Bennett S. LeBow College of Business

Carina Consolo

Bennett

How A Paper Versus Digital Calendar Influences Consumer’s Planning and Everyday Activity

Purpose: Understanding consumer planning and shopping behavior could improve marketing strategies. The purpose of this study is to explore whether or not people will be more committed to plans made on paper than those made on smartphones.

Methodology: We asked participants to fill out surveys, develop either a technological based or paper-based calendar for 10 days, and journal their daily activities to determine if they were making time for those plans. Data was collected and analyzed.

Results: The study found that people who used paper calendars were more committed to their original plans; they were more likely to do the planned activity at the time scheduled.

Conclusions: Involvement when making plans affects plan execution. Making plans on a paper calendar could make people more committed compared to making plans on a smartphone calendar possibly because people are more involved when handwriting than typing plans. Given that using smartphones to plan is becoming a trend, people need to be more aware of the negative consequence of convenience in technological-based calendars. To compensate for possibly not committing to plans, smartphone planners could set a timer for the events they’ve planned for to ensure commitment.

Bennett S. LeBow College of Business

Spencer Ross

Bennett

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Elea McDonnell Feit Marketing

Measuring User Sentiment for Video Games Through Text Analysis

With the growing importance of Big Data, business must learn to utilize all available resources to understand customers’ opinions about their products and adjust their products accordingly. One of the largest data sources comes in the form of customer reviews of products on public websites. Reacting to customer feedback is crucial for a good product, and we show how the review analysis process can be automated so that companies can visualize customer feedback and correct flaws in their product. We illustrate this approach using comparing reviews for several video games including Star Wars Battlefront II, Battlefield 1, and Call of Duty: WWII

Using Amazon and MetaCritic as our primary sources, we scraped over 3,000 customer reviews. These reviews scored for the sentiment of each review and the most frequent topics customers discussed. Common topics in reviews included gameplay, graphics, and microtransactions. After comparing the results of Star Wars Battlefront II with those of 4 other games in the same market, it was evident that users were extremely dissatisfied with the prevalence of microtransactions within the game.

Bennett S. LeBow College of Business

Andrew Antwi

Hongjun Ye, Siddharth Bhatt Co-Mentors

The effect of the extent of humanizing and automating on retail perceptions

Over the last decade, robots such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Home Mini have infiltrated our daily lives. A report from McKinsey & Company indicates that by 2030, as many as 800 million workers worldwide could be replaced at work by robots. One of the main questions we wanted to dissect how the look of robots affected consumer’s willingness to trust, purchase or use them. We wanted to measure the uncanny valley which explores the relationship between the degree of an object’s resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to such an object. To measure this, we created a survey of four robots ranging from human looking to machine-like. We created a scenario where each robot type was an employee at an Office Store and we asked questions based on trust and comfort to asses consumers opinions on how the look of these robots affected their shopping experience. This data allowed us to see how the look of the robot plays an essential role in automation in the retail industry. The next step will be to evaluate how these opinions vary when the robots are put in other settings like restaurant, hotels and other places.

Bennett S. LeBow College of Business

Alexandra Ellis

Bennett S. LeBow College of Business Organizational Management, Marketing

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Chen Wang Marketing

Impact of Gerber’s Baby with Down Syndrome on Brand Perception

To determine the impact of Gerber Product Company’s inclusivity on brand perception among consumers, I conducted an experiment containing pertinent information regarding its photo advertisement campaign. The purpose of the experiment was to compare the effectiveness and consumers’ perceptions of two Gerber campaigns. Participants were randomly assigned to evaluate one of the two campaigns. Half of the participants were asked to answer a set of questions after reviewing information about Grace, a neurotypical Gerber baby from 2015, while the other half of the participants were asked to answer the same set of questions after reviewing information about Lucas, the first ever Gerber baby with Down Syndrome and the current spokes-baby. After analyzing responses from participants, I found that on average, participants who viewed the inclusive advertisement were more likely to recommend this brand to other consumers, more likely to agree that Gerber Product Company prioritizes inclusion, encapsulates beauty in diversity, and extends a social impact, and more likely to experience positive reactions than those who received the advertisement with the neurotypical baby.

Bennett S. LeBow College of Business

Derek Hengemihle

Bennett S. LeBow College of Business General Business

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Chen Wang Marketing

Coffee Shops at Drexel and How They Succeed in a Student-Only Market

For most college students, the morning begins with an important necessity: a cup of coffee. This necessity provides an exciting opportunity for coffee shops on campus and drives hundreds of local sleepy students through their doors during all times of the day. With the coffee shop industry already being so uniquely competitive, this creates an intense market on campus. At Drexel University, three main coffee chains compete for the same customers, day in and day out. To be successful, these coffee shops need to implement unique and specific marketing strategies that develop place attachment (a consumer’s emotional bond with a location) with the student body. My research is focused on understanding what strategies a coffee shop owner on campus can implement to most efficiently establish the downstream variable of customer loyalty. In order to learn more about this casual effect link, I first collected qualitative data by interviewing customers and managers of the coffee shops. Then I conducted a survey to understand customers’ perceptions of the coffee shops on campus. By analyzing this qualitative and quantitative data, I found that Drexel students value a fair price and quality and are drawn to a corporate style coffee shop.