Pat Auger

What Will Consumers Pay for Social Product Features

The importance of ethical consumerism to many companies worldwide has increased dramatically in recent years. Ethical consumerism encompasses the importance of non-traditional and social components of a companys products and business process to strategic success – such as environmental protectionism, child labor practices and so on. The present paper utilizes a random utility theoretic experimental design to provide estimates of the relative value selected consumers place on the social features of products.

Do What Consumers Say Matter? The Misalignment of Preferences with Unconstrained Ethical Intentions

Nearly all studies of consumers willingness to engage in ethical or socially responsible purchasing behavior is based on unconstrained survey response methods. In the present paper we ask the question of how well does asking consumers the extent to which they care about a specific social or ethical issue relate to how they would behave in a more constrained environment where there is no socially acceptable response. The results of a comparison between traditional survey questions of intention to purchase and estimates of individuals willingness-to-pay for social attributes in products reveal that simple survey questions are too noisy to provide operationally meaningful information and overstate intentions to a considerable extent.

Factors Affecting the Adoption of an Internet-Based Sales Presence for Small Businesses

The Internet has doubled in size every year in recent years and now spans the globe, facilitating the exchange of all matter of digital data. Recent development has been categorized by an explosion in new commercial activity. Despite overwhelming coverage in the popular press, relatively little is understood regarding the impact the Internet is having on firms that use this medium to facilitate commerce. Even less is understood about the impact on small enterprises-the largest segment of U.S., Japanese, and Western European businesses. This article reports the results of an exploratory study examining critical issues surrounding the use of the Internet in emerging enterprises. The survey (1) describes how small businesses develop and use their on-line sales presence, (2) explores factors that motivate firms to invest in electronic commerce, (3) assesses the importance of the expected benefits of an on-line sales presence on the decision to go on-line, and (4) examines some of the barriers that prevent sma...

Revenue streams and digital content providers: an empirical investigation

Abstract There is tremendous confusion among practitioners regarding the relationship between various potential online revenue streams and the performance of a firm’s online efforts. Such questions are of particular interest to firms that provide information goods, due to both the unique characteristics of such goods and the fact that such products are increasingly offered free by online providers. Using the magazine publishing industry as a context, this paper provides an empirical exploration of various revenue streams and relates them to manager assessment of the performance of the firm’s online efforts. These results present, to the authors’ knowledge, the first empirical exploration of the link between the performance of an online effort and various revenue streams pursued.

The Impact of Interactivity and Design Sophistication on the Performance of Commercial Websites for Small Businesses

This study of small businesses involved in Internet‐based electronic commerce focuses on the relationship between the design of a website and its performance. Specifically, this study examines the relationships between two design constructs, the level of interactivity and design sophistication, and two performance measures, an overall measure of performance and the number of visitors to the site. Furthermore, the study explores the role of two contingency variables, market turbulence and the age of the website, on these relationships. The results indicate that the level of interactivity of a website is positively associated with overall performance, but not associated with the number of visitors. Furthermore, market turbulence moderates the relationship between interactivity and performance so that the two constructs are positively associated under high levels of market turbulence but not associated under low levels of market turbulence. Results also show that design sophistication is associated with a greater number of visitors but not with overall performance. These findings suggest that the performance of a website is affected differently by different design constructs and that multidimensional measures of performance are necessary to properly evaluate performance.

Business process digitization, strategy, and the impact of firm age and size: the case of the magazine publishing industry

Abstract Despite increasing interest among researchers and practitioners in the field of Internet commerce, significant controversy remains regarding the large incumbent versus nimble newcomer dynamic. This paper explores issues related to firm age and size and the firms propensity to engage in Internet-enabled process digitization by conducting an empirical investigation based on a sample of 150 firms in the magazine publishing industry. Results suggest that (a) differences exist as a function of firm age and size in the degree and manner in which firms digitize business processes through the Internet, (b) Internet-enabled digitization of business processes is associated with both strategies of innovation and of low cost, and (c) the digitization–strategy relationship is stronger for new versus established firms and for smaller versus larger firms.

Strategic Orientation, Competition, and Internet-Based Electronic Commerce

This paper investigates the relationship between strategic orientation, competition, and Internet-based electronic commerce. We propose that firms use the Internet to support their strategy, and in a manner that will help them compete in their environment. We use technology policy and entrepreneurial orientation as examples of strategic orientations, focusing on (a) the extent to which linkages exist between these orientations and conducting business activities over the Internet, and (b) whether these linkages vary as a function of the competitive intensity of the environment in which the firm operates. Analyses are based on a sample of 150 firms from the magazine publishing industry. Our results show that the more aggressive the technology policy and the stronger the entrepreneurial orientation, the more the firm uses the Internet to conduct business activities. More important, the competitive intensity of the business environment moderated these relationships: Technology policy and entrepreneurial orientation were associated with the use of Internet-based electronic commerce under high levels of competitive intensity, but significantly less so under low levels of competitive intensity.

An empirical investigation of the Miles and Snow typology for small online businesses

The World Wide Web is becoming an increasingly important strategic tool for businesses around the world. The web offers businesses the ability to promote their products, conduct market research, deliver customer services, and sell their products directly to an ever-growing number of internet users worldwide. However, very little is known about how businesses should strategically leverage the capabilities of this new medium. This article presents the results of an empirical study of the Miles and Snow typology to describe the strategies of small businesses involved in web-based electronic commerce. The results demonstrate that the Miles and Snow typology can be extended to the realm of electronic commerce and that the strategies followed by online businesses are consistent with previous empirical findings. Furthermore, the results lend further support to the validity and usefulness of the typology and to the concept of co-alignment.

Inertia and Discounting in the Selection of Socially Responsible Investments: An Experimental Investigation

Socially responsible investment funds (SRIs) have grown dramatically as an investment alternative in most of the developed world. This is an important development from a managerial perspective since the criteria used to qualify for inclusion in these funds could influence the decisions and behaviors of managers with regards to their CSR practices. However, little is known about how investors select SRI funds and how they allocate their investments in these funds. This study uses a structured experimental approach to determine if the decision-making process of investors to invest in SRIs is consistent with the decision-making used for conventional investments. Our theoretical framework draws on two widely studied concepts in the decision-making and investment literature, namely, inertia and discounting. For our 704 respondents we find that inertia plays a significant role in the selection of SRI funds and that they systemically discount the value of SRIs. Furthermore, the level of discounting of SRIs was positively related to the risk level of the investments. Our results suggest that SRIs need to be designed to cater to the risk/return profiles of investors and that these investors need to be better informed about the performance of SRIs versus conventional investments in order to reduce their systematic discounting.

Inertia and discounting in the selection of socially responsible investments: An experimental investigation

Purpose Socially responsible investment (SRI) funds have grown dramatically as an investment alternative in most of the developed world. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a structured experimental approach to determine if the decision-making process of investors to invest in SRIs is consistent with the process used for conventional investments. The theoretical framework draws on two widely studied concepts in the decision making and investment literature, namely, inertia and discounting. Findings The authors find that inertia plays a significant role in the selection of SRI funds and that investors systemically discount the value of SRIs. Research limitations/implications The results suggest that SRIs need to be designed to cater to the risk/return profiles of investors and that these investors need to be better informed about the performance of SRIs vs conventional investments to reduce their systematic discounting. Originality/value Unique experimental approach applied to investment alternatives in a manner that captures individual level variation.