Knowledge that Transforms

Five studies, using diverse methodologies, distinct consumption experiences, and different manipulations, demonstrate the novel finding that savoring an upcoming consumption experience heightens enjoyment of the experience both as it unfolds in real time (ongoing enjoyment) and how it is remembered (remembered enjoyment). Our theory predicts that the process of savoring an upcoming experience creates affective memory traces that are reactivated and integrated into the actual and remembered consumption experience. Consistent with this theorizing, factors that interfere with consumers’ motivation, ability, or opportunity to form or retrieve affective memory traces of savoring an upcoming experience limit the effect of savoring on ongoing and remembered consumption enjoyment. Affective expectations, moods, imagery, and mindsets do not explain the observed findings.

To develop the knowledge and skill sets of channel partner firms, manufacturers increasingly introduce learning programs as part of their relationship management strategies. However, the engagement of channel partners in these programs tends to be low. The current research, conducted in collaboration with a Fortune 100 information technology company, examines ways to strengthen learning engagement. In accordance with self-regulated learning theory, the authors propose and demonstrate that when channel partners write reviews of a learning module that they attended, beyond providing ratings, they are better able to reflect on the relevance of their learning experience and are further engaged in learning activities. The audience and focus of these written reviews determine the engagement of the channel partner sales personnel; therefore, review writing is a valuable, informal mechanism to motivate them. These effects are moderated by characteristics of both the channel partner (salesperson's learning orientation and identification with the manufacturer) and the relationship with the manufacturer (length and exclusivity).

Many goods manufacturers and service providers jointly deliver partnered hybrid offerings to achieve competitive advantage and superior performance. In such cases, service providers may emphasize different aspects of service in their offerings. Do service providers and goods manufacturers benefit equally from emphasizing service satisfaction? Do the performance effects of emphases on different aspects of service satisfaction vary across different goods? The authors examine the effects of emphases on two aspects of service satisfaction, relational service (interactions with the service provider's staff) and service environment (service provider's facilities), on the market shares of service and goods components of partnered hybrid offerings. Using multiple secondary data sources from the U.S. automobile industry between 2009 and 2015, the authors find that emphasizing relational service satisfaction increases service market share but decreases goods market share. Counterintuitively, emphasizing service environment satisfaction decreases service market share. Furthermore, the vertical quality of the good moderates these relationships. The findings generate actionable guidelines to improve market shares by adjusting relational service satisfaction and service environment satisfaction in the partnered hybrid offerings context.

This article examines the impact of new product development (NPD) “make/buy” choices on product quality using data from the automobile industry. Although the business press has lamented that NPD outsourcing compromises product quality, there is no systematic evidence to support or refute this assertion. Against this backdrop, this study tests a contingency model of the impact of NPD make/buy decisions on immediate and future product quality. The hypotheses are tested using data on NPD make/buy choices of 173 models of 12 automobile firms in the United States between 2007 and 2014. The authors find that whereas NPD buy has a more positive impact on immediate product quality, NPD make has a more positive impact on future product quality. Furthermore, the immediate product quality impact of NPD buy is stronger when (1) technologies are more complex and (2) firm NPD capability is higher. In contrast, the future product quality impact of NPD make is stronger when (1) there is postlaunch adverse feedback and (2) firm NPD capability is higher. The study highlights the complex trade-offs associated with NPD make/buy decisions and offers valuable insights on how firms could manage these decisions.

The authors study specialized personal incentives (SPIs), which are cash rewards granted to salespeople for meeting interim performance goals within the regular sales quota period (monthly, quarterly, etc.). Because firms often institute multiple SPIs, the authors are able to investigate whether different sales achievement trajectories have differential impacts on salespeople's period-end sales performance. The authors find that a steadily growing sales trajectory in a sales period is more strongly associated with period-end success than a sales trajectory that is relatively flat early but has a sharp spike later in the period. Furthermore, although salespeople who had high performance in the prior month (i.e., high-performance state) may be able to draw on superior selling strategies (compared with other salespeople), they too experience a boost in sales performance in the current month by earning SPIs. Notably, the authors also find that although earning SPIs benefits all salespeople, there is a U-shaped relationship between a salesperson's performance state and his or her month-end sales performance. For any specific number of SPIs earned, the probability of meeting and exceeding month-end quotas is boosted more for salespeople with low- and high-performance states than for salespeople with a medium-performance state.

