<p> Colleges and universities in the United States could end operations in record numbers largely from financial shortfalls. The Urban Institute reported that nonprofit organizations lost $3.4 billion in reneged pledges from 2013 to 2014 from donor dissatisfaction, creating a problem because financial losses can occur from a lack of understanding on how media marketing efforts affect fundraising. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to identify traditional and social media marketing strategies that some nonprofit college and university leaders use to increase alumni financial support. Interviews took place with 7 college or university leaders at 3 private, nonprofit colleges or universities in the southeastern United States. The 7 leaders consisted of 3 vice presidents, 2 provosts, and 2 presidents. The conceptual framework differentiated media into categories, 2 of which were owned media and earned media. As the primary data collection instrument, collection of marketing literature for each school and 7 semistructured interviews occurred. In the data analysis process, transcription of interview data and coding using the modified van Kaam method took place discovering themes. The 4 themes discovered included social media effectiveness, evolution of traditional marketing blending with social media marketing, social media marketing efficiency, and the multiplier effect of social media. Implications for social change included increasing the scholarship ability of schools, creating an affordable environment for students to receive postsecondary education. Additional benefits included enhanced economies for communities where a college or university resides and an improved level of education per capita in the areas surrounding a college or university.</p><p>

My dissertation is composed of three papers on symbolic consumption–how consumers use products, brands, and time to express who they are and signal status. The first paper (Brand Tourists: How Non–Core Users Enhance the Brand Image by Eliciting Pride) demonstrates the positive impact of non-core users of a prestige brand perceived as “brand tourists” into the brand community. The second paper (The Red Sneakers Effect: Inferring Status and Competence from Signals of Nonconformity) investigates the conditions under which nonconforming behaviors, such as wearing red sneakers in a professional setting, can act as a particular form of conspicuous consumption and lead to positive inferences of status and competence in the eyes of others. The third paper (Conspicuous Consumption of Time: When Busyness and Lack of Leisure Time Become a Status Symbol) further extends this line of investigation on alternative signals of status by uncovering the role of long hours of work and lack of leisure time as a status symbol. I conclude with a discussion of current working papers and future research agenda on symbolic consumption and branding.

In this dissertation, I study how consumers influence each other in the adoption and engagement of digital goods. In the first essay, I study peer influence in mobile game adoption. Although peer effects are expected to influence consumer decisions, they are difficult to identify in observational studies due selection bias: Friends share common characteristics and behave in similar ways even without peer effects. I use a novel approach to estimate unobserved characteristics which endogenously drive tie formation and use the estimates to control for selection, without need for instruments. This is the first paper to use latent space to reduce bias in peer influence estimates. I find that peers account for 27% of mobile game adoptions, and that ignoring latent homophily would bias the estimates by 40%, in line with previous studies. In some samples, ignoring latent homophily can result in overestimation of social effects by over 100%. In the second essay, I examine the effect of zero rating on consumer behavior in a social net- work. I use Facebook data on millions of users to quantify direct, peer, and long-term effects of zero rating, a campaign where consumers can access digital media over mobile networks for free, on social network activities. I find that zero rating does not have the same effect on all so- cial network activities. While the direct impact of zero rating is positive on all activities, users with more friends on zero rating create less, consume more, and give more feedback on content. In addition, zero rating does not have a uniform effect across consumers. Some consumers benefit more from zero rating than others, and I show that network characteristics can help identify those consumers whose network benefits the most from zero rating.

This research investigates the continuum of choice—unseen, unanticipated causes and consequences of consumer decisions. Three essays investigate hidden factors that influence the choices we make, subtle ways to affect choice at the moment of execution, and the overlooked signals that our choices convey (correctly or incorrectly) about us to others. Essay one investigates the perverse tendency to hope for the worst: when faced with a difficult decision (e.g., whether or not to have surgery), people can paradoxically feel subjectively better with—and even actively prefer—objectively worse but certain news (e.g., “95% chance of a disease”) over objectively better but more uncertain news (e.g., “50% chance of a disease”). This, in turn, has the potential to meaningfully change people’s subsequent choices and preferences in unexpected ways. Essay two examines a subtle intervention to change people’s decisions about engagement levels: arbitrarily grouping discrete tasks or items together as part of an apparent “set” motivates people to reach perceived completion points—or finish a pseudo-set—even in the absence of extrinsic incentives. Essay three explores the judgments people make after observing others’ choices; specifically, upon learning of someone’s choice of one option, people erroneously believe that person must dislike dissimilar options, leading to a pervasive and systematic prediction error.

