Marketing Seminar

Speaker:

Miss Chu Dang (Ivy)
Ph.D. Candidate in Marketing
CUHK Business School
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Abstract:

Consumers’ valuation for privacy plays a crucial role in determining how much data a firm can collect to drive its managerial decisions. Meanwhile, previous literature that measures consumers’ dollar value for privacy often features small incentives to encourage data sharing. In this paper, we estimate consumers’ valuation for privacy by examining their data sharing decisions under a wide range of incentives, for customers of a microloan provider in Hong Kong. During the application process, the loan provider uses interest rate discounts to incentivize applicants to provide additional personal data. This percentage discount translates to dollar gains from 4,643 to 9,285 Hong Kong dollars (amount to 30 to 50 percent of their monthly salaries) for applicants who request different loan terms and expect different repayment behaviors. Using a structural model, we calculate the dollar price for personal data as a function of applicant risk type and the characteristics of the loan that they apply for. Despite the substantial benefits of sharing data, only 19 percent of applicants choose to share any optional personal data requested. In the counterfactual, we show how the incentive scheme can balance its role in collecting personal data to improve loan offering decisions and its role in screening applicants who accept the loan.

Marketing Seminar

Speaker:

Dr. Ashish KUMAR
Assistant Professor of Marketing
School of Business
Aalto University

Abstract:

Online shopping cart abandonment is a growing problem for e-commerce merchants worldwide as it causes a significant loss of their online revenue. The objective of this study is to examine the antecedents and recovery mechanism of online shopping cart abandonment. First, using a longitudinal data of consumers’ online orders, the authors show that cart characteristics, payment methods, marketing communications, situational factors, and consumer characteristics have significant effects on their online shopping cart abandonment behavior. In this regard, cart breadth, cart discount, delivery cost, the time gap between online orders, and morning time increase the likelihood of online shopping cart abandonment. On the other hand, cart depth, dynamically priced items in the cart, top-selling items in the cart, bank payment, cash on delivery payment method, email newsletters, and registered customers reduce the likelihood of online shopping cart abandonment. We find monetary value of cart has a nonlinear effect on the likelihood of online shopping cart abandonment. Second, for the same set of customers, we collect additional data from a marketing program intervention where we find that sending reminder emails reduces the rate of online shopping cart abandonment significantly. In fact, reminder emails lessen the probability of online shopping cart abandonment by as much as five percent, which is a significant recovery of lost online revenue in cart abandonment. Furthermore, we also report differential effects of reminder emails and antecedents on varying degree of cart recovery, such as full vs. major vs. minor recoveries. Based on these results, the study offers critical managerial insights to online retailers in addressing the issue of online shopping cart abandonment and recommends them to exploit reminder emails as a digital nudge in their repertoire of recommendation system.

Marketing Seminar

Speaker:

Dr. Leonard Lee
Associate Professor and Dean’s Chair
Department of Marketing, NUS Business School
National University of Singapore

Abstract:

Merely anticipating a future sad event may motivate consumers to “accumulate (i.e., bank) happiness” in order to enhance their ability to cope with the anticipated sadness later—a phenomenon that we call banking happiness. People bank happiness because of the lay theory that happiness is a resource that can be accumulated (i.e., banked) and consumed later. The present research documents three manifestations of this banking-happiness phenomenon: holding the happiness-is-bankable lay theory causes consumers who anticipate sadness (vs. a neutral mood) to (a) choose positive stimuli over non-positive stimuli when given the choice; (b) recall more positive (vs. negative) memories; and (c) engage with positive stimuli more deeply, thus achieving a greater boost in positive mood after exposure to these stimuli and responding less negatively to the anticipated sad event later. As a proactive mood-regulation strategy, banking happiness differs from reactive mood regulation. The strength of consumers’ lay beliefs in whether happiness is bankable as well as their dispositional future (vs. present) orientation predicts their tendency to bank happiness, but not their propensity to repair their negative moods after actually experiencing sadness.

Marketing Seminar

Speaker:

Dr. Guiyang Xiong
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Martin J. Whitman School of Management
Syracuse University

Abstract:

A revolutionary application of the virtual reality technology in online retailing, virtual fitting room (VFR), has attracted increasing attention of researchers and practitioners. However, it remains unclear whether and how VFR influences sales and post-sales outcomes based on the limited literature, and how its effects vary across customer groups and product types. Hence, retailers hesitate in adopting the technology due to concerns about its profit prospects. In this research, we conduct large-scale field experiments with real-world customer behavior data to test the causal effects of different VFR designs, and lab experiments to unveil the underlying theoretical mechanisms. We find that, although VFR can have a sizeable positive effect on sales, it can be counterproductive when used improperly. Specifically, personalized VFR may not increase sales if used in combination with conventional product visualizations because self-discrepancy becomes salient under this condition. Moreover, VFR significantly influences post-sales outcomes, i.e., it enhances customer satisfaction and reduces product return rate. Finally, the effects of VFR are conditional on certain customer characteristics and product types, implying the importance of precision targeting.

