This thesis evaluates how industrial product firms screen new product ideas. Its aims are to investigate: (1) the evaluative dimensions used when assessing proposals, (2) how these criteria relate to screening decisions and (3) how new product environments--market, product and firm--affect this decision model. / A two stage research approach involved: (1) the establishment of new product screening attributes relevant to industrial product firms and (2) a reassessment by managers of recently screened new product ideas (accepts and rejects) in terms of these attributes. / Managers' new product screening decisions supported the hypothesized decision model. Nine of the eleven composite dimensions characterizing new industrial products, were key determinants in explaining screening decisions. These dimensions were further classified according to: (1) four basic criteria categories, (2) the basic risk/return investment model and (3) the screening role played by each. Moreover, the project environment, particularly its market, had a significant influence on the screening model. The results have implications for developing operationally more effective screening approaches.

Marketers are faced with informed and highly complex consumers. The consumer market is becoming more competitive and more difficult to predict as consumers make purchase decisions in their everyday life. An ongoing need exists for information and an examination of purchasing behaviour for marketers to succeed in their pursuit of business endeavours. This study examines the influence of selected variables on motor vehicle-related purchasing behaviour. Five independent variables, namely branding, price, promotion, safety features and colour were investigated and the dependent variable (purchasing behaviour) was examined. In doing so, various stages which consumers undergo when making purchasing decisions were discussed. These stages were outlined as need recognition, information search, and evaluation of alternatives, purchase and post-purchase behaviour. The primary research objective of this study was to determine the influence of selected variables on motor vehicle-related purchasing behaviour. In order to achieve the objectives of the study, an empirical investigation was undertaken. The quantitative (positivistic) paradigm was used in this study, as the aim was to test the hypotheses and conceptualmodel of the study using statistical analysis. In gathering primary data, 192 self-administered questionnaires were issued to respondents for completion by means of convenience and quota non-probability sampling. Upon completion of all the questionnaires, data was analysed in order to arrive at the conclusions regarding the research questions. The empirical findings and analysis followed a systematic and statistical process, where exploratory factor analysis using target rotation was used to test the validity of the measuring instrument. Cronbach alpha correlation coefficients were used to confirm the reliability of the measuring instrument, while multiple regression analysis was carried out to test the hypothesised relationships between the independent variables and the dependent variable of the study. ANOVA was applied to determine differences in the demographic characteristics of respondents. The main findings on the validity and reliability of the measuring instrument proved to be statistically satisfactory. The main findings which emerged from the multiple regression analysis suggested that price and colour had statistically significant influence on motor vehicle-related purchasing behaviour. Findings revealed that branding, promotion and safety conditions had no significant effects on motor vehicle related purchasing behaviour. Accordingly, the hypotheses for price and colour were accepted and those for branding, promotion and safety conditions were rejected. Therefore according to respondents, price and colour of a motor vehicle are the most important considerations when undertaking purchasing decisions regarding motor vehicles. Additionally, the empirical investigation revealed that significant differences exist between age groups of respondents, meaning that different age groups of respondents had different perceptions and opinions with regard to their purchasing patterns relating to price. Furthermore, significant differences were also found between male and female respondents in terms of price and colour, meaning that the two genders had different perceptions and opinions with regard to their purchasing patterns in these areas. The empirical findings of this study are relevant for motor vehicle retailers and original equipment manufacturers, as the findings provide important information regarding the influence of selected variables on motor vehicle-related purchasing behaviour. Secondly the findings of this study contribute to the body of knowledge regarding purchasing behaviour.

