Brian T. Ratchford

Brian T. Ratchford
The University of Texas at Dallas | UTD · Management Science

Doctor of Business Administration

About

140
Publications
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7,633
Citations

Publications

Publications (140)
Article
The fast-paced growth of e-commerce is impacting the type and variety of products consumers purchase across channels. A commonly held theory, known as long tail theory, posits that online sales are less concentrated at the top of the sales distribution than offline sales, and that more variety is bought online, making the tails of the overall sales...
Article
This study develops a model for pricing seasonal goods, helping retailers better cope with demand uncertainty. Specifically, to improve price markdown policies for fashion apparel retailers, we uncover the relationship between fashion product characteristics and consumers’ within-season product adoption behavior. We develop an aggregate demand mode...
Article
The fast-paced growth of e-commerce is rapidly changing consumers’ shopping habits and shaping the future of the retail industry. While online retailing has allowed companies to overcome geographic barriers to selling and helped them achieve operational efficiencies, offline retailers have struggled to compete with online retailers, and many retail...
Article
Crowdfunding is an online method of fundraising from a large audience. Digital Word of Mouth (DWOM) via social media has become a popular promotion platform for crowdfunding campaigns due to its negligible nominal cost. While one may expect that promoting these campaigns on social media may steadily increase donations, the exact dynamics of such pr...
Article
Using the Technology Adoption Propensity (TAP) index, a psychometric scale that measures four dimensions of consumers’ technological predispositions, we examine the relative influence of contributing (optimism and proficiency) and inhibiting (dependence and vulnerability) dispositional attitudes on the adoption of a varied range of 19 technologies....
Article
Full-text available
In this paper, the authors review current literature on retail formats and propose a new customer-centric framework for retailers to focus on as they continue to innovate and evolve. Specifically, they review the literature on how formats compare in their attributes and compete with each other; the role of customer behavior in format choice; and de...
Chapter
Donations by individuals make up the vast majority of contributions received by nonprofit organizations. Based on the statistics published by Giving USA, around 72% of donations made in 2014 ($258.5 billion) were individual contributions. Not surprisingly, in a digital era, online donation campaigns account for a significant part of contribution fi...
Article
Students, in general, get into undesirable eating habits, partly due to the decrease in consumption of unhealthy, prepared food items (e.g., take-out). This research applies a multi-method approach to modeling the motivations behind cooking behavior for this cohort of young-adult consumers. Focus groups are conducted and findings are incorporated i...
Article
Full-text available
Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine what the history of research in marketing implies for the reaction of the field to recent developments in technology due to the internet and associated developments. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines the introduction of new research topics over 10-year intervals from 1960 to the prese...
Article
Full-text available
Using the Technology Adoption Propensity (TAP) index, a psychometric scale that measures four dimensions of consumers’ technological predispositions, we examine the relative influence of contributing (optimism and proficiency) and inhibiting (dependence and vulnerability) dispositional attitudes on the adoption of a varied range of 19 technologies....
Article
Full-text available
Purpose This paper aims to investigate the moderating impacts of seasonality on the effectiveness of new product commercialization strategies in short-lifecycle markets. The authors contextualize their theory in the vast and culturally significant entertainment industry sector and contrast the effects between independent films and big budget movie...
Article
Full-text available
In this research, we address an important gap in the literature as to the search behavior of new car buyers. While the effect of the Internet on this process is known, the literature still lacks a comprehensive study which (1) concurrently covers time periods before and after the launch of the Internet, and (2) compares trends of consumer search ac...
Chapter
In this study, we propose a multivariate tobit model to examine the effects of different types of frequently purchase products on consumers’ spending in retail formats. There is a rich marketing literature that studies the determinants of consumers’ purchases in the stores that belong to the same retail format (e.g., Bell & Lattin, 1998; Bodapati &...
Article
Full-text available
When making important purchase decisions, consumers often consult multiple information sources. This paper examines how consumers allocate their search time across offline and Internet sources using survey data from new automobile purchases. Our analysis shows how time spent on Internet sources interrelates with time spent on offline sources, such...