Firms increasingly adopt online and multi-channel marketing strategies to reach and persuade consumers. Therefore, designing an effective marketing mix is critical to their success. The aim of my dissertation is to understand the strategy behind firms’ channel choices and assess marketing effectiveness. It consists of three large-scale empirical studies examining several important aspects of online and multi-channel marketing. My first essay focuses on the business-to-business (B2B) interactions involving online platforms, which serve as new channels for traditional merchants to reach consumers and grow business. Using data from the daily deal market, we specify a structural model that examines consumer choices on the demand side and firm strategies on the supply side. In particular, we incorporate merchant heterogeneity and allow prices to be jointly determined by merchants and platforms through negotiation; both of these match the real-world complexity but are challenging to be modeled theoretically. Our results show how platform size, commission rate, and the allocation of price-bargaining power jointly determine the price setting and the platform differentiation among merchants. Essay two studies to what extent marketers’ actions can affect the reach of video advertising campaigns through influencing the amount of user-generated content. To do so, we compile a unique and comprehensive data set on ad campaigns conducted on video sharing sites such as YouTube. We find that several instruments under the control of advertisers can influence how much the reach of a campaign benefits from user-generated content. Our results underscore that, with the right strategy, advertisers can substantially increase the number of impressions that their online video campaigns yield. Essay three assesses the effect of advertising and personal selling in the U.S. presidential elections, where advertising involves both candidate campaign ads and those sponsored by outside political interest groups and personal selling takes the form of field operations. We set up a structural model that treats campaign allocation as endogenous and also allows the campaign effect to vary across individuals. Among the many findings, we show that field operations are more effective for partisan voters whereas candidate campaign ads are effective for non-partisans. Interestingly, ads from outside political groups are more effective for partisans than for non-partisans. Our counterfactual results indicate that field operations play a critical role in the 2008 and 2012 elections while the importance of ads is only substantial in a close competition like the 2004 election.

This research examines the effects of firm transparency on consumer behavior. Three essays investigate how consumer behavior changes when firms are transparent about costs, wages, and promotional strategies. Essay one investigates when and why firms benefit from revealing confidential unit cost information to consumers. A natural field experiment conducted with an online retailer suggests that cost transparency can boost sales. Subsequent controlled lab experiments replicate this basic effect and provide evidence for why it occurs. Essay two examines whether consumer behavior is influenced by the disclosure of a firm’s pay ratio - the ratio of the total compensation of the CEO to the average annual compensation of all other employees. Pilot field data and a series of experiments show that pay ratio disclosure affects the purchase intentions of a subset of consumers, via perceptions of wage fairness. Essay three examines how marketing offers that are framed as percentages can confuse consumers, due to highly non-linear impacts in terms of actual value. Three lab studies and one field experiment show that while even highly numerate consumers are prone to error, the transparent provision of rate information can help consumers evaluate offers more accurately.

