Comprehensive Exams Are Done

Woo hoo indeed.

The Television Keeps Calling Me By Name

Whenever this iPhone commercial is playing in the background, it makes me jump when it says my name. It is just odd to have the television address you personally.

http://www.apple.com/iphone/gallery/ads/#voice-control-large

Michael Jackson: The Brand

In memory of the King of Pop, BNet has a collection of Michael Jackson's commercials through the years, beginning with the Jackson Five days. I had forgotten most of them.

View them here.

Best Comp Question Ever

I have been compiling as many sample comp questions as I can find, not only from past years at UNT, but also from other institutions. (Via "the Google").

This one, from Georgia State, takes the cake. This is the best question ever, for several reasons,

All marketing professors take an ocean cruise on the S.S. Titanic II. While on the cruise, the ship accidentally (we think) strikes a boat filled with accounting professors. Unfortunately, the Titanic begins to sink rapidly (the boat with the accounting professors is totally unscathed). There is only one good lifeboat on the Titanic II and it only seats 4 people.

1. Who among the thousands of marketing professors on the Titanic should be saved? Defend your choice by listing their specific contributions to the marketing literature.
2. Who would be the first four you would throw off the boat?

The first part is relatively easy. I can't think of anyone off the top of my head for Part B, other than a certain econ professor -- and I suppose he wouldn't count.

Another article accepted

An article was accepted last week for the International Journal of Electronic Marketing & Retailing special issue on "evolving the social Web." It has the distinction of being my first solo-authored publication.

For those who are counting, that's four journal publications, along with three conference papers.

I thought that was fairly impressive until I read AMA's "Who Went Where" survey results, which were released today. Although the mean and mode for publications when going to market is zero, which clearly I've exceeded, the max (which is always my target to beat) was nine(!!), and the max for conference papers was 12. I don't think I could afford to go to that many conferences even if I had all those acceptances.

Blockbuster CEO Steers Company Toward Cliff

I couldn't believe this story in today's Dallas Morning News:

Blockbuster Executive Emphasizes Brick-And-Mortar Stores

Blockbuster Inc. CEO Jim Keyes told shareholders Thursday that "there is life in the stores," and brick-and-mortar locations remain key to the company's growing multichannel pitch to customers.

It's analogous to the following headlines: "Blockbuster: Betamax Key To Our Success", "AOL: Dial-Up Internet Is The Future", "GM Bets On Horse and Buggy" or "Coal: The Fuel of Tomorrow" (oops, that one is really out there).

Right now, not only do I get unlimited Netflix movies in the mail for $15 a month (three rentals from Blockbuster), but through Fios on-demand I can watch new releases through my remote. And digital delivery is only going to grow in availability.

If I were a shareholder at that meeting, I would have bolted for the door and called my broker on the spot. Sell! Sell!

One Hurdle Down

It's official. I have now completed all my coursework toward my PhD. (And with a 4.0 GPA, no less.) In one sense, it seems that the past two years flew by, but on the other hand it seems like a really long two years.

Next are the qualifying exams in August, and then the dissertation. I plan to have completed my doctorate within the next 18-20 months. It feels good to be in control (for the most part) of my own destiny.

College Students As Customers

The student as customer (SAC) approach leads students to believe that they deserve grades that they didn't earn, and are entitled to complain if they don't receive them, according to a pair of researchers.

The two conducted a survey of 1,025 undergraduate students at the University of South Alabama in the spring of 2008 and presented their findings at the 24th Annual Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Conference in April. Of those surveyed, 52 percent perceived themselves as customers of the university, responding positively to the statement, "As a student, I believe that my role is that of a customer of the university."

After measuring other attitudes and behaviors, including entitlement, satisfaction with the university, attitude toward complaining, and involvement with education, the researchers found that students who considered themselves customers of their university were more likely to feel entitled to complain--regardless of their satisfaction with the university--but they were not any more involved in their education than were other students.

This study demonstrates the unintended consequences of treating students as customers, which seems to be a trend over the last few decades. The researchers suggests treating students as co-producers, rather than customers.

Newspapers as Grandpa Simpson

As everyone knows, newspapers are dying left and right. Readership is down -- way down -- and the dead-tree medium is having trouble keeping subscribers, not to mention attracting new, younger ones. As content moves to the Web, newspaper publishers (who have done a horrible job of taking advantage of the potential of the Internet), have assumed the role of grumpy old men. They sit on their rocking chair shaking their fists and saying "Back in my day ..."

The latest rant is against Google and similar content aggregators. It seems the newspaper industry is angry that these young whippersnappers are on their lawn -- er, linking to their content. In the rest of the Internet world, driving traffic from search engines is a good thing, but the grumpy old men of the newspaper industry think we should read their online news the way they want us to. "By cracky, in my day when we wanted news, we waited for the afternoon edition and went out and bought a newspaper." If you want to read Dear Abby, by golly, you have to buy the whole paper.

