P. K. Kannan

University of Maryland, College Park | UMD, UMCP, University of Maryland College Park · Robert H. Smith School of Business

Purpose The Covid-19 pandemic and the related closures and lockdowns have changed how consumers shop for products and how they consume them. In this paper, the authors focus on how customers' journeys from the awareness stage down to purchase and loyalty stages have been impacted by the pandemic across different product categories and markets and h...

Firms increasingly follow an ‘always on’ philosophy, producing multiple pieces of firm-generated content (FGC) throughout the day. Current methodologies used in marketing are unsuited to unbiasedly capturing the impact of FGC disseminated intermittently throughout the day in stock markets characterized by ultra-high frequency trading. They also nei...

Recently, biometric data generated by fingerprints, hand geometry, heart rate, voice patterns, facial characteristics and expressions, brain activity and body movement has increased in both volume and prominence. Surprisingly, academic business literature has remained relatively silent on the immense potential of biometric data, as well as on the v...

Firms use mobile applications to engage with customers, provide services, and encourage customer purchase. Conventional wisdom and past research indicate that apps have a positive effect on customer spending. The authors critically examine this premise in a highly competitive institutional context by estimating how customers’ multichannel spending...

Big data and technological change have enabled loyalty programs to become more prevalent and complex. How these developments influence society has been overlooked, both in academic research and in practice. We argue why this issue is important and propose a framework to refocus loyalty programs in the era of big data through a societal lens. We foc...

“Facts Up Front” nutrition labels are a front-of-package (FOP) nutrition labeling system that presents key nutrient information on the front of packaged food and beverage products in an easy-to-read format. The authors conduct a large-scale empirical study to examine the effect of adoption of FOP labeling on products’ nutritional quality. The autho...

This paper investigates the underlying mechanisms of crowdfunding behavior (forward-looking delaying investment behavior and social interactions), which lead to the crowdfunding dynamics.

Digital technologies and digital media are changing the environments in which firms interact with customers. However, the evolution of digital organizational forms, customer technology use, and the nature of customer journeys differ significantly across global markets. Drawing on observations of customer journeys across different international mark...

The healthcare system is undergoing a fundamental transformation fueled by regulatory shifts that reward value over volume, coupled with unprecedented advances in technological capabilities. To address the processes involved in defining, measuring, and delivering value in this shifting landscape, we develop the framework of value-centered marketing...

Marketers of digital content such as books, news, video, music, and mobile games often provide free samples of the content for consumers to try out before buying the product or signing up for subscription. Similarly, firms selling software (such as software as a service), and cloud-based services may provide free limited-version products or a free-...

Data is considered the new oil of the economy, but privacy concerns limit their use, leading to a widespread sense that data analytics and privacy are contradictory. Yet such a view is too narrow, because firms can implement a wide range of methods that satisfy different degrees of privacy and still enable them to leverage varied data analytics met...

Although firms are increasingly launching branded mobile apps, an understanding of their influence on firm value remains elusive. Using stock market returns to assess firm value, the authors investigate the impact of branded mobile app announcements on such value. Moreover, recognizing that mobile apps generate various touchpoints in the customer j...

Firms increasingly use innovation tournaments to crowdsource innovation ideas from customers. This article uncovers antecedents and consequences of customers’ participation intensity over the course of a tournament. More specifically, the authors theorize on the effects that the type and timing of moderating feedback have on tournament participants...

The success of a freemium model depends on the number of customers who purchase the premium version in the presence of the free version. The authors investigate the strategy of extending the premium product line to spur demand for the existing premium version. Extending the results of the standard product line model is insufficient in such cases be...

Recently, marketing of content (such as books, video and music), digital products and services (such as mobile games, and software), or cloud-based services has been increasingly stimulated by the provision of free samples of content or free games or limited-version of the software or service. While the motivation for providing free samples or a fr...

The increased penetration of mobile devices has a significant impact on customers’ online shopping behavior, with customers frequently switching between mobile and fixed devices on the path to purchase. By accounting for the attributes of the devices and the perceived risks related to each product-category, we develop hypotheses regarding the relat...

Third-party recognition for design excellence is often viewed as an event triggering the success of a product with a good design. However, evidence from extant research raises doubt as to whether this form of recognition matters in business-to-business (B2B) markets. Using a demand shock conceptualization to capture the signaling role and demand un...

Recently, marketing of content (such as books, video and music), digital products and services (such as mobile games, and software), or cloud-based services has been increasingly stimulated by the provision of free samples of content or free games or limited-version of the software or service. While the motivation for providing free samples or a fr...

