Sloan Center Seminar Series

Seminars will be held in Anderson Hall South 118. Contact Professor Donna Hoffman for more information.

December 1, Professor Fred Davis, David D. Glass Chair in Information Systems
Sam M. Walton College of Business, University of Arkansas

“Tradeoff-induced Decision Anxiety: Unintended Negative Effects on Preferences for Decision Aids”

2-3:30pm seminar; 3:30-5pm reception AGSM front lawn 

Professor Barbara Kahn of the Wharton School gave a very important speech addressing research productivity during her presidential address at the recent Association for Consumer Research conference in Orlando.  She looked at the ways that ACR could help make a difference in our academic lives and conducted a survey of the membership to get a better handle on the kinds of problems we all face in trying to be more productive - and impactful - researchers.

Her observations and conclusions are really interesting (and highly useful in resource-based arguments with university administrators).  Have a look.

Fall 2006 Marketing Seminar Series

Seminars will be held in Anderson Hall 121. Contact Professor Donna Hoffman for more information.

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ONLINE BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH ROUNDTABLE AT ACR Orlando Sept 28-Oct 1, 2006

Collecting data over the Internet seems like a solution to all an experimentalist’s problems. Responses can be collected from the far corners of the world, from people in all walks of life. Experiments that would take months can now be carried out in days. But ours is not an ideal world. Researchers wrestle with fickle software, challenges to experimental design, and a host of other problems.

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We just learned that our Marketing Science (2000) paper on online customer experience (working paper version) was the most cited article in that journal over the last ten years.  Pretty neat!  Interestingly, only three of the cites to our article came from Marketing Science articles, suggesting, among other things, that articles in that journal are having an impact that reaches beyond that single journal. 

Neslin, Scott A., Thomas P. Novak, Kenneth R. Baker, and Donna L. Hoffman, “An Optimal Contact Model for Maximizing Online Panel Response Rates,” (August 2006).

Abstract.  We develop and test an optimization model for maximizing response rates for online marketing research survey panels.  The model consists of:  (1) a decision tree predictive model that classifies panelists into “states” and forecasts the response rate for panelists in each state, and (2) a linear program that derives a plan specifying how many panelists should be solicited from each state in order to maximize response rates.  The linear program is forward looking in that it optimizes over a finite horizon during which S studies are to be fielded.  It takes into account the desired number of responses for each study, the likely migration pattern of panelists between states as they are invited and respond or don’t respond, as well as demographic requirements.  The model is implemented using a rolling horizon, whereby the optimal solution for S successive studies is derived and implemented for the first study; then, as results are observed, an optimal solution is derived for the next S studies, and the solution is implemented for the first of these studies, etc.  The procedure is field tested and shown to increase response rates significantly, compared to random selection and the heuristic currently being used by panel management.  Implications are discussed for further model development, implementation issues for online panel managers, and for the broader area of optimal contact models in customer relationship management.  Download pdf.

It’s hard to miss the news of Mel Gibson’s recent DUI arrest - picked up for speeding on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu last Friday (July 28), Mr. Gibson spewed forth with anti-semitic comments and generally acted like a celebrity behaving badly. 

But real news is how fast this all hit the ether - barely hours after the incident, TMZ.com posted a scan of  several pages of the arresting officer’s handwritten report, and alleged a police cover-up.  The Internet metes out Celebrity Justice - over and over, one post after another.

Sadly, no one is terribly shocked that Gibson would say this stuff (cf. Holocaust denier pater familias Gibson and the not-exactly Jewish-friendly “Passion of the Christ”).

Today’s New York Times reported that Disney/ABC has dropped plans to produce Gibson’s “Holocaust-themed miniseries.”  (I’m not making this up - it’s weird here in California.)

Anyway, thanks to the Internet, Gibson is suffering through all kinds of negative press, business backlash, and angry blog comments.  From a political perspective, it sure is really bad timing.

Off to rehab he goes; count on the Net to keep us posted at the speed of light…

The last time the real estate market crashed in the early 90s, somebody estimated that it took over 18 months for the fact to dawn on the masses that prices were collapsing. That makes sense when you consider that information was on one-way pipe from realtors, the financial markets and the media to the mass market "audience" consuming newspapers and TV shows. This time, I have to wonder if it won't happen faster - a whole lot faster.  Consider how much things have changed.  The entire MLS is available online, ziprealty.com tracks price reductions in real time, zillow.com offers instant "Zestimates" of a home's real value in a way-cool graphical context (check out those "bird's eye" views), and dozens of blogs not only discuss the impending crash, they offer near daily reams of won't-find-anywhere-else insightful and scary analysis. Continue reading →

By popular demand, the “Conjoint Interactive Exercises” are once again available.

These interactive on-line exercises were developed in 1998 by Tom Novak and programmed by Andy Bass, at Project 2000. These exercises can be used to demonstrate the basic principles of conjoint analysis as used in marketing research.

These interactive exercises were awarded the 2005 “Merlot Business Classics” award. The exercises are set in the contexts of movie theater and airline travel preferences. The first exercise asks students to order, from most preferred to least preferred, 18 hypothetical theater configurations which vary in terms of five attributes: ticket price, line-of-sight, seat comfort, audio/visual equipment, and concessions. A parallel exercise asks students to evalute 18 hypohetical airline flights. The resulting output lists the relative importance of each attribute to the student, and provides part worth information for each level of the five attributes.

Please follow the links below to access the exercises.

1) Design a Movie Theater Using Conjoint Analysis
2) Airline Conjoint Exercise

We have received many requests for the source code for these exercises. The Java Source Code for the the following three conjoint applets can be downloaded, with terms of use specified by the open source license appearing at the top of the source code:

Airline java applet source
Movie java applet source
Movie java apple source with logging

It's hard for me to understand how the United States Senator who heads the Senate Commerce Committee can be so ignorant about the Internet.  Ted Stevens, the Republican Senator from Alaska, actually chairs the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.  As such, he is responsible for communications bills that impact the Internet.  Aren't there minimum education requirements for these posts?

If you've been traveling the blogosphere, then you know that Senator Stevens appears to have no clue regarding the Internet. 

Pathetic and scary.  Check out Jon Stewart's hilarious riff on the sorry "tubes" analogy and a fun electronica video (both cycle randomly in the lower right of our blog - just refresh).  Other fun jabs here.