Browsing by Author "Coupey, Eloise"

Now showing 1 - 12 of 12
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    Achieving Late-Mover Advantage: The Effects of Enhancing and Distinctive Strategies
    Zhou, Zheng (Virginia Tech, 2002-04-10)
    Despite the fact that most firms are late entrants in any product market, research on how to achieve a late-mover advantage is limited and lags behind the theoretical work on first-mover advantage. The strategic choice a late mover can utilize to compete against the pioneer is largely underdeveloped. Further, extant studies provide contradictory arguments and predictions regarding the efficacy of two basic late entry strategies: an enhancing strategy (providing a late entrant with enhanced features along existing product attributes) and a distinctive strategy (adding new or unique features to a late entrant' offering). The goal of this dissertation is to better understand the underlying behavioral mechanisms that enable a late entrant to compete with a successful pioneer and thereby address this inconsistency in the literature. Taking a category-based learning perspective, it is proposed that new brands are learned through a comparison process with existing brands. In the process, common features are evaluated in a category-based mode while unique features are processed in a piecemeal fashion. Two behavioral mechanisms are identified — discrepancy effects (i.e., perceived differentiation) which add to the late entrant's visibility and attractiveness, and ambiguity effects (comparison difficulty and perceived performance risk) that lessen the late entrant's attractiveness. Product category familiarity is proposed as the key moderator that affects the salience of each behavioral mechanism and hence the effectiveness of late entry strategies. Three experiments were designed to test the proposed perspective. It was found that common features are the focus of comparison in unfamiliar product classes and unique features receive particular attention in familiar product classes. Accordingly, ambiguity effects become more salient in unfamiliar product categories while differentiation effects are more prominent in familiar product cases. Further, a distinctive strategy is both more differentiated and more ambiguous than an enhancing strategy. Thus, a distinctive strategy is more effective in a familiar product class due to its attention-grabbing nature. An enhancing strategy is more successful in a novel or unfamiliar product class because of low levels of ambiguity. These findings provide important implications for product entry and positioning strategies as well as for further research.
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    Bundling and Consumer Evaluations of Individual Bundle Components
    Sheng, Shibin (Virginia Tech, 2004-04-12)
    Drawing from mental accounting, reference price, attribution and categorization theories, we propose that bundle price discounts will influence perceived prices and quality of the individual bundle components, thus influence purchase intentions. Meanwhile, we investigate how these bundling effects interplay with the forms of bundling, complementarity and brand images of bundle components. The empirical results indicate that the impact of bundle price discount on evaluations of individual bundle components varies across bundling forms. In a mixed-joint bundle, the price discount increases consumer perceptions of the regular price of bundle components, but does not change quality perceptions. In a mixed-leader bundle, the price discount hurt consumer price and quality evaluations of the discounted product, but increased the undiscounted product's perceived quality. These effects are moderated by complementarity and the brand images of bundle components. Implications of these findings for marketing researchers and managers are presented along with suggestions for further research.
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    A Case Study of an Interdisciplinary Design Course for Pervasive Computing
    Coupey, Eloise; McNair, Lisa D. (IEEE, 2010)
    This paper provides a case study of an interdisciplinary design project course for pervasive computing products. As a team of faculty from computer engineering, industrial design, and marketing, we have run several interdisciplinary design projects with teams of undergraduates from those disciplines. Our paper will detail our process for each of these projects and how that process has evolved with each offering of the course.
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    Development of a Responsible Policy Index to Improve Statutory and Self-Regulatory Policies that Protect Children’s Diet and Health in the America’s Region
    Rincón-Gallardo Patiño, Sofía; Rajamohan, Srijith; Meaney, Kathleen; Coupey, Eloise; Serrano, Elena L.; Hedrick, Valisa E.; da Silva Gomes, Fabio; Polys, Nicholas F.; Kraak, Vivica (MDPI, 2020-01-13)
    In 2010, 193 Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed World Health Assembly Resolution WHA63.14 to restrict the marketing of food and beverage products high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) to children to prevent obesity and non-communicable diseases (NCDs). No study has examined HFSS marketing policies across the WHO regional office countries in the Americas. Between 2018 and 2019, a transdisciplinary team examined policies to restrict HFSS food and beverage product marketing to children to develop a responsible policy index (RESPI) that provides a quality score based on policy characteristics and marketing techniques. After designing the RESPI, we conducted a comprehensive literature review through October 2019 to examine policies in 14 countries in the WHO Americans Region. We categorized policies (n = 38) as either self-regulatory or statutory and calculated the RESPI scores, ranked from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest). Results showed Brazil, Canada, Chile, and Uruguay had the highest RESPI scores associated with statutory policies that restricted point of sale, cartoon, licensed media characters and celebrities; and HFSS products in schools and child care settings, and broadcast and print media. Policymakers can use the RESPI tool to evaluate marketing policies within and across geopolitical boundaries to protect children’s diet and health.
