Consumption of certain products or services often brings status or prestige to the consumer. Such status consumption plays an essential role in the lives of many consumers and in today's economy. In my two dissertation essays, I seek to examine the role of status consumption in consumer behavior context. In the first essay, I explore the connection between status consumption and charitable donation behavior. The results of nine studies demonstrate that status consumption, considered a self-centered behavior, leads to increased charitable donations, a prosocial outcome. This effect is driven by subjective feelings of empowerment that consumers derive from status consumption. My second essay investigates inferences made about consumers who share word of mouth about their status products. I demonstrate across 12 studies that word of mouth about status products decreases consumers' perceived status in the eyes of other people. This is because word of mouth about their status products reduces the perceived cultural capital of status consumers, which in turn reduces the perception of status. This is paradoxical since consumers share word of mouth about their status products with the intention to elevate their status in the eyes of others. In the two essays, I use both lab and field experiments to test my hypotheses, employ both mediation and moderation methods to test the psychological processes, rule out an array of alternative explanations, and explore several boundary conditions. I conclude the two essays by outlining their contributions to both theory and marketing practice.

As the number of nonprofit organizations increases and consumer donations reach record levels, an understanding of the multitude of factors influencing donors' sharing behavior is critical. This dissertation is the first step in investigating the role of perceived interpersonal closeness (IC) on donation allocations and the influence of word-of-mouth (WOM) request type on likelihood of sharing. These goals are addressed in two essays. The first essay (Chapter Two) focuses on the role of donor's IC with a victim on allocation to nonprofit activities addressing care or cure. Specifically, this essay explores how those who perceive greater IC with a victim are more likely than those with low IC to allocate donations to cure due to a greater degree of hope for the future. The second essay of this dissertation (Chapter Three) investigates the influence of WOM type, specifically donor- or charity-focused, on donors' likelihood to share. Drawing on literature from psychology, this essay demonstrates that requests for donor-focused WOM reduce the likelihood of sharing relative to charity-focused WOM requests due to lower perceived persuasive efficacy. In sum, the two essays included in this dissertation advance the knowledge of factors that will influence consumer behavior, adding to the theoretical understanding of prosocial behavior, donation allocations, and WOM, while providing implications for nonprofit marketing managers and increased consumer well-being.

My dissertation focuses on designing marketing strategies to improve firm performance. My dissertation's first essay focuses on designing a competitive strategy for digital media platforms for tackling AdBlock. Online advertising is a major source of revenue for digital media firms but increasing ad-blocking software usage has a negative impact on such revenues. To avoid losses from AdBlock usage, digital publishers mainly use two strategies. First, publishers can use the whitelisting strategy, which blocks AdBlock users from viewing the publishers' content. Second, publishers can use the sophisticated ad recovery (SAR) strategy that bypasses AdBlock and only shows relevant ads to readers. With an analytical model and duopolistic framework, I identify the conditions under which digital publishers might adopt the whitelisting strategy over SAR strategy and those in which two ex-ante symmetric firms might prefer asymmetric strategies to combat ad-blocking usage. My second essay of the dissertation focuses on developing an empirical strategy to design a Chief Marketing Officer's (CMO's) job, which positively affects firm value. Prior empirical research on the design of a CMO's job and its impact on firm value is scarce. My research focuses on the conceptualization and finds empirical support on this issue. I find that variations in describing the design of a CMO's job can affect the contribution of a CMO to the firm value. I use announcement data for 227 publicly traded firms over the 11-years (2005-2016) to show that the design of a CMO's job when focused on the decisional role creates more firm value. The results of the two essays fill the gap that exists in the digital media platforms and top management and have several theoretical and managerial contributions.

Nonverbal communication has important applications in all areas of marketing, including advertising, sales, and service interactions. Not only do nonverbal cues motivate inferences about the qualities of the displayers, but they also communicate the displayers' social and interaction intentions. These inferences subsequently influence consumer behavior and marketing communication outcomes. Using both lab and field experiments in my two essays, I examine the role of nonverbal communication across various marketing contexts. In the first essay, I investigate how the size of a spokesperson's face in relative to the size of the marketing communications affects consumer response. Results of the first essay demonstrate that higher facial prominence of the spokesperson within marketing communications negatively affect communication outcomes. My second essay examines the impact of a spokesperson's expression of power on consumer responses to communications about a corporate crisis. Findings in this essay indicate that the decision of whether to use powerful or powerless expressions during crisis communications can have important consequences and the impact of those communications depends on the level of relevance of the brand transgression to the audience. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications of these essays are also discussed.

