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- All Subjects: online marketing
- All Subjects: Industrial procurement--Management.
- Creators: Kull, Thomas
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
- Status: Published
Description
E-commerce has rapidly become a mainstay in today's economy, and many websites have built themselves around providing a platform for independent sellers. Sites such as Etsy, Storenvy, Redbubble, and Society6 are increasingly popular options for anyone looking to open their own online store. With this project, I attempted to examine the effects of four different marketing techniques on sales in an online store. I opened a shop on Etsy and tracked sales in connection with promotion through social media, selling products in-person at a convention, holding a holiday tie-in sale, and using price anchoring. Social media accounts were opened on Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram to promote the shop over the course of the project period, and Etsy's web analytics were used to track which sites directed the most traffic to the shop. I attended a convention in mid-January 2016 where I sold my products and distributed business cards with a discount code to track sales resulting from being at the convention. A holiday sale was held in conjunction with Valentine's Day to look at whether holidays influenced purchases. Lastly, a significantly more expensive product was temporarily put in the shop to see whether it produced a price anchoring effect \u2014 that is, encouraged sales of the less expensive products by making them seem affordable in comparison. While the volume of sales data was too small to draw statistically significant conclusions, the project was a highly instructive experience in the process of opening a small online store. The decision-making steps outlined may be helpful to other students looking to open their own online shop.
ContributorsChen, Candice Elizabeth (Author) / Moore, James (Thesis director) / Sanford, Adriana (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This thesis is structured as a case study that draws primarily from the field of marketing with supplements from supply chain management. It focuses on the Law Offices of Jennifer Hayes over a time period of six months that spans from September 2012 to February 2013. This project examines how the firm's marketing efforts were expanded to include online pay-per-click marketing through Google Adwords. The project was a huge success as it helped fuel the growth of the business through the generation of qualified leads. Additionally, this thesis also tells the story of the complexities and decisions surrounding the project from its inception to its completion. In the process, this thesis found that the value of the advertising spend at a professional services firm can be increased even when cost reductions are impractical. This was be done by first confirming that there is in fact room to enhance value in this spend category. Secondly, the strategy to accomplish this goal took a holistic approach that enhanced the overall competitiveness of the company, not just its revenues.
ContributorsDe La O, Douglas David (Author) / Ostrom, Amy (Thesis director) / Kull, Thomas (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
While agency problems inevitably exist in buyer-supplier relationships, the focus on how to overcome such problems has been confined to the buyer-supplier dyad as if the dyad exists in isolation. In this dissertation, I re-frame the agency problems beyond the dyadic relationship between a buyer and its supplier and suggest a new way to overcome agency problems. While the current Agency Theory suggests that the buyer can monitor and provide incentives to mitigate the agency problems, I propose to look beyond the dyad in addressing buyer-supplier agency problems.
In the first chapter, I examine the impact of the “indirect links” in which the buyer is connected to the supplier through a third actor. I propose a conceptual framework that specifies how the indirect links can overcome agency problems through the effects of information exchange, mutual monitoring, power change, and network governance. These different effects are enabled by the indirect links based on the different network positions and levels of connectivity of the third actor. The first chapter provides a theoretical framework for Chapter 2 and 3.
In Chapter 2, the effect of network governance enabled by the indirect links is investigated. In particular, two scenario-based role-play experiments were conducted with managers to examine the effects of dyadic and network governance mechanisms on supplier opportunism. In Study 1, the participants took the perspective of a supplier, while in Study 2, the participants took the role of a buyer. The results show that network governance mechanism reduces the supplier's opportunistic behavioral intentions directly and indirectly through the negative affection prediction, and while suppliers may overlook the buyer's reactions as they make decisions, the buyers are likely to react against the supplier, such as engage in negative word-of-mouth or reduce level of commitment.
Finally, directed sourcing, a direct application of how a buyer could overcome agency problems beyond the dyad, is examined in Chapter 3. Directed sourcing is an emerging sourcing practice in which the buying firms bypass the top-tier suppliers and directly manage or contract with lower-tier suppliers, and research on this new practice is in its infancy. Therefore, multi-tier multi-task principal-agent models are developed to investigate the effect of directed sourcing practice on each member in this three-tier supply chain, comparing with traditional tiered sourcing. The results show that directed sourcing generally benefits the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and the lower-tier supplier, while it harms the top-tier supplier. Yet, directed sourcing is not always beneficial to the OEM. Therefore, an OEM should be selective in implementing this new strategy.
In the first chapter, I examine the impact of the “indirect links” in which the buyer is connected to the supplier through a third actor. I propose a conceptual framework that specifies how the indirect links can overcome agency problems through the effects of information exchange, mutual monitoring, power change, and network governance. These different effects are enabled by the indirect links based on the different network positions and levels of connectivity of the third actor. The first chapter provides a theoretical framework for Chapter 2 and 3.
In Chapter 2, the effect of network governance enabled by the indirect links is investigated. In particular, two scenario-based role-play experiments were conducted with managers to examine the effects of dyadic and network governance mechanisms on supplier opportunism. In Study 1, the participants took the perspective of a supplier, while in Study 2, the participants took the role of a buyer. The results show that network governance mechanism reduces the supplier's opportunistic behavioral intentions directly and indirectly through the negative affection prediction, and while suppliers may overlook the buyer's reactions as they make decisions, the buyers are likely to react against the supplier, such as engage in negative word-of-mouth or reduce level of commitment.
Finally, directed sourcing, a direct application of how a buyer could overcome agency problems beyond the dyad, is examined in Chapter 3. Directed sourcing is an emerging sourcing practice in which the buying firms bypass the top-tier suppliers and directly manage or contract with lower-tier suppliers, and research on this new practice is in its infancy. Therefore, multi-tier multi-task principal-agent models are developed to investigate the effect of directed sourcing practice on each member in this three-tier supply chain, comparing with traditional tiered sourcing. The results show that directed sourcing generally benefits the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and the lower-tier supplier, while it harms the top-tier supplier. Yet, directed sourcing is not always beneficial to the OEM. Therefore, an OEM should be selective in implementing this new strategy.
ContributorsYang, Yang (Author) / Choi, Thomas Y. (Thesis advisor) / Carter, Craig (Thesis advisor) / Kull, Thomas (Committee member) / Yin, Rui (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016