<p>The negotiation and communication of logistics management decisions between buyers and sellers of goods is critical for effective supply chain management. Incoterms? rules, a set of three character acronyms, are often used by buyers and sellers to communicate each party?s logistics management responsibilities when transacting goods. Inappropriate application of Incoterms? rules can lead to miscommunication of logistics responsibilities and expose either party to unanticipated costs and risks. This three-part mixed methods research explores the circumstances that contribute to errors in logistics management decision communication within buyer-seller dyads, the consequences of these errors, and methods to improve logistics management decision communication. Study 1 is a qualitative pilot case study that explores how buyer-seller dyads negotiate and communicate logistics management decisions and the communication errors that occur within a large, anonymous, international corporation. Study 2 conducts multiple qualitative case studies utilizing in-depth semi-structured interviews that explore how buyer-seller dyads negotiate and communicate logistics management decisions and the communication errors that occur within these buyer-seller dyads. Study 3 quantitatively tests hypotheses developed from analysis of the results of Study 2, using a scenario-based experiment deployed via a questionnaire, and seeks to find methods to improve the quality of communication of logistics management decisions in buyer-seller dyads. The hypotheses tested in Study 3 are H1: Incoterms? training leads to a decrease in miscommunication of logistics decisions; H2: using fully specified and explicit Incoterms? definitions leads to a decrease in miscommunication of logistics decisions; and H3: using both fully specified and explicit Incoterms? definitions and Incoterms? training leads to a further decrease in miscommunication of logistics decisions. Examining the results of the questionnaire, using binary logistic regression and ordinal logistics regression, H1 is supported, H2 is partially supported, and H3 is not supported. The findings of the research detail the process used in the negotiation and communication of logistics management decisions. While Incoterms? rules appear widely used in goods transactions to communicate logistics decisions, their inappropriate use causes a variety of issues including unanticipated costs and risks. Incoterms? training is shown to have the biggest impact on improving the quality of buyer-seller dyads? communication of logistics management decisions.

Non-profit health agencies are examined from three perspectives: their contribution to medical research by region and subject area; changes in their revenue sources and fund-raising techniques between 1982 and 1987; and, correlates of fund-raising effectiveness. Data are obtained from a survey of 1,103 health charities and foundations, interviews with the executive directors of six hospital foundations across Canada and statistics in the public domain. Results indicate that in comparison with the distribution of Federal government research grants, health agency research funding is more highly concentrated in one province, Ontario, and two subject areas, cardiovascular disease and cancer. Agencies appear to be obtaining larger proportions of their total funding from donations or business activities and smaller proportions from government grants or transfers. Large-established agencies are shifting fund-raising resources from canvassing to direct mail. Two variables, public awareness of the agency and the proportion of agency funds derived from donations, appear to be important correlates of agency effectiveness as measured by donations per fund-raising dollar. Small, positive correlations are noted between two indicators of a marketing approach and fund-raising outcome. Implications for future research are discussed.

This study evaluated the ability of a promised charitable donation to the Heart and Stroke Foundation by a corporate sponsor, Bell Canada, to stimulate a higher mail questionnaire response rate. In addition, the study assessed whether the intention to complete the questionnaire and its eventual return by mail would increase donations through a "foot-in-the-door" (FITD) effect during Heart and Stroke Month. Three study groups which included an experimental group (the Heart Group) and two control groups (the Bell and Mail Only Groups) were established by random assignment from a randomized cluster-sample of 910 households in the City of Kanata, a satellite community west of Ottawa, Ontario. The promised charitable donation by a corporate sponsor stimulated a greater response rate for personally-delivered mail questionnaires, and a foot-in-the-door effect associated with returning a mail questionnaire subsequently increased donations to the Heart and Stroke Fund. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This thesis studies the application of speech recognition and synthesis technologies, agents and virtual environments in the design of a digital assistant, helping a user of web-based e-commerce applications. A useful component of the user interface in an electronic commerce system is a speech user interface. This interface will contain a user's agent and serve an active role in recognizing a user's speech input as well as synthesizing the required speech sentences needed to be conveyed. The Speech GUI implemented in this thesis complements the web browser during virtual world e-commerce. The virtual world being researched in the MCRLab is a shopping mall, where users can enter a store and find sales agents ready to assist them. Each person within this virtual environment is represented with the use of an agent and avatar. The virtual environment is a multi-agent system. These agents (also represented by avatars) can navigate through the virtual environment such as a shopping mall, and interact with each other. Once dialog has occurred between a user's agent and the store's sales-agent and an item of interest is found, this item will be displayed in the virtual mall. The virtual environments technology, with the help of avatars will allow us to have good voice QoS coupled with synchronized avatar lip movements. The ultimate purpose of the Speech GUI is to assist a user in finding items of interest within a virtual shopping store. Also, when the items of interest are found, this Speech GUI will ask the web browser to display the objects within the virtual store. Communication for this is achieved using the HLA/RTI available standard. The second type of communication associated within the Speech GUI uses the KQML protocol to communicate with other peoples' agents.