This goal of this paper is to establish a research agenda that will lead to a stream of research that closes the gap between actual and normative strategic managerial decision making. We start by distinguishing strategic managerial decision making (choices) from other choices. Next, we propose a conceptual model of how managers make strategic decisions that is consistent with the observed gap between actual and normative decision making.
The authors examine how new brand entries affect consumers' consideration sets. A within-subject longitudinal experiment examines several entry positions into existing markets. The results suggest that new brand entries produce changes in consideration sets toward dominating, compromise, and assimilated brands, away from extreme brands in two-brand markets, and toward dominating and away from extreme brands in eight-brand markets. These results are confirmed by a second experiment that utilizes a between-subject design and markets with six existing brands.
The widespread belief in the intuitive relationship between quality, customer satisfaction and economic returns, as well as the growing frustration with attempts to improve quality, serve to underscore the importance of analytical and empirical work increasing understanding of customer satisfaction and how it relates to economic returns. Firms that actually achieve high customer satisfaction also enjoy superior economic returns.
In this study we investigate several hypotheses relating strategic forecasting to market segment selection and firm performance. In the context of a strategic marketing simulation, subjects in 14 competitive industries made strategic forecasts for market segment size and benchmark prices.
This study examines how advertising budget setting, framed as a prisoner's dilemma, is affected by information on the competitive situation and characteristics of the decision maker. Hypotheses are tested using experiments in which subjects set advertising budgets. Results indicate that subjects were generally competitive, but also based their strategy selections on what they expected their opponents to do, what their opponents did last time, whether the competitive relationship was expected to continue, market shares, and whether the subject's profit objectives were short- or long-term.
Affluent investor mutual fund decisions are probed. Several different investor profiles are developed from data on approximately 300 affluent investors. These investor types differ in sources of information regarding mutual fund investments, particularly the use of financial advisers, and in the selection criteria employed for mutual fund purchases. In addition, they have distinguishable mutual fund behavior and demographic characteristics. Specific implications for financial services firms are developed.
International differences in general, and cultural differences in particular, exert profound influence on what people buy. In modeling market response, highly visible international differences in purchase behavior seem to lead to an assumption by management scientists that there are large parallel international differences in market response to such things as price and advertising.
This paper examines the attributes that consumers use when making product similarity judgments and their effect on similarity scaling. Previous research suggests that concrete brands are judged using dichotomous features while more abstract product categories are judged using continuous dimensions. This, in turn, suggests that the appropriateness of spatial scaling increases relative to tree scaling as one moves from brands to product categories. The results of two studies support an increase in the fit of spaces relative to trees from brands to categories.
This research proposes that negotiators consider each other's payoffs in their evaluation of potential settlements beyond the level necessary to maintain the bargaining relationship. We further hypothesize that the way in which negotiators weight their opponents' payoffs, relative to their own, is a function of characteristics of the relationship and of the bargainers' personalities. Specifically, we consider liking of the other party, payoff expectations, satisfaction with past settlements, the likelihood of future negotiations, egocentricity, and power orientation.