Today's consumers are immersed in a vast and complex array of networks. Each network features an interconnected mesh of people and firms, and now, with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), also objects. Technology (particularly mobile devices) enables such connections, and facilitates many kinds of interactions in these networks—from transacti...

Social tags are user-defined keywords associated with online content and reflect consumers' perceptions of various objects, including products and brands. This research presents a new approach for harvesting rich, qualitative information on brands from user-generated social tags. We first compare and contrast our proposed approach with conventional...

We develop and describe a framework for research in digital marketing that highlights the touchpoints in the marketing process as well as in the marketing strategy process where digital technologies are having and will have a significant impact. Using the framework we organize the developments and extant research around the elements and touchpoints...

Today’s consumers are immersed in a vast and complex array of networks. Each network features an interconnected mesh of people and firms, and now, with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), also objects. Technology (particularly mobile devices) enables such connections, and facilitates many kinds of interactions in these networks — from transac...

Firms use different attribution strategies such as last-click or first-click attribution to assign conversion credits to search keywords that appear in their consumers’ paths to purchase. These attributed credits impact a firm’s future bidding and budget allocations among keywords and, in turn, determine the overall return-on-investment of search c...

Firms make significant marketing investments in online, mobile and offline media and channels such as search engines, social media, e-mail, display advertising, print, TV, etc., to draw in customers to their websites, mobile apps, and stores to effect conversions and spur sales. As customers go through a series of touch points across media, channel...

The authors provide a critical examination of marketing analytics methods by tracing their historical development, examining their applications to structured and unstructured data generated within or external to a firm, and reviewing their potential to support marketing decisions. The authors identify directions for new analytical research methods,...

This research presents an approach to harvest rich, qualitative information in user-generated social tags. Social tags are user-defined keywords being associated with any content generated online by consumers and reflect their perceptions of various objects, including brands and products. Previous research has shown that social tags contain signifi...

Retailers collect, process, and use large amounts of data about customers: what they buy, how they buy, when they buy – and when customer loyalty cards are used – who buys the product or service. The use of customer data within the customer relationship management (CRM) framework has largely remained one sided. The potential of customer data for th...

I introduce the special section highlighting the background of the competition and the work of the finalists in the 2013-2014 Gary L. Lilien ISMS-MSI Practice Prize Competition, showcasing the best applications of rigor and relevance by marketing scientists in working with practical problems. The winning paper is by a team who developed an innovati...

Given the unprecedented reach of social media, firms are increasingly relying on it as a channel for marketing communication. The objective of this study is to examine the effect of firm-generated content (FGC) in social media on three key customer metrics: spending, cross-buying, and customer profitability. The authors further investigate the syne...

The world of retailing has changed dramatically in the past decade. The advent of the online channel and new additional digital channels such as mobile channels and social media have changed retail business models, the execution of the retail mix, and shopper behavior. Whereas multi-channel was in vogue in the last decade in retailing, we now obser...

We examine the relationship between investment behavior of individual investors on crowdfunding platforms and the fundraising outcomes in crowdfunded ventures. Extant research has identified two main drivers for crowdfunding investments: irrational herding behavior of investors driven simply by observation of other investors’ actions; and rational...

Substitution decisions have been examined from a variety of perspectives. The economics literature measures cross-price elasticity, operations research models optimal assortments, the psychology literature studies goals in conflict, and marketing research has examined substitution-in-use, brand switching, stockouts, and self-control. We integrate t...

Product design decision makers are frequently challenged by the difficulty of ensuring compatibility of parts sourced from various suppliers, including the services that the product is designed to integrate. The crux of the difficulty is in analyzing the ability of sourced parts (and services) to interoperate under uncertainty, and the impact of su...

Social tagging is a new way to share and categorize online content that enables users to express their thoughts, perceptions, and feelings with respect to diverse concepts. In social tagging, content is connected through user-generated keywords-"tags"-and is readily searchable through these tags. The rich associative information that social tagging...

An important part of the rapidly growing shopper marketing practice is cross-category retail management. In managing two related product categories, retailers face some important questions: Which category should be stocked more? How close to each other should they be stocked in the store (aisle adjacency)? Which category should be promoted more oft...

Technology enables a firm to produce a granular record of every touchpoint consumers make in their online purchase journey before they convert at the firm's website. However, firms still depend on aggregate measures to guide their marketing investments in multiple online channels (e.g., display, paid search, referral, e-mail). This article introduc...

After a service failure, customers want to be treated with fairness. They expect the firm to perform quickly without having to wait for the failure resolution. The primary goal of this study is to investigate whether the service recovery paradox (SRP) exists. In addition, the study also explores whether timeliness and compensation can influence it...