Article
The received wisdom, reflected in popular marketing textbooks, is that featuring deeply discounted items will generate additional store traffic for retailers that in turn will lead to increased sales and profits. However, there is surprisingly little systematic evidence about the impact of these deep discounts on aggregate store traffic, sales, and...
Article
In this study, the authors develop a structural model that combines a macro diffusion model with a micro choice model to control for the effect of social influence on the mobile app choices of customers over app stores. Social influence refers to the density of adopters within the proximity of other customers. Using a large data set from an African...
Preprint
In this study, the authors develop a structural model that combines a macro diffusion model with a micro choice model to control for the effect of social influence on the mobile app choices of customers over app stores. Social influence refers to the density of adopters within the proximity of other customers. Using a large data set from an African...
Conference Paper
Donations by individuals make up the vast majority of contributions received by nonprofit organizations. Based on the statistics published by Giving USA, around 72% of donations made in 2014 ($258.5 billion) were individual contributions. Not surprisingly, in a digital era, online donation campaigns account for a significant part of contribution fi...
Article
I suggest an approach that helps the online marketers to target their Gamification elements to users by modifying the order of the list of tasks that they send to users. It is more realistic and flexible as it allows the model to learn more parameters when the online marketers collect more data. The targeting approach is scalable and quick, and it...
Preprint
I suggest an approach that helps the online marketers to target their Gamification elements to users by modifying the order of the list of tasks that they send to users. It is more realistic and flexible as it allows the model to learn more parameters when the online marketers collect more data. The targeting approach is scalable and quick, and it...
Article
Full-text available
Price-matching guarantees (PMGs) are offered in a wide array of product categories in retail markets. PMGs offer consumers the assurance that, should they find a lower price elsewhere within a specified period after purchase the retailer will match that price and refund the price difference. The goal of this study is to explain the following styliz...
Article
Using the University of Texas at Dallas database on publications in the top 24 business journals, we examine the evolution of Marketing Science as reflected by participation of faculty from top ranked business schools on one hand, and diversity on the other hand, as evidenced by contributions from different countries and from faculty of a wider set...
Article
Full-text available
Predicting share-of-wallet and size-of-wallet (i.e., category expenditure) of customers requires a firm to have, in addition to its own sales, an estimate of customer spending at competing firms. Given data on competitive spending from a sample of customers, this study considers the problem of predicting consumer expenditures at competing firms whe...
Article
Advertising is commonly used as a major marketing tool by many firms to support their new product release. Quantifying the effectiveness of pre-release advertising campaigns, however, is both challenging, since no sales data are available, and costly, because of the need to conduct consumer surveys. This is especially true for movie industry for wh...
Article
Full-text available
This study examines how different information sources are used by consumers prior to their purchase of used durable goods, specifically used cars. We examine how online and offline search are related. Categories of online sources are dealer websites and resale websites, and of offline sources are print media and dealer visits. Prior research on new...
Article
This paper examines how channel interactions influence product bundling decisions by channel members. Specifically, what products or bundles should be offered, at what prices, and by which channel members, in equilibrium. To answer this, we analyze Stackelberg games between a manufacturer and retailer, with pricing and bundling as decision variable...
Article
The current research examines the trade-offs between launching new products during high seasons, when both demand and competition are high, and low seasons, when both demand and competition are less intense. We argue that seasonality moderates the impact of competition and key marketing activities—advertising, distribution, and word- of-mouth—on ne...
Article
Full-text available
A heterogeneous thresholds probit for ordered ratings is developed to remove conditional independence among responses and incorporate respondent traits. We propose a semiparametric approach to relaxing normality of random-effects in the probit model that account for differences in response style. Simulation studies provide evidence of the ability f...
Article
Full-text available
This paper uses individual level data to examine the influence of product reviews in different stages of the consumer’s purchase decision process. Specifically, a two-stage model consisting of consideration set formation and choice is posited, where the consumer can incorporate information from product reviews in each stage. The model is estimated...
