2021 Year in Review Graduate Programs and Research

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

GRADUATE PROGRAMS AND RESEARCH A NOTE FROM THE ACTING ASSOCIATE DEAN

Dr. Lakshmi S. Iyer Acting Associate Dean Graduate Programs and Research

Warm greetings on behalf of the Walker College of Business Graduate Programs and Research. Resilience has been in the vocabulary of many since the start of the pandemic. I would add gratitude and admiration to mine as I am so thankful and in awe of what our students, staff, and faculty have accomplished.

This newsletter highlights the student profile and achievements of all three WCOB graduate programs: Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of Science in Accounting (MSA), and Master of Science in Applied Data Analytics (MSADA).

In addition to supporting our graduate programs through their excellent teaching and service, our faculty are very active in research. As you read about selected peer-reviewed journal publications of our faculty, note the areas of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) that are addressed in their research. These are indicated by one or more symbols that represent each of the 17 UN-SDGs.

Dr. Neel Das MBA Program Director

Dr. Jason Xiong MSADA Program Acting Director

Dr. Lynn Stallworth MSA Program Director

Donna Lindabury Graduate Programs Administrator

Cele Burt Graduate Student Services Associate

Maureen Cathey Graduate Programs Career Coach

Despite changes to the traditional learning, research and work environments, our students, staff, and faculty have embraced their commitment to excellence that is evidenced in this newsletter. Thank you for joining us in looking back on our shared journey and major accomplishments.

Warmest Regards, Lakshmi S. Iyer

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT Samuel Biggs

ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT Manas Desai

MBA/IOHRM Class of 2021

MBA/MSADA Class of 2021

Samuel Biggs is a 2021 graduate. Upon completing the Master of Business Administration (MBA) program and the Industrial-Organizational Psychology and Human Resource Management (IOHRM) program at Appalachian, he accepted a role at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as a management consultant within their Workforce Transformation Department.

This January, alumnus Manas Desai has joined Ally Financial as a Data Engineer based in Charlotte, NC. He is a 2021 December graduate of both the Master of Science in Applied Data Analytics (MSADA) program and the Master of Business Administration (MBA) program.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION ON CAMPUS JACKSON SIPPE (MBA ‘21) Jackson Sippe was awarded a North Carolina IDEA MICRO Grant for his startup company, Worxstr co-founded with incoming MBA student, James Wheeler. He also recently began a PhD program at the University of Colorado Boulder.

MARC PFROGNER (MBA ‘22) Marc Pfrogner has founded his own LLC, Progner Research, and is currently being mentored this semester by MBA Alumnus Zak Ammar (MBA ‘16) and Erich Schlenker (Director, Center for Entrepreneurship).

MITCHELL POWERS (MBA ‘21) Mitchell Powers has earned his Green Belt certification from the Council of Six Sigma Certification.

BRAXTON LEE & TEAGUE VREELAND (IOHRM/MBA ‘22) Dual degree IOHRM/MBA students Braxton Lee & Teague Vreeland have both qualified for and took the Society for HR Management Certified Professional (SHRM-CP) exam in December 2021.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION ONLINE WALKER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS IS HOME TO NEARLY HALF OF ALL QUALITY-MATTERS CERTIFIED ONLINE COURSE OFFERINGS AT APP STATE Excellence in teaching is one of the cornerstones of WCOB. Since the launch of our online MBA program, our graduate faculty have worked closely with our Center for Academic Excellence team to create high quality online courses for the online program. Several faculty have earned their Teaching Online Certificate from Quality Matters (QM), a nationally recognized, faculty-driven peer-review process used to ensure the quality of online and blended course design. In addition, several courses listed below are QM-certified.

Dr. Jason Xiong developed the first QM-Certified course within Walker College of Business Dr. Xiong attained QM Course Certification for MBA 5200: Problem Analysis and Quantitative Methods. The certificate enables instructors to demonstrate mastery of online teaching through seven workshops that offer the experience of learning online from the student’s perspective. He is also a Center for Academic Excellence faculty champion.