The canonical design of customer satisfaction surveys asks for global satisfaction with a product or service and for evaluations of its distinct attributes. Users of these surveys are often interested in the relationship between global satisfaction and ...

Purpose Existing research suggests a multitude of approaches to value co‐creation that bring with them a range of different ideas on what constitutes the concept. The purpose of this paper is to identify the sources of the differing approaches, and so reduce the complexity of the concept and develop a business‐oriented analytical framework for asse...

Purpose - With the rapid proliferation of digital technology for creating and disseminating content in different forms - textual, music, video - both firms and consumers have a number of alternative technology and formats available for creating and consuming content. While this has led to more value for consumers, the firms have had mixed results....

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...

Reference prices have long been studied in applied economics and business research. One of the classic formulations of the reference price is in terms of an iterative function of past prices. There are a number of limitations of such a formulation, however. Such limitations include burdensome computational time to estimate parameters, an inability...

Technological advances enable companies to offer information products such as books, music, and movies in electronic formats, in addition to the traditional physical formats. Although one format may appear more useful and be preferred, consumers may be enticed to consider the unique attributes of all formats if they deliver equally well on salient...

Convergence products are multifunctional designs which are changing the way consumers use existing functionalities. Manufacturers’ ventures in developing convergence products abound in the marketplace. Smartphones, tablet computers, internet TV, are just a few examples. The complexity of designing a convergence product can differ significantly from...

We examine, in a strategic setting, the broad issue of how retail channel structures—retail monopoly versus retail duopoly—impact a manufacturer's optimal new product design, both in terms of engineering design specifications as well as manufacturer and retailer profits. Our strategic framework enables manufacturers in specific contexts to anticipa...

Acquisition of the customer data for product design selection using conventional customer survey techniques can be a time-consuming and costly undertaking. The aim of this paper is to overcome this limitation by using web based User-Generated Content (UGC) as an alternative to the conventional customer survey techniques. UGC refers to various publi...

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...

The increasing importance of information technology (IT) services in the global economy prompts researchers in the field of information systems (IS) to give special attention to the foundations of managerial and technical knowledge in this emerging arena of knowledge. Already we have seen the computer science discipline embrace the challenges of fi...

The increasing importance of information technology (IT) services in the global economy prompts researchers in the field of information systems (IS) to give special attention to the foundations of managerial and technical knowledge in this emerging arena ...

This study explores how third-party assurance seals, a privacy service provided by vendors to mitigate customers' fears, has an impact on on-line customer satisfaction and repeat-purchase intention. It asks the following research questions: Do assurance ...

One prevalent approach to increase both retailer and manufacturer revenues are to improve the attractiveness of a product offering by bundling related product categories together for one price. To be most effective, bundled products should be developed with an integrated design approach that seeks to achieve utility for the end customer. We propose...

In service systems, variability is encountered in many components, interfaces, and entities interacting with the system. There could be variations in service system performance across different usage situations and conditions. There could be operator-introduced variations in operating the system, and there could be customer-introduced variability i...

Market players, such as competing manufacturing firms and retail channels, can significantly influence the demand and profit of a new product. Existing methods in design for market systems use game theoretic models that can maximize a focal manufacturing firm’s profit with respect to product design and price variables given the Nash equilibrium of...

We examine the problem of how a content provider, specifically the National Academies Press (NAP), can optimally price the different forms of its product—print and PDF—that it sells online. Whereas products in the traditional product line generally tend to be substitutes, the different content product forms could range from being substitutes to bei...

Amid growing competition, retailers are increasingly interested in more effective aisle and display management strategies. These strategies involve placements of product categories in aisles and displays within each store to facilitate greater sales affinity (demand attraction) between categories to improve the store's share of customer wallet. The...

Amid growing competition, retailers are increasingly interested in more effective aisle and display management strategies. These strategies involve placements of product categories in aisles and displays within each store to facilitate greater sales affinity (demand attraction) between categories to improve the store's share of customer wallet. The...

Significant recent research has focused on the marriage of consumer preferences and engineering design in order to improve profitability. The extant literature has neglected the effects of channel markets which are increasingly prevalent. At the crux of the issue is the fact that channel dominating retailers, like Wal-Mart, have the ability to unil...

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...

In service systems, variability is encountered in many components, interfaces, and entities interacting with the system. There could be variations in service system performance across different usage situations and conditions. There could be operator-introduced variations in operating the system, and there could be customer- introduced variability...

With the rapid penetration of broadband technologies, content sellers have become one of the fastest growing businesses on the Internet. With content being made available in many forms and formats, these firms are grappling with the problem of pricing their product line appropriately. In this paper, we examine this problem in the context of a publi...