With the growing popularity of the internet as a channel of distribution many researchers are trying to determine factors that influence and hinder consumers' acceptance of this channel. Unfortunately, the explosion of articles studying internet patronage involve the same limitation as previous shopping motivation research. Namely, the internet is just one of many channels from which consumers' can choose to purchase products. Current articles on internet patronage, as well as the previous work on other channels, have failed to account for this fact. These studies examine patronage motives one channel at a time, while neglecting to account for how consumers choose between channels. As such, the main goal of this study was to develop an integrative consumer channel preference model which would allow for a comparison across channels to determine which factors are the most influential for each channel. Participants for this study consisted of individuals 16 and older who had access to the internet. This sample was chosen to ensure that consumers have some type of access to the internet, which is essential for any on-line purchases. Two-thousand consumers were mailed a 6-page survey asking for their participation. Eight-hundred and one consumers returned the completed questionnaire (40% response rate), with 754 included in subsequent analyses due to a pre-qualification question. The results showed that product class knowledge, familiarity/prior use with a purchasing channel, and immediate possession motives were the only predictors that influenced consumers' preferences for all three channels included in this study (i.e., bricks-and-mortar, catalogs, and internet). Other factors influencing channel preferences included risk aversion, merchandise uniqueness motives, loyalty to local merchants, catalog recreation motives, and the respondent's age. Despite the large number of constructs investigated in the current study only seven were consistently significant predictors of consumers' bricks-and-mortar preferences. Six consistently predicted catalog preferences, and only three predicted internet preferences. Additionally, these variables accounted for a small portion of the variance explained in consumers' channel preferences (ranging from 11% to 39%), with catalog models explaining the least variance. These results suggest that there are many other factors and motives that influence consumers' channel preferences than were captured in the current study.