In 2021, six additional professors obtained a QM Course Certification for the following courses: Dr. Dwayne McSwain for Managerial Accounting (MBA 5320), Dr. Steven Creek for Strategic Management (MBA 5750), Dr. Steven Leon for Operations and Supply Chain Management (MBA 5220), Dr. Scott Hunsinger for his Introduction to Business Analytics and Information Systems (MBA 5260), Dr. Dinesh Davè for Global Supply Chain Management (SCM 5690), and Dr. Nik Nikolov for International Marketing (MKT 5550). There are an additional three courses under external review.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN APPLIED DATA ANALYTICS GOPIKA MALIK Gopika Malik, a student in the Master of Science in Applied Data Analytics (MSADA) program, received an academic student grant to attend the South East SAS Users Group (SESUG) conference. Malik served as co-captain of WCOB’s Analytics Team and is a Google Cloud Ready facilitator.

THE 2021 ARCH MI DATA DIVE TEAM MSADA students earned first place in Arch Mortgage Insurance’s 2021 ARCH MI Data Dive Competition. The App State students beat out student teams from Wake Forest University, Duke University, Arizona State University, and UNC Greensboro, among others.

THE 2021 FINTECH COMPETITION TEAM Peiman Ostadi (MSADA ‘21), Gopika Malik (MSADA ‘22) and Anirudh Nomula (MSADA ‘21) placed in the top 5 in the FinTech Competition.

STUDENTS EARN COMPETITIVE BADGING & ANALYTICS CERTIFICATIONS Several students have earned badging and certification from Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google, DataCamp, Tableau and IBM in emerging topics in analytics. This has led to strong placement and salary offers.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ACCOUNTING

CHARLES JOHNSON III NAMED A RECIPIENT OF FLEMING SCHOLARSHIP Johnson, an intended accounting major, is one of four first-year students at Appalachian who have been named recipients of the Dr. Willie C. Fleming Scholarship. He said becoming a Mountaineer has been a dream of his since attending a Duke TIP (Talent Identification Program) summer event at Appalachian when he was in middle school.

Johnson graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, where he was involved in track and field, bowling, marching band and the drum line.

MASTER OF SCIENCE IN ACCOUNTING STUDENT EARNS A $10,000 SCHOLARSHIP Megan Winter, a 2021 Appalachian State University alumna who is now working toward her Master of Science in Accounting degree, has been selected by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to receive a $10,000 scholarship for the 2021-2022 academic year.

As an undergraduate, Winter consistently earned Chancellor’s List and Dean’s List nods, was a member of the Walker College Honors Program, and participated in Club Swimming.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

WALKER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS NEWS DR. HUNSINGER RECEIVED THE MERITORIOUS PAPER AWARD AT CONISAR

FOUR EARN DEAN’S CLUB RESEARCH PRIZES

Dr. Scott Hunsinger received the Meritorious Paper Award at the Conference on Information Systems Applied Research (CONISAR) in November 2021 in Washington, DC for his research paper, “The COVID Effect: Information Technology Jobs in the Pandemic,” co-authored with Dr. Patricia Sendall (Merrimack College), Dr. Alan Peslak (Penn State University), and Dr. Wendy Ceccucci (Quinnipiac University). The paper examined the impact of COVID-19 on salary and employment trends in Information Technology (IT) jobs. It found that there is a strong demand for cybersecurity specialists, but job postings for IT workers have lagged behind other science and engineering positions since the pandemic began.

Four professors in the Walker College of Business at Appalachian State University have earned Dean’s Club Research Prizes. They are, pictured clockwise from top left, Dr. Joseph Cazier, Dr. Edgar Hassler, Dr. Lubna Nafees and Dr. Jason Xiong.

DR. NAFEES CITED IN WSJ ARTICLE ON IMPACTS OF INFLUENCER MARKETING

DR. IYER AWARDED ADVANCE GRANT FOR GENDER EQUITY IN TECH

In October of 2021, Dr. Lubna Nafees was quoted in a Wall Street Journal Exclusive article examining personal branding in the influencer space. The article, “Paris Hilton’s Business Empire Is Getting a Makeover”, highlights the shift taking place where media companies rely less on legacy brands alone and lean into personalities.

Dr. Lakshmi S. Iyer is performing research aimed at fostering gender equity in IT through a three-year project titled Increasing the Participation and AdvanCemenT of Women in Information Technology, or ImPACT IT.

Dr. Nafees weighed in saying, “increasingly, consumers are turning to social-media influencers to find products and services that align with their lifestyles, which means brands have to work through this channel in order to be present where their consumers are.”

