Consumer Behavior Throw a dice to find your price Consumer reactions to gambled price discounts Type: Advisor: Literature:

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1 Consumer Behavior Throw a dice to find your price Consumer reactions to gambled price discounts Classical price promotion formats can lower reference prices. Hence, companies are looking for alternative price discount designs. Gambled price promotions might have a positive impact on demand without lowering internal reference prices and can, thus, be more sustainable. These promotions are characterized by uncertainty about the absolute magnitude of the price discount. Despite the theoretical and practical relevance, gambled price discounts constitute a largely underresearched area. The aim of this thesis is to first review the literature on the topic. Second, you should conduct an experiment to explore customer reactions to gambled price discounts. Type: Experiment; customer survey Advisor: Andreas Polthier Ailawadi, K. L., Gedenk, K., Langer, T., Ma, Y., & Neslin, S. A. (2014), "Consumer response to uncertain promotions: an empirical analysis of conditional rebates," International Journal of Research in Marketing, 31(1), Alavi, S., Bornemann, T. & Wieseke, J. (2015), "Gambled Price Discounts: A Remedy to the Negative Side Effects of Regular Price Discounts," Journal of Marketing, 79(2), Dhar, S. K., Gonzalez-Vallejo, C., & Soman, D. (1995), "Brand promotions as a lottery," Marketing Letters, 6(3), Goldsmith, K., & Amir, O. (2010), "Can uncertainty improve promotions?," Journal of Marketing Research, 47(6), Laran, J., & Tsiros, M. (2013), "An investigation of the effectiveness of uncertainty in marketing promotions involving free gifts," Journal of Marketing, 77(2),

2 Page 2 Slice the price to make innovations look nice? Partitioned pricing for new products Partitioned pricing is a practice whereby firms divide the prices they charge customers into two or more mandatory parts instead of charging one all-inclusive price. Partitioned pricing can positively impact purchase-related variables under certain conditions (e.g. small number of price components). However, research on the application of partitioned pricing in the context of innovations is largely lacking. The aim of this thesis is to explore partitioned pricing in the context of pricing of innovations. First, the thesis should provide a literature review on partitioned pricing. Second, in-depth interviews with customers shall be conducted to find out how they react to partitioned pricing vs. classical all-inclusive pricing of innovations. Type: In-depth interviews Advisor: Andreas Polthier Carlson, J. P., & Weathers, D. (2008), "Examining differences in consumer reactions to partitioned prices with a variable number of price components," Journal of Business Research, 61(7), Hamilton, R. W., & Srivastava, J. (2008), "When 2+ 2 is not the same as 1+ 3: Variations in price sensitivity across components of partitioned prices," Journal of Marketing Research, 45(4), Kuester, S., Feurer, S., Schuhmacher, M. C., & Reinartz, D. (2015). "Comparing the incomparable? How consumers judge the price fairness of new products, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 32(3), Morwitz, V. G., Greenleaf, E. A., & Johnson, E. J. (1998), "Divide and prosper: consumers' reactions to partitioned prices," Journal of Marketing Research, 35(4), Thaler, R. (1985), "Mental accounting and consumer choice," Marketing science, 4(3),

3 Page 3 Cognition, Feeling, or Both? Conceptualizing Trust in the Real of Innovation Adoption Uncertainty is inherent in the purchase of innovations. Researchers agree that trust helps consumers to overcome perceptions of uncertainty. Although a large body of research is concerned with trust, a clear and uniform conceptualization of trust does not exist. The various conceptualizations of trust range from trust being defined as a purely cognitive construct to an affect- and cognition-based construct to a basic emotion. The aim of this thesis is to provide an extensive literature review on the existing trust literature of different literature streams in order to identify similarities and differences of the various conceptualizations of trust. In doing so, a wellinformed definition of trust shall be derived and validated by conducting consumer interviews. Type: Literature review; consumer interviews Dimoka, Angelika (2010), "What does the brain tell us about trust and distrust? Evidence from a functional neuroimaging study," MIS Quarterly, 34 (2), McAllister, D. J. (1995), "Affect- and Cognition-Based Trust As Foundations for Interpersonal Cooperation in Organizations," Academy of Management Journal, 38 (1), McKnight, D. Harrison, Vivek Choudhury, and Charles Kacmar (2002), "Developing and Validating Trust Measures for e-commerce: An Integrative Typology," Information Systems Research, 13 (3), Plutchik, Robert (1982), "A Psychoevolutionary Theory of Emotions," Social Science Information, 21 (4-5), Schlosser, Ann E., Tiffany Barnett White, and Susan M. Lloyd (2006), "Converting Web Site Visitors into Buyers: How Web Site Investment Increases Consumer Trusting Beliefs and Online Purchase Intentions," Journal of Marketing, 70 (April),

