Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

Consumer perceived value: The development of a multiple item scale

Driven by more demanding customers, global competition, and slow-growth economies and industries, many organizations search for new ways to achieve and retain a competitive advantage. Past attempts have largely looked internally within the organization for improvement, such as reflected by quality management, reengineering, downsizing, and restructuring. The next major source for competitive advantage likely will come from more outward orientation toward customers, as indicated by the many calls for organizations to compete on superior customer value delivery. Although the reasons for these calls are sound, what are the implications for managing organizations in the next decade and beyond? This article addresses this question. It presents frameworks for thinking about customer value, customer value learning, and the related skills that managers will need to create and implement superior customer value strategies.

Customer value: The next source for competitive advantage

Procrastination is a prevalent and pernicious form of self-regulatory failure that is not entirely understood. Hence, the relevant conceptual, theoretical, and empirical work is reviewed, drawing upon correlational, experimental, and qualitative findings. A meta-analysis of procrastination’s possible causes and effects, based on 691 correlations, reveals that neuroticism, rebelliousness, and sensation seeking show only a weak connection. Strong and consistent predictors of procrastination were task aversiveness, task delay, selfefficacy, and impulsiveness, as well as conscientiousness and its facets of self-control, distractibility, organization, and achievement motivation. These effects prove consistent with temporal motivation theory, an integrative hybrid of expectancy theory and hyperbolic discounting. Continued research into procrastination should not be delayed, especially because its prevalence appears to be growing.

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The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure.

Experiential value: Conceptualization, measurement and application in the catalog and Internet shopping environment.

How much choice should students have within their marketing majors or curriculum? Course choice is a topic generating considerable attention in business education (Kushner 1999). The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), no longer mandates a proscribed model curriculum. This has contributed to increased curriculum fiexibility (Blum 1991 ). Course choice can affect the actual quality of career preparation. Inadequate guidance in choice of courses can leave students unprepared for a desired career path (Shuptrine and Willenborg 1998). Perhaps the average undergraduate student does not have the experience needed to make informed choices. On the other hand, a "one size fits all" curriculum that is too restricted may be inadequate to address the differing needs of students. Course choice may also affect how students feel about themselves. Choice is viewed as empowering. Lack of choice leads to a perceived threat to freedom, lowers motivation, and decreases feelings of control (Deci and Ryan 1985). Too little freedom of choice in education may lead students to react in a negative way toward their education, thereby lowering satisfaction and motivation. However, too much choice can be demotivating, a source of stress and discomfort, and lead to deferred decisions (Iyengar and Lepper 2000). Finally, the degree of choice may affect how students perceive the quality of an academic program. A program allowing too much choice may be perceived as lacking quality control (Mansfield 2003), but too little choice may be attributed to a lack of resources necessary for a quality education. The results of our study suggest that some degree of curriculum choice is good, but if students must make too many choices they may feel less satisfied with 23 the results. Perhaps they want some choice, but do not feel sure of themselves and thus prefer to rely on expert opinion for a portion of decisions about their curriculum. Results also found that choice had a positive impact on the perceived value of the chosen business option for students" future careers, but that the level of interest infiuenced the value students perceived for employers. Perhaps choice allows students to feel enabled to maximize perceived value for their own careers, but interest enhances perceptions of value to others.

Can good choices be bad?: measurement of the effect of level of choice and interest of course selection on perceived quality of a business option

In his classic book The Marketing Imagination, Levitt (1986) stated that organizational success is predicated on the use of the marketing imagination and generation of creative ideas. As creativity is a sine qua non for organizational growth and success, a recent Harvard Business Review article, “Managing for Creativity,” states that an organization’s most important asset is its “arsenal of creative thinkers whose ideas can be turned into valuable products and services” (Florida & Goodnight, 2005, p. 2). Recent business press has also emphasized the importance of creativity in fostering organizational revenue growth (Coy, 2000) and discussed the increasing attention given by large corporations to fostering creativity (Nussbaum et al., 2005). Naturally, marketing educators are focusing their attention on methods for developing creativity in their students and across the marketing curriculum (Anderson, 2006; Gilbert, Prenshaw, & Ivy, 1996; McIntyre, Hite, & Rickard, 2003; Ramocki, 1994, 1996; Titus, 2000, 2007). Recent empirical research on marketing students’ perceptions suggests that, from their point of view, creativity is an important skill for marketing majors and one that can be learned. Marketing faculty are encouraged to provide “imaginative assignments” to foster creativity, create a classroom environment in which risk taking is encouraged, and reward creativity (McCorkle, Payan, Reardon, & Kling, 2007). The purpose of this contemporary issues (table topics) session was to provide interested participants with examples of use of poetry as a tool for developing creative thinking (Sherry & Schouten, 2002). As a hands-on session, participants learned about the use of poetry both as an engagement tool and as a learning tool in several undergraduate and graduate marketing classes, and participated in a poetry exercise. Examples of how poetry has been used in the undergraduate and graduate introductory marketing and marketing seminar courses, as well as in an advanced personal selling and sales management class, were shared. Participants were invited to provide their insights on poetry as a creative thinking and creative writing exercise, discuss poetry’s potential use in marketing, and provide examples of their approaches to fostering creativity in the marketing classroom.

Barbara L. Gross

Papers

Can good choices be bad?: measurement of the effect of level of choice and interest of course selection on perceived quality of a business option

Fostering creative thinking in the marketing classroom: sharing and assessing pedagogical approaches