Managing Retail Budget Allocation between Store Labor and Marketing Activities

The performance of a retail store depends on its ability to attract customer traffic, match labor with incoming traffic, and convert the incoming traffic into sales. Retailers make significant investments in marketing activities (such as advertising) to bring customers into their stores and in‐store labor to convert that traffic into sales. Thus, a common trade‐off that retail store managers face concerns the allocation of a store's limited budget between advertising and labor to enhance store‐level sales. To explore that trade‐off, we develop a centralized model to allocate limited store budget between store labor and advertising with the objective of maximizing store sales. We find that a store's inherent potential to drive traffic plays an important role, among other factors, in the relative allocation between advertising and store labor. We also find that as advertising instruments become more effective in bringing traffic to stores, managers should not always capitalize this effectiveness by increasing their existing allocations to advertising. In addition, we discuss a decentralized setting where budget allocation decisions cannot be enforced by a store manager and present a simple mechanism that can achieve the centralized solution. In an extension, we address the budget allocation problem in the presence of marketing efforts to shift store traffic from peak to off peak hours and show that our initial findings are robust. Further, we illustrate how the solution from the budget allocation model can be used to facilitate store level sales force planning/scheduling decisions. Based on the results of our model, we present several insights that can help managers in budget allocation and sales force planning.     

消费者预算约束对推荐奖励策略的影响研究

在社会化商务研究中,大多数研究考虑消费者的购买意愿对企业决策的影响,很少有文献探讨消费者的资金不足时对企业开展在线营销活动效果的影响.本文讨论了当消费者消费预算有约束情况下,在线企业采用推荐奖励策略对营销效果的影响.首先建立了销售企业、已有顾客、已有顾客的朋友(潜在顾客)三者之间的博弈模型,其中假设朋友的预算是私有信息,企业和已有顾客不知道该信息.通过对博弈模型的求解,发现当朋友存在预算约束时,企业采用高价格、高奖励的推荐奖励策略并不总是有效;当潜在顾客(朋友)对产品的购买意愿处于中间状态时,只有其预算偏高时,企业采取推荐奖励策略才能获得更高的利润.此外,在基本推荐奖励策略的基础上,拓展企业提供融资策略以及考虑朋友对推荐奖励反感程度的情况.研究发现,融资成本较高时,融资和奖励之间存在相互替代效果,但融资成本较低时,与融资效果与消费者的购买意愿程度相关;当潜在消费者对推荐策略存在反感时,企业仍存在一定的赢利空间.研究结果对在线企业开展推荐奖励策略的实践具有参考价值.     

Maximizing customer equity subject to capacity constraints

This paper considers a firm that wants to optimally allocate limited capacity to heterogeneous customer segments in order to maximize its customer equity. The decision whether to accept or to reject a customer׳s request in a current period influences his repurchase behavior in later periods. The allocation process becomes complex, when demand exceeds capacity, because the isolated determination and optimization of a single customer׳s lifetime value is no longer feasible. Using a Markov decision process formulation, we study how to trade off short-term attainable revenues and long-term customer relationships. Furthermore, we analyze when and how intertemporal customer behavior influences capacity allocation. Finally, we investigate the impact of limited capacity on the customer lifetime value by introducing an opportunity cost-based approach that understands customer profitability as a customer׳s contribution to customer equity.     

国有商业银行与股份制商业银行顾客忠诚意向驱动因素比较研究

为对国有商业银行和股份制商业顾客忠诚意向驱动因素进行对比研究,本文将银行类型作为调节变量引入模型。Logit Moderated回归模型结果显示,国有商业银行和股份制商业银行顾客忠诚意向的差异,主要来源于顾客对两者价值资产和关系资产的感知显著不同,而顾客感知两者品牌资产的差异在统计上不显著。在其它变量水平相同的情况下,国有商业银行比股份制商业银行为顾客提供的价值高,但股份制商业银行比国有商业银行与顾客的关系更紧密。该结论从统计上论证了国有商业银行和股份制商业银行各自维持顾客忠诚的特点,同时也为银行未来优化营销经费配置提供了理论依据。     

A comparison of approaches to exploit budget allocation data in cross-sectional maximum likelihood estimation of multi-attribute choice models

In this paper, four calibration approaches to exploit budget allocation data in maximum likelihood estimation of multi-attribute choice models are proposed. They differ on the implicit meaning of the dependent variable: (A) share of consumers according to the preferred alternative; (B) share of sales; (C) average share of consumer's budget; and (D) share of sales according to the preferred alternative. Differences between them can be conceived as depending on two circumstances: customer loyalty and customer selectivity. These are tested in the context of spatial consumer behavior, market response to hypermarket chains being represented as a function of their location strategies. Results show that different nuances on the definition of the dependent variable lead to slightly different relationships with the explanatory variables and to different predictive capabilities.     