Article
Full-text available
Consumers’ time allocation decisions among various activities are fundamental to marketing research and consumer behavior. We construct a dynamic panel data model to examine how consumers allocate time to a portfolio of leisure activities over time. Our data comprise a longitudinal panel where we tracked 287 U.S. consumers’ time use, consumption mo...
Article
The Internet has significantly impacted the information search behavior of consumers. Many consumers regularly consult Internet sources for information on product categories, brands, manufacturers, and retailers, particularly when making a purchase decision about major durable goods. Automobiles are one example of such goods. The Internet has becom...
Article
This paper offers a fresh approach to the literature examining the effect of internationalization on retail-firm performance. We draw on the organizational learning theory to test the moderating effect of four variables which are hypothesized to affect the performance of internationalizing retailers through facilitating the transfer of learning in...
Article
People consult various sources, including the Internet, to search for information before purchasing an automobile. We develop an econometric model for a consumer's time allocation over multiple information sources. The process of searching is viewed as a formal choice problem in which the consumer attempts to choose the amount of search from multip...
Article
Retailers use various promotions, such as gift cards, to increase profits. When retailers give gift cards “free” to consumers who spend above specified thresholds in a single purchase, some consumers may buy more goods. We develop a model to derive the optimal purchase amount thresholds and gift card values. The model is developed for consumers wit...
Article
Though individual demand and supply equations can readily be expressed in logit models, closed-form solutions for equilibrium shares and prices are intractable due to the presence of products of polynomial and exponential terms. This hinders the employment of logit models in theoretical studies, and also makes it difficult to develop reduced-form e...
Article
Full-text available
Game theoretic models of marketing channels typically rely on simplifying assumptions that, from a behavioral perspective, often appear naïve. However, behavioral researchers have produced such an abundance of behavioral regularities that they are impossible to incorporate into game theoretic models. We believe that a focus on three core findings w...
Article
This study explores whether retailers should back up consumer purchase with PMG in a sequential search model extending from Stahl (1989). Three consumer segments with contrasting shopping behaviors are recovered from the imposed search cost structure - shoppers, refundees, and non-shoppers. Retailers devise a mixed pricing strategy facing all three...
Article
Full-text available
In the increasingly complex retailing environment, more and more retailers operate in more than one channel, such as brick-and-mortar, catalogs, and online. Success in this dynamic environment relies on the strategic management and coordination of both online and offline pricing. This article provides an overview of findings from past research in b...
Article
Full-text available
The US population is changing dramatically, e.g. aging, migrating, becoming more racially diverse and overweight, etc. We examine how these major shifts affect snack consumption and, therefore, how Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) manufacturers should adjust their business-as-usual practices. We present the development and implementation of DemoImpact...
Article
Full-text available
Game-theoretic models of marketing channels typically rely on simplifying assumptions that, from a behavioral perspective, often appear naïve. However, behavioral researchers have produced such an abundance of behavioral regularities that they are impossible to incorporate into game-theoretic models. We believe that a focus on three core findings w...
Article
In most cases, consumers must search for information about prices and product attributes, and find it too costly to become perfectly informed. the consequent departure from perfect information affects the pricing behavior of sellers in a variety of ways. the purpose of this chapter is to review the literature on consumer search, and on the conseque...
Article
Full-text available
Until recently, retailers have taken an either/or approach to competition: either reacting fiercely to competitive price changes or ignoring them altogether. Today, however, firms make a concerted effort to determine and quantify competitive effects. In this paper, we focus on how pricing and competitive effects interact as a general phenomenon, pa...
Article
The Internet influences prices in two ways: it is a channel for obtaining information, and it is a vehicle for transactions. This paper reviews the literature on the impact of online information on prices, and also reviews the literature on how the features of online markets influence online pricing. The major influences on online pricing that are...
Article
The retailing of information media either in a pure digital form or bundled with the conventional form has become increasingly common in product categories such as books, newspapers, music, etc. A general problem with these media is that much of the content that they offer is common to both conventional and digital formats. This makes the media inh...