Firms realize that outside knowledge resources can help them with creation of new ideas and innovation that may not have been realized relying solely on their own internal resources (Cohen and Levinthal 1990). But knowledge is not completely transparent, and organizations may still feel guarded about openly sharing such a valuable resource. This has created an environment in which I have described in this dissertation as "Knowledge Nets". Within these knowledge nets, firms are able to connect through explicit, codified, pieces of knowledge of emerging technology, products, processes, methods, designs, and even unique business process operations. Finns can use these unique, defined pieces of knowledge in order to orient themselves to their customers as well as their competitors in the increasing network environments of "coopetition" (Luo, Slotegraaf, and Pan 2006). The marketing Literature has recognized Market Orientation as focal concept of a Firm s ability to internalize the marketing concept (Kohli and Jaworski 1990; Jaworski and Kohli 1993), and has promoted Market Orientation as a key to the successful introduction of innovative new products and services (Han, Kim and Srivastava 1998). Past studies of market orientation and new product performance have focused largely on behaviors associated with satisfying expressed needs of customers and markets (Day 1991, 1994; Kirca, Jayachandran, and Bearden 2005). More recently, research has introduced the concept of total market orientation (Narver, Mater, and MacLachlan 2000, 2004). Under this framework market orientation is comprised of two components, a reactive orientation focused on satisfying expressed customer needs and a proactive market orientation which focuses on the discovery and satisfaction of latent customer and market needs which have yet to be addressed. In this dissertation I extend the literature on market orientation by examining the impact of proactive and reactive market orientation on firms' dynamic capabilities and performance. The method I use introduces a new approach in marketing for measuring orientation based on patent awards, which are central to a firm s knowledge base, and act as a knowledge conduit that can be used for tracking technology shifts and changes in a network environments (DeCarolis 2003. Dutta and Weiss 1997). In addition, measuring both a reactive and proactive orientation of a firm provides an ability to test how a firms' total market orientation may be associated with developing a firm's dynamic capabilities that translate knowledge into learning and strategic actions (Eisenhardt and Martin 2000). Dynamic capabilities are an additional resource in which firms can use the type and strength of their market orientations for creating additional formal network ties for optimum firm performance. This dissertation examined the impact of market orientation in a network environment measured through the collection of realized patent activity over a five year period in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and chemical supply industries. Patent measures and computations were collected for all publicly held firms in this time period that met a minimum of innovation activity. I examined 54 different models that measure (1) the impact of reactive and proactive market orientation on a firm's ability to create dynamic capabilities and firm performance and (2) the relationship between dynamic capabilities and firm performance. This study shows that the marketplace values a firm's proactive orientation, in terms of the market capitalization as well as their return on investment. The market capitalization of a firm is also influenced by the type and amount of external dynamic capabilities of a firm. One of the most prevalent significant relationships existed between the different measures of dynamic capabilities and the firm performance measure of market-to-book. In this study there were strong, significant relationships between market-to-book and research collaborations, alliance/partnerships, and joint marketing/sales. Market-to-book had a positive relationship with firms' creation of external activities and agreements with other firms, as well as the overall composite score of dynamic capabilities. In addition, smaller firms that may be focusing a great deal of their resources on developing radical new technology, do not have the resources to develop sufficient market and sales forces, resulting in joint marketing and sales agreements with firms who have the marketing structure currently in place to execute the distribution and sales of a new product as soon as it is approved. Although the mediating relationship of dynamic capabilities on market orientation and firm performance did not exist, the mixed results warrant further exploration of this potential causal relationship between the three constructs. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Consumers’ decision making and consumption behaviors have a significant and direct impact on our natural environment. The continued consumption of limited and/or non-renewable natural resources has been of growing concern for individuals and firms, creating a trend towards environmental awareness unique to this day and age. During the past decade, ‘buying green’, a moniker once reserved for hippies and alternative lifestyle seeking individuals, has permeated the mainstream market. Currently, organic farming is practiced in more than 130 countries worldwide, (Organic Trade Association, 2008) and, in 2007, the global sales of organic food topped $46 billion dollars (Organic Monitor, 2008). Between 2003 and 2006, sales of hybrid cars exploded almost 2000% (Tanneeru, 2006); a trend that continued into 2007; hybrid sales reached 352,184 units, up from 2006’s 250,000 (Hybrid Car, 2008). In 2008, the Natural Marketing Institute teamed up with renowned ratings analysts, The Nielsen Company, to better understand the $209 billion dollar market of consumers who make purchases based on the environment, sustainability, personal health and social issues (Case, 2008). Both academicians and practitioners would benefit from a valid and practical scale designed to measure Consumer Environmentalism as an individually held value, and, a method to predict behavioral intentions with respect to purchasing environmentally oriented goods. Determining who is most likely to adopt green products will help practitioners develop effective marketing strategies and help theorists more thoroughly model choice behavior. This research investigates the environmentally conscious consumer, by developing a scale to measure the individually-held value, Consumer Environmentalism, and, based on consumers’ attitudes towards environmentally friendly goods, predict consumers’ behavioral intentions towards purchasing environmentally friendly products. Constructs related to Consumer Environmentalism will be examined, including; Locus of Control (Rotter, 1966), Consumer Self-Actualization (Brooker, 1976), Materialism (Richins, 1992), Innovativeness (Goldsmith and Hofacker, 1991), and Social Desirability (Reynolds, 1982). The contributions of this research will help practitioners communicate more effectively and directly target the rapidly expanding environmentally conscious segments of the consumer goods market.

Marketing strategy contributes to firm value following two processes: value creation and value appropriation. The value of a marketing channel, one of a firm’s market-based assets, is determined not only by the amount of value created during the distribution process, but also by the ultimate value appropriated by the firm. In this dissertation, we develop two studies to address the value creation process and value appropriation process respectively to provide a comprehensive picture of the performance and value relevance of a channel strategy. Study 1 provides an integrative meta-analysis of the drivers of channel performance/value creation. Specifically, we utilize three of the most common theoretical perspectives in channels literature: political-economy analysis (PE), relationship marketing analysis (RM), and interorganizational governance analysis (IG) to identify the major channel performance drivers examined in empirical studies. We combine a traditional meta-analytic correction and synthesis of effect sizes of the drivers on channel performance, followed by an a test of an integrative structural model of channel performance based on the Relational View (RV) to explore the immediate precursors of channel performance. Results of this study confirm the validity of the underlying theoretical perspectives to predict channel performance. The significant effects of the proposed immediate drivers (i.e. cooperation, relational norms, reseller RSI, and supplier monitoring) support the RV framework as an organizing structure in predicting channel performance at interorganizational level. This study also finds that the contexts and methods of performance assessment have an impact on the appraisal of performance drivers. Study 2 explores the underlying mechanisms whereby a firm can appropriate value from its channels. First, we introduce channel appropriability to indicate a firm’s ability to appropriate value created from its distribution network. Based on a multidisciplinary review of the appropriability literature, we identify profit appropriation and resource appropriation which explain how channel appropriability is achieved and contributes to the intangible value of a firm. Second, we propose two channel strategies to predict channel appropriability and link them with intangible firm value. Lastly, we examine the effect of channel appropriability strategies on intangible firm value by considering the condition of a firm and the industry. Empirical results of this study confirm that channel integration and channel compression strategies can drive intangible firm value through improving channel appropriability. Moreover, the value impact of these channel appropriability strategies is contingent on marketing environmental factors. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications of the two studies.