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    Emotional Reasoning and Decision Making: understanding and regulating emotions that serve people's goals
    Peter, Paula Caterina (Virginia Tech, 2007-04-11)
    Increasing physical activity and adopting a healthy diet have the goal to enhance consumer welfare. The goal of this set of studies is to contribute to a research agenda that tries to support and enhance the life of consumers, through the exploration of emotional intelligence as a new possible avenue of research related to consumer behavior and health. Four studies are proposed that look at the possibility to introduce emotional intelligence in decision making and performance related to health (i.e. adoption and maintenance of a healthy diet/weight). The findings suggest the salient role of emotional reasoning (i.e. understanding and regulation of emotions) on decision making and performance related to health. Training on emotional intelligence and health seems to activate mechanisms that help people to use their knowledge in the right direction in order to make better decisions and improve performance related to health (i.e. adoption/maintenance of healthy diet/weight).
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    An Examination of the Relationship Between Ethical Work Climate and Moral Awareness
    VanSandt, Craig V. (Virginia Tech, 2001-08-20)
    This dissertation draws from the fields of history, sociology, psychology, moral philosophy, and organizational theory to establish a theoretical connection between a social/organizational influence (Ethical Work Climate) and an individual cognitive element of moral behavior (moral awareness). The research was designed to help fill a gap in the existing literature by providing empirical evidence of the connection between organizational influences and individual ethical choices, which has heretofore largely been merely assumed. Additional aspects of moral behavior beyond moral judgment, as suggested by the Four Component Model (Rest, 1994) were investigated. Extensively relying on the work of Victor and Cullen (1987, 1988), Rest (1979, 1986, 1994), and Blum (1991, 1994), seven hypotheses were formulated and tested to determine the nature of the direct relationship between the organizational level Ethical Work Climate and individual level moral awareness, and that relationship as moderated by four demographic and individual variables. Seven of the climate types identified by Cullen, Victor, and Bronson (1993) were replicated in the present study. All three of the hypotheses pertaining to the direct relationship between Ethical Work Climate and moral awareness were supported, as were three of the four hypotheses related to the moderating variables. These results provide evidence that Ethical Work Climate is a primary predictor of individual moral awareness, and that social influence often overrides the effects of individual differences is a work group setting. Implications for future research are provided.
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    An Information Processing Perspective on Between-Brand Price Premiums: Antecedents and Consequences of Motivation
    Mandrik, Carter A. (Virginia Tech, 1999-06-15)
    This dissertation examines between-brand price premiums from an information processing perspective. A literature review is conducted in which price premiums are shown to depend on consumer's ability, motivation and opportunity to process information relevant to making between-brand judgments of value. A conceptual model is developed that incorporates these three constraints on brand information processing, but focuses on the antecedents of the motivation construct. An experiment is conducted that tests the effects on information processing of four antecedents to motivation: involvement, brand evaluation motive, economic concern, and need for cognition. Results show that involvement interacts with motive in its effect on information processing amount, but not on processing style. Need for cognition is positively related to both amount and style of processing, but the economic concern results were mixed. Finally, implications of the results are discussed and future research directions suggested.
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    Security Architecture for the TEAMDEC System
    Wang, Haiyuan (Virginia Tech, 2000-05-02)
    The prevalence of the Internet, client/server applications, Java, e-commerce, and electronic communications offers tremendous opportunities for business, education and communication, while simultaneously presenting big challenges to network security. In general, the web was designed with little concern for security. Thus, the issue of security is important in the design of network-based applications. The software architecture proposed in this thesis allows for the secure and efficient running of a team-based decision support system, specifically TEAMDEC. Based on the system's requirements and architecture, three types of possible attacks to the system are identified and a security solution is proposed that allows for user authentication, secure communication, and script access control. The implementation of these features will reduce security risk and allow effective use of the valuable system information data.
