Congrats to the INFORMS/ISMS organizers and to the local organizing committee for another prefect execution of a great event.

Next, Dr. Zhuping Liu (University of Texas at Austin, see picture below) presented his talk titled “Understanding Marketing Spillover of Location-based Services” (co-authors: Jason Duan,
Frenkel ter Hofstede).

Next, Rebecca Jen-Hui Wang (see picture below) presented her talk “Shopping on the Go: How Mobile Usage Affects Customer Purchase Behaviors” (co-authors: Lakshman Krishnamurthi, Edward Malthouse). Mobile shopping (M-shopping) has become increasingly important in retailing. The authors compare customers’ behaviors based on whether they use mobile devices, i.e., smartphones, tablets, and/or personal computers (PCs) when composing, modifying or placing orders online. They conclude that orders made with all three device types, i.e., smartphones, tablets and PCs, are the largest.

Finally, Dr. Margherita Pagani (EMLyon Business School, see picture below) delivered her talk titled “Experiential Engagement and Locational Privacy Intrusiveness on the Use of Mobile Location-based Social Applications”.


After the coffee break, I attended the Internet and Interactive Marketing track. First, Dr. Norris Bruce (University of Texas at Dallas, see picture below) presented the talk “High-dimensional Sparse Dynamic Factor Modeling: Measuring the Effects of Digital Media on Sales” (co-author: Prasad Naik). The latter challenge is characterized by a high dimensionality (many variables available) and fairly small sample size because digital advertisers can readily access thousands variables across search, display and social media channels to track and optimize media performance.

Next, Dr. Youngsoo Kim (Singapore Management University, see picture below) presented his talk “The Dynamics of Online Consumer’s Purchase Pattern” (co-author: Ramayya Krishnan). The authors analyze the relationship between a set of hidden states of online consumer’s purchase tendency (e.g., risk loving vs. risk averse) and buying behavior (e.g., intangibility level) using HMMs. They also relate the transitions between the latent states to the observed buying behavior such as the composition of individual market baskets.

Next, Dr. Hema Yoganarasimhan (University of California at Davis, see picture below) took the stage with her talk “Search Personalization”.


The final talk before lunch was held by Dr. Vibhanshu Abhishek (see picture below) titled “Media Exposure through the Funnel: A Model of Multi-stage Attribution” (co-authors: Peter Fader, Kartik Hosanagar).

After lunch, I joined the “Pricing: Dynamics” session. First, Dr. Hui Li (University of Pennsylvania, see picture below) took the stage with the talk “Intertemporal Price Discrimination with Complementary Product: The Case of E- book and E-reader”.

Next, Dr. Xi Li (Rotman School of Management, see picture below) presented “Product and Pricing Decisions in Crowdfunding” (co-authors: Mengze Shi, Ming Hu).

Finally, Prof. Dr. Joseph Pancras (University of Connecticut, see picture below) presented his talk “A Longitudinal Study of Price Changes in Perishable Goods Markets” (co-authors: Satheesh Seenivasan, Dinesh Gauri, S. Sriram). Inter-temporal price changes are common characteristics of firms in travel industry which is characterized by perishable capacity, demand uncertainty and advanced booking. Such wide changes in prices lead to a greater dispersion in prices even for same booking class across multiple time periods. In this study, the authors focus on studying the extent of intra-firm price dispersion and factors driving this phenomenon in cruise industry.

One of the rooms was converted to monitoring the soccer World Cup 2014 events. Below is a view during the opening game Brazil - Croatia.

Then, it was time for the opening reception.

Made on a Mac

On Friday, June 13th, I first attended the Social Influence track. This session started off with a talk by Abhishek Borah (see picture below) titled “Does Offline Brand Advertising Affect Online Conversations?” (co-author: Prof. Dr. Gerard Tellis). Their research has two goals: 1. It attempts to understand whether offline advertising for a brand plays any role in affecting the sentiment of online conversations; 2. It analyzes how the type of offline ads affects the sentiment of online conversations.

Next, I attended the talk titled “The Role of Brand and Category Intangibles in the Virality of Tweets” by Nima Jalali and Purush Papatla. More specifically, they focus on whether brands and product categories differ in how viral their communications are.

Next, Beth Fossen (Emory University, see picture below) presented her talk “Scandals and Reputational Spillover: Collateral Damage or Benefit?” (co-authors: Manish Tripathi, David Schweidel). They investigate how a scandal affects the public’s perception of a human brand, as manifested in the sentiment of social media conversations. Moreover, they also study the reputational spillover effect by capturing the scandal’s impact on human brands that are not associated with the scandal.

The final talk in this session was by Dr. Ashish Agarwal (University of Texas at Austin, see picture below) titled “Social Advertising: When Does it Work?” (co-author: Kartik Hosanagar).

