UConn Today– UConn business professor Gary Powell, a specialist in the role of gender in the workplace, says people are not only influenced by their own sex – as defined by biology – in selecting the gender of a potential boss, but also by their own gender identification.
Faculty
Moving Beyond Crisis Mode: Successful Corporations Merge Short-Term Goals, Long-Term Strategy, Expert Says
In a corporate world that is obsessed with immediate results, there is still plenty of need for long-term, strategic thinking, said David Souder, a management professor and the academic director of UConn’s Executive MBA program.
In a lively presentation, which touched on everything from light bulbs to major league baseball, Souder told 40 business executives that a progressive company must always strive for a balance between short-term goals and long-term strategy. Souder outlined four steps to bringing long-term goals into focus.Continue Reading
Marketing Scholars Lurie and Pancras Invited to Mobile Marketing Thought Leadership Conference
Nicholas Lurie and Joseph Pancras, associate professors of marketing, were invited to the Thought Leadership Conference on “Mobile Marketing and its Implications for Retailing” held at the Mays Business School, Texas A&M University on Jan 21-23. Leading researchers in mobile marketing and industry practitioners participated in work group discussions on five different areas of mobile marketing.Continue Reading
Tesla’s Bid to Bypass Connecticut Law
UConn Today asked Timothy B. Folta, professor of management and the Thomas John and Bette Wolff Family Chair of Strategic Entrepreneurship at UConn’s School of Business, for his views on Tesla’s bid to bypass dealerships.
UConn Marketing Professor, Colleague Find that Merchants Can Use In-Store “Showrooming’’ to Boost Online Sales
Most consumers today split their shopping experiences between traditional brick-and-mortar stores and internet purchases. But if you believe that traditional, in-store browsing is facing extinction, think again.
In fact, it is often a trip to the mall or shopping center that gives consumers the confidence they need to buy similar, or more upscale, items online, according to research conducted by UConn Assistant Professor Jane Gu and her colleague, Giri Tayi, from the State University of New York at Albany.Continue Reading
‘The Doors are Open to Anyone with Ideas’ University Leaders Say that Student Entrepreneurship is on the Fast Track
When Management Professor Rich Dino started a course that helps non-business majors write a business plan, it filled almost instantly. He scheduled two more classes, and the same thing happened.
“This semester I have students majoring in everything from physics to music, and their different views enhance the class,” Dino said. “The doors are open to anyone with ideas.”Continue Reading
Faculty Research: Study Shows that Decision Aids Can Hurt Consumer Decision Making
Journal of Retailing (2014)
Nicholas Lurie. Co-Author: Na Wen.
To help consumers deal with increasing amounts of information, many online retailers offer simple decision aids, such as the ability to sort products on a particular product attribute. Intuitively, such aids should help consumers but, in a recent article, Nicholas Lurie and a colleague at City University of Hong Kong show that simple decision aids can hurt consumers’ ability to make good decisions.
Whether decision aids help or hurt depends on the extent to which choices involve tradeoffs among attributes. For example, a consumer buying a laptop might want a large screen and lots of memory. If large screen laptops usually come with lots of memory then using a decision aid to sort on screen size will help the consumer choose the best laptop for her. However if, instead, the consumer wants a large screen and light weight laptop, and large screen laptops tend to be heavy, sorting on screen size will not enhance choice. The authors suggest that consumers use simple decision aids as substitutes for cognitive effort and find that the more consumers use such aids, the lower the quality of their decisions. Providing consumers with multiple decision aids, such as the ability to eliminate as well as sort products, is one way to overcome the negative aspects of such aids.
Faculty Research: When Harry Bet with Sally: An Empirical Analysis of Multiple Peer Effects in Casino Gambling Behavior
Journal: Marketing Science (2015)
Hee Mok Park. Co-author: Puneet Manchanda.
In many consumption settings (e.g., restaurants, casinos, theme parks), individuals consume products either alone or with their peers (e.g., friends and/or family members). In such settings, it is likely that through social influence, a consumer’s decision on what to purchase or how much to consume is influenced by the purchase or consumption decisions of their peers.
Marketing researchers have had much interest in measuring such social influence and were primarily focused in estimating how one’s behavior (e.g., how much to spend) is influenced by the behavior of the peer. However, a consumer could not only be affected by the peer’s behavior, but also by other events that influence the peer to change his/her behavior. For example, if the peer gets a promotion, but the focal consumer does not, the focal consumer might judge the differential treatment to be unfair and react negatively. Another mechanism by which social influence could operate could be when the peer is physically present, but does not engage in the behavior under question. In other words, the peer’s presence could directly affect the focal consumer’s consumption behavior as the lack of consumption by the peer may signal a subtle or transient change in preferences. In response to this, the focal consumer may modify her behavior.
The authors develop an empirical model that allows them to identify all three effects simultaneously and apply it to behavioral data from a casino setting. The data comprise detailed gambling activity for a panel of individuals at a single casino over a two-year period. The results show that all three types of peer effects exist. The results also indicate that accounting for these peer effects simultaneously and identifying them at an individual level could help marketing managers draw up better guidelines for promotion policies as well as policy makers implement a more informed regulatory regime for the casino industry.
Report Finds “Conflicts of Interest” Have No Effect on FDA Advisory Committee Votes
Policy and Medicine – Stringent conflicts-of-interest policies keep many experts off of FDA advisory committees. A new study suggests that the fear of pro-industry bias underlying these policies may be misplaced, and also serves to keep highly qualified candidates off of these committees.
James C. Cooper, director of research and policy at the Law and Economics Center at George Mason Law School and Joseph Golec, professor of Finance of the University of Connecticut, who conducted the study, sought to compare conflicted members’ voting patterns with objective criteria. They found that decisions by advisory committees with conflicted members to recommend drugs were more likely to be consistent with both the ultimate FDA decision as well as stock market predictions than non-conflicted advisory committees and members.
Message from the Dean (Winter 2014)
This article first appeared in the UConn Business magazine, Volume 4, Issue 1 (Winter 2014)
The entrepreneurial spirit has always been a part of the fabric of the State of Connecticut. We are, after all, home to the first hamburger, the original lobster roll, the Wiffle Ball and the Frisbee, the sewing machine and color TV. More recently, Connecticut innovators created the first nuclear submarine and the first artificial heart. Continue Reading