The Dean’s Club Research prize recognizes and rewards innovative business research at Appalachian that reflects the Walker College of Business mission, vision and values, while aligning with the UN 17 sustainable development goals.

Iyer, who also serves as a professor in the Department of Computer Information Systems, was awarded more than $100,000 in grant support for the project; funding that is part of a nearly $1 million National Science Foundation (NSF) ADVANCE grant awarded to the College of William & Mary.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

DEPARTMENT OF ACCOUNTING

Dr. Pennie Bagley

Dr. Bagley co-authored (with Derek W. Dalton, C. Kevin Eller, and Nancy L. Harp) Preparing Students for the Future of Work: Lessons Learned from Telecommuting in Public Accounting. Their findings present best practices and challenges regarding telecommuting implementation within a team setting. The results are useful to accounting educators as they advise and mentor today’s students, who are likely to enter a workforce with increasing prevalence of telecommuting postCOVID.

Dr. Hofmann authored The Politics of Religion and Taxation: Keeping Church and State Separate. In this paper, Dr. Hofmann discusses tax laws and federal court decisions relating to the taxation or exemption of religious non-profit organizations. In a democracy characterized by separation of church and state, what role does the federal government play in regulating the activities and financial transactions of churches and other religious non-profit organizations?

Dr. Scot Justice

Dr. Justice recently co-authored (with Dana R. Hermanson) Considering the Longer-Term Effects of Letting Star Employees Get Away with Ethical Violations, published in The CPA Journal in May 2021. In the study, they found that in the long term, lenience with star employees can lead to average employees being more likely to get away with similar ethical violations, greatly weakening the control environment and increasing overall fraud risk.

Dr. Kowalczyk co-authored (with Lindsey Wise, Eric Marland, Gregg Marland, Jason Hoyle, Tatyana Ruseva, Jeffrey Colby, and Timothy Kinlaw) the article Optimizing Sequestered Carbon in Forest Offset Programs: Balancing Accounting Stringency and Participation. The research focuses on the requirements for accounting and permanence in forest carbon offset programs to illustrate that current requirements for participation in carbon offset markets disproportionately disadvantage small landowners.

Dr. Lynn Stallworth

Dr. Mary Ann Hofmann

Dr. Tammy Kowalczyk

Dr. Stallworth co-authored (with Ken Brackney) Reveal Technologies: A Case of Key Differences Between IFRS and US GAAP. This case gives students the opportunity to apply their knowledge of the differences between U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by making a series of adjustments to a company’s U.S. GAAP basis account balances to reflect IFRS.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Dr. Joseph Cazier

Dr. Cazier co-authored (with Edgar E. Hassler, Brandon Hopkins, James T. Wilkes, Kiefer Smith, and Max Runsel) A Century of Discovery: Mining 100 Years of Honey Bee Research. The paper presents the analysis of 30,355 unique peer reviewed journal articles related to honey bees, beekeeping and bee research from 1917-2016. The study shows how honey bee research has evolved from a sub-field of other disciplines to a strong discipline in its own right and how it has further been enriched by contributions from other sciences.

Dr. Chen co-authored (with Juthamon Sithipolvanichgul, Judy Land, and Peter Rectham) Factors Affecting Cloud Computing Adoption & Continuance Intention of Students in Thailand. The article explores the increasing number of higher education institutions that have embraced Cloud Computing Services (CCS) to better respond to the issues arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Charlie Chen

Dr. Hoon Choi

Dr. Choi co-authored (with Shin-Yuan Hung, Cheng-Yung Peng, and Charlie Chen) Different Perspectives on BDA Usage by Management Levels. Adopting theoretical foundations of the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) framework and technology task fit theory, this study investigates how business managers in different management levels determine BDA use. The major findings suggest that low-level and middle-level managers decide the use of the BDA system from different perspectives.

Dr. Iyer co-authored (with Margaret M. Sugg, Trent J. Spaulding, Sandi J. Lane, Jennifer D. Runkle, Stella R. Harden, and Adam Hege) Mapping Community-Level Determinants of COVID-19 Transmission in Nursing Homes: A Multi-Scale Approach. The research uses GIS-based spatial modeling aimed to determine the association between nursing home-level metrics and county-level, place-based variables with COVID-19 confirmed cases in nursing homes across the US. Results provide a framework for examining further COVID-19 cases in nursing homes.

