David Bell

Bio: David Bell is an academic researcher from University of Leeds. The author has contributed to research in topics: Tourism & Queer. The author has an hindex of 52, co-authored 214 publications receiving 14873 citations. Previous affiliations of David Bell include University of California, Los Angeles & Staffordshire University.

Neighborhood effects and trial on the internet: Evidence from online grocery retailing

Abstract: For traditional retailers the customer pool is largely bounded in space, whereas an Internet retailer can obtain customers from a wide geographical area. We examine customer trials at Netgrocer.com, and drawing on studies in marketing and economics conjecture that exposure spatially to proximate others (through direct social interaction or observation), can influence decisions of those who have yet to try. Trials arise from utility-maximizing behavior and the model is estimated as a discrete time hazard. The data span: (1) 29,701 residential zip codes, (2) 45 months of transactions since inception, and (3) zip code contiguity relationships. The estimated neighborhood effect is significantly positive and economically meaningful.

Seven Barriers to Customer Equity Management

Abstract: The article reviews the evolution from brand-centered marketing to customer-centered marketing and the beginnings of a focus on viewing the customer as an asset. It illustrates the practice by desc...

From Point of Purchase to Path to Purchase: How Preshopping Factors Drive Unplanned Buying

Abstract: Many retailers believe that a majority of purchases are unplanned, so they spend heavily on in-store marketing to stimulate these types of purchases. At the same time, the effects of “preshopping” factors—the shoppers' overall trip goals, store-specific shopping objectives, and prior marketing exposures—are largely unexplored. The authors focus on these out-of-store drivers and, unlike prior research, use panel data to “hold the shopper constant” while estimating unbiased trip-level effects. Thus, they uncover opportunities for retailers to generate more unplanned buying from existing shoppers. The authors find that the amount of unplanned buying increases monotonically with the abstractness of the overall shopping trip goal that is established before the shopper enters the store. Store-linked goals also affect unplanned buying; unplanned buying is higher on trips in which the shopper chooses the store for favorable pricing and lower on trips in which the shopper chooses the store as part of a mu...

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Abstract: The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Economics of Information

Abstract: The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Boundary-Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strains and Interests in Professional Ideologies of Scientists

Abstract: The demarcation of science from other intellectual activities-long an analytic problem for philosophers and sociologists-is here examined as a practical problem for scientists. Construction of a boundary between science and varieties of non-science is useful for scientists' pursuit of professional goals: acquisition of intellectual authority and career opportunities; denial of these resources to "pseudoscientists"; and protection of the autonomy of scientific research from political interference. "Boundary-work" describes an ideological style found in scientists' attempts to create a public image for science by contrasting it favorably to non-scientific intellectual or technical activities. Alternative sets of characteristics available for ideological attribution to science reflect ambivalences or strains within the institution: science can be made to look empirical or theoretical, pure or applied. However, selection of one or another description depends on which characteristics best achieve the demarcation in a way that justifies scientists' claims to authority or resources. Thus, "science" is no single thing: its boundaries are drawn and redrawn inflexible, historically changing and sometimes ambiguous ways.