After the coffee break, I attended the reprise of the ISMS-MSI Gary Lilien Practice Prize Competition Presentations. These were excellent talks! The first talk was by Prof. Dr. John Roberts and Prof. Dr. Peter Danaher titled “Repositioning Kmart: This Time with Feeling – Kmart Australia” (co-authors: Ken Roberts, Rohan Raghavan). What is frequently overlooked in sales response models is the effect of consumer emotions. This study describes the use of a combined affective-cognitive model of choice to identify drivers of discount department store shopping. The model is used to design a communications and merchandising strategy intended to resonate with the target market with the aim of increasing market share and profit.


Next, I attended the talk titled “Implementing Integrated Marketing Science Modeling at a Non-profit Organization: Balancing Multiple Business Objectives at Georgia Aquarium” by V Kumar, Amalesh Sharma, Naveen Donthu, Carey Roundtree. The authors present an integrated approach consisting of multiple marketing science models including Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Competitive Analysis, Zip code Analysis, Media optimization analysis and Pass holder Lifetime Net revenue (Customer Lifetime Value) analysis. The presenters also elaborate on how GA succeeded in enhancing its bottom line and accelerating growth significantly by implementing their recommendations.

Finally, Prof. Dr. Martin Natter presented their winning presentation “ECO: Entega’s Profitable New Customer Acquisition on Online Price Comparison Sites” (co-author: Ana-Marija Ozimec, Ju-Young Kim). The authors describe a pricing approach that deals with a highly competitive market situation. The approach integrates different available data sources such as price comparison site data, regional transaction or cost data to optimize sales and profit targets. The developed tool, ECO (Electricity Contract Optimization) sets regionally varying one-time bonuses to attract new customers on price comparison sites. ECO considers the relationships among rankings, sales, margins, and regional demand- (market size and consumption levels) and supply-side (costs and competition) differences. ECO provides predictions for sales, profits and budget consequences for alternative market scenarios.

After his talk, Prof. Dr. Martin Natter (University of Frankfurt, see picture below) and his co-authors are being awarded the ISMS-MSI Gary Lilien Practice Prize by Prof. Dr. Gary Lilien himself (see picture below - on the left). Congratulations!

After lunch, I attended the “Leveraging Unstructured Data; Big Data” session. Yusan Lin (PennState, see picture below) presented the talk “Fashionology: A Textual Analysis Approach of Understanding Innovativeness and Influence of Fashion Theories” (co-authors: Yilu Zhou, Heng Xu).


Next, Prof. Dr. Catherine Tucker (see picture below) presented the talk “The Reach and Persuasiveness of Viral Video Ads”. This research explores the relationship between number of views and how persuasive the ad is at convincing consumers to purchase or adopt a favorable attitude towards the product.

Next, Kathrin Gruber (University of Vienna, see picture below) presented the talk “Structural Modelling using Chain Graphs” (co-author: Prof. Dr. Thomas Reutterer). The study shows that chain graphs produce stable and robust results and turn out to be a viable alternative for structural equation modeling.

Next, Dinah Sina Damangir (University of Houston, see picture below) presented “Leveraging Big Data on Co-consideration in Market Response Modeling” (co-author: Rex Du, Ye Hu). They augment designated market area (DMA)-level sales and marketing mix data with data that captures how often consumers simultaneously request price quotes for various competing products.

After the coffee break, I attended the ISMS Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Competition Winners session. First, Ron Berman (see picture below) presented “Beyond the Last-touch: Attribution in Online Advertising”. He shows that last-touch attribution can be beneficial for CPA campaigns when the process is not too accurate or when advertising exhibits concavity in its effects on consumers.

Next, Clarence Lee presented the talk “Designing Freemium: a Model of Consumer Usage, Upgrade, and Referral Dynamics” (co-authors: Sunil Gupta, Vineet Kumar). Over the past decade “freemium” (free + premium) has become the dominant business model among Internet start-ups for its ability to acquire and monetize a large install-base with limited marketing resources. Freemium is a hybrid strategy where a firm offers both a perpetually free but limited version of their service, and a premium version with enhanced features that require a fee, and where firms regard the free product as a promotional tool.

Finally, Song Lin (MIT, see picture below) presented the talk “Standard or Optional: Add-on Policy under Vertical Differentiation”. In many competitive industries firms sell an add-on on top of a base product (e.g., hotels sell Internet). An important question is when the firms should bundle the add-on with the base as standard, and when they should sell it separately as optional to screen consumers.

On Friday evening, it was time for the conference dinner at the Georgia Aquarium in Downtown Atlanta. Prior to the dinner, we had the opportunity to visit the aquarium (see pictures below).

On Saturday, June 14th, I first attended the CRM: Loyalty Programs track. First, Nuo Xu (see picture below) presented her talk titled “In-network and Out-of-network Shopping in a Loyalty Program”. Many loyalty programs today are built as credit cards that allow members to accelerate their progress towards a reward through purchase outside of the loyalty program network. This study looks into this particular loyalty program structure in order to understand the correlation between in-network and out-of-network shopping using the loyalty program credit card and whether the inclusion of out-of-network shopping helps to retain customers in the program and lift their spending within network.

