J. Barry Mason

Multisegment analysis of supermarket patronage

Abstract This study evaluates the efficacy of different customer segmentation approaches in developing a better understanding of consumer choice among competing supermarkets in an urban setting. The analysis focuses on the differential impact of patronage-influencing variables within and across three different segmentation alternatives in a choice modeling context. A key objective is to determine whether one segmentation approach can yield a better understanding of retail choice than other segmentation approaches or a single aggregate model. If “best” approaches for segmenting the market are discovered for different situations, the findings will enable retail offerings to be targeted to key groups of customers more flexity and effectively. The supermarket industry was selected because of the “veritable explosion” in recent years of “meaningfully differentiated” retail formats. These specific store formats, such as “hypermarkets, warehouse stores, super combos, fresh food superstores, and limited assortment discount stores” (Arnold et al., 1983 p. 149), are designed to include specific groups of people who shop outlets other than the closest one to their homes by offering and promoting attributes mixes targeted directly at them. While such efforts are still in their infancy, future success in customer targeting strategies in this and other retail industries will increasingly depend on the ability to segment the market effectively. This study of different approaches for segment-based patronage modeling should therefore lead to significantly improved understanding of the retail market and, ultimately, better strategic decisions by retail firms.

Marketing Education in the 1990s: A Dean’s Retrospective and Prospective View

B-schools are entering an era characterized by constrained budgets, pressures for increased productivity, and increased regulation and oversight. The responses are varied but typically reflect the application of such corporate sector concepts as reengineering, benchmarking, learning alliances, and partnerships. Other responses include an acceleration in distance learning programs, technology investments to accelerate faculty productivity, restructuring of programs in the context of mission driven accreditation, and efforts to reduce the cost and amount of time needed to complete a degree. Faculty, in the face of such initiatives, must have assurance that quality remains supreme and that every action taken is supportive of the College’s mission statement.

Determinants of Physician and Pharmacist Support of Generic Drugs

A recursive model depicting a theoretical chain between hypothesized determinants of support for generic drug practices was examined using a maximum likelihood estimation procedure, and applied to samples of 412 physicians and 118 pharmacists. Results suggest that confidence in regulation, potential savings, and impact on drug research represent plausible determinants of physician and pharmacist support of generic drugs.

Relationship Management: Strategic Marketing’s Next Source of Competitive Advantage

This paper integrates two major themes, relationships in business contexts and strategic marketing. Strategic marketing must be understood as the way marketing is carried out in a firm, not as the province of but a select few firm members. Given this theoretical understanding, we develop the idea that how the firm manages relationship processes, consumer and business alike, is fully a strategic marketing issue and not an issue for an unnecessary new marketing paradigm entitled relationship marketing. Insights from consumers are discussed and then a relationship continuum is presented with its associated managerial implications.

Evolution of a Retail Market Area: An Event-History Model of Spatial Diffusion

AbstractWe model the development of the market area around a newly opened retailer in terms of the diffusion of individual consumer adoptions across time and space. The large number of such events ...

Empirical Evidence on Marketplace Alienation

This article reports the results of a two-wave consumer panel study (n = 749) of the relationship between consumer alienation and a number of variables and issues reported in previous research to be of interest to consumer affairs theorists and practitioners. The results suggest that consumer alienation warrants consideration in subsequent explanations of consumer issues. Consumer complaints, however, do not appear to be necessarily manifestations of a general alienated consumer segment, as has been previously suggested.

Marketing Strategies and the Business Cycle

Marketing executives frequently have difficulty developing cohesive and consistent strategies because uf what they perceive as erratic and unpredictable shifts in the economy. During the late 1970s, for example, executives planned on the basis of expected continuing high inflation, high unemployment, and high raw materials prices. Yet, within three years interest rates had dropped from a high of approximately 20 per cent to below 10 per cent. Raw materials prices also dropped rapidly, as did the prices of many finished goods. Continuing deflationary pressures have characterized many sectors of the US economy since the early 1980s [1,2] with unprecedented 2.9 per cent and even 0 per cent financing rates for new automobiles in the United States as a continuing reflection of this reality. The frustration of corporate strategists in the above circumstances is understandable. They need to be able to anticipate the future so as to avoid potential threats and take advantage of pending opportunities. Yet, without a cohesive conceptual framework for separating transitory events from long term economic trends, their task is difficult, if not impossible. The objectives of this article are thus to: a) review the underlying bases for long term macroeconomic trends in the economy, b) suggest a framework for separating transitory from long term trends, and c) highlight appropriate marketing responses at the level of the firm to the various phases of cyclical economic activity.

Analysis of covariance for the removal of temporal effects in experiments with serial treatments

This research demonstrates the value of analysis of covariance for removing temporal effects from data collected through a retail experiment in which treatments are applied sequentially in a single store with rest periods interposed between treatments. Time series factors which were significant at the 0.05 level in a stepwise, dummy variable, multiple regression analysis became covariates in the analysis of variance models for both the treatment week data and the rest week data of each experimental product. For three of the four experimental products, the regression analysis revealed time series factors which may have affected the experimental treatments. For two of the experimental products, time series factors adversely affected the traditional ANOVA models. However, the application of analysis of covariance successfully removed the effects of these factors from the ANOVA models.

Functional marketing plan development in department store retailing

Retailers are now implementing the types of formal marketing planning programs that have long characterized consumer goods firms. The functional marketing plans that are developed tend to be a year or less in duration. The primary responsibility for developing the plans resides with the general merchandise manager. The planning efforts of the retailing executive, in spite of their short term nature, do reflect an awareness of the importance of understanding the strengths and weaknesses of competitors and of the need to spell out issues involving profit planning, sales promotion planning, merchandise addition/deletion decisions, and issues involving inventory/physical distribution. A variety of marketing plans are developed. Separate plans are developed by merchandise lines in many organizations.

Replicating the Effect of Advertised Specials at Regular Price on Food Shopper Price Evaluation

Abstract This study verifies a previous finding that food shoppers can correctly identify the advertised price level for items featured at the regular price in the context of a newspaper ad. Morever, advertising regular-priced items in prominent positions did not materially affect their price accuracy scores.