Entries from July 2006 ↓

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.

We’ve chosen to set up the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing Web site at the University of California, Riverside, using Wordpress blogging software.  Why?  From 1994 to 2006, we’ve maintained a series of websites for our research centers - Project 2000, eLab, and the Sloan Center for Internet Retailing - at Vanderbilt University.  Tools for implementing these websites ranged from hand-coded html on a Unix server back in 1994, to Frontpage, to Dreamweaver and ColdFusion. 

Continue reading →

Early eLab character art, created by Mike Meredith. Click on each image to view Mike’s original hand sketches.

Mike also designed the Sloan Center’s current shopping cart logo…

All images (c) 2006, Sloan Center for Internet Retailing. Hand sketches copyright Mike Meredith.

The A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Riverside invites applications for up to four full-time tenure-track faculty positions as Assistant Professor in Marketing to begin July 1, 2007. We seek candidates with highly sophisticated research training who can demonstrate the potential for outstanding accomplishment and scholarly distinction in marketing. Research area is open but preference will be given to candidates with strong methodological training and behavioral research interests. Teaching opportunities are available at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.  Candidates must have the Ph.D. or expect the degree to be conferred by the date of appointment. 

File review will begin June 1, 2006. First consideration will be given to candidates who apply by the application deadline of September 1, 2006

Download pdf of full job announcement.

The Sloan Center for Internet Retailing officially moved to the University of California, Riverside on July 1, 2006.   Professors Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak, formerly of Vanderbilt University, will co-direct the UCR Sloan Center.  The UCR Sloan Center is supported by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and corporate partners, including founding partners Walmart.com and Lands' End.   (Press release).