- Niraj, Rakesh (x)
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Show moreWe use the context-general and context-specific factor approach to examine the generalizability of satisfaction and loyalty models across two disparate online contexts -- online retailing and content site browsing. Our conceptual models include the moderating effects of user-characteristic Web expertise, besides main effects of Web site factors and Web expertise. Results indicate that satisfaction and loyalty judgments are sensitive to both context-general and context-specific determinants, as well as to some interactions between them. Among context-general determinants, ease of use and customer service are positively related to satisfaction, Web community to loyalty, and Web expertise to both satisfaction and loyalty. Flow, a context-specific determinant, has a significant positive effect on satisfaction alone; security affects loyalty alone; and fulfillment/reliability and information quality are significant predictors of both satisfaction and loyalty. The results show that Web expertise moderates the effect of ease of use on satisfaction. The study contributes to marketing theory and practice by identifying satisfaction and loyalty mechanisms that are potentially generalizable across the two online contexts and providing a guiding framework for simultaneous consideration of context-specific and context-general factors in future research.
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Show moreThis dissertation deals with issues that arise in distribution channel management where channel partners face uncertain environments. The two essays address two related but slightly different ways channel partners often interact in environments characterized by uncertain demand. In the first essay, I look at voluntary information sharing arrangements between distribution channel partners, like those in the Category Management initiative in food retailing, in two different settings. The results from a simple bilateral monopoly channel indicate an asymmetry in retailer's and manufacturer's incentives to enter such information-sharing alliances. Only relatively sophisticated retailers find it profitable to enter such alliances, while manufacturers benefit from such arrangements under a broader set of conditions. In a setting with multiple manufacturers selling through a common retailer, I provide an explanation for the category captain phenomenon, wherein the retailer enters into an exclusive alliance with only one supplier. Thus an asymmetric outcome obtains even if the manufacturers are ex-ante asymmetric. The second essay looks at logistics improvements that channels have undertaken, with or without the pooling of demand information. The practice of Quick Delivery is being adopted in some distribution channels as improved ability to forecast demand and better logistic practices enable a channel to minimize retail inventory and bring efficiency. However, in the presence of demand uncertainty, retail inventory also enables the manufacturer to better manage the competition among retailers carrying his product. Thus, in channels practicing Conventional Delivery , having excess retail inventory allows manufacturers to extract surplus from the retailers more effectively, using the possibility of return of unsold goods. I analyze the balance of the above two forces in models of a distribution channel with retail competition. It is shown that when retail competition is not very intense and when price elasticity is relatively high, it may be beneficial for a manufacturer to continue with conventional delivery practices in the channel. In such cases, the strategic benefit of better extraction of surplus from retailers and ability to induce lower stock-out situations may outweigh his share of the efficiency gain brought about by a reduced inventory level for the channel.
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Show moreThis paper examines the mediating role of attitudinal loyalty in the relationship between satisfaction and customer behavioral intentions such as willingness to pay more and internal and external complaining responses. It also examines the nonlinear effects in the relationship between satisfaction, attitudinal loyalty and behavioral intentions.
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Show moreWe examine the trade-offs between demand information and inventory in a distribution channel. While better demand information has a positive direct effect for the manufacturer in improving the efficiency of holding inventory in a channel, it can also have the strategic effect of increasing retail prices and limiting the extraction of retail profits. Having inventory in the channel can help the manufacturer to manage retail pricing behavior while better extracting retail surplus. Thus, even if the information system is perfectly reliable, the manufacturer might not always want to institute an information-enabled channel over a channel with inventory. We show this first in a channel with a single retailer, where the channel with perfect information is preferred over the channel with inventory only if the marginal cost of production is sufficiently high. We also analyze a channel with an imperfectly reliable information system and find that if the manufacturer were to choose the precision of the demand information system, it might not prefer perfect information, even if such information was costless to acquire. In a channel with competing retailers, the channel with perfect information is preferred when retail competition is sufficiently intense. Thus, the presence of inventory can play a role in managing competition among retailers and in helping the manufacturers to appropriate surplus especially when retailers are sufficiently differentiated.
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