Niek Althuizen

“Notable” or “Not Able” When Are Acts of Inconsistency Rewarded?

Atypical practices of crossing categories or genres are generally discouraged in the market, but the ideal of the Renaissance mind1 persists. Building on recent work elaborating the need to reward the greater risk associated with atypicality for it to survive, this article provides the first systematic, direct evidence for such a reward. We focus on stylistic inconsistency—mixing distinct artistic styles. In a between-subject experimental design, 183 subjects estimated the aesthetic and market value of consistent and inconsistent sets of artworks by Pablo Picasso in three status conditions. Controlling for cognitive difficulties posed by inconsistency, we show that inconsistency is rewarded (i.e., evaluated higher than consistency on aesthetic value) only at high status. Status cues guide perception so that inconsistent works by a prominent artist are given the benefit of the doubt and interpreted as a sign of creativity. The association with creativity leads to a reward for atypicality in the absence of tangible proof that it performs better than typicality.

Advances in Marketing Management Support Systems

This chapter discusses recent advances in the field of marketing management support systems (MMSS). We start with a short history of marketing management support systems, with special attention to marketing models, the core topic of this Handbook. In Section 17.2 we describe developments which have improved the quality of MMSS and favor their use for marketing decision making in current marketing practice. Section 17.3 presents our growing know-ledge about the factors that affect the adoption and use of MMSS. In Section 17.4 we discuss developments in a new category of marketing management support systems, i.e. systems that support decision-making for weakly structured marketing problems.

Help that is not recognized: Harmful neglect of decision support systems

Decision support systems (DSSs) aim to enhance the performance of decision makers, but to do so DSSs have to be adopted and used. Technology acceptance research shows that user evaluations (i.e., beliefs, perceptions, and attitudes) are key drivers of adoption and use. This article first presents evidence from the literature suggesting that the link between user evaluations of DSSs and actual performance may be weak, or sometimes even negative. The authors then present two empirical studies in which they found a serious disconnect between user evaluations and actual performance. If user evaluations do not accurately reflect performance, then this may lead to harmful neglect of performance-enhancing DSSs. The article concludes with a discussion of interventions that may alleviate this problem.

The Effects of IT-Enabled Cognitive Stimulation Tools on Creative Problem Solving: A Dual Pathway to Creativity

Abstract We investigate the effectiveness of three types of IT-enabled cognitive stimulation tools for enhancing creative problem solving: mind mappers, process guides, and stimuli providers. Based on the dual pathway to creativity models, the authors examine the extent to which these tools are capable of stimulating individuals to explore their knowledge base more deeply (i.e., the persistence pathway) and more broadly (i.e., the flexibility pathway) and, hence, help to produce more novel ideas. In a laboratory study with business students, they find that, as compared to unaided individuals, IT-enabled stimuli providers enhance individual creativity more than process guides and mind mappers. As for the underlying creative process, stimuli providers push individuals to explore their knowledge base more deeply and more broadly, leading to more novel but, unexpectedly, also more useful ideas. The reported findings may facilitate the development of creativity support systems and their assignment to individuals and tasks.

Managerial Decision-Making in Marketing: Matching the Demand and Supply Side of Creativity

This article provides an overview of creativity research in marketing and offers a novel framework for matching the demand and supply side of creativity. The demand side comprises the marketing problem domain and the specifics of the task, which will influence how much emphasis management places on the originality versus usefulness of the generated ideas or solutions. The supply side includes individual and organizational resources that management can put to use for boosting creativity. Based on contemporary creative cognition research, this article distinguishes the following pathways to creativity: fluency, persistence, and flexibility. Examples of common marketing decisions, including their need for creativity, the emphasis placed on originality versus usefulness, and the pathway(s) that may lead to the desired level of creativity, are used to illustrate how the presented framework for matching the demand and supply side of creativity can guide managerial decision-making. This article concludes with a discussion of creativity research priorities in marketing.

Using structural technology acceptance models to segment intended users of a new technology: Propositions and an empirical illustration

This article aims to offer an alternative method to analyse technology acceptance models, namely a segment‐wise analysis. The empirical illustration of this method involves data that were collected during a company‐wide implementation of a Sales Force Automation technology in Europe. The data comprise a variety of commonly used technology‐related, context‐related, and person‐related variables. The segmentation procedure, which involved a finite mixture partial least squares estimation, provides more insight into the different ways in which people come to accept new technologies. Unlike other segmentation studies published in IS journals, the resulting segments are based on similarities and differences in the structure of the underlying theoretical models rather than (a collection of) individual variables. Further research or a re‐analysis of existing data should help establish robust “technology acceptance model”‐based segments as well as comprehensive profiles of the individuals in each segment.

Is It a Masterpiece? Social Construction and Objective Constraint in the Evaluation of Excellence:

A key question in scholarship on evaluation is the extent to which the role of social construction is constrained by objective reality. This question is addressed in an analysis of the evaluation of artistic excellence. In an online experiment, we manipulate the subjective social status (both artwork and artist) and the degree of aesthetic complexity of the artwork. The results confirm the independent role of the objective aesthetic factor in art evaluation. Most importantly, we document an interaction between subjective and objective factors whereby aesthetic complexity serves as a credibility lever, amplifying or attenuating the credibility of the status labels. Excessive praise (i.e., a masterpiece by a world-famous artist) tends to reduce the appreciation of aesthetically simple artworks when status labels are questioned. However, the association of aesthetic complexity with the capacity to provoke thought may encourage respondents to take the paintings more seriously. Complexity is typically discouraged for standard products, but it can be instrumental in the process of singularization by stimulating visual exploration and sustaining interest over time.