Showing papers by "David Bell published in 2012"

Traditional and IS-Enabled Customer Acquisition on the Internet

Abstract: Geographic variation in consumer use of Internet retailers is partly explained by variation in offline shopping costs. Explanations for geographic variation in the efficacy of different customer acquisition methods including traditional methods of offline word-of-mouth (WOM) and magazine advertising and information systems (IS)-enabled methods of online WOM and online search remain unexplored. We estimate a multivariate negative binomial distribution (NBD) model on zip code--level customer counts from a leading Internet retailer and provide new insights into factors explaining geographic variation in the success of these methods. First, we show that target customer density explains geographic variation over and above the impact due to the number of potential customers. Moreover, the effect of density is greatest for offline and online WOM acquisitions; this suggests that density contributes to contagion, connectivity, and a hypothesized “social multiplier.” Second, when senders and recipients of WOM share consumption benefits, WOM is more powerful and compelling. We find that location-based convenience benefits have stronger effects on location-dependent offline WOM acquisitions than on location-independent online WOM acquisitions. Third, acquisition channels contribute differently to the total customer pool---offline WOM acquisitions are clustered, whereas magazine acquisitions are dispersed. Finally, separate click-to-conversion data from Coremetrics.com indicates that using the model-based predictions to target specific markets delivers a twofold improvement in actual click-to-order rates. This paper was accepted by Sandra Slaughter, information systems.

Ties that blind: on not seeing (or looking) beyond 'the family'

Abstract: Reading Edwards and Gillies' commentary on the continued importance of the concept 'family' made us wonder whether we had somehow missed this supposed paradigm shift in sociology, where everyone had abandoned the family and were now instead talking about personal life and non-familial intimacies. Had the queer revolution in sociology finally happened and we had just failed to notice? It was not even a decade ago that Roseneil and Budgeon (2004: 136) highlighted 'the heteronormativity of the sociological imaginary' and stressed the importance of moving the focus of the discipline beyond 'the family'. Therefore, we were left questioning whether so much had really changed in the past decade. Last time we checked, Family Studies with a capital F still appeared to be pretty high profile in the social sciences. So the first point to raise is whether we have actually seen such a 'shift away from the use of the term \" family \" ', as Edwards and Gillies (2012: 63) suggest. It is crucial to question where these shifts in academic discussion have taken place and to note that these debates have tended to exist in a fairly small (often UK-centric) subfield of sociology. We would argue that a normative (often heteronormative, always mononormative) understanding of 'the family' still dominates many fields in the social sciences (and outside the academy). Moreover, the narrative of 'the family' is frequently still an exclusionary force that positions non-familial subjects as either invisible or abject, and that conjures up images of the married couple, biological kinship, reprocentric futurism, business as usual. So has the family really been 'slipping from view'? Edwards and Gillies (2012: 66) claim that there has been a 'recent intellectual move away from the concept of \" family \" ' towards a new sociology of personal and intimate life. However, this overlooks the ways in which researchers working within the sociology of intimate and personal life still often utilise the concept of 'family', looking at familial relationships alongside a broader array of intimate attachments. The family has therefore not necessarily slipped from view in new work on the sociology of personal life. In this context, Edwards and Gillies' argument seems a somewhat strange proposal to be putting forward – a plea to return to a concept that has never actually been abandoned. We were left questioning whether we really need these 'deliberately somewhat provocative notes' (Edwards and Gillies: 2012: 63). …

Neighborhood Social Capital and Social Learning for Experience Attributes of Products

Abstract: Social learning can occur when information is transferred from existing customers to potential customers. It is especially important when the information that is conveyed pertains to experience attributes, i.e., attributes of products that cannot be fully verified prior to the first purchase. Experience attributes are prevalent and salient when consumers shop through catalogs, on home shopping networks, and over the Internet. Firms therefore employ creative and sometimes costly methods to help consumers resolve uncertainty; we argue that uncertainty can be partially resolved through social learning processes that occur naturally and emanate from local neighborhood characteristics. Using data from Bonobos, a leading U.S. online fashion retailer, we find not only that local social learning facilitates customer trial but also that the effect is economically important because about half of all trials were partially attributable to it. Merging data from the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, we find that neighborhood social capital, i.e., the propensity for neighbors to trust each other and communicate with each other, enhances the social learning process and makes it more efficient. Social capital does not operate on trials directly; rather, it improves the learning process and therefore indirectly drives sales when what is communicated is favorable.

Reexamining possible mispricing of customer satisfaction

Abstract: There has been a recent debate in the marketing literature concerning the possible mispricing of customer satisfaction. While earlier studies claim that portfolios with attractive out-of-sample properties can be formed by loading on stocks whose firms enjoy high customer satisfaction, later studies challenge this finding. A large part of the disagreement stems from the difficulty of how to actually evaluate mispricing based on the observed portfolio returns. In particular, any portfolio formation method that requires the use of a risk model is open to the criticism of time-varying risk factor loadings due to the changing composition of the portfolio over time. As an alternative, we construct portfolios that are neutral with respect to the desired risk factors a priori. Consequently, no risk model is needed when analyzing the observed returns of our portfolios. Using various ways of measuring customer satisfaction, we do not find any convincing evidence that portfolios that load on high customer satisfaction lead to abnormal returns.