Optimal Resource Allocation for Defense of Targets Based on Differing Measures of Attractiveness

This article describes the results of applying a rigorous computational model to the problem of the optimal defensive resource allocation among potential terrorist targets. In particular, our study explores how the optimal budget allocation depends on the cost effectiveness of security investments, the defender's valuations of the various targets, and the extent of the defender's uncertainty about the attacker's target valuations. We use expected property damage, expected fatalities, and two metrics of critical infrastructure (airports and bridges) as our measures of target attractiveness. Our results show that the cost effectiveness of security investment has a large impact on the optimal budget allocation. Also, different measures of target attractiveness yield different optimal budget allocations, emphasizing the importance of developing more realistic terrorist objective functions for use in budget allocation decisions for homeland security.     

Market segmentation: an integrated framework

Contrary to the narrow, demand-oriented approach to market segmentation taken in much of the marketing and planning literature, this article illustrates a broader, integrated framework which includes both the demand and supply sides of the competitive equation. The author argues that starting with ‘product’ characteristics is both an easier and more actionable way of segmenting markets than the traditional marketing approach that typically begins with the customer or ‘people’ characteristics. This approach can be employed by a business to make decisions about entering a market segment, differentiating a brand from its competition, positioning it in the market and communicating its quality to the customers. Customers, too, generally rely on product characteristics to perceive and evaluate the quality claims made by different competitors. Thus, the article bridges an important gap between strategy formulation and strategy implementation: an area often neglected in the strategy literature. The proposed approach focuses not only on customer benefits or needs, but also on the resources necessary to satisfy them and demonstrates this with examples from Apple, Church & Dwight and many other companies. To show a practical application, the article presents a price-quality-benefit segmentation profile of the US toothpaste market which revealed three strategic groups.     

Cost‐Benefit Analysis for Optimization of Risk Protection Under Budget Constraints

Cost‐benefit analysis (CBA) is commonly applied as a tool for deciding on risk protection. With CBA, one can identify risk mitigation strategies that lead to an optimal tradeoff between the costs of the mitigation measures and the achieved risk reduction. In practical applications of CBA, the strategies are typically evaluated through efficiency indicators such as the benefit‐cost ratio (BCR) and the marginal cost (MC) criterion. In many of these applications, the BCR is not consistently defined, which, as we demonstrate in this article, can lead to the identification of suboptimal solutions. This is of particular relevance when the overall budget for risk reduction measures is limited and an optimal allocation of resources among different subsystems is necessary. We show that this problem can be formulated as a hierarchical decision problem, where the general rules and decisions on the available budget are made at a central level (e.g., central government agency, top management), whereas the decisions on the specific measures are made at the subsystem level (e.g., local communities, company division). It is shown that the MC criterion provides optimal solutions in such hierarchical optimization. Since most practical applications only include a discrete set of possible risk protection measures, the MC criterion is extended to this situation. The findings are illustrated through a hypothetical numerical example. This study was prepared as part of our work on the optimal management of natural hazard risks, but its conclusions also apply to other fields of risk management.     

The Effect of Competition on R&D Portfolio Investments

Although project portfolio management has been an active research area over the past 50 years, budget allocation models that consider competition are sparse. Faced with the competition, firms contemplating budget allocation for their project portfolio cannot limit their attention to the returns from their projects' target markets, as is the case for monopoly firms, but must also anticipate the competitive effects on these returns. Assuming firms allocate their budgets between projects offering incremental innovation targeting a mature market and projects offering radical innovation targeting an emerging market, we show that while the monopoly firm bases its budget allocation decision solely on the marginal returns of the markets, competing firms—as they take into account their counterparts' investment decisions—need to also consider the projects' average returns from their respective markets. This drives competing firms into incrementalism: faced with competition, firms invest larger portions of their budgets into projects targeting mature markets. This effect is amplified as the number of competing firms increases and firms allocate an even greater share of their budget into projects targeting a mature market. We further demonstrate the effects that changes to firms' individual budgets, as well as to market characteristics, have on firms' budget allocation decision.     

How can perceived consistency in marketing communications influence customer–brand relationship outcomes?

This paper examines the impact of perceived consistency in marketing communications on customer–brand relationship outcomes. The perception of consistent message and image through different marketing communication tools is one of the basic principles of the integrated marketing communications (IMC) approach. Although literature suggests that IMC might have an influence on customer–brand relationship outcomes, empirical evidence that supports this assumption is still weak and inconclusive. Three main brand relationship outcomes are established for the purpose of the study, i.e. trust, commitment, and loyalty. The relationships between perceived communication consistency and brand outcomes are examined in a hospitality context on a sample of 452 respondents who had to evaluate fast-food brands. Structural Equation Modelling was employed as the main technique for data analysis using Partial Least Squares (PLS). Results reveal that communication consistency has a strong direct impact on brand trust and brand loyalty. Although its influence on affective brand commitment is found to be positive, it is not statistically significant. The interrelationship between three brand relationship outcomes is also corroborated. The study contributes to our understanding of the role of IMC in the relationship marketing paradigm and provides deeper insights into the impact of communication consistency on different relationship outcomes with fast-food brands.     