Category captainship (CC) is a retailing practice wherein a retailer collaborates with one of the manufacturers in a product category (referred to as the captain) to develop and implement a category management strategy. Although CC has been studied using both theoretical models and surveys, empirical evidence on the benefits and drawbacks of CC is scarce. The authors use a unique data set collected during a CC implementation to empirically examine the impact of CC on the retailer, the captain, and the other manufacturers in the category. The authors find that both the retailer's private label and the captain benefit from CC because of pricing and assortment changes. They also find that some competing manufacturers benefit from CC while others suffer. Specifically, the manufacturers that closely compete with the captain benefit, whereas the manufacturers that are in close competition with the private label suffer because the retailer protects its private label. The authors show that category sales would have been higher if the retailer had not protected its private label. This study sheds light on how joint consideration of assortment and pricing, the presence of a private label, and product characteristics may influence the outcomes of CC implementations.

Competing brands differ in the extent to which they offer a given feature as standard or optional in their product lines. In this article, the authors study the competitive basis for this difference in brands’ product line strategies. Specifically, they analyze the relationship between a brand's quality image and its propensity to offer a wider product line, from a relatively stripped-down base model to a more feature-rich model. They develop a conceptual framework and hypotheses by considering an analytical model with two vertically differentiated firms: They show that a low-quality firm would offer a feature as optional—that is, it would offer both a feature-added product and a stripped-down base product—if it chose to add the feature to its product. In contrast, a high-quality firm would offer the feature as a standard component unless the cost of the feature was high. This asymmetry in the propensity of high- and low-quality firms to offer optional and standard features with their products is tested using data from the U.S. passenger car market; the authors find empirical support for their model.

Although it seems intuitive for firms to leverage social connections and interactions to influence consumers’ goal attainment and spending, the authors present a caveat of such strategies. Using two large-scale data sets with more than 5 million people-day observations from online gaming markets, Studies 1 and 2 show consistently nonlinear effects. Although some social connections and interactions boost goal attainment and spending (positive linear term), after a certain point too many of them have a diminished marginal effect (negative squared term). The results are robust to a wide array of modeling techniques addressing self-selection, unobserved individual heterogeneity, and endogeneity. In addition, novices can benefit more from greater social connections and interactions, yet also suffer more from the diminishing effects. Regarding the underlying mechanism, the follow-up experiment Study 3 shows that consistent with the information processing theory, some social connections and interactions can provide information support for goal attainment, but too many of them can introduce an information overload problem and, thus, hamper goal attainment intention. Together, these findings refute a simple, linear view of the effects of social connections and interactions and provide pivotal theoretical and practical implications.

The authors propose a model relating a product's comparative price to the construal level of its associated communications and show how perceived expensiveness shapes consumers’ response to the wording of marketing communications. A series of six studies shows that for both absolute low- and high-cost product categories, comparatively expensive (inexpensive) products are preferred when accompanied by high-construal (low-construal) messages, due to the conceptual fluency of the “match” between price-induced psychological distance and construal level. The model provides novel implications for designing effective marketing communications: comparatively expensive versions of objectively low-priced products (e.g., an expensive chocolate truffle) are best promoted through more abstract slogans, whereas comparatively affordable versions of objectively high-priced products (e.g., an inexpensive diamond pendant) are best promoted using more concrete slogans. By emphasizing the link between comparative price and the matching level of construal, the authors contribute to a richer view of the interplay between price and product communication in marketing.

The business model for musicians relies on selling recorded music and selling concert tickets. Traditionally, demand for one format (e.g., concerts) would stimulate demand for the other format (e.g., recorded music) and vice versa, leading to an upward demand spiral. However, the market for recorded music is under pressure due to piracy and the unbundling of albums, which also entail threats for the traditional demand spiral. Despite the fundamental importance of recorded music and live concerts for the multibillion-dollar music industry, no prior research has studied their dynamic interplay. This study fills this void by developing new theory on how piracy, unbundling, artist fame, and music quality affect dynamic cross-format elasticities between record demand and concert demand. The theory is tested with a unique data set covering weekly concert and recorded music revenues for close to 400 artists across more than six years in the world's third-largest music market, Germany. The cross-format elasticity of record on concert revenue is much stronger than the reverse elasticity of concert on record revenue. The results show the key role of piracy, unbundling, and artist characteristics on these cross-format elasticities, which have implications for the business model of the music industry.