Rahul Govind

Geographic Patterns in Customer Service and Satisfaction: An Empirical Investigation

When firms’ customers are located in geographically dispersed areas, it can be difficult to manage service quality because its relative importance is likely to vary spatially. This article shows how addressing such spatial aspects of satisfaction data can improve managements ability to implement programs aimed at enhancing service quality. Specifically, managers can identify areas of high service responsiveness, that is, areas in which overall satisfaction is low but customers are highly responsive to improvements in service quality. The authors estimate the spatial patterns using geographically weighted regression, a technique that accounts for spatial dependence in the variables. They apply this methodology to a large national sample of automobile customers served by a network of dealerships across the United States. The authors also investigate the extent to which factors related to the physical and psychological landscape explain the importance that people in different regions place on dealership service and vehicle quality.

Increasing Student Engagement Using Asynchronous Learning

Student engagement is an ongoing concern for educators because of its positive association with deep learning and educational outcomes. This article tests the use of a social networking site (Facebook) as a tool to facilitate asynchronous learning opportunities that complement face-to-face interactions and thereby enable a stronger learning ecosystem. This student-centered learning approach offers a way to increase student engagement and can have a positive impact on academic outcomes. Using data from a longitudinal quasi-experiment, the authors show that students who participated in both face-to-face on-campus classes and asynchronous online learning opportunities were more engaged than students who only attended face-to-face classes. In addition, the findings show that participation in the asynchronous setting relates significantly and positively to students’ academic outcomes (final grades). The findings have notable implications for marketing education.

Geographic diversification, product diversification, and firm cash flow volatility: the moderating effect of firm dynamic capability

Abstract Literature is largely inconclusive on the effects of geographic diversification and production diversification on firm performance. This impedes the understanding of diversifications and hinders the decision-making process in global practice. Further, performance indicators in the literature are mainly constrained to the returns aspect of the firm. Risk side factors such as the volatility of cash flow are largely neglected. This paper explores the inconclusive pattern of diversifications from the perspectives proposed by resource-based theories and dynamic capability theories. It examines how firm capability dichotomizes the relationships between diversifications and firm cash flow volatility. Results confirm that capability the roles of both geographic and product diversifications. A high capability is a necessary condition by which diversification strategies by themselves, or their joint effort, can benefit the firm.

Segmentation of Spatially Dependent Geographical Units: Model and Application

We develop and test a new methodology that assigns geographical units (such as ZIP codes) to market segments by simultaneously considering bases of segmentation, such as customer attitudes and needs, such that the resulting segments display a high level of spatial concentration. Such concentrated segments are managerially desirable because of the logistical and administrative efficiencies created by implementing spatially concentrated segment-level strategies. The suggested approach captures spatial dependence flexibly while allowing us to identify managerially actionable segments that effectively balance homogeneity and spatial concentration. An illustrative empirical application demonstrates how the results can be utilized to derive consumer insights for actionable segmentation strategies. A Monte Carlo simulation and an assessment of the quality of the segments obtained from the empirical application support the value of the proposed spatially dependent segmentation method. This paper was accepted by P...

Product market diversification and market emphasis: Impacts on firm idiosyncratic risk in market turbulence

Purpose Extant literature indicates that increased product market diversification generates both positive and negative impact on firm performance. This inconclusive pattern hinders the decision-making of deploying a firm’s resources across different markets. Our research embeds diversification into a moderation-based framework and demonstrates the conditions under which increased diversification produces either beneficial or harmful effects on firm outcomes. The authors introduce another market configuration dimension, viz. market emphasis, and reveal how changes in diversification and in emphasis yield interactive effects on an important firm performance indicator, idiosyncratic risk. An additional moderator, market turbulence, is also incorporated to further enrich the model in a three-way interaction. Results show that when market turbulence is high, and a firm highly skews its resources to some of its markets, diversifying into more market domains will increase firm idiosyncratic risk. A better choice...

Geographically Varying Effects of Weather on Tobacco Consumption: Implications for Health Marketing Initiatives

Weather and its fluctuations have been found to influence the consumption of negative hedonic goods. However, such findings are of limited use to health marketers who cannot control the weather, and hence, its effects. The current research utilizes data obtained at the zip-code level to study geographical variations in the effect of weather on tobacco consumption across the entire continental United States. The results allow health marketers to identify areas that will be most responsive to marketing efforts aimed at curtailing negative hedonic consumption and thus implement more effective, region-specific initiatives.