Article
The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of various literatures related to consumer search for information, and its effect on markets. Normative models of consumer search prior to purchase, and of consumer search through experience, are reviewed first. Models of consumer consideration set formation are also outlined. These models are ge...
Article
Full-text available
Consumers often use objective as well as subjective criteria to evaluate a product. For example, power tool users may evaluate a power tool based on not only its objective attributes such as price and switch type but also its subjective characteristics such as ease of use and the feel of the tool. Our research is distinctive in its emphasis on inco...
Article
Full-text available
In channel structures characterized by a powerful retailer (e.g., Wal-Mart, Home Depot), the dominant retailer's acceptance of a manufacturer's new product often determines the success of the new offering. Focusing on a manufacturer in such a market, we develop an approach to positioning and pricing a new product that directly incorporates the reta...
Article
Full-text available
Using three cohorts of data from field surveys of new car buyers in 1990, 2000, and 2002, this study seeks to determine how the Internet fits into patterns of information search for recent car buyers. We believe that our study provides the most complete analysis to date of how the Internet is being integrated with other product information sources....
Article
Promotion is a key and pervasive strategy used by retailers to attract customers to their stores and improve the performance of the stores. At the same time, evaluation of the effect of such promotions on store performance, while important, requires analyses on multiple criteria (like traffic, sales and profit) and at multiple levels (like aggregat...
Article
We have observed conspicuous changes in the 25 years after Frank M. Bass, John D. C. Little, and Donald G. Morrison begot Marketing Science. Marketing Science benefited from five subsequent editors and fifty different area editors. New ...
Article
Full-text available
In this paper, we study the choice of technology levels and timing of the introduction of new technologies in a market in which customer sophistication increases over time. Faced with the introduction of a new generation product, a firm can either imitate or leapfrog it. If the new product is introduced optimally, we show that the optimal response...
Article
We discuss the development and implementation of , a sales forecasting model, by pack size, category, channel, region, customer account and a Web-based decision support system (DSS) for consumer packaged goods. In addition to capturing the effects of such variables as past sales, trend, own and competitor prices and promotional variables, and seaso...
Article
The explosive growth in Internet retailing has sparked a stream of research on online price dispersion, defined as the distribution of prices (such as range and standard deviation) of an item with the same measured characteristics across sellers of the item at a given point in time. In this paper, we review the empirical and analytical literature o...
Article
In the academic literature pertaining to store choice, studies have traditionally limited the choice to stores within a certain format. The role played by different retail formats has not been studied extensively. This paper, therefore, develops a general model of retail format choice for non-durable goods. Using one common model, we are able to is...
Article
Why does Amazon.com make low or no profits, whereas, its bricks-and-mortar rival Borders makes substantially higher profits? Why is price dispersion high in certain categories and low in others? Why are prices for the same item higher at bricks-and-mortar retailers than they are at pure play Internet retailers? To answer these questions, we analyze...
Article
Despite the fact that other factors of production have been substituted for labor, and that scanner technology has come into widespread use, the BLS index of labor productivity for retail food stores has been declining for sometime. The purpose of this paper is to study this puzzling decline in measured productivity. The results indicate that the d...
Article
We investigate how online price dispersion has evolved since the bursting of the Internet bubble by comparing price dispersion levels in years 2000, 2001, and 2003 and between multi-channel and pure play e-tailers. The results show that although online price dispersion declined between 2000 and 2001 when there was a shakeout in Internet retailing,...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The paper simulates how market power affects electricity retailing to households. A pseudo-random number seeding algorithm creates representative product differentiation in repeated drawings, for an incumbent and seven challengers. A ninth player competitor decides how to distinguish her product. The simulation creates an efficient starting market,...
Article
In this paper, we first develop a game theoretic model of price competition between a pure play e-tailer and a bricks-and-clicks e-tailer. We show that in general, the pure play e-tailer has a lower equilibrium price. We then develop a simultaneous equation model of e-tailer price and traffic and estimate this model using data collected from 905 e-...
