▼ Two experiments using a rigorous response-latency methodology were conducted, intended to extend knowledge in the areas of attitude measurement, persuasion, prediction, and advertising effectiveness. More specifically, the research was concerned with identifying conditions under which spontaneous (versus constructed) attitudes are formed in response to advertising. Spontaneously formed attitudes refer to authentic attitudes that are formed in response to a novel object and then retrieved from memory when an attitudinal inquiry is made. Conversely, constructed attitudes refer to those attitudes which may appear to be authentic but are actually formed at the time of inquiry and thus, are measurement induced. This work also investigated the influence of spontaneously formed (versus constructed) attitudes on subsequent purchase intentions and brand inferences about omitted product attributes and general dimensions. Moreover, the moderating role of the need to evaluate was examined. Finally, the study examined an exploratory issue, the correspondence bias, to uncover potential consequences of constructed attitudes on correspondent inferences and brand evaluations. Building upon previous work on the functional value of holding a previously formed attitude as a determinant of spontaneous attitude formation, this study investigated the role elaborative processing plays in determining when attitudes will be formed and the efficacy of relying on source and audience response cues as a basis for spontaneous attitude formation. Results of the study show that when conditions support elaborative processing, spontaneous attitude formation is likely. When the likelihood of elaborative processing is low, source and audience response cues do not prompt spontaneous attitude formation, and reported attitudes are simply constructed (i.e., measurement induced), unless the person perceives some functional benefit to forming an attitude, such as when the person is high (versus low) in the need to evaluate. These findings suggest that peripheral cues, such as source or audience response cues, may not be as effective in influencing brand attitudes during exposure to marketing stimuli as marketers may think. Advisors/Committee Members: Kardes, Frank R.

▼ This dissertation explores a new class of intelligent software agents called product selection agents (PSA) and proposes a business model based on the concept. A product selection agent is an intelligent software agent, coupled with comprehensive databases, that performs product selection and associated functions on behalf of its clients. This dissertation investigates properties these agents must have in order to fulfill functions suggested by the literature in consumer decision-making and by trends in e-commerce. We also provided rationale for the development of product selection agents. We present a new typology of decision scenarios explicitly for the world of e-commerce. In the typology, the most difficult decision scenario is to select products that are best for the client who lacks well-developed preferences and who does not have the ability to construct preferences priori to a decision. Through a series of experiments we show that the Support Vector Machine can be applied to overcome design barriers and fulfill the goals of the client.To illustrate the design principles, we discuss how to build an agent for the pharmaceutical industry, labeled Case 4, in the most difficult context. The PSA will help diabetics select glucose meters that best meet their needs, particularly as these needs change as a function of stage of diseases, life style, demographics, and the client's economic status. The agent will also serve physicians specializing in the treatment of diabetes, most of whom cannot keep current about products on the market, their functioning, their costs, and other aspects regarding the appropriateness of a given product or product bundle for a given patient. Further, because all participants in the industry share the agent through the Internet, they will be able to exchange information in real time, thus integrating the industry using the agent as infomediary. Advisors/Committee Members: Curry, David J.

▼ Creating store loyalty is a difficult but necessary undertaking for retailers. This effort is especially difficult for online store retailers where the number of competitors is innumerable. This study explores online store loyalty and the effect of online store atmospherics. The focus of the research is to explore the customer's emotional response to the shopping experience and their impact on loyalty attitudes and behaviors. The study empirically tests a three-phase framework of online store loyalty and proposes that loyalty be measured as a function of the attitude towards repurchase, strength of the attitude towards repurchase and percentage of purchases. The loyalty framework was tested using a two-week longitudinal study involving two fictional online retailers and four different web sites. The study manipulated the presence of web site cues that are non-essential to the shopping task; the product and pricing remained the same across all store web sites. The empirical work uses structural equation modeling to empirically test the model of online store loyalty. The analyses show that online store loyalty is positively affected by pleasant shopping experiences. In addition, expected pleasure and perceived risk are shown to affected a key component of store loyalty-the customer's attitude towards repurchasing. The study also illustrates that the customer's attitude towards repurchase and its ability to predict actual purchasing behavior increases in significance when the strength of the attitude, specifically, the extremity and level of certainty, are considered. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are also discussed. Advisors/Committee Members: Machleit, Karen.

