Aidin Namin, Ph.D.

Innovations in retail delivery: Current trends and future directions

Brian Ratchford, Dinesh K. Gauri, Rupinder P. Jindal, Aidin Namin

2023-12-01

Spurred on by the transition to omnichannel retailing and advances in technology, retail delivery process has seen many innovations in recent years. The delivery process, broadly defined, is the set of tasks needed to deliver the product from the retailer to the final consumer. Innovations pertain to modes of delivery, locations of delivery, and trade-offs between delivery speed and delivery charges. We attempt to build a typology of innovations and their use, and summarize their potential costs and benefits to retailers and consumers. It is easily seen that many of the innovations can be labor saving for retailers. But there has been little evidence on consumer reactions. For this purpose, we conduct a national survey to examine the likelihood of adoption of a number of innovations in delivery. We find that although overall interest in these innovations is not high at this early stage, there is a significantly large segment of customers who are more likely to adopt these innovations. These customers are predominantly millennials, have higher incomes, and they are tech-savvy, innovative, environmentally conscious, and value quality. The findings suggest that retailers need to be strategic about choosing targets for successfully propagating these innovations.

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Technology within cultures: Segmenting the wired consumers in Canada, France, and the USA

Aidin Namin, Maria Petrescu and Marie-Odile Richard

2023-09-01

This paper uses a state-of-the-art quantitative modeling approach to latent class analysis to analyze American, Canadian, and French consumers’ perception of technology-based products and their cultural values. It identifies hidden segments of consumers based on technology adoption propensity, cosmopolitan characteristics, and identification with the global consumer culture. The study emphasizes the diversity and variability between and among countries regarding localism, globalism, cosmopolitanism, and the global consumer culture. The framework provides a new way to evaluate modern consumers and reflects the combination of national/regional cultural characteristics and global culture elements while highlighting the relevance of modern technologies and communication methods in leveling consumer preferences and attitudes across cultures. From a theoretical viewpoint, this article provides a new framework incorporating technology adoption propensity and cultural elements in the empirical evaluation of modern consumers.

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The role of feedback source and valence in crowdsourced idea innovation

Aidin Namin, Rambod Dargahi and Andrew Rohm

2023-02-13

This research investigates the effect of feedback source (expert vs. peer) and feedback valence (negative vs. positive) on the motivation of individuals in an online crowdsourced ideation platform to generate better ideas. By collecting and analyzing over 300 observations of experimental data, this study’s findings indicate that the mere presence of feedback, compared with no feedback, increases the likelihood of innovation in idea generation. Additionally, feedback from experts, rather than peers, increases the likelihood of innovation in idea generation.

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Driving a difference: the role of the Covid-19 pandemic in U.S. consumers’ information search behaviors and purchasing of Japanese automobiles

Aidin Namin and Seth Ketron

2022-11-10

While prior research has investigated factors that predict consumers’ information search behaviors as they relate to automobiles, such studies were conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that the pandemic has necessitated lockdowns, social distancing, business closures and other disruptions to normal shopping activities, consumer information search behaviors have also been substantially altered as the psychological distance between consumers and marketers has increased. Thus, this study aims to examine these changes and identify patterns of search behavior for a major durable product: automobiles.

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Alleviating demand uncertainty for seasonal goods: An analysis of attribute-based markdown policy for fashion retailers

Aidin Namin, Gonca P. Soysal and Brian T. Ratchford

2022-06-01

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.

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The Unanticipated Dynamics of Promoting Crowdfunding Donation Campaigns on Social Media

Yashar Dehdashti, Aidin Namin, Brian T. Ratchford, Lawrence B. Chonko

2022-02-15

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 promotions have not been studied for donation-based crowdfunding. We collect panel data on several unique donation campaigns from a major donation-based crowdfunding website (gofundme.com) and analyze them employing a variety of econometric techniques. We specifically provide empirical evidence that promoting crowdfunded charitable campaigns using social media follows three phases throughout a campaign's lifecycle. Our results indicate that the general pattern of behavior is the same for charitable campaigns as it is for reward-based campaigns. This suggests that the psychological motives outlined in the literature are important for both types of campaigns. Because the economic motives are not present, this finding would not be clearly anticipated. We show that the contributing role of social media in a campaign's success varies over time and that it is most helpful in the first ten days of initiating a campaign. We also provide preliminary evidence that promoting charitable campaigns on social media can lead to slacktivism, an unexpected consequence of using social media as a promotion tool resulting in less donations and more social media flurry. We also find that if a campaign does not reach at least 70 percent of its goal after twenty days since launch, it is not likely to be successful. Fundraisers and charitable marketers can use our findings in gauging the effectiveness of raising awareness about their campaigns in the online world. They could also streamline the timing of social media promotions to enhance their impact on collecting donations for charitable causes.