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Researchers in marketing have concluded that behavior intentions are not a very good predictor of behavior. It has been suggested that unexpected situations may be causing much of the inconsistency between intentions and behavior. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which unexpected situations affect behavior intention - behavior inconsistency. Fifty seven housholds from Tucson, Arizona were studied. For each household, information concerning intended consumption of fifteen foods and beverages was collected. This information included: attitudes toward the foods, social norm effects, past behavior, and intended consumption over the next seven days. In addition, the expectation of thirteen situations occurring and their expected influence on consumption was measured. Seven days later, the subjects were asked to report their actual consumption of the fifteen food products and the actual occurrence and influence of the thirteen situations. In addition to self-reports, garbage analysis was used to measure past behavior and consumption during the seven day experimental period. Correlation and regression analyses were used to assess the extent to which unexpected situations influenced the inconsistency in behavior. The results indicated that unexpected situations do explain some of the inconsistency between intentions and behavior. Unexpected situations explained an average (across products) of between 5.8% and 14.1%, and as much as 53.5% of the variance in behavior inconsistency. However, the influence of situational variables was quite different for each product. In addition, it was found that the amount of inconsistency explained by the situational variables. An interesting findings was that the simple unexpected occurrence or nonoccurrence of a situation also exlained behavior inconsistency, indicating subjective effects of situations are not required to explain behavior. These results have several important implications. First, objectively based measures of situations can be used to explain some types of consumer behavior. This makes situational variables much easier for managers to monitor and control. Situational variables were also found to have generalizable effects across individuals, again indicating that situational variables may be easier for managers to use than was previously supposed. Finally, this research indicates that it would be useful to include situational variables into behavior intentions models, especially when intentions and behavior are not closely related.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the saleability judgements of retail store buyers of women's and men's wear. A sample of 81 women's and men's wear buyers, representing two specialty stores and one mass merchandiser, was sent questionnaires. Principal Components Factor Analysis with Varimax Rotation was used to reduce the number of product, vendor and information source variables to eight factors. Three significant differences existed between the women's wear and men's wear buyers, verifying that not all retail buyers are alike. Results will benefit educators in preparing students to become more effective buyers, retail management can incorporate this same information into a buyer training program and apparel manufacturers can use the study in planning product strategies to retailers.

O setor de serviços no Brasil vem crescendo desde a década de 80 e mostra-se como o setor da economia mais importante em países desenvolvidos. O estudo do marketing de serviços nos Estados Unidos e Europa para esse setor ganhou importância desde então, no entanto estudos realizados por acadêmicos brasileiros ainda são escassos. O objetivo desta dissertação foi estudar o gerenciamento das variáveis de decisão de marketing em serviços de demanda não desejada do ponto de vista conceitual e prático. Para tanto, realizou-se extensa fundamentação teórica sobre o gerenciamento de marketing de serviços, mais especificamente sobre as variáveis de decisão produto, preço, distribuição e comunicação, finalizando essa parte com uma análise critica dos serviços de demanda não desejada. Do ponto de vista prático, realizou-se uma pesquisa de cunho exploratório, utilizando o método do estudo de caso, com o intuito de gerar novas idéias sobre o tema. A pesquisa de campo compreendeu o estudo de duas empresas do setor de seguros, que geraram novas idéias sobre o tema central desta dissertação. As análises obtidas dos casos mostraram que as empresas têm consciência da natureza dos serviços que vendem. Na variável preço não é uma variável de diferenciação, já que os preços são extremamente regulamentados no mercado de seguros. A distribuição é feita de maneira semelhante nas duas organizações estudadas, ou seja, por parceiros de negócio e corretores, que tem o papel de vendas. Treinamentos e campanhas de incentivo absorvem a maior parte dos investimentos das empresas. Por fim, identificou-se que as empresas pesquisadas utilizam elementos de comunicação que ampliam a receptividade do consumidor, além de utilizarem as relações públicas e patrocínios como principais ferramentas de comunicação. / The services industry in Brazil has been growing since the 80´s and is the most important industry in most developed economies. The study of services marketing in the United States and Europe has been becoming increasingly important ever since, however studies by Brazilian researchers are still scarce. The aim of this dissertation is to study the management of decision variables in marketing for negative demand services, both in a conceptual and practical perspective. With that purpose in mind, an extensive theoretical review about services marketing management was carried out, focusing particularly on decision variables related to price, product, distribution and communication and concluding with a critical analysis of negative demand services. From a practical perspective, an exploratory research using case studies was done. Thus, the field research comprised the study of two insurance companies and resulted in fresh ideas on the central subject of this dissertation. The resulting case analyses have shown that both studied companies are aware of the nature of the services they sell. The price variable is not a differentiation variable, since prices in the insurance industry are subjected to regulations. Distribution is similar on both companies and is executed by business partners and brokers that have in fact the sales role. In-house sales training and reward campaigns account for the majority of the investment expenses of the companies. Finally, it was evidenced that the studied companies use communication elements that increase consumers´ receptiveness to their products and employ public relations and sponsorships as their main communication tools.

