After screening for attentiveness and comprehension, we present subjects with Ellsberg's (1961) two‐urn problem using essentially equivalent but representationally complex matrices. High‐comprehension subjects exhibit rates of ambiguity aversion typical of the standard two‐urn problem, while low‐comprehension subjects appear to randomise.
What is the impact of higher technological volatility on asset prices and macroeconomic aggregates? I find the answer hinges on its sectoral origin. Volatility that originates from the consumption (investment) sector drops (raises) macroeconomic growth rates and stock prices.
We study differences in the effects of prices, non-price promotions, and brand line length on brand shares at different retail formats. Our conceptual framework rests on the presence of trip level fixed and category level variable utility components and shows how the trade-off between these components results in (i) different formats visited on different types of shopping trips; and (ii) differential marginal sensitivities of brand shares to changes in marketing mix variables across trip types.
We hypothesized that individuals in cultures typified by lower levels of relational mobility would tend to show more attention to the surrounding social and physical context (i.e., holistic vs. analytic thinking) compared with individuals in higher mobility cultural contexts. Six studies provided support for this idea. Studies 1a and 1b showed that differences in relational mobility in cultures as diverse as the U.S., Spain, Israel, Nigeria, and Morocco predicted patterns of dispositional bias as well as holistic (vs. analytic) attention.
The essence of a brand is that it delivers on its promises. However, consumers’ trust in brands (CTB) has declined around the world in recent decades. As a result, CTB has become a major concern for managers. The authors examine whether CTB is influenced by marketing-mix activities (i.e., advertising, new product introduction, distribution, price, and price promotion) implemented by brands.
Editorial to the JOM special issue on Pre-approved Research Designs for Field Experiments.
We find that although team structure has a significant impact on the performance of nonfounder‐led firms (consistent with past literature), it has little to no effect on the operating performance of founder‐led firms, suggesting that founder chief executive officers (CEOs) may exert too much control. Thus, the irony is that founders are retained to propel progress but their very retention may prevent progress.
Faced with demand uncertainty and heterogeneity in a nascent industry, entrants often consider how many customer segments to serve by tailoring the usage breadth of their product portfolios. Portfolio usage breadth is the extent to which products in a portfolio collectively span distinct customer segments. We suggest that when entrants have use experience in contexts that are potential users of the new product, their portfolios exhibit low usage breadth, due to demand-oriented cognition and knowledge.
Although the power held by the marketing department can determine key organizational outcomes, including firm performance, this power seemingly has been decreasing. To address this apparent disconnect, the authors propose that the board of directors is a critical but overlooked antecedent of marketing department power (MDP).
How does sentiment in a pitch affect an entrepreneur’s fundraising outcomes? Although research suggests that negativity in entrepreneurial “pitches” to investors adversely impacts resource acquisition, there is a lack of empirical research showing whether, and to what extent, this is true. We study over 30,000 entrepreneurial loan requests from one of the largest loan marketplaces to understand how the sentiment in text-only pitches to investors affects fundraising. In contrast to prior literature, we find that negatively-worded pitches are funded faster than positively-worded ones.
Can decision-maker roles—roles with responsibility for allocating resources toward ideas—shape which ideas people in those roles view as creative? Prior theory suggests that expertise should influence creativity assessments, yet examples abound of experts in different roles disagreeing about whether the same idea is creative. We build and test a social context model of creative idea recognition to show how decision-maker roles can shift creativity assessments. In an experimental study, we show that relative to non-decision-making roles, decision-making roles inculcate an economic mindset and so lead to downgrading otherwise creative ideas with cues of low social approval.
Employees often engage in collective grassroot efforts to bring about gender equity in the workplace. Such coalition-based advocacy is largely driven by women, which has led to debate about whether men’s involvement as allies can help. Integrating literatures on signaling and legitimacy, we propose that the demographic composition of a gender equity advocacy coalition matters: Men-only groups lack coalition legitimacy, or the perception that they are the “right” spokespersons for gender equity issues, whereas women-only groups struggle to convey issue legitimacy, or the perception that gender equity is of strategic importance within business organizations.
Employee spinouts, defined as startups founded by prior employees of an industry firm, play a critical role in firm creation and knowledge transfer. Their superior performance often arises from resources and knowledge accrued during employment in parent firms. An understudied question is whether prior employment in parent firms impacts an employee
Following state-level legal changes that increase labor dismissal costs, firms increase their innovation in new processes that facilitate the adoption of cost-saving production methods, especially in industries with a large share of labor costs in total costs. Firms with high innovation ability exhibit larger increases in process innovation and capital-labor ratios, an effect driven by both increases in capital investment and decreases in employment. By facilitating the adjustment of the input mix when conditions in input markets change, innovation ability allows firms to mitigate value losses and is a key driver of their performance.
Although past research demonstrates that perceived fairness leads to many benefits, it also tends to assume that fairness flows almost exclusively from justice adherence. We instead reason that when employees form fairness judgments, they consider not only the extent to which supervisors adhere to justice but also why supervisors do so.
We integrated theories of social exchange and emotional ambivalence to explain how ambivalent relationships influence interpersonally directed helping and harming behaviors. Using multiple methodologies, including a study of student teams, an experiment, and a quasifield study of retail employees, we compared ambivalent relationships with positive and negative relationships. Our three studies provide convergent evidence that ambivalent relationships with coworkers are positively related to both helping and harming behaviors.
Standard private labels (PLs) have been the topic of multiple prior reviews. Having been leapfrogged by business practice, the marketing literature has only recently witnessed a surge in interest in multi-tier PL offerings. These typically include a budget and/or premium tier in addition to the omnipresent standard PL tier. This study offers a systematic review of recent empirical findings on budget and premium PLs.
Private labels (PL), also known as store brands or private brands, account for hundreds of billions of dollars in consumer packaged goods sales every year. PLs build store loyalty, improve margins and have been a key factor in changing the balance of power between retailers and national brand (NB) manufacturers. Thus, retailers around the world have a stake in pushing their own store brands. Yet, while PLs enjoy great success in Western, and increasingly Central, Europe, their performance is much more muted in the world's largest market, the United States, and in emerging markets. Why is that the case?
Prior literature suggests many benefits stemming from founders’ strong identification with their firms. We suggest, however, that there is also a potential dark side. We argue that founders can become overidentified with their organizations, making them more likely to engage in irresponsible behavior that protects the firm but harms others, as moral and societal norms are viewed as obstacles to fulfilling an organization’s goals.
Detaching from work is beneficial because it helps employees recover from work demands. However, we argue that detachment may be a trade-off for employees in organizations with higher (vs. lower) levels of performance pressure. Drawing on social self-preservation theory, we hypothesize that evening detachment leads employees working in higher (vs. lower) performance pressure work contexts to experience increased shame at work the next morning.