPC. We identify specific situations in which the dynamic approach leads to superior marketing investment decisions, when compared to the conventional static view of the SCP. These insights provide valuable managerial guidance for effectively managing the SPC over time.