Contributions published at Marketing (Martin Natter)

Digitalization allows retailers to target customers with personalized promotions when they enter the store. Although traditional promotional retailer objectives, such as store visit, become obsolete once the shopper is already in the store, retailers still tend to target customers based on indicators that drive store visit, such as recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM). In order to improve promotional efficiency, the authors propose targeting shoppers based on information derived from regularity patterns in individual interpurchase times at the point of sale. When compared to RFM-based targeting, the proposed live targeting approach translates into higher redemption rates (+ 10.5 percentage points), revenues (+ 42.3 percentage points), and purchase frequencies (+ 44.2 percentage points). The findings emphasize the importance of promotional timing and of considering customers’ outside potential for dynamic in-store targeting.

In a national sample of 5087 Spaniards, we examine the prevalence of 10 specific misperceptions over five separate science and health domains (climate change, 5G technology, genetically modified foods, vaccines, and homeopathy). We find that misperceptions about genetically modified foods and general health risks of 5G technology are particularly widespread. While we find that partisan affiliation is not strongly associated with any of the misperceptions aside from climate change, we find that two distinct dimensions of an anti-elite worldview—anti-expert and conspiratorial mindsets—are better overall predictors of having science and health misperceptions in the Spanish context. These findings help extend our understanding of polarization around science beyond the most common contexts (e.g. the United States) and support recent work suggesting anti-elite sentiments are among the most important predictors of factual misperceptions.

Addressing the demands of our aging society, technologies such as smart home systems enhance older adults' independence and enable them to live longer at home. Yet, older adults tend to avoid, delegate, or defer decisions, and smart home systems are rarely used by individuals over the age of 65. Drawing on research on choice overload and age labels, we investigate across four studies how the presentation of smart home systems can influence the decision-making process of older adults ages 65+ by mitigating choice complexity and, consequently, choice avoidance. We argue that age-framing of complex systems makes the choice options easier to process for older adults than does price-framing, the current market standard. We find that age-framing positively affects the rate of choice, and we identify reduced choice complexity as the underlying process. Our research further demonstrates that family members, as important co-deciders, evaluate decisions made on age-framed alternatives more positively, thus making it easier for older adults to justify their decisions. We thus contribute to research on the decision-making of older adults in general and on age labels in particular, and we identify important practical implications for providers of high investment products for older adults.

Approximately one-third of all food produced for human consumption is either lost or wasted. Given the central position of retailers in the supply chain, they have the potential to effectively reduce consumer food waste by implementing targeted interventions. To do so, however, they should target distinct consumer groups. In this research, we use a unique data set comprising the grocery shopping data of customers who use loyalty cards, complemented with food waste reports, to derive three distinct target groups: traditionals, time-constrained, and convenience lovers. Based on the general behavioral change literature, we discuss diverse target group-specific interventions that retailers can implement to reduce consumer food waste. Overall, we pave a research path to examine how retailers and marketing can effectively shift consumer behavior toward more sustainable food and shopping practices and assume responsibility within the food supply chain.

Dynamic pricing is typically implemented via pricing algorithms that react to varying levels of supply and demand. Some companies, such as Uber, also vary prices for different offers, such as standard cars or limousines for a ride. However, companies usually do not proceed to the next logical step and delegate pricing authority to their employees. This is astonishing as service employees often vary in service quality, possess unique business knowledge, hold close relationships with customers, and influence the overall customer experience. The authors investigate the consequences of delegating pricing authority to employees. They also investigate the responses of customers who face a situation where their firm transitions from fixed to dynamic prices set by the firm (control group) or service employees (treatment group). The findings demonstrate that the actual dynamic price paid affects customers’ distributive fairness perceptions, which influence their behavioral responses. The authors find support for pricing authority (firm vs. employee) acting as a second-stage moderator. The results provide supporting evidence for the stylized fact that firms keep the pricing authority with the company and do not delegate it to service employees instead.

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Mystery shopping (MS) is a widely used tool to monitor the quality of service and personal selling. In consultative retail settings, assessments of mystery shoppers are supposed to capture the most relevant aspects of salespeople’s service and sales behavior. Given the important conclusions drawn by managers from MS results, the standard assumption seems to be that assessments of mystery shoppers are strongly related to customer satisfaction and sales performance. However, surprisingly scant empirical evidence supports this assumption. We test the relationship between MS assessments and customer evaluations and sales performance with large-scale data from three service retail chains. Surprisingly, we do not find a substantial correlation. The results show that mystery shoppers are not good proxies for real customers. While MS assessments are not related to sales, our findings confirm the established correlation between customer satisfaction measurements and sales results.

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