▼ Despite the rapid growth and penetration of the Internet into an increasing number of businesses and households, its use by consumers as a shopping medium remains severely limited when compared to both business-to-business (b-to-b) sales over the Internet and to traditional retail and catalog sales (OECD, 1998). Accordingly, the primary goal of this research was to contribute to our current understanding of online consumer behavior by identifying how online privacy and security concerns impact participation likelihood, and by testing two policy mechanisms that can be used effectively by governments and businesses to increase current participation levels. To address these issues, the Judgment Uncertainty and Magnitude Parameters Model (JUMP) developed by Chandrashekaran and Marinova (1998) was employed. The JUMP procedure increases the power of behavioral models by statistically and simultaneously considering the impact of both intention magnitude and intention uncertainty in the generation of an overt response or behavior. Because JUMP estimates the impact of both intention magnitude (IM) and intention uncertainty (IU), it enables researchers to more accurately account for much of the heterogeneity observed in overt behavior. Further, JUMP enables researchers to gain a more complete understanding of the process by which intentions are formed in that researchers are able to specify and estimate both the unique and shared impact of antecedents on IM and IU. The outcome of the research provides some interesting results. First, although privacy concerns have a negative impact on a consumer's IM to shop online, these concerns can be mitigated by the two policy mechanisms tested in this paper. In addition, negative attitudes about online shopping and price also have a negative impact on IM. The quality of a consumer's online experience, on the other hand increases IM as well as moderates the negative impact of price on IM. Further, JUMP testing indicates that uncertainty plays a significant role in the formation of a consumer's intention to shop online. IU, however, appears to be reduced in the presence of positive attitudes about online shopping, prior e-commerce experience, and policy mechanisms designed to protect online privacy and security. Advisors/Committee Members: Mehta, Dr. Raj B.

▼ As more and more transactions occur across national boundaries, companies face daunting new ethical challenges. To maintain successful, on-going relationships with organizational and individual customers, multinational firms need to understand how cultural values influence ethical decision making processes and judgmental outcomes. Thus, this dissertation seeks to uncover factors influencing the combination of deontological and teleological evaluations in formulating ethical judgments (EJ) and behavioral intentions (INT) across national boundaries, and to ascertain how individual characteristics (individualism, collectivism, power distance, need for success, uncertainty avoidance, cultural ethnocentrism, idealism, and relativism) moderate the impact of culture on decision-making processes. Further, this dissertation advances research propositions regarding the impact of culture on the variables antecedent to ethical evaluations, thereby extending Hunt and Vitell’s general theory of marketing ethics. It also offers new measures to facilitate cross-cultural research. Eight pretests involving over 1000 Americans and Koreans were conducted to develop and refine measures and scenarios that were used in the main study. To test an inventory of hypotheses, the main study was conducted with over 600 business managers, using a 2 (low, high ethicality) x 2 (positive, negative consequences) x 3 (outcome recipients: self, in-group, out-group) x 2 (culture: USA, Korea) between-subjects factorial design. This study contributes to the marketing ethics literature by showing some distinct patterns in EJ and INT across cultures. American managers used deontological evaluations more than their Korean counterparts; Korean managers used teleological evaluations more than their American counterparts. As hypothesized, EJ and INT of the Koreans (Americans) were (were not) influenced by outcome recipient. EJ and INT of Koreans (Americans) tend (not) to differ between consequences to in-groups versus out-groups. Further, Koreans (Americans) were more moderate (extreme) in their ethical judgments and intentions. However, these cultural-level macro patterns in EJ and INT were qualified by individual characteristics. Second, this study contributes to the cross-cultural literature by providing new, construct-valid, individual level measures of cultural values, cultural ethnocentrism, and global ethical judgment. Multinational companies can also use the findings to inform employee training, development, and refinement of ethical codes and policies. The study concludes with directions for future research. Advisors/Committee Members: Kellaris, Dr. James J.

▼ The illusory truth effect refers to a tendency for people to believe claims as true when they are repeated. The effect has been attributed to repetition-induced familiarity and source misattribution. (Recent research showed that salience of input statements also could induce retrieval fluency, which increases subjective perception of familiarity.) Research showed that the truth effect is stronger in the low (versus high) involvement condition or in the divided (versus full) attention condition, because reflective thinking can oppose implicit familiarity. But it was reported that the effect is more pronounced for knowledgeable people. This study aims to test how effective the correction effect of recollection is in terms of different type of claims and of different levels of general skepticism under full and divided attention conditions. Consistent with the corrective role of recollection, it is hypothesized that the truth effect will more pronounced for low skeptics than for high skeptics who are watchful. For the test, an experiment was administered using computer-based experimental protocols for the presentation of stimuli and for the collection of responses. This study showed that high skeptics were more susceptible to the truth effect for easy-to-comprehend claims, and low skeptics were more susceptible to the effect for difficult-to-comprehend claims. The results are interpreted on the basis of the process dissociation framework, and implications for the research on judgmental biases are discussed. Advisors/Committee Members: Kardes, Dr. Frank R.