Dr. Jung Hwan Kim

Dr. Lakshmi Iyer

Dr. Kim co-authored (with Freeha Khan, Lars Mathiassen, and Robin Moore) Data Breach Management: An Integrated Risk Model. This model is based on a systematic review of the literature and risk management perspective. Practically, the study provides key insights that practitioners can use to organize and orchestrate effective data breach management based on comprehensive profiles of risk items and resolution techniques.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS Dr. Baik co-authored (with Hanjoon Michael Jung) Contests with Multiple Alternative Prizes: Public Good/Bad Prizes & Externalities. They study contests in which there are multiple alternative public-good/bad prizes, and the players compete, by expending irreversible effort, over which prize to have awarded to them.

Dr. Kyung Baik

Dr. Bruner co-authored (with Caleb Cox, David M. McEvoy, and Brock Stoddard) Strategic Thinking in Contests. The paper examines motives for over-bidding in contests using both individual and team contests. The results suggest that analyzing communication provides a rich window into an individual’s thought process when making decisions, and it can complement insights gained through elicited values from common decision tasks.

Dr. David Dickinson

Dr. Dickinson co-authored The Influence of Dietary Patterns on Outcomes in a Bayesian Choice Task with recent graduate Caleb Garbuio (’21). It explores whether voluntary dietary patterns have an impact on decision making. Their results suggest that decision making is nuanced among dietary groups, but that short-term incentivized decisions in an ecologically valid field setting are likely not improved solely by following a promoted diet such as the Mediterranean or Vegetarian diet.

Dr. Groothuis, Austin Eggers and alumnus Parker Redding (‘18) co-authored The Flutie Effect: The Influence of College Football Upsets & National Championships on the Quantity and Quality of Students at a University. They found a positive correlation between winning either an upset victory or a national championship in football and the number of students enrolling at the successful university.

Results suggest that athletics serve as a consumption amenity, leading students to apply and enroll at the victorious university.

Dr. Dennis Guignet

Dr. David Bruner

Dr. Peter Groothuis

Dr. Guignet co-authored (with Matthew T. Heberling, Michael Papenfus, and Olivia Griot) Property Values, Water Quality, and Benefit Transfer: A Nationwide Meta-Analysis. The meta-dataset includes 656 unique estimates, and entails a cluster structure that accounts for property price effects at different distances from a waterbody. While they found evidence of systematic heterogeneity, the median out-of-sample transfer errors are relatively large. The authors discuss the implications for benefit transfer and identify future work to improve transfer performance.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Dr. Dave McEvoy

Dr. McEvoy co-authored (with David L. Dickinson and David M. Bruner) The Impact of Sleep Restriction on Interpersonal Conflict Resolution and the Narcotic Effect. The study explores how insufficient sleep affects interpersonal conflict and the subsequent implications for personal and workplace settings. One implication is that insufficient sleep predicts increased dependency on alternatives to voluntarily resolution of interpersonal conflict.

Dr. Ramalingam co-authored (with Shaun P. Hargreaves Heap and Brock Stoddard) Team Competition When There is Within-Team Inequality. The study examines the effect of within-team inequality on public good contributions when the team competes with another team for a prize. They find in some cases the boost to public goods contributions is bigger with unequal teams than equal ones. Hence, competition not only promotes efficiency, it also reduces inequality in their experimentation.

Dr. Brock Stoddard

Dr. Stoddard co-authored (with Caleb A. Cox and James M. Walker) Incentivizing Provision of Collective Goods: Allocation Rules. In a laboratory experiment, the researchers study the voluntary provision of a divisible collective good. The results suggest several interesting directions for future research, including decision settings where the allocator’s allocation mechanism is known prior to group members choosing their level of contribution.

Dr. Whitehead co-authored (with Jimena González-Ramírez and Jill Caviglia-Harris) Teaching Environmental and Natural Resource Economics: A Review of the Economic Education Literature. This paper creates an easy-to-use guide to the large volume of journal articles on teaching Environmental and Natural Resource Economics (ENRE). The most common ENRE topic in these 54 articles is incentive-based approaches for addressing externalities, and more specifically, marketable pollution permits.