A data mining framework for targeted category promotions

This research presents a new approach to derive recommendations for segment-specific, targeted marketing campaigns on the product category level. The proposed methodological framework serves as a decision support tool for customer relationship managers or direct marketers to select attractive product categories for their target marketing efforts, such as segment-specific rewards in loyalty programs, cross-merchandising activities, targeted direct mailings, customized supplements in catalogues, or customized promotions. The proposed methodology requires customers’ multi-category purchase histories as input data and proceeds in a stepwise manner. It combines various data compression techniques and integrates an optimization approach which suggests candidate product categories for segment-specific targeted marketing such that cross-category spillover effects for non-promoted categories are maximized. To demonstrate the empirical performance of our proposed procedure, we examine the transactions from a real-world loyalty program of a major grocery retailer. A simple scenario-based analysis using promotion responsiveness reported in previous empirical studies and prior experience by domain experts suggests that targeted promotions might boost profitability between 15 % and 128 % relative to an undifferentiated standard campaign.     

市场竞争下企业股权融资的供应链模型分析

股权融资是企业在市场竞争中抢占市场份额、实现跨越式发展的重要融资途径,企业融资决策的制定必须考虑产品市场上企业间的竞争行为.构建了双寡头零售商的股权融资模型,探讨零售商采取股权融资进行市场开拓时,市场竞争对其股权融资决策的作用机理.核心的发现是:零售商的股权融资应考虑不同成长性下市场竞争的直接和间接影响,市场竞争抑制(促进)了低成长性(高成长性)零售商的股权融资.供应商参与博弈后,零售商的融资策略取决于不同初始市场规模和成长性下的市场竞争与市场开拓之间的权衡.     

Coordinated Contract Decisions in a Make‐to‐Order Manufacturing Supply Chain: A Stochastic Programming Approach

One of the important objectives of supply chain S&OP (Sales and Operations Planning) is the profitable alignment of customer demand with supply chain capabilities through the coordinated planning of sales, production, distribution, and procurement. In the make‐to‐order manufacturing context considered in this paper, sales plans cover both contract and spot sales, and procurement plans require the selection of supplier contracts. S&OP decisions also involve the allocation of capacity to support sales plans. This article studies the coordinated contract selection and capacity allocation problem, in a three‐tier manufacturing supply chain, with the objective to maximize the manufacturer's profitability. Using a modeling approach based on stochastic programming with recourse, we show how these S&OP decisions can be made taking into account economic, market, supply, and system uncertainties. The research is based on a real business case in the Oriented Strand Board (OSB) industry. The computational results show that the proposed approach provides realistic and robust solutions. For the case considered, the planning method elaborated yields significant performance improvements over the solutions obtained from the mixed integer programming model previously suggested for S&OP.     

The marketing strategy worksheet—A practical planning tool

The Marketing Strategy Worksheet is a simple aid to strategic planners. It enables a coherent and integrated plan to be produced and communicated to others. It is a three-level flow chart comprising an analytical stage, formulation of some key primary decisions and subsequent settlement of strategic issues within the marketing mix. The analytical stage incorporates both external and internal analysis. The primary decisions concern company objectives, marketing objectives, demand management, target market and positioning. Using the conventional marketing mix format, decisions are made about product, promotion, distribution and price.     

The Fairness of Decision Rules

Prior work on resource allocation has generally considered only a small number of allocation rules, usually reflecting equity or equality. We use a scenario study to examine the effect of eight different allocation rules (past performance, future performance, rank, random draw, chance meetings, business need, personal need, and political reasons) on recipient reactions to the gain or loss of three different kinds of resources in an organizational setting. We find evidence that allocations based on past performance and random draw rules lead to the highest fairness perceptions and the lowest expectations that the decisions made will lead to intragroup conflict. However, fairness judgments are also influenced by a variety of other factors, such as the type of resource being allocated and whether the recipient is advantaged or disadvantaged relative to others in the workgroup (what we term the “egocentric interaction”). We discuss how our results might influence managers’ allocation decisions.     