As blogger Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com writes:

Your Google snits don’t even address your far more profound problem: the vast majority of your potential audience who never come to your sites, the young people who will never read your newspapers. You all remember the quote from a college student in The New York Times a year ago, the one that has kept you up at night. Let’s say it together: “If the news is that important, it will find me.” What are you doing to take your news to her? You still expect her to come to you - to your website or to the newsstand - just because of the magnetic pull of your old brand. But she won’t, and you know it. You lost an entire generation. You lost the future of news.

Jeff has it exactly right. Newspaper publishers have had a decade or so to adapt to the new Internet-driven media environment, and they've done a horrible job.

Woo Hoo!

It has nothing to do with either marketing or academia, but my favorite TV show has been renewed for a record-breaking 21st season.

Yes, The Simpsons will return in new episodes this fall. Best. Show. Ever.

AMA Winter 2009: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Just returned from the American Marketing Association's 2009 Winter Educators Conference in Tampa. The city is nice (at least the part I saw) and the weather was beautiful.

I made some good contacts and was able to connect with some like-minded researchers. As always, the academic community was friendly, collegial and helpful. That's the good.

The bad and the ugly refers to the academic job market. Thankfully, I won't be going to market until August 2010, because this year's market was described as "terrible,", "grim" and "dismal, to say the least." However, a bad market this year is bad for us next year because of the spillover effect. Even if the economy bounces back, there is likely to be a glut of candidates from 2009 who either couldn't find a position or who just delayed entering the market. Either way, it's an ugly market in 2009 and a bad one in 2010

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The No-Service Economy

For all the talk about the importance of service, it seems that retailers are going in the opposite direction. The "Wal-Mart-ization" of the retail industry puts low price ahead of anything else. It's fine for a no-frills operation like, well, Wal-Mart.

But as Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer blogs, it has spread even to upscale retailers like Nordstrom's.

If service is so important, why is it so scarce? To me, it seems to be a vicious cycle. Retailer loses money. To cut cost, retailer cuts employees. Fewer employees means less service. Less service means lower customer satisfaction. Lower satisfaction means lower financial performance. And so it goes.

Snow Day! (Ice, Actually)

Is it wrong to still be a little happy when the university closes down for the day?

Supposedly we've got a big ice storm moving into the DFW area, so classes are canceled. I don't see any ice yet, but the map shows a big front north of us.

(I resisted the urge to use the headline "Ice, Ice Baby.")

A Publication and a Conference Paper

Two new additions to the vita:

Last Friday, I received my acceptance letter for the Academy of Marketing Science 2009 Conference. My paper, “Real-Time Service Encounters And Customer Satisfaction: Online
Monitoring Of Core Service Delivery", was accepted for the services marketing track. I'll be presenting it in Baltimore in May.

Today, received an acceptance letter from the Electronic Commerce Research Journal. The paper, “Privacy Concern And Online Personalization: The Moderating Effects of Information Control and Compensation,” was co-authored by Dr. Donna Davis of Texas Tech and Dr. Ravi Jillapalli of Texas State. The article will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal.

Circuit City, R.I.P

In case you missed it, Circuit City announced today that it is going out of business. Wow. At one time, I was a big fan of the chain. Not so much over the past five years or so, but back in the day, I very much preferred Circuit City over its "evil twin", Best Buy. Now I shop Best Buy often, but can't remember the last time I was in Circuit City.

What happened? Of course the consumer electronics market is brutal, but Circuit City made some bone-headed moves. While Best Buy adapted to the changes in the marketplace, CC didn't. Best Buy expanded (or at least maintained) its product selection, CC cut theirs. Even in a down economy, people need to replace washing machines and refrigerators. Computers and big-screen TVs? Not so much. Best Buy acquired Geek Squad to beef up their service; Circuit City fired their senior salespeople.

A lot of the blame goes to the Wal-Mart factor. But there's always room for competition that provides service and knowledge, as well as the bare-bones Wal-Mart cost approach.

I hope that Home Depot and Circuit City have demonstrated that cutting service is NOT the way to compete with Wal-Mart. At one time, both were known for knowledgeable and helpful associates, but their respective CEOs opted to sacrifice service to beef up the bottom line.

R.I.P., Circuit City.

The 'Break' Is Almost Over

In academia, I suppose you eventually get used to the questions.

• "You only teach two classes a week? What do you do the rest of the time?"
• "It must be nice to only work nine months a year."
• "Wow! I wish I had a month off for Christmas."
  

Over the 5-week winter "break", here's what I've done:

• Completed and submitted two journal articles
• Analyzed data for another study and wrote it up in a manuscript to be submitted to a conference
• Read four books on qualitative research, transcribed and analyzed six hours of focus group video for another study, and then overhauled that manuscript (still working on it)
• Reviewed articles for the 2009 AMS Annual Conference and a special issue of an e-marketing journal
  
• Still working on data analysis for another pilot study
• ... and I'm not done yet!
  

In summary, over this "break" I've taken exactly four days off: the weekend after the semester ended, Christmas and New Year's. Meanwhile, friends and family who are so envious of my 5-week "break" have taken entire weeks off.

Not that I'm complaining; I love what I'm doing. But it's a lot of work. A lot.

Is It Cold In Here, or Is It Just Me?

For those of us who have classmates, colleagues or coworkers who are always cold, Dilbert is spot-on, as usual.

Read it here.