Dr. Nathaniel Wilcox

Dr. Abhijit Ramalingam

Dr. John Whitehead

Dr. Wilcox co-authored (with Jeffrey A. Smith and Alexander Whalley) Are Participants Good Evaluators? This study compares participant evaluations based on survey responses to econometric impact estimates obtained using data from the experimental evaluation of the U.S. Job Training Partnership Act, and results suggest that program participants behave as ‘lay scientists’ who seek to estimate the impact of the program but face cognitive challenges in doing so.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

DEPARTMENT OF FINANCE, BANKING & INSURANCE Dr. Cox co-authored (with Donovan Woods), COVID-19 and Market Structure Dynamics. The study examines the impact of COVID-19 on market structure in the U.S., specifically, the impact of both the COVID-19-induced market uncertainty period, and the suspension of the NYSE floor on trading dynamics such as market fragmentation, algorithmic trading, and hidden liquidity in the market.

Dr. Justin Cox

Dr. Hadley co-authored (with D. Brian Blank) When CEOs Adapt: An Investigation of Manager Experience, Policy and Performance Following Recessions.

The paper examines the changes in corporate policies following recessions during CEO tenures to evaluate the value of learning. CEOs with recession experience demonstrate expertise in risk-shifting strategies that can contribute to higher firm value and performance during subsequent recessions.

Dr. Jeffrey Hobbs

Dr. Brandy Hadley

Dr. Hobbs co-authored (with Vivek Singh and Madhumita Chakraborty) Institutional Underperformance: Should Managers Listen to the Sell-Side Before Trading? This study examines the performance of institutional trades in the context of recent analyst recommended changes. Results strongly suggest that institutional managers could increase their returns by merely following sell-side analysts’ advice more often.

The primary objective of the Department of Finance, Banking and Insurance is to develop leaders for the business, government, and educational communities and to assist them in making contributions to society. The students are provided with the theoretical concepts needed to understand and dissect business problems. The faculty provide students with practical applications needed for financial analysis in their given areas of study. In addition to practical applications in the classroom, we encourage students to intern off-campus. Internships allow students to gain valuable practical business experience while still in college.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT

Dr. Mark Bolinger

Dr. Bolinger co-authored (with Matthew A. Josefy, Regan Stevenson, and Michael A. Hitt) Experiments in Strategy Research: A Critical Review and Future Research Opportunities. The paper reviews extant experimental work in strategic management and argues that experiments constitute an underused methodology that has significant potential. Overall, the work documents experimental research and provides a methodological practicum, thereby offering a platform for future experiment-based research in strategic management.

Dr. Nandi co-authored (with Madhavi L. Nandi and Varsha Khandker) the Impact of Perceived Interactivity & Perceived Value on Mobile App Stickiness: An Emerging Economy Perspective. The study serves as a potential landscape for mobile app developers, consultants and service providers to identify unique daily-life requirements for mobile applications in emerging economies.

Dr. Santosh Nandi

Dr. Rachel Shinnar

Dr. Shinnar co-authored (with Daniel Cohen and Dan K. Hsu) Identifying Innovative Opportunities in the Entrepreneurship Classroom: A New Approach & Empirical Test. They examine a unique teaching method (IDEATE), rooted in experiential learning and aimed at developing novice learners’ skills for opportunity identification. Findings show that the opportunities identified by the students in the IDEATE group were significantly more innovative than those identified by students in the passive control group.

Dr. Westerman co-authored (Madasu B. Rao, Sita Vanka, and Manish Gupta) Sustainable Human Resource Management & The Triple Bottom Line: Multi-Stakeholder Strategies, Concepts, and Engagement. This overview article brings together papers which embrace the challenge of creating a new, more sustainable human resource management model with a multi-stakeholder triple bottom line orientation, which emphasizes environmental and social performance in addition to economic outcomes.

Dr. Jim Westerman

The Department of Management offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs to prepare students for a variety of managerial responsibilities in today’s dynamic environment. The student who is studying management will acquire relevant knowledge and skills necessary for success in a variety of small, medium and large organizations. The Department of Management at Appalachian State University is committed to developing and allocating resources to the fundamental task of creating a diverse campus culture. We value diversity as the expression of human similarities and differences, as well as the importance of a living and learning environment conducive to knowledge, respect, acceptance, understanding and global awareness.

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING & SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Dr. Fayez Ahmad

Dr. Ahmad co-authored (with Francisco Guzman) Brand Equity, Online Reviews, and Message Trust: The Moderating Role of Persuasion Knowledge. The paper investigates whether a message from a brand with stronger brand equity generates more trust than a message from a brand with lower brand equity. The findings confirm that consumers are more likely to write online reviews when a message comes from a brand that has stronger brand equity.

