Essays on Customer Preference Measurement
Open Access
- Author:
- Xiao, Li
- Graduate Program:
- Business Administration
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 13, 2013
- Committee Members:
- Min Ding, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Min Ding, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Rajdeep Grewal, Committee Member
Mosuk Chow, Committee Member
Robert Collins, Committee Member
Fuyuan Shen, Committee Member - Keywords:
- preference measurement
face
facial features
eigenface
service innovation
patent - Abstract:
- Customer preference measurement has always been an active area in marketing research. Essay 1 makes first attempt to explore customers’ preferences toward different faces in print advertisement context. It aims to answer three questions that are important to both researchers and practitioners: 1) Do faces affect how a viewer reacts to an advertisement in the metrics that advertisers care about? 2) If faces do have an effect, is the effect large enough to warrant a careful selection of faces when constructing print advertisements? 3) If faces do have an effect and the effect is large, what facial features are eliciting such differential reactions on these metrics, and are such reactions different across individuals? Relying on eigenface method, a holistic approach widely used in the computer science field for face recognition, we conducted two empirical studies to answer these three questions. The results show that different faces do have an effect on people’s attitudes toward the advertisement, attitudes toward the brand, and purchase intentions; and the effect is non-trivial. Multiple segments were found for each key advertisement metric, and substantial heterogeneity in people’s reactions to the ads was revealed among those segments. Implications and directions for future research are discussed. Essay 2 aims to explore customers’ preferences toward different service innovations. In this essay, we design and validate a mechanism for service firms, called the quasi-patent (qPatent) system. The qPatent system builds upon both principles of the patenting system and unique characteristics of services using state-of-art incentive aligned conjoint analysis. It provides an environment where a firm can incent potential outside inventors to develop service innovations that the firm desires, in a way that innovations addressing the needs of the firm will be protected and rewarded financially based on their market value. We demonstrate the application of the qPatent system in the context of developing a tour package for American tourists visiting Shanghai, China. It is shown to be capable of generating new service offerings that are more valuable to the firm than existing offerings for various segments of potential customers.