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    Self-Organizing Units in an Interdisciplinary Course for Pervasive Computing Design
    McNair, Lisa D.; Newswander, Chad; Coupey, Eloise; Dorsa, Edward A.; Martin, Tom; Paretti, Marie C. (ASEE, 2009-06)
    We conducted a case study of a design course that focused on bringing together students from engineering, industrial design, and marketing to use pervasive computing technologies to design, coordinate, and build a “smart” dorm room for disabled individuals. The class was loosely structured to encourage innovation, critical thinking and interdisciplinarity. In this environment, teams were created, disassembled, and re-created in a self-organizing fashion. With few norms, teams were expected to be interdisciplinary, form quickly, and work together by creatively integrating their disciplinary expertise. In observing this semester-long class, we found certain conditions that will enhance pedagogical tools designed to expedite team formation and improve collaborative practices in a classroom setting. Similar to open source software development, we found that groups can form randomly in a loosely coordinated environment that is both self-managing and self-directing if instructors create a strong normative foundation to the class. In this case study, we observed that the applied concept of self-organizing buffered with strong faculty input invests group members with a greater commitment to be productive, effective, and innovative.
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    Situativity Approaches for Improving Interdisciplinary Team Processes
    Kim, Kahyun; McNair, Lisa D.; Coupey, Eloise; Martin, Tom; Dorsa, Edward A.; Kemnitzer, Ron (ASEE, 2010)
    Interdisciplinary teaming requires not only multiple levels of expertise but also social competencies gained through interactive contexts. In the classroom, a situativity approach that encourages student engagement can help students learn to value differing perspectives. To foster students’ interdisciplinary collaborative skills, an interdisciplinary capstone design class that brings students and faculty from electrical and computer engineering, industrial design, and marketing was developed and twelve fourth-year students participated (four from each discipline). The students were tasked with designing a next generation firefighter helmet that incorporates innovative computing technology. Various interventions such as learning modules and teaming exercises were implemented throughout the class to help students learn how to communicate across disciplines. Direct observation, interviews, questionnaires, and assessment of course assignments indicated both benefits and limitations of the class. Implications and future directions are also discussed.
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    Subculture of Deer Hunters and the Negotiation of Masculinity: An Ethnographic Investigation of Hunting in the Rural South
    Littlefield, Jonathan (Virginia Tech, 2006-11-16)
    Hunting is an important recreational activity for many men in the rural south and as such, it represents a backdrop from which to view the social development of masculinity within families and among the community of adult men. Despite the importance of this activity, little research has examined the consumption implications of and socialization into hunting. This project uses the ethnographic methods of participant observation and depth interviews to examine the role of hunting in socializing men through stages of development from neophytes to competent hunters, and describes five groups into which these hunters may develop. While current conceptualizations of community in the consumer research literature, including subcultures of consumption (Schouten and McAlexander 1995), brand communities (Muñiz and O'Guinn 2001), and tribal marketing (Cova and Cova 2002), describe phenomena that are of relatively short duration and are highly market mediated, I suggest an alternate conceptualization of community that includes the long family socialization process--often covering multiple generations within families--and activities that may be less market mediated than those previously studied.
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    Teamdec: a Group Decision Support System
    Chen, Qian Jr. (Virginia Tech, 1998-07-29)
    TEAMDEC is a Group Decision Support System (GDSS). The development of a GDSS is supported by a broad spectrum of theories and techniques. Two major aspects of GDSS development were considered in TEAMDEC design: HCI and decision-making assistance. These two aspects interact to promote an interactive group decision support system with high quality. Decision guidance using a script-based knowledge representation improves the GDSS's efficiency, effectiveness, and flexibility. The traditional script, however, is relatively inflexible. The proposed application, TEAMDEC, provides a set of solutions to support customization in a script system to enhance the decision guidance utilization. The user interface design plays an important role in the overall system design. Two software development models (lifecycle model and V-model with backtracking) are adopted for TEAMDEC development. The user interface design of TEAMDEC is considered from three perspectives: functional, aesthetic, and structural. Quality is emphasized in the development of the interactive system. It can be measured from two perspectives: those of the user and the designer. The quality measures of TEAMDEC are categorized into external properties and internal properties, corresponding to the two perspectives.