Marketing Seminar

Speaker:

Miss Ying BAO
Ph.D. Candidate in Marketing
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto

Abstract:

Consumers often forget their past consumptions and incur overage charges. Technologies such as mobile applications have emerged to help consumers track their spending and eliminate overage charges. This paper is intended to examine the relation between consumer forgetfulness and overage charges as well as the implications of a lower consumption tracking cost due to technology improvements. To accomplish this, I develop a model of consumers who are forgetful about past usage and may be naïve about their forgetfulness.  In the model, a firm offers a service contract to consumers who will incur a penalty fee if they overuse the service prior to the end of the contract’s billing cycle.  Consumers who are forgetful, and naïve in the sense that they underestimate their forgetfulness ex-ante, will be more likely to incur such fees.  The model allows consumers the option of using a consumption tracking technology during the billing cycle at a cost; consumers who use the technology will be informed of their usage, so they can avoid penalty fees. In equilibrium, I show that decreases in the cost of tracking will improve consumer welfare, even if consumers never use the technology.  The intuition behind this result is that the firm will lower the penalty fee to disincentivize consumers from tracking their consumption.  Furthermore, I show that when consumers are heterogeneous in their levels of forgetfulness, decreases in the cost of tracking will reduce welfare for some consumers, while benefiting others. This is because the firm will design its contract to exploit some consumers and a lower tracking cost serves as a tool for the firm to discriminate between consumers. These results confirm the importance for the firms and regulators to consider consumers’ lack of sophistication towards their forgetfulness.

Marketing Seminar

Speaker:

Dr. Tuan Q. Phan
Associate Professor
NUS School of Computing

Abstract:

Flight delays are costly to passengers, the air travel industry, businesses, and the overall economy. Yet, there is little empirical evidence on how passengers behave and spend their time as a result of given time due to schedule disruptions. In this study, we use a large proprietary dataset on passengers’ indoor movements from a major airport and publicly available flight delay data to study how flyers spend their time due to flight delays. We find that, on average, for every ten minutes of delay, passengers spend twenty additional seconds near shops and 8 seconds near dining establishments. Furthermore, we find that passengers at lower rated airlines are more likely to spend time at dining establishment. Our findings can aid airlines and airports to better manage passengers satisfaction due to service disruptions.

Traning seminar hosted by Contemporary Marketing Center

Speakers:

Mr. Yushan Chen
Marketing Director
Miaozhen Systems

Mr. Yongyi Yu
Chief Data Scientist
Miaozhen Systems

Introduction:

The Contemporary Marketing Center has invited Mr. Chen Yushan and Mr. Yu Yongyi from Miaozhen Systems (秒针系统) to conduct the information and training seminars. Miaozhen Systems is the leading omni-marketing data and technology solution provider in China. Their visit and seminar are to provide information and training about their product and service that can fit the research such as usage of their database, data tracking system.

Marketing Seminar

Speaker:

Mr. Mengzhou Zhuang
Ph.D. Candidate in Marketing
Gies College of Business
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Abstract:

Keyword sponsored advertising serves as a channel for firms to communicate with consumers. Noting the critical role of price information in consumers’ decision making, this study investigates product price as a factor that affects consumers’ responses to such advertising, along with the moderating effects of two keyword attributes. With a hierarchical Bayesian model, the authors analyze a unique data set from a leading electronic shopping platform and find that consumers tend to click more on extreme price options (i.e., highest or lowest), which serve as anchors to evaluate a broad range of options. This effect is diminished among advertisements sponsoring more specific keywords but enhanced among those using more popular keywords. Yet conversion rates are higher for the moderately priced options, which offer a compromise across different product features. This effect weakens for more specific keywords but strengthens for more popular keywords. The findings provide new insights on the role of price information in sponsored keyword advertising, along with managerial implications for devising effective sponsored keyword advertising strategies.

Marketing Seminar

Speaker:

Dr. Freeman Wu
Assistant Professor of Marketing
Owen Graduate School of Management
Vanderbilt University

Abstract:

Financial institution, service providers, and retailers recognize the importance of offering their credit, debit, and gift cards to customers in attractive card designs. For example, credit cards ranging from the Chase Sapphire in the U.S. to the EPOS Visa in Japan have been praised for their eye-catching designs, Capitol One and Wells Fargo readily encourage their clients to design their own credit card cards, and companies from Starbucks to Sephora regularly promote and release highly attractive gift card packaging and card designs. Given the rising popularity of credit and gift card aesthetics, the current research examines the impact that payment aesthetics can have on the overall purchase experience. Across a series of studies, we demonstrate that the aesthetics and design of a payment can enhance the consumption experience by increasing the “pleasure of paying,” or the gratification derived from spending money. In other words, payment aesthetics make the act of spending more pleasurable and enjoyable, which in turn results in greater spending and satisfaction. However, when the payment’s attractiveness must be compromised through spending (e.g. ripping attractive gift card packaging to access a gift card), we propose consumers will experience greater pain from paying, which in turn reduces spending and decreases purchase satisfaction. Taken together, our work not only introduces the pleasure of payment construct to the literature, which we argue is conceptually distinct from pain, but we also identify payment aesthetics as a novel source of pain of payment, one that is exogenous to the payment and unrelated to its fiscal value.

Marketing Seminar

Speaker:

Dr. Xiuping Li
Associate Professor
NUS Business School

Abstract:

This research investigates how parents’ consumption choices for their preadolescent children (aged 9-12 years) affect the children’s self-concept clarity. In four studies, we demonstrate that making experiential consumption (vs. material consumption) salient may lead to an increase in children’s self-concept clarity, which positively influences their well-being. Furthermore, the influence of consumption type on self-concept clarity and well-being is not monotonic. It is moderated by (1) the extent to which children perceive that their parents’ choice is driven by social influence and (2) whether the children hold high versus low interdependent self-construal. By measuring the proportion of experiential consumption expenses on children at the household level (reported by parents) or experimentally manipulating the salience of different types of consumption, we demonstrate not only the associative but also the causal link between parental choice of consumption type and self-concept clarity in preadolescent children.