▼ Drawing on existing work in cognitive structures, schema theory, attribution research, subjective construal, and cognitive models of persuasion, this research develops an Advertising Tactic Detection and Evaluation Model showing four alternative persuasive processes mediated by persuasion knowledge. The model predicts that unexpected advertising tactics will trigger an evaluation of the source of the message as a primary processing goal, while expected advertising tactics will influence product evaluations in a manner consistent with current findings in consumer research. The Advertising Tactic Detection and Evaluation Model shows the conditions under which each type of evaluation takes place and identifies three alternative explanations of the cognitive processes mediating the source evaluation triggered by unexpected advertising tactics. Two experiments were conducted to test the model. The first experiment was an empirical test of the different persuasive processes predicted by the model. Using "truth in advertising" as the unexpected tactic, the experiment developed evidence for a consumer having both product and source evaluations as processing goals in a persuasive situation. When the advertising tactic is expected, product evaluation is the primary processing goal. When the advertising tactic is unexpected, source evaluation is the primary processing goal. Participants were more likely to attribute the unexpected advertising tactic to the ad agency than to the manufacturer. This suggests the consumer perceives the ad agency rather than the manufacturer of the product to be the source of unexpected tactics. The second experiment compared three theoretical perspectives (schema theory, pragmatic implication and consistency theory) thought to mediate the relationship between unexpectedness and the source evaluation. The relationship or structural path underlying each perspective was significant on its own. When the three perspectives were compared simultaneously, the path for consistency theory became non-significant. Schema theory mediated the relationship between unexpectedness and the source evaluation. Pragmatic implication required an intervening variable as a "trigger" for pragmatic inferences. Advisors/Committee Members: Kardes, Dr. Frank R.

▼ Current trends of rapidly advancing technology and consolidation within markets have contributed to making customer migration a necessity for the survival of firms. Customer migration refers to the process of moving existingcustomers from their current product/service (or channel) to a new, improved one. Despite the large amount of anecdotal evidence pointing to the difficulties and uncertainties experienced by customers and suppliers when engaging a migration situation, this issue has received scarce attention in the academic literature. The objectives of this research are to understand the: (a) drivers of customer uncertainty in a forced migration situation, (b) impact of marketing interventions (e.g., targeting) and firm-specific relationship variables (e.g., complexity) on mitigating uncertainty and fostering migration (vs. defection), (c) indicators of customer vulnerability (who are the defectors?), (d) timing of migration decisions (who is likely to defer choice?) and (e) potential time-dependent effects of marketing interventions on the specific migration decision. The setting for the investigation is the financial services industry. The innovation, Electronic Retirement Plan (ERP), pertains to the offering of retirement plans for small firms, via the Internet. The data for the research come from (a) a pre-market study conducted in April 1999 focused on assessing perceptions and migration intentions toward ERP, and (b) actual migration data (both choice and timing) in the 28 months following the introduction of ERP into the marketplace. The research proceeds within two studies. In Study 1 (n=265), employing the pre-market research and actual migration data for firms currently facing a forced migration to ERP, I utilize the recently developed JUMP model (Chandrashekaran, et al. 2000), which, given one measure of a stated intention, statistically and simultaneously separates the drivers of intention magnitude from those of intention uncertainty. Next, I introduce the Fuzzy Intention Translation (FIT) model of migration behavior that illustrates the fuzzy intention-behavior link by articulating a psychological mechanism within which uncertainty-laden intentions translate into actual behavior. In Study 2 (n=940), two stages of analysis are conducted to understand the role of marketing actions and relationship-specific variables on the timing and probability of migration. In the first stage, I utilize a split-hazard duration model to investigate the effects of variables on the timing of migration decisions, while accounting for a portion of customers who will resist making a migration decision. In the second stage, I examine the potential time-dependent nature of the migration process by estimating the effects of marketing actions and relationship-specific variables at various periods of the migration decision process. Advisors/Committee Members: Kardes, Dr. Frank R.