John Deighton

The Consumption of Performance

This article develops a vocabulary to describe the management of performance and the nature of consumer judgments of staged performance quality. It distinguishes three kinds of performance--contractual, enacted, and dramatistic. While all marketing actions are by nature dramatistic, this article explores how marketing can obscure the traces of dramatism by reframing the performance as contractual or enacted. Alternatively, marketing may seek to emphasize a performances dramatistic character, selecting among skill, show, thrill, or festive frames. I apply this framework to examine the issue of the quality of performances. Copyright 1992 by the University of Chicago.

Using Drama to Persuade

Television ads can be classified as either arguments or dramas or hybrids of these forms. We claim that form dimension influences how ads are processed. An argument backs its claims with appeals to objectivity and is processed evaluatively. A drama appeals more to subjective criteria and is processed empathically. A study is reported in which 40 television commercials were classified on a dramatization scale. They were shown to 1,215 people, and measures of evaluative and empathic processing were taken. The measures were found to be weighted differently for arguments and dramas, supporting the contention that form influences processing. Copyright 1989 by the University of Chicago.

The Interaction of Advertising and Evidence

Recent advertising research appears to neglect the role of evidence in persuasion. From work on confirmatory bias in the field of behavioral decision theory, this paper argues for an interaction between advertising and evidence on evaluations, and finds experimental support for the interaction. Implications are drawn for advertising testing and for hierarchy models of advertising effects.

Negotiated belief structures and decision performance: An empirical investigation

Abstract When a group approaches a decision, each member may hold a schema for the information domain of the issue in question. A negotiated belief structure represents the politically enacted collection of schemata employed by the group in their deliberations. The aggregation of these schemata is marked by two structural properties—realized coverage and realized consensus. An examination of 713 product decisions made by 29 firms in a simulated business environment indicates that these structural properties are systematically related to product and firm performance.

Marketing and Seduction: Building Exchange Relationships by Managing Social Consensus

We distinguish seduction from persuasion and other ways to draw consumers into exchange relationships. A legal case involving the prosecution of a mail fraud known as Chonda-Za is used to illustrate seduction, and the concept is defined in terms of social constructionist theory. We identify five stages in the unfolding of a seduction and draw parallels and contrasts to the formation of a normal exchange relationship. We explore the enrollment stage in more detail and model it as a matter of inducing consumers to accept progressively more involving role agreements. The distinction between legitimate and illegitimate seduction is also examined. Copyright 1995 by the University of Chicago.

Adding Bricks to Clicks: Predicting the Patterns of Cross-Channel Elasticities over Time

The authors propose a conceptual framework to explain whether and when the introduction of a new retail store channel helps or hurts sales in existing direct channels. A conceptual framework separates short- and long-term effects by analyzing the capabilities of a channel that help consumers accomplish their shopping goals. To test the theory, the authors analyze a unique data set from a high-end retailer using matching methods. The authors study the introduction of a retail store and find evidence of cross-channel cannibalization and synergy. The presence of a retail store decreases sales in the catalog but not the Internet channel in the short run but increases sales in both direct channels over time. Following the opening of the store, more first-time customers begin purchasing in the direct channels. These results suggest that adding a retail store to direct channels yields different results from adding an Internet channel to a retail store channel, as previous research has indicated.

A Situational Model Development in Hospitality Retailing: The Case of Irish Pubs

The article reviews the evolution from brand-centered marketing to customer-centered marketing and the beginnings of a focus on viewing the customer as an asset. It illustrates the practice by describing the use of a loyalty program to identify and respond to high-potential customers in the market for business-class hotels. Next, it considers seven challenges that impede wider adoption of customer equity management and concludes with a schematic model of customer-centered marketing management.

Forward-Looking Focus: Can Firms Have Adaptive Foresight?

Customer metrics are pivotal to assessing and monitoring how firms perform with customers and other publics. The authors contend that customer metrics used by firms today are predominantly rear-view mirrors reporting the past or dashboards reporting the present. They argue that companies need to and can develop “adaptive foresight” to be positioned to predict the future by exploiting changes in the business environment and anticipating customer behavior. They address the need for adaptive foresight by synthesizing and integrating literature on customer metrics, customer relationship management, customer asset management, and customer portfolio management. They begin by reviewing the metrics that have been and are currently being used to capture customer focus. Next, they discuss possible “headlight” or forward-looking customer metrics that would allow firms to anticipate changes and provide opportunities to increase the value of the customer base. They then identify the conditions under which the new metrics would be appropriate and offer a process for developing adaptive foresight. The authors close by discussing the implications of adaptive foresight for successful customer asset management that increases long-run business performance.

The impact of internet exchanges on business-to-business distribution

The authors review an incumbent business-to-business distributor of electronic components faced with the entry of more than 50 Internet-based competitors and offer an explanation for why the distributor prevailed. Underlying the explanation is an assertion that the appropriate unit of analysis is the buyer-distributor-seller triad, not the buyer-seller dyad. In the case examined, the channel activities were interrelated such that when each party calculated the costs and benefits of the activities that occurred within this three-way relationship, they outweighed the net gains from disintermediation or Internet intermediation. Particular conditions favoring the status quo included existing activities for sharing customer identification information between the distributor and the seller, a high proportion of negotiated distributor-customer contracts, and new entrants’ reliance on open technologies. While no claims are made about the generalizability of this explanation beyond the case studied, the authors believe their assertion and hypotheses may have broader applicability.

Choice in Computer-Mediated Environments

In the last several years, the increased diffusion of computer andtelecommunications technologies in businesses and homes has produced newways for organizations to connect with their customers. These computermediated environments (CMEs) such as the World Wide Web raise new researchquestions. In this paper, we examine the potential research issuesassociated with CMEs in five areas: (1) decision processes, (2) advertisingand communications, (3) brand choice, (4) brand communities, and (5)pricing.