Assuming that all unmet demand is fully lost, we begin our study by confining the sales lever to be price only, that is, z = p , and ignoring the cost for executing the sales lever. Given a stationary (s, S, p) policy, we find that the profit function for the lost-sales case exhibits the same structure as the one for the backlogging case. We further show that the relaxed assumption on the news-vendor type profit function can also be satisfied by a broad class of demand function. We can therefore extend the optimizing algorithm and the optimality analysis developed earlier to the lost-sales case. We further demonstrate that the results can be extended to the general sales lever decisions. / Assuming that unmet demand is fully backlogged, a newsvendor-type profit function which is defined as the resulting expected one-period profit with sales lever being optimized for every inventory level, fails to be unimodal. By assuming the newsvendor-type profit function to have a finite number of local maxima, we develop an efficient algorithm for finding the optimal ( s, S, z) policy with the long-run average profit derived by the renewal theory. We further identify the conditions under which the (s, S, z) policy is globally optimal. / Issues on the interfaces between operations management and marketing research have attracted much attention recently. The developments integrating marketing decisions into inventory management are not only of academic interest, but also of practical importance. With uncertain demand, this research studies the joint determination of inventory and sales lever decisions such as price, incentives to salesforce, and short-term promotions, or a combination of them. / We consider a single-item, periodic-review system with the objective of maximizing the long-run average profit over an infinite planning horizon. Demand in a period is a non-negative, discrete random variable with its distribution dependent on the sales lever chosen for the period. A replenishment order can be placed at the beginning of a period incurring both fixed and variable ordering costs. The sales lever is determined jointly, and its execution may incur possible cost, for example, promotion cost. For such a model, we take particular interest in a so-called (s, S, z) policy, which operates as follows: whenever the inventory level falls to or below s, an order is placed to bring it up to S; when the inventory level is above s, no order is issued; the choice of sales lever z depends on the inventory level. / We finally conduct an extensive numerical study for both the backlogging and lost-sales cases. We compare the benefits of the dynamic sales lever strategy with those of the semi-dynamic as well as the static sales lever strategy, and find that the profit gains are significant. By sensitivity analysis, we bring out the impact of cost parameters on the optimal solutions. / Wei Ying. / "December 2006." / Adviser: Youhua Frank Chen. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 3961. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 125-131). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest dissertations and theses, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

No description available.

Thesis (M.S.)--Georgia State University, 2008. / Title from file title page. Yanqing Zhang, committee chair; Rajshekhar Sunderraman, Ying Zhu, committee members. Electronic text (64 p. : ill. (some col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Nov. 19, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 59-64).

Consumers make trade-offs in their purchase decision making between extending market knowledge from exploring a product market and maximizing purchase value based on exploiting their current knowledge. The value of these strategies can be enhanced opportunistically by taking advantage of promotions. In this research, a new and unique datamining model was developed to process store scanner data for quantifying the brand selection behaviour of an individual consumer in reaction to promotions. Selected consumers in each of Pittsfield’s salty snack, yogurt, and toilet tissue markets were then segmented into four behavioural segments using clustering analysis based on their Prevalence of Promotion and their Value of Information from Purchases. The behavioural segmentation was valid, as the four generated behavioural segments in each product market could be differentiated by using demographic variables. In a product market, the demographic profiles of behavioural segments can be generated andused for improving the performance in targeting consumers. The generated demographic profiles of a behavioural segment explain how consumers in the segment react to promotions,which can be used for predicting how consumers will react in the future. Complementing demographic profiles, dynamic behavioural evolvements in consumer purchase lifecycles can also help to predict the purchase behaviours of consumers in the future from the purchases that the consumers have made. The evolvements enable people to understand how consumers with a given amount of market experiences make their purchase decisions via making trade-offs between market knowledge extension and immediate purchase value maximization. Product markets differ in their available number of brands for selection. The findings generated in a product market, however, cannot be generalized to a different product market. Consumers have different demographic-related purchase behaviours across frequently purchased consumer goods markets. Based on the findings in the research, the dissertation discusses and provides suggestions forretail businesses to improve their performances for achieving a competitive edge.