HEC Paris

About: HEC Paris is a education organization based out in Jouy-en-Josas, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Investment (macroeconomics) & Market liquidity. The organization has 584 authors who have published 2756 publications receiving 104467 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales & HEC School of Management Paris.

CONSUMERS, CHARACTERS, AND PRODUCTS: A Balance Model of Sitcom Product Placement Effects

Abstract: This study examines the influence of product placements in television serial comedies on consumer attitudes toward the products. Proposing a "Balance Model of Sitcom Product Placement Effects," the study integrates genre theory to analyze character-product associations in sitcoms, parasocial theory to consider consumer-character referential relations, and balance theory to address the main research issue of the way that characters' relations to placed products and consumers' relations to the characters affect consumers' attitudes to the products. The model is based on balance theory, in which attitude alignment is the explanation for links between a triad composed of the consumer, the sitcom character, and the placed product. The influence of two consumer-character variables (attitude and parasocial attachment) and two character- product variables (valence and strength of association) are tested in a real-world situation. The methodology uses real televised sitcoms as stimuli, real viewers as respondents,...

Consumer Involvement Profiles: A New and Practical Approach to Consumer Involvement

Abstract: Today, many advertising recommendations mention the target market's degree of involvement in justifying the chosen strategy. Consumers' involvement in products is believed to moderate considerably their reactions to marketing and advertising stimuli. Therefore it should affect copy, format, media, and repetition decisions. Foote, Cone, & Belding agencies worldwide have even adopted a strategy planning device, the "Grid," based on a highlow involvement dichotomy (Vaughn, 1980). Current practice measures involvement by a single index, or even a single item of product's perceived importance. A new stream of research initiated in Europe since 1981 has shown that the degree of involvement counts actually less than the source of this involvement. Empirical data on 37 product categories and derived from more than 7500 interviews show that involvement is not limited to a single dimension. It should rather be thought of as a profile of the dimensions of interest, perceived risk, pleasure value, and sign value (Kapferer and Laurent, 48 1984, 1985; Laurent and Kapferer. 1985). For advertising managers the involvement profile is an enlightening new tool for understanding the full dynamics of the relationship of consumers to products, for describing targets, and for market segmentation. The purpose of this article is to present the rationale and the main aspects of this new approach to the conceptualization and measurement of consumer involvement. Since its theoretical and methodological bases have already been presented at length elsewhere, we shall stress here the practical applications of the involvement profile.

The Missing Link Between the Theory and Empirics of Path Dependence: Conceptual Clarification, Testability Issue, and Methodological Implications

Abstract: Path dependence is a central construct in organizational research, used to describe a mechanism that connects the past and the future in an abstract way. However, across institutional, technology, and strategy literatures, it remains unclear why path dependence sometimes occurs and sometimes not, why it sometimes lead to inefficient outcomes and sometimes not, how it differs from mere increasing returns, and how scholars can empirically support their claims on path dependence. Hence, path dependence is not yet a theory since it does not causally relate identified variables in a systematized manner. Instead, the existing literature tends to conflate path dependence as a process (i.e. history unfolding in a self-reinforcing manner) and as an outcome (i.e. a persisting state of the world with specific properties, called 'lock-in'). This paper contributes theoretically and methodologically to tackling these issues by: (1) providing a formal definition of path dependence that disentangles process and outcome, and identifies the necessary conditions for path dependence; (2) distinguishing clearly between path dependence and other 'history matters' kinds of mechanisms; and (3) specifying the missing link between theoretical and empirical path dependence. In particular, we suggest moving away from historical case studies of supposedly path-dependent processes to focus on more controlled research designs such as simulations, experiments, and counterfactual investigation.