This paper presents an historical analysis of relationship marketing. We discuss the roots and the directions of relationship marketing that are considered relevant: their origins, the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing group (IMP) approach to business relationships, the Nordic approach to services relationships and, the managerial and Customer Re...

Modern retailers now control in excess of 70% of many markets and thereby control the access manufacturers have to the end customer. Success of a new product design therefore depends upon acceptance of the product by the powerful retailer as well as the end customer. One prevalent approach to increasing both retailer and manufacturer revenues is to...

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...

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...

Modern retailers now control in excess of 70% of many markets thereby controlling the access manufacturers have to the end customer. Success of a product design therefore depends upon acceptance of the product by the powerful retailer as well as the end customer. Manufacturers should take this market asymmetry into account in developing product des...

Selection of a final design for a new product that is to be introduced in the market is a very critical step in the new product development process. The selection needs to consider three factors of importance: anticipated market demand for the design, designers' preferences, and uncertainty in achieving predicted design attribute levels under diffe...

We present an integrated design and marketing approach to facilitate the generation of an optimal robust set of product design alternatives to carry forward to the prototyping stage. The approach considers variability in both (i) engineering design domain, and (ii) customer preferences in marketing domain. In the design domain, the approach evaluat...

Most CRM applications use static scoring methods to target customers;-however, the fast-changing environment of the Internet often demands dynamic models that are able to adapt to changes “on the fly.” Here, we focus on location-based dynamic targeting of customers by proposing spatial models of choice that adapt to dynamically changing environment...

In this paper, we examine the relationship between users’ technology readiness (specifically employees) and their adoption of wireless technology and services in a longitudinal setting. Technology readiness measures and attitude towards wireless adoption were measured across a sample of government employees in July 2002. Subsequent to this study, a...

The chapter presents an overview of the present and future of e-service. E-service emphasizes the use of e-commerce to drive customer satisfaction and revenue expansion, rather than just efficiency and cost reduction. The historical reasons for the rise of e-service are explored and the two paths to profitability are elucidated. With the emerging i...

As the online channel matures, many firms are finding that an understanding of how their online customers' preferences and choices vary across geographical markets can be very useful. In this paper, we propose a spatial multinomial model of customer choice and illustrate how spatial modeling of choices of online customers across geographical market...

Robust design of new products under variability is presented. It is found that any new product that is designed should be robust to variations both in product performance and consumer preferences. A multi-objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) that incorporates multifunction criteria in order to identify better designs while incorporating the robustnes...

We present an integrated engineering design and marketing approach to facilitate the selection of a robust set of product designs to carry forward to the prototype stage. Our approach considers variability (i.e., noise or uncertainty) in both (i) engineering design domain, and (ii) customer preferences in marketing domain, to prune a set of design...

Firms must take full advantage of Net-based e-service opportunities, particularly in the transition of products to services, to garner long-term customer relationships and loyalty.

The World Wide Web has significantly reduced the costs of obtaining information about individuals, resulting in a widespread perception by consumers that their privacy is being eroded. The conventional wisdom among the technological cognoscenti seems to be that privacy will continue to erode, until it essentially disappears. The authors use a simpl...

Online information servers that provide access to diverse databases where users can search for, browse through, and download the information they need have been rapidly increasing in number in the past few years. Online vendors have traditionally charged users for information on the based on the length of the time they were connected to the databas...

The purpose of this paper is to examine how online retailers can create loyalty among consumers. Despite growth in sales, Internet retailers are finding consumer loyalty to be an elusive goal. The recent spate of failures among online retailers suggests that engendering consumer loyalty is difficult. Lacking personal relationships between sales ass...

Delivery of customized, targeted advertisement messages, and delivery of customized information products and software products to consumers requires effective gathering and analysis of preference information. In this paper, we propose a model for dynamically profiling consumers' preferences that is based on the theory of questionnaires. The customi...

The field of marketing has witnessed substantial improvement in modeling household level heterogeneity. However, relatively little has been written about how modeling household heterogeneity translates into better marketing decisions. In this paper, we study the impact of household level heterogeneity in reference price effects on a retailer's pric...

The pricing of products and services sold over the Internet channel is becoming more dynamic. In part this is due to the increasing use of auction models in business and consumer markets to sell commodities, excess inventories, used merchandise, rare items collectibles, and other items. Marketers are resorting to dynamic prices even for goods and s...

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 ...

Wireless commerce is viewed as the extension of Internet-based e-commerce beyond the static terminal of the PC or the Web-TV to the flexible anytime, anywhere, anyplace context of the mobile environment. While many in the industry and popular press seem to equate the world of Internet e-commerce and wireless commerce as one and the same, there are...