Marketing researchers and practitioners are concerned about the accountability of marketing expenditures due to increased pressure to demonstrate the value created by marketing activities. To that end, marketing managers need to translate their marketing resource allocations and marketing performance into a recognizable performance metric, shareholder value (Rust et al. 2004). This study adopts Srivastava et al. (1998)’s classification for market-base assets and categorizes marketing assets into relational and intellectual assets. Building upon the marketing literature of marketing-finance interface (e.g. Srivastava et al. 2001; Luo and Donthu 2006) and the strategy literature of the resource-based theories (e.g. Dierickx and Cool 1989; Grant 1991), this dissertation develops a conceptual framework to address four research questions. Those research questions are: (i) what are the relationships between the assets and shareholder value? (ii) What are the relationships between the capabilities and shareholder value? (iii) What are the relationships between the assets and the capabilities? (iv) How do the assets interact with the capabilities to influence shareholder value? Combining marketing and financial analysis, this dissertation uses multiple statistical techniques including data envelopment analysis, structural equation modeling, hierarchical linear modeling, and stock return response modeling (Mizik and Jacobson 2004) to develop the complex asset and capability configurations and to test the research model. The findings show that the distinct marketing assets and capabilities have different effects on shareholder value. Although assets have positive effects on capabilities there were no interaction affects.

Marketing partnerships may involve either horizontal relationships (e.g., a co-marketing alliance between firms selling different products) or vertical relationships (e.g., between an upstream manufacturer and its downstream retailers). Either type of partnership often includes multiple members and the marketing efforts (e.g., level of advertising) of any member typically affect the profitability of the other members. When selecting their effort levels, however, the individual members of the partnership do not account for such externalities. Consequently, the overall effort on behalf of the partnership is not optimal. This dissertation investigates the value of contractual mechanisms such as monitoring schemes (for horizontal partnerships) and cooperative advertising programs (for vertical partnerships) that may provide better incentives to the partners to invest into the relationship. The first part of this dissertation focuses on horizontal marketing partnerships and examines the relative effectiveness of outcome- and action-based contracts in providing the alliance partners with the incentives to invest appropriately. A mathematical model is developed in which a focal firm (e.g., Sony) contracts with two partners (e.g., McDonald's and Old Navy), when each of these partners is privately informed about the impact of the alliance on its demand. The analysis evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of outcome- (or output-) and action- (or input-) based contracts in several settings including those with no demand externality, a positive externality and a negative externality. The analysis shows that when there is (a) no externality, (b) negative externality, or (c) a relatively weak positive externality, there is a strict preference for output-based contracts; that preference, however, is reversed with a sufficiently strong positive externality. The rationale for these findings, along with the implications and directions for further work are discussed. The second part of this dissertation focuses on a vertical marketing relationship where multiple retailers sell the products from a common manufacturer. Here, each retailer's level of advertising affects the demand for the other retailers. This positive externality, however, allows any retailer to free-ride on the other retailers' efforts and leads to an overall reduction in the level of advertising by all the retailers. In this context, a manufacturer can use a cooperative advertising contract to reimburse part of the advertising expenses of its retailers in order to induce them to raise their levels of advertising. Observed terms in a cooperative advertising contract include either a participation rate, a participation rate and a variable accrual rate, or a participation rate and a fixed accrual rate. This dissertation analyzes the relative effectiveness of the above three types of cooperative advertising contracts in minimizing or eliminating the free-riding problem. More specifically, a mathematical model is developed to analyze the relative impact of these contractual terms when the downstream retailers face either symmetric or asymmetric demand and cost structures. The analysis shows that with symmetric retailers, the three types of contracts are equally effective. With asymmetric retailers, though, including some form of accrual stipulations typically adds value to a contract that specifies only a participation rate. Further, using a variable accrual stipulation may be preferred to the fixed accrual stipulation under certain conditions and vice versa. The two types of accrual stipulations affect retail prices and efforts in distinct ways and these differences may tip the scale in favor of one contract versus the other under the appropriate circumstances. These conditions and the intuition behind the results are discussed. Overall, this dissertation contributes to the literature on horizontal and vertical marketing relationships and enhances our understanding of distinct contractual mechanisms that can help align the actions of various members involved in such partnerships.