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The strategic drivers of drop-shipping and retail store sales for seasonal products

Annibal C. Sodero, Aidin Namin, Dinesh K. Gauri, Sreekumar R. Bhaskaran

2021-09-20

Retailers that sell seasonal products face significant challenges when planning inventory assortment. The incorporation of drop-shipping into their operations, wherein suppliers own and ship products directly to consumers at retailers’ requests, has only complicated these challenges. This study investigates multichannel assortment planning of retailers that sell seasonal products.

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Is self-knowledge the ultimate prize? A quantitative analysis of participation choice in online ideation crowdsourcing contests

Rambod Dargahi, Aidin Namin, Seth C. Ketron, Julian K. Saint Clair

2021-09-13

Online crowdsourcing contests are a nascent but rapidly growing method among marketers and retailers to generate and solicit creative ideas. In two studies – a dynamic model with scraped data from a well-known crowdsourcing platform using Python (study 1) and a survey among real participants in online contests with conjoint analysis (study 2) – we explore how multiple design parameters influence participation in online contests.

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Improving Student Presentation Skills Using Asynchronous Video-Based Projects

Aidin Namin, Seth C. Ketron, Velitchka D. Kaltcheva, Robert D. Winsor

2021-01-08

Given the central role that excellent presentation skills plays in management, methods for better developing these skills represent an important area of focus in business education. Rapidly evolving distributed (distance) technologies have compelled businesses to reimagine practices in most areas, and presentations are no exception. In the present study, we examine the potential advantages of video presentations—not from the perspective of the audience, but rather from the perspective of the student as immersed in the process of developing individual presentation skills. We crafted a course project where students collaborate to create a video presentation, replacing a more traditional in-class presentation. To test the effectiveness of this new approach, we conducted a study in which measures from multiple course sections using either the new video creation approach or the traditional presentation approach were compared. For the former, we found a significant improvement in students’ presentation skills on five dimensions (central message, supporting material, language, organization, and delivery) as evaluated with the authoritative Oral Communication VALUE Rubric developed by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. We describe the project and the study, and end the article with lessons learned and recommendations for expanding the project’s applications to other courses.

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The Future of Private Labels: Towards a Smart Private Label Strategy

Katrijn Gielens, Yu Ma, Aidin Namin, Raj Sethuram, Ronn J. Smith, Robert C.Bachtel, Suzanne Jervis

2021-01-03

Modern day store brands (SB) or private labels (PL), now also popularly called private brands, are brands generally owned and marketed by retailers. They have been active on the market for about 70 years. Over this time span, these brands have evolved from generic, cheap, low-quality economy or budget private labels to lower-priced-than-national brand but acceptable-quality value or standard private labels. Over time, retailers extended the value proposition to the consumer segment seeking higher quality by offering premium private labels. This strategy, called the tiered-private label, comprises offering economy PL to the price-sensitive but not quality sensitive consumers, standard PL to mainstream consumers seeking acceptable quality at lower prices, and premium PL to the quality-sensitive segment seeking value. Over the last 40 years (1980–2020), these versions of private labels have witnessed substantial growth around the world, though the growth is said to be tapering in recent times.

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Improving revenue performance with third-degree price discrimination in the cruise industry

Aidin Namina, Dinesh K.Gaurib, Robert J.Kwortnikc

2020-08-01

The leisure cruise industry has enjoyed high levels of growth for nearly five decades due in part to traveler interest in the cruise experience, but also to relatively lower pricing. Although revenue management of cruise fares is now standard practice, there are untapped opportunities to improve yields through data-driven market segmentation and third-degree price discrimination. This paper uses a finite mixture modeling approach to develop, empirically validate, and compare pricing models. By unveiling segments of travelers based on individual attributes, third-degree price discrimination can improve target marketing, the timing and appeal of price discounts, and the matching of variable demand with fixed, though differentiated, room supply. Empirical results from running thousands of simulations with pricing data from one of the world’s largest cruise lines show that the segmentation analysis using third-degree price discrimination can increase fare revenue more than four percent. The modeling approach used in this research extends the emerging literature on revenue management in the cruise industry and offers meaningful managerial implications for advanced pricing tactics and revenue management.