Article
It has been hypothesized that the online medium and the Internet lower search costs and that electronic markets are more competitive than conventional markets. This suggests that price dispersion - the distribution of prices of an item indicated by measures such as range and standard deviation - of an item with the same measured characteristics acr...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The paper simulates how market power affects electricity retailing to households. A pseudo-random number seeding algorithm creates representative product differentiation in repeated drawings, for an incumbent and seven challengers. A ninth player competitor decides how to distinguish her product. The simulation creates an efficient starting market,...
Article
Using data from surveys of automobile buyers collected in 1990 and 2000 in a natural experiment setting, the authors study the determinants of use of the Internet as a source of information on automobiles, its impact on the use of other sources, and its impact on total search effort. The results indicate that the Internet draws attention in approxi...
Article
Frictionless e-commerce implies that price dispersion for identical products sold by different e-tailers should be smaller than it is offline, but some recent empirical evidence reveals the opposite. A study by Smith et al. (2000) suggests that such a phenomenon may be due to heterogeneity among e-tailers in such factors as shopping convenience, co...
Article
A model of demand for the Internet and other information sources is presented that treats the Internet as a production factor employed in producing benefits of search. Based upon the premise that the Internet is most efficient at providing information about functional attributes and price, several propositions are developed about its use and its im...
Article
No abstract available
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Full-text available
While approaches to measuring the state of a consumer's knowledge are well developed, much less is known about the relationship between knowledge and consumer choice and information search. The purpose of this article is to explore these relationships by treating consumer knowledge as human capital, which affects the full price of consumption and s...
Article
Despite claims that electronic commerce lowers search costs dramatically, and therefore makes it easy for consumers to spot the best buy, empirical studies have found a substantial degree of price dispersion in electronic markets for consumer goods. This study investigates the consumer welfare implications of observed price levels and price dispers...
Article
This study proposes and empirically tests a dynamic model of consumer information search behavior for groceries, which incorporates human capital. By building a formal model that demonstrates interactions between the determinants of search, we are able to distinguish between different types of human capital, and to provide insight into the measurem...
Article
Full-text available
A comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding consumers' information search behavior is presented. Unlike previous research, our model identifies not only what factors affect consumers' search behavior but also how these factors interact with each other. In particular, the model emphasizes the effect of prior brand perceptions on the sear...
Article
Full-text available
A variety of measures have been proposed in the literature to assess market efficiency and resulting losses to consumers. The authors provide an integrated review and summary of the findings in this body of literature. They critically examine properties of different measures of efficiency and discuss strengths and weaknesses of each measure. They a...
Article
The influence of subjective product knowledge on the relationship between attitudes and purchase intentions for a durable good is examined. The study reports that this indicator of attitude strength is an important direct influencer of behavioral intentions and an important moderator of the relationship between attitudes and behavioral intentions....
Article
Full-text available
Using data on search and choice behavior from a local automobile market, we estimate monetary returns to search in terms of lower prices resulting from additional time invested in price search. For our analytical framework, we adapt a model developed in the job search literature to the problem of consumer search; this framework is especially useful...
Article
The available literature indicates that consumers are likely to be less than perfectly informed when confronted with a choice situation. But whether the costs to consumers of imperfect information are large enough to warrant public intervention in markets is still an open question. By studying the optimality of new car choices, we attempt to shed l...
Article
Existing models of retail resource allocation generally specify response functions in a somewhat ad hoc manner. These are not usually derived from an explicit model of consumer maximization, and they generally do not explicitly consider the supply side of the market. This paper shows how the model of Ehrlich and Fisher (1982) can be used to provide...
Article
In this paper, we discuss commentaries by Maynes and Hjorth-Andersen on our earlier paper (1990), and then go on to discuss the merits of various measures of market efficiency which have appeared in the literature. While Maynes criticized the model in our 1990 paper for a lack of realism, we argue that our limited objective of demonstrating that pr...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents a framework for organizing and discussing factors influencing consumer choice dynamics, how these factors may be incorporated into models of buyer behavior and problems that may arise in estimating such models. The paper identifies research issues and delineates possible approaches.

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