4 Page 4 It's Simple Until You Make it Complicated: Does Complexity Serve as a Signal for Superiority? Complexity is one essential characteristic of innovations. Research clearly shows that complexity can negatively influence consumers' adoption intentions. At the same time many successful breakthrough innovations are based on complex technologies, such as itunes or Dropbox. Based on the tenets of Signaling Theory, the aim of this thesis is to explore whether complexity may actually serve as a signal for superiority and, hence, lead to an increase in consumers adoption intention for innovations. To this end, a consumer experiment shall be conducted to gain meaningful insights about complexity as a potential adoption driver. Finally, based on the findings, implications for managers introducing complex innovations shall be derived. Type: Empirical paper; experiment Arts, Joep W. C., Ruud T. Frambach, and Tammo H. A. Bijmolt (2011), "Generalizations on Consumer Innovation Adoption: A Meta-Analysis on Drivers of Intention and Behavior," International Journal of Research in Marketing, 28 (2), Kirmani, A. and A. R. Rao (2000), "No pain, no gain: A critical review of the literature on signaling unobservable product quality," Journal of Marketing, 64 (2), Schuhmacher, M. C., S. Kuester, and E-J. Hultink (2017), "Appetizer or Main Course: Early Market vs. Majority Market Go-To-Market Strategies for Radical Innovations," Journal of Product Innovation Management, forthcoming.

5 Page 5 That Looks Familiar to Me! How Should Promotional Messages About Innovations Be Framed? The framing effect is a cognitive bias that consumers often fall for. The framing effect describes the fact that individuals react differently to particular information depending on how it is presented - i. e. framed - for example as a loss or as a gain. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how educational promotional messages about innovations, particularly service innovations, should be framed in order to facilitate adoption. Furthermore, the medium used for the message may be explored as a possible moderating factor. Based on the schema theory, a consumer experiment should conducted in order to illustrate how the learning of new cognitive schemata and behavioral scripts, which are necessary for the usage of service innovations, can be activated most effectively. The resulting insights should lead to managerial implications for the design of educational promotional messages for innovations in general and service innovations in particular. Type: Empirical paper; experiment Gill, T. (2008), "Convergent products: What functionalities add more value to the base?," Journal of Marketing, 72(March), Meyers-Levy, J., & Tybout, A. (1989), "Schema congruity as a basis for product evaluation," Journal of Consumer Research, 16(1), Olshavsky, R. W., & Spreng, R. A. (1996), "An Exploratory Study of the Innovation Evaluation Process," Journal of Product Innovation Management, 13(6), Stayman, D., Alden, D., & Smith, K. (1992), "Some effects of schematic processing on consumer expectations and disconfirmation judgments," Journal of Consumer Research, 19(2),

6 Page 6 Feeling close to innovations: Reducing psychological distance via go-to-market strategies The Construal Level Theory describes the relation between psychological distance and the extent to which an individual s thinking is abstract or concrete. The more distant an object is perceived to be, the more abstract it will be evaluated. The level of construal has been found to impact consumers innovation adoption. The theory differentiates between temporal, spatial, social, and hypothetical distances. Recent research even suggests additional types of distances. The aim of this thesis is to provide an overview of the research on Construal Level Theory with a particular focus on its application in the context of innovation adoption. A consumer experiment shall investigate how the go-to-market-strategy of an innovation may influence the level of construal and, consequently, adoption intentions. Based on the findings, managerial implications for the design of go-to-market strategies for innovations shall be derived. Type: Literature Review & Experiment Alexander, David L., John G. Lynch Jr., and Qing Wang (2008), As time goes by: do cold feet follow warm intentions for really new versus incrementally new products?, Journal of Marketing Research, XLV (June), Arts, Joep W. C., Ruud T. Frambach, and Tammo H. A. Bijmolt (2011), Generalizations on Consumer Innovation Adoption: A Meta-Analysis on Drivers of Intention and Behavior, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 28 (2), Hoeffler, Steve (2003), Measuring Preferences for Really New Products, Journal of Marketing Research, 40 (November), Trope, Yaacov and Nira Liberman (2010), Construal-level theory of psychological distance, Psychological review, 117 (2),