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“Improving Revenue Performance with Third-Degree Price Discrimination in the Cruise Industry

Aidin Namin, Dinesh K.Gauri, Robert J.Kwortnik

2020-06-26

The leisure cruise industry has enjoyed high levels of growth for nearly five decades due in part to traveler interest in the cruise experience, but also to relatively lower pricing. Although revenue management of cruise fares is now standard practice, there are untapped opportunities to improve yields through data-driven market segmentation and third-degree price discrimination. This paper uses a finite mixture modeling approach to develop, empirically validate, and compare pricing models. By unveiling segments of travelers based on individual attributes, third-degree price discrimination can improve target marketing, the timing and appeal of price discounts, and the matching of variable demand with fixed, though differentiated, room supply. Empirical results from running thousands of simulations with pricing data from one of the world’s largest cruise lines show that the segmentation analysis using third-degree price discrimination can increase fare revenue more than four percent. The modeling approach used in this research extends the emerging literature on revenue management in the cruise industry and offers meaningful managerial implications for advanced pricing tactics and revenue management.

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Co-production or DIY: an analytical model of consumer choice and social preferences Co-production or DIY: an analytical model of consumer choice and social preferences

2020-04-20

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how consumers choose among three different options offered by a firm in a monopolistic setting, namely, to buy a standard product with a non-customizable design, to ask the firm to customize a product using the consumer’s ideal design or to do the entire design task by themselves. The authors also investigate how social preference intensity and the possibility of reselling a product influence a consumer’s decision.

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Making more in crowdsourcing contests: a choice model of idea generation and feedback type

2020-04-02

A crowdsourcing contest is the process of inviting the general public or a targeted group of individuals to submit their ideas or solutions to a specific problem or challenge within a predefined period of time. In this study, utilizing nearly 500 participants, we design and run a field experiment to model two types of feedback: rated and ranked. We also measure the effect of each on the likelihood of revising the generated ideas and their subsequent quality based on novelty, feasibility, and value criteria in a crowdsourcing contest. Our major findings indicate that providing any type of feedback, compared to no feedback, improves the quality of ideas generated.

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Dine-in or take-out: Modeling millennials’ cooking motivation and choice

2020-03-01

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 into an integrative framework to develop and estimate three quantitative choice models for predicting millennials’ cooking behavior.

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Is it Expensive? The Dual Effect of Construal Level on Price Judgments

2019-07-18

When judging the expensiveness of a product or service, consumers often make comparisons to similar offerings that serve as reference points. Extant pricing literature shows that reference items in the consideration set may trigger a “contrast effect,” where higher-priced items make the target item seem less expensive. Two studies show that the effect of reference price depends on the consumer’s level of abstract thinking—or “construal level” —at the time of judgment. Concrete construal leads to the standard contrast effect, but abstract construal leads to an assimilation effect, where higher-priced reference items make the target seem more expensive.

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A “hidden” side of consumer grocery shopping choice

2019-05-01

This study identifies hidden classes of grocery shoppers and their choice of different items on different days of the week. Following the literature on consumer grocery shopping, three major groups of products are considered: food/drink, cleaning, and personal care. Applying Finite Mixture Modeling to a rich scanner dataset, latent classes of customers and their choice of grocery items on different days of the week are discovered and empirically validated. The model controls for consumer unobserved heterogeneity and demographic characteristics through mixing probabilities. Results uncover latent classes of grocery shoppers and their day of the week shopping day, their sizes, their product choices, mixing probabilities, and demographics. Findings offer retail promotion targeting guidelines for the identified latent classes in the food/drink, cleaning, and personal care groups. Analysis outcome provides marketing and managerial implications in identifying grocery store segments, handling store traffic, managing store promotion and pricing, and improving store layout.

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Who searches where? A new car buyer study

2018-04-16

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 across those combined years. Our unique survey dataset, which spans 22 years and includes consumer search information for new cars from both the pre- and post-Internet eras, enables us to investigate this important gap. Using a latent class model, we classify respondents according to variables that measure consumer search for new automobiles. We unveil changes in characteristics of the six latent segments of car shoppers. Our main findings show that, over the years since the advent of the Internet, the segment of car buyers who mainly search through car dealers/stores has been shrinking drastically. We also find evidence that, over time, the heavy Internet user segment has become less likely to have decided on the manufacturer/dealer prior to searching. Our findings benefit researchers, practitioners, car manufacturers, dealers, and buyers.

