Ashish Sinha

Even as more companies integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into their new products and services, little research outlines the strategic implications of such AI adoption. Therefore, the present study investigates how investors respond to announcements of new product innovations integrated with AI by non-software firms (AI-NPIs), with the prediction that they respond favorably if the firms feature a marketing department with substantial power; such firms likely possess the marketing resources and assets needed to ensure the success of AI-NPIs. An event study with a sample of 341 announcements by 77 S&P 500 firms between 2009–2018 supports this prediction. Furthermore, the relationship between marketing department power and investor response intensifies when the announcement (1) occurs in later innovation stages, (2) involves the sourcing of external innovation assets, and (3) refers to more complex innovations. These findings have both theoretical and managerial implications.

Purpose: Given the high uncertainty in the quality perception of experiential products, manufacturers use signals to influence consumers’ decisions. In the movie industry, literature shows that performance of the main channel (e.g. cinema) strongly influences the performance of auxiliary channels (e.g. DVDs). The success of a movie in the home country is also to be resonated by its good performance in host countries. However, the cultural contingency of these success-breeds-success (SBS) effects has not been examined. This paper aims to test the influence of cultural values on the SBS effects across channels and countries. Design/methodology/approach: Borrowing concepts from the signaling literature and analyzing DVD sales data from six international markets using a multilevel mixed-effects model, the study finds that culture plays a significant role to influence both SBS effects. Findings: In countries with low power distance, short-term orientation and high indulgence, consumers who purchase from auxiliary channels are more likely to be influenced by the box office performance of movies. Meanwhile, cultural distance between the home and host nations significantly decreases the cross-national SBS effect. Research limitations/implications: The findings are likely to be generalized to online auxiliary channels of movies, but empirical testing is required to ensure that no major adaptation is required in the process. Future research can also extend the framework of this paper to include more countries into the analysis and investigate cultural variables beyond Hofstede’s dimensions. Practical implications: This paper suggests that the SBS effects may vary across nations. When managers plan for the sequential distributions of experiential products, the cultural values of target markets should be considered to decrease the uncertainty in sales prediction. Originality/value: This paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating the international auxiliary channels of movies and incorporating cultural values into the framework of sequential distributions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to test the links between the main and auxiliary channels from an international marketing perspective.

This study examines the optimization of interrelease timing decisions, focusing on box office and DVD sales in the U.S. motion picture industry. It aims to improve managerial decision making by jointly modeling the revenue in these two channels through a copula modeling approach. As in previous studies, the authors find that the time lag from box office release to DVD release should be increased to optimize total movie performance, but they conclude that previous studies have systematically underestimated the optimal time lag. This study is the first to challenge the assumption of a negative decay in DVD performance as a function of time; its results suggest that a delayed DVD release is still optimal for maximizing revenue in the DVD channel. This study's model suggests that, on average, individual movies are approximately eight weeks away from their optimal lag and that the net impact of optimizing would be improvements in total and DVD revenue by 2.5% and 5.6%, respectively. Therefore, this model is expected to enhance managerial decision making by offering the ability to predict the optimal time lag for individual movies.

In the context of an emerging market economy, this study examines the mediating role of marketing capabilities on the market orientation (MO)–performance relationship. Specifically, the authors investigate the roles of product innovativeness, customer relationship management (CRM) capability, research and development (R&D) integration and brand management capabilities in the institutionalisation of a MO culture and the implementation of MO behaviours. With data collected from 150 organisations, the authors find that MO behaviour fully mediates the effects of MO culture on product innovativeness and CRM capability, which in turn enhance firm performance. In addition, leadership quality facilitates the effect of MO culture on MO behaviour, and the effects of product innovativeness and CRM capability on firm performance are greater in the presence of R&D–marketing integration and brand management capabilities, respectively.

Using a meta‐analysis of 142 experimental observations, this work examines the influence of different research design and outcome measures on extremeness aversion (i.e., the propensity to avoid extreme options in choice situations). The results indicate that extremeness aversion is a robust phenomenon: middle options are significantly more often selected than other options. However, the strength of this behavioral effect exhibits substantial variation (up to three times the average magnitude) across methodological decisions: employing price‐quality tradeoffs, nondurable categories, or binary‐trinary choice‐set comparisons tend to reduce the probability of extremeness aversion among consumers, whereas using a larger number of tradeoff dimensions, non‐numeric attributes, high‐quality extensions, or utilitarian products increase its likelihood. Because extremeness aversion has been assessed using three different measurement paradigms (absolute‐share changes, relative‐share shifts, and middle‐option proportions), we discuss their characteristics and investigate their degree of agreement. We find that the three measures can lead to rather different effect magnitudes and even contradictory conclusions about the effect of moderators.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation of a category management tool known as Category Optimizer™ at Foster's Wine Estates Americas for one of its brands, the Beringer California Collection. Foster's was facing a common management problem: harnessing its portfolio of Beringer California Collection wines to increase profitability, improve its competitive position, and defend against a disruptive new entrant in the U.S. wine market called Yellow Tail. Category Optimizer combines the parsimony of an internal market structure with the advances that have been made in assortment planning in operations research, assortment and stock-keeping-unit–level modeling, mixed logits, and the marketing literature on the perceptions of variety of assortment to develop and estimate a model on readily available store scanner data. The model subsequently uses these results to inform strategic and tactical decision making. This approach led to recommendations that initially seemed counterintuitive; the normal response would be for Foster's to consider lowering prices to maintain share and volume, a strategy not inconsistent with many of the recommendations of past models. However, considering the additional degrees of freedom that a product range offered for defense, we demonstrated that a combination of price increases together with the introduction of a volume-flanker product in a new channel would improve profits, increase revenue, and protect and enhance market share. These were successfully implemented in early 2008, earning rich dividends for the company; increasing profitability by 70%, revenue by 3%, and earnings before interest and taxes by 8.5%; and having a positive impact on its brand ranking. In fact, in 2008, it debuted as sixth among the international wine brands. It also managed to play an important role in deposing Yellow Tail, the market share leader, from its dominant position. We conclude the paper by providing examples of other companies where this approach has also been successfully implemented and by discussing some avenues for future research.