Next, Prof. Dr. Manfred Krafft (University of Münster, see picture below) presented the talk “Social Influence and Targeted Marketing in the Adoption of Loyalty Programs” (co-authors: Kalyan Raman,
Vijay Viswanathan, F. Javier Sese). The attention paid by prior research has been mainly devoted to understanding their performance implications. Surprisingly, the study of the adoption process of LPs and, specifically, of the adoption timing, has been subject to less inspection. In this study, the authors draw upon expected utility theory and propose a model in which the time to adopt a LP is affected by social influence and targeted marketing activities.

Next, Tong Guo (see picture below) presented her talk “The Impact of Frequent Flyer Programs on Consumer Behavior” (co-author: Yesim Orhun). Using a member-level dataset of booking records from a major US carrier, the authors explore members’ willingness to pay for the carrier’s flights as they accumulate miles towards the goal. The authors find a nonlinear relationship between a member’s progress toward the goal and the price she pays. The revenue that the carrier can extract from the member first increases in the miles accumulated towards a goal, and then declines as the member gets close to achieving the goal, consistent with exerting more effort when effort is most effective.

The final talk in this session was by Yuping Liu-Thompkins titled “Habit Evolution Under a Loyalty Program” (co-author: Tim Manoles). Previous studies on loyalty program effects have focused on incremental measures such as changes in purchase frequency, share of wallet, and total spending. These outcomes neglect an important aspect of consumer behavior – purchase habit. That is, do loyalty programs strengthen or weaken purchase habit?

After the coffee break, we attended the Location session, because it also included our talk. First, Donald Ngwe (see picture below) took the stage with the presentation titled “Why Outlet Stores Exist: Extending Markets While Reducing Cannibalization”. Outlet stores offer attractive pricing and are usually located far from central shopping districts. The main perspectives as to why outlet stores exist can be broadly classified into inventory management, geographic segmentation, and price discrimination through consumer self-selection. The firm stocks outlet stores with older merchandise to prevent cannibalization of primary store revenues by means of exploiting the positive correlation between consumers' travel sensitivity and taste for new products. The author finds that the rate of product introduction in primary stores would fall by 13% if outlet stores were closed down, while profits would decline by 19%.

Next, Matthias De Beule (Ghent University and @RetailSonar, see picture below) took the stage for his talk “Prescriptive Analytics For Retail Network Optimization using Extended Huff Models” (co-authors: yours truly: @dirkvandenpoel and Nico Van de Weghe). This study proposes a prescriptive analytics system based on a modified Huff model that takes directly into account spatial competition between stores of the same brand, brand attraction based on actual brand performance and spatially variable substitution. The model uses only publicly available or easily acquirable data as input, whereas model output is extensively validated on various levels. These levels include comparison of modeled and real market shares on block, store and brand level for the Belgian food market. Results show that multi-objective optimization of model parameters yields comparable results on block level to other models in the literature but improved results on store and brand levels, thereby ensuring model robustness. This robustness also enables the application of the model for various business purposes as store location determination, leaflet distribution optimization, store and store concept benchmarking, without loss of spatial generality (@GeoIntelligenc1). The full paper is available here.

Finally, the last talk was titled “Do Product Forms and Marketing Mix Elements Evolve in Emerging Markets?” by Amalesh Sharma, V Kumar, Sarang Sunder. Empirical work in the emerging market literature, though scarce, has only considered static effects of the marketing mix while ignoring time-varying effects of distribution formats. In this study, the authors attempt to address this gap by proposing a Time-Varying Effect Model (TVEM) to investigate the dynamic effects of distribution levels across store formats on sales, while accounting for endogeneity of the marketing mix.

After lunch, I attended the Marketing Performance Metrics and Organization session. First, the talk titled “Organizing for Sales Promotions” (authors: Marian Paul, Karen Gedenk, Stefanie Rudek, Franziska Voelckner) was presented. When consumer goods manufacturers organize their sales promotion activities they need to decide how to allocate tasks across different departments like product management, key account management and trade marketing.



Next, Dr. Muhammad Abrahim Zaka (see picture below) presented “Are Customer’s Accurate in their Assessment of the Value Created Through Supplier Relationships?” (co-authors: Henry Robben, Kees van Montfort). In recent years a key focus of suppliers has been to create superior value for their customers. However, what is not clear is whether customers are accurately able to assess the value created by their suppliers. Indeed, does investment in relation specific assets pay off for the supplier?

The final talk was titled “Developing a Comprehensive Marketing Performance Measurement System- A Dynamic Capabilities View” (authors: Xiaoning Liang, Yuhui Gao). Her research focuses on developing a comprehensive marketing performance measurement system (MPMS).