Dr. Albinsson co-authored (with Lubna Nafees, Sarita R. Chaudhury, and B.Yasanthi Perera) This Is Who I Am: Instagram as Counterspace for Shared Gendered Ethnic Identity Expressions. This research examines the way individuals use Instagram as a counterspace to create and share gendered ethnic identity (GEI) expressions to counter oppression and promote well-being. In doing so, this study answers the call to advance research on genders, markets, and culture by exploring GEI as a sociocultural, intersectional construct.

Dr. Ilgim Benoit

Dr. Pia Albinsson

Dr. Benoit co-authored (with Elizabeth G. Miller) Enhancing Creativity Perception through Fear. This paper shows that fear positively affects creativity assessments of advertisements, leading to increased advertising effectiveness, and that this effect is due to fear’s positive impact on engagement. Across seven studies, the paper shows that these findings hold for both incidental and integral fear (i.e., fear appeal), for public service announcements and commercial advertisements, and across a variety of product categories.

Dr. Davè co-authored (with William M. Baker), Using Financial Accounting Throughout Supply Chain Management - Now is the Time. The paper examines how Supply Chain Management (SCM) is unarguably the most critical organizational function, and it continues to gain high visibility, particularly due to current environmental issues. The paper describes how and why financial accounting rules hinder SCM. Finally, the study explains how to implement financial accounting into SCM success.

Dr. Dinesh Davè

Dr. Leon co-authored (with Charlie Chen and Aaron Ratcliffe) Consumers’ Perceptions of Last Mile Drone Delivery. Organizations have begun testing last mile drone delivery and will likely push to use it more in the near future. This research examines the influence of privacy, legislation, organizational trust, and usefulness on consumers’ intention to adopt last mile drone delivery services.

Dr. Steven Leon

2021 | YEAR IN REVIEW

DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING & SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Dr. Binay Kumar

Dr. Kumar co-authored (with V. Kumar and Divya Ramachandran) Influence of New-age Technologies on Marketing: A Research Agenda. This study focuses on four key new-age technologies – the Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Blockchain – and their respective roles in marketing. The authors present research questions that are pertinent to key entities (firms, customers, intermediaries, developers, and regulators), and also highlights major areas that need managerial focus in the adoption of these technologies.

Dr. Nafees co-authored (with Christy M. Cook, Nik Nikolov, and James E. Stoddard) Can Social Media Influencer (SMI) Power Influence Consumer Brand Attitudes? The Mediating Role of Perceived SMI Credibility. Social media usage is pervasive, and brands must manage this channel carefully in order to meet their strategic goals. The role of social media influencers (SMI) is progressively becoming crucial for shaping consumer brand attitudes toward the firms’ offerings.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine how SMIs can help brands build favorable brand attitudes and thus improve product acceptance and downstream business performance.

Dr. Nik Nikolov

Dr. Lubna Nafees

Dr. Nikolov co-authored (with Ismail Karabas and Brittany Wood) The Effect of eWOM from Identity and Non-identity Social Media on Movie Sales. Based on prior research on social identification and relationship orientation of social networks in marketing, the authors examine whether eWOM on identity-focused (e.g., Facebook) and non-identity-focused (e.g., Youtube) platforms impact an objective consumer response variable: motion pictures box office sales.

Dr. Northington co-authored (with Stephanie T. Gillison, Sharon E. Beatty, and Shiri Vivek) I Don’t Want to be a Rule Enforcer during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Frontline Employees’ Plight. This research explores the pandemic-related experiences of frontline employees (FLEs) relative to customer rule-enforcement interactions within retail and service industries. Results indicate that several customer misbehaviors, such as not following rules and being rude, produce significant occupational stress.

Dr. William Northington

At the Department of Marketing & Supply Chain Management, students learn to drive industry initiatives that develop customer satisfaction and retention, gain hands-on experience by identifying problems, developing plans, and implementing programs with faculty interaction in a supportive, collegial learning environment. Specific topics examined and taught by this department would include consideration of the underlying determinants of buyer behavior, product management, managing promotional activities, the elements of sound pricing decisions, product distribution, marketing research, and the social and ethical implications of marketing decisions.