基于收益共享契约的网络零售联合促销策略研究

网络零售业造节促销已成常态,优化网络零售平台(简称平台商)和销售商联合促销策略是一项值得深入研究的课题。本文基于收益共享契约,利用不同的博弈模型刻画入驻销售商和平台商之间三种不同的促销模式,包括由其中一方率先发起促销的模式和二者同时发起促销的模式,研究不同模式下销售商和平台商的最优促销策略。研究结论表明,在三种促销模式下,二者的最优促销策略均随着商品佣金费率的增长依次呈现三种不同的形式:从仅由销售商提供促销到联合促销再到仅由平台商提供促销。当且仅当佣金费率和商品的日常售价高于一定阈值时,销售商和平台商才会有动机开展联合促销。研究还发现,销售商和平台商在各自率先发起的联合促销模式下具备先动优势。销售商(平台商)率先发起的联合促销将更有利于对佣金费率较低(高)的商品实施。当销售商和平台商同时独立发起促销时,供应链整体促销力度最大,供应链的整体利润也最高。     

竞争中的参考价格效应及承诺

消费者的社会感知会影响其对产品和品牌的评价。当消费者进行购买选择时,经常会受到参考价格效应的影响。而广告和价格不仅是企业经常要考虑的重要决策,还会对参考价格产生重要影响。为此,一个值得研究的的问题是：在考虑参考价格效应的情况下,企业该怎样确定其动态广告和价格策略？
为了研究该问题,本文构建了一个广告和价格的动态模型,来研究一个双寡头市场环境下两个寡头企业的价格和广告决策,并以此分析参考价格效应的作用。具体而言,我们假定企业可以采用广告承诺和价格承诺中的一种,其中前者承诺其在一段时间内的广告投入量恒定不变,而后者确保价格不变。两种策略不仅会影响消费者的购买决策,也会影响竞争对手的选择。在上述假定下,我们探讨了两个寡头企业在都采用广告承诺、都采用价格承诺及一个企业采用广告承诺而另一个企业采用价格承诺等三种不同情形下的最优广告和价格决策,并以此分析了三种情形下参考价格效应对最优的广告投入及定价策略的影响。最后,通过数值分析,探讨了不同情形下企业的最优策略选择。     

Von der Kundenintegration 1.0 zur Kundenintegration 2.0 – Implikationen für Praxis und Forschung

Customer integration has become an established topic in management research with specific attention given by marketing researchers. The term refers to a new definition of a customer’s role in market exchange. While previously the customer was considered a merely passive recipient of goods and services only he now takes over the function of active supplier of input before, while and after a market transaction. Currently, four different research lines on the topic can be identified: Each of these research lines also mirrors a distinct manifestation of practical application: (1) the business of solutions, (2) mass customization, (3) service co-creation and (4) value co-creation. For the future we expect more stimulation for both the practical and the conceptual advancement of customer integration particularly to stem from new technologies to be summarized under the label of web 2.0. For web 2.0 we distinguish between moderator centered approaches such as crowdsourcing, swarm creativity and open innovation on the one hand and community centered approaches such as social network sites on the other hand. In order to advance and substantiate our understanding of the new implications from web 2.0 on customer integration we propose to resort to the theory of social capital and the concept of the borderless organization.     

Co‐Op Advertising in Dynamic Retail Oligopolies

We study a supply chain in which a consumer goods manufacturer sells its product through a retailer. The retailer undertakes promotional expenditures, such as advertising, to increase sales and to compete against other retailer(s). The manufacturer supports the retailer’s promotional expenditure through a cooperative advertising program by reimbursing a portion (called the subsidy rate) of the retailer’s promotional expenditure. To determine the subsidy rate, we formulate a Stackelberg differential game between the manufacturer and the retailer, and a Nash differential subgame between the retailer and the competing retailer(s). We derive the optimal feedback promotional expenditures of the retailers and the optimal feedback subsidy rate of the manufacturer, and show how they are influenced by market parameters. An important finding is that the manufacturer should support its retailer only when a subsidy threshold is crossed. The impact of competition on this threshold is nonmonotone. Specifically, the manufacturer offers more support when its retailer competes with one other retailer but its support starts decreasing with the presence of additional retailers. In the case where the manufacturer sells through all retailers, we show under certain assumptions that it should support only one dominant retailer. We also describe how we can incorporate retail price competition into the model.     

A LOGIT-MARKOVIAN MODEL OF CONSUMER PURCHASE BEHAVIOR BASED ON EXPLANATORY VARIABLES: EMPIRICAL EVALUATION AND IMPLICATIONS FOR DECISION MAKING*

This study describes and empirically evaluates an approach to modeling purchase behavior that integrates a Logit-Markov-based multivariate brand-choice model structure with stochastic components. Using actual market data for a frequently purchased consumer product obtained from a consumer purchase panel survey, the paper highlights some marketing applications of the model. Given its general structure, the model can aid marketing managers in defining and evaluating target market segments and in assessing the impact of alternative marketing strategies.