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Impact of message design on banner advertising involvement and effectiveness: An empirical investigation

2017-10-25

Following past research examining online advertising design and effectiveness, this research studies the impact of variations in the design of online banner advertisements on advertising involvement and effectiveness. Advertisement involvement and effectiveness are measured as response to changes in message design and are determined by the number of clicks on the banner ad (involvement) as well as the click-through rate, or CTR (effectiveness). The latter is the ratio of ad clicks to its total impressions. Related to the message design, the type (static or dynamic), size (pixel ratios), and the format of a banner advertisement are studied employing behavioral response data from a single apparel retailer. Results suggest that the type of banner advertisement significantly influences advertising involvement and effectiveness. Results also suggest that banner ad size in terms of pixel ratios significantly increases advertising involvement through total number of clicks but does not affect effectiveness through CTR. Our findings also identify and empirically validate the important role of the Golden Ratio in banner ad message design and its effectiveness.

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An Empirical Analysis of Demand Variations and Markdown Policies for a Fashion Retailer

2017-09-01

In this paper, using data from a leading specialty apparel retailer, we empirically examine the determinants of a retailer's dynamic pricing policy and investigate consumer response to price changes (markdowns) throughout a fashion product's selling season using a product diffusion setting.

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Revisiting Customers' Perception of Service Quality in Fast Food Restaurants

2017-01-09

This research is an extension to previous work in fast food restaurant marketing. The population of this research consists of actual fast food restaurant customers. Results indicate that there is no direct way of increasing behavioral intentions through improving service quality for fast food restaurants. Rather, behavioral intentions can be improved through customer satisfaction as an intermediary. Further, this work finds evidence that customer satisfaction can be improved through service quality, food quality, and price-value ratio, which in turn would pave an indirect path toward improvement in behavioral intentions in this industry.

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Measuring Customer Satisfaction Using SERVQUAL Survey

2012-06-04

The focus of this research is on assessing the quality of services of Tehran’s Saman bank and the available gap between customer’s expectation and perception. Also the relationship between customer’s satisfaction and each dimension of service quality (ie: reliability, tangibility, responsiveness, assurance and empathy) and ranking them accordingly, is investigated.

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The Future of Private Labels: Towards a Smart Private Label Strategy

Katrijn Gielensa, Yu Ma, Aidin Namin, Raj Sethuraman, Ronn J. Smith, Robert C. Bachtel, Suzanne Jervis

2021-01-03

Modern day store brands (SB) or private labels (PL), now also popularly called private brands, are brands generally owned and marketed by retailers. They have been active on the market for about 70 years. Over this time span, these brands have evolved from generic, cheap, low-quality economy or budget private labels to lower-priced-than-national brand but acceptable-quality value or standard private labels. Over time, retailers extended the value proposition to the consumer segment seeking higher quality by offering premium private labels. This strategy, called the tiered-private label, comprises offering economy PL to the price-sensitive but not quality sensitive consumers, standard PL to mainstream consumers seeking acceptable quality at lower prices, and premium PL to the quality-sensitive segment seeking value. Over the last 40 years (1980–2020), these versions of private labels have witnessed substantial growth around the world, though the growth is said to be tapering in recent times. As retailers chart the future strategy for their private labels in 2020 and beyond, a pertinent question they face is: Should they continue to offer value or even tiered PL with the same formula that brought them success in the past, or should they morph and adopt new strategies in keeping with current market trends? We support adopting a new strategy that we call the smart PL strategy. The value PL strategy and its manifestation as the tiered PL strategy cater to different consumer segments but focus primarily on price and quality as attributes of choice. In the current marketplace, consumers care not only about price and quality, but also about sustainability, ethics, social responsibility, image, so forth, perhaps more so than earlier generations. They are also more tech-savvy in using digital tools for search and purchase. Retailers, on their part, are now endowed with rich, extensive data that they can tap into to understand customers’ diverse needs, and they are able to harness technology for developing the right product and communication. Thus, the smart PL strategy is a strategy by which retailers can leverage data and technology to market private labels that meet diverse customer needs and achieve greater retail differentiation, store loyalty, margins, and profits. This thought piece provides a road map for developing such a smart PL strategy and directions for future research.

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