David and Goliath: When do underdog businesses benefit from neighborhood giants?
2014-12-09
(Press-News.org) Is being located next to a big-name competitor always bad for your small business? A new study in the Journal of Marketing Research shows that contrary to accepted belief, the presence of a large, nearby competitor can actually boost the sales of smaller brands.
"When the owner of Los Angeles's Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf could not stop Starbucks from moving in next door, he at first admitted defeat," note authors Neeru Paharia (Georgetown University), Jill Avery (Harvard University), and Anat Keinan (Harvard University). "However, soon after, he was surprised to see his sales shoot up, so much so that he began to proactively locate new stores next to Starbucks."
To test their theory, authors examined the buying habits of people shopping for books in a small, locally owned bookstore. Some shoppers were told that the bookstore's only competitors were other small bookstores. A different group was told that the bookstore's primary competition was a nearby national chain bookstore that threatened to put the locally owned shop out of business. The study found that customers who were told of the nearby national chain bookstore were more likely to make purchases at the smaller locally owned store.
In a second study, participants were told, "Imagine you are in the mood for a cup of coffee. You can either go to Starbucks or an independent coffee shop called Joe's Java." One group was told that Joe's Java and Starbucks were the same distance away, but in different neighborhoods. The second group was told that Joe's Java was right next door to Starbucks. The group that believed Joe's Java was literally standing in the shadow of Starbucks was more likely to go to Joe's Java.
Pilot study results indicate that consumers may gain pleasure as they 'stick it to the man', perhaps punishing larger, more dominant brands for having too much power. Instead of shying away from mentioning the competition, small businesses would do well to highlight the battle between small and large competitors.
INFORMATION:
Neeru Paharia, Jill Avery, and Anat Keinan. "Positioning Brands against Large Competitors to Increase Sales." Forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing Research. For more information, contact Neeru Paharia.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2014-12-09
LOS ANGELES (Dec. 09, 2014) - A computer system was more effective than doctors at collecting information about patient symptoms, producing reports that were more complete, organized and useful than narratives generated by physicians during office visits, according to a Cedars-Sinai study.
Investigators said the research, published in the American Journal of Gastroenterology, highlights the potential of computers to enhance the quality of medical care and improve outcomes by harnessing accurate and thorough patient information.
The authors said they did not expect ...
2014-12-09
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Harmful bacteria have evolved some ingenious mechanisms to resist antibiotics. One of those is the drug efflux pump -- proteins that stand guard along bacterial cell membranes, identifying antibacterial agents that pass through the membrane and swiftly ejecting them from the cell.
"These drug efflux pumps are extremely problematic," said Jason Sello, associate professor of chemistry at Brown University. "The drugs are pumped out of the bacteria and cannot reach the critical concentration for toxicity."
Sello and a team of researchers ...
2014-12-09
With Americans spending billions of dollars each year on nutritional supplements, researchers have analyzed popular eye vitamins to determine whether their formulations and claims are consistent with scientific findings. They determined that some of the top-selling products do not contain identical ingredient dosages to eye vitamin formulas proven effective in clinical trials. In addition, the study found that claims made on the products' promotional materials lack scientific evidence. The results of their study were published online in Ophthalmology, the journal of the ...
2014-12-09
In results characterized as "very surprising," UCLA researchers found for the first time that higher-earning clinicians make more money by ordering more procedures and services per patient rather than by seeing more patients, which may not be in patients' best interest.
The research team from the UCLA Department of Urology and the Veterans' Health Administration examined what Medicare was billed and what it paid to clinicians. The data reviewed was Medicare Part B payments from the 2012 calendar year, said letter first author Dr. Jonathan Bergman, an assistant professor ...
2014-12-09
Fairfax, Va., December 9, 2014--The use of hypofractionated whole-breast irradiation (HF-WBI) for patients with early-stage breast cancer increased 17.4 percent from 2004 to 2011, and patients are more likely to receive HF-WBI compared to conventionally fractionated whole-breast irradiation (CF-WBI) when they are treated at an academic center or live ≥50 miles away from a cancer center, according to a study published in the December 1, 2014 issue of the International Journal of Radiation Oncology • Biology • Physics (Red Journal), the official scientific ...
2014-12-09
Is being located next to a big-name competitor always bad for your small business? A new study in the Journal of Marketing Research shows that contrary to accepted belief, the presence of a large, nearby competitor can actually boost the sales of smaller brands.
"When the owner of Los Angeles's Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf could not stop Starbucks from moving in next door, he at first admitted defeat," note authors Neeru Paharia (Georgetown University), Jill Avery (Harvard University), and Anat Keinan (Harvard University). "However, soon after, he was surprised to see his sales ...
2014-12-09
The first long-term study of a pioneering endoscopic laser treatment for early vocal-cord cancer, developed at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and previously shown to provide optimal voice outcomes, finds that it is as successful as traditional approaches in curing patients' tumors while avoiding the damage to vocal quality caused by radiotherapy or by conventional laser or cold-instrument surgery. The report in the December Annals of Otology, Rhinology & Laryngology describes results for the first 117 patients treated for vocal-cord cancer with the green-light potassium-titanyl-phosphate ...
2014-12-09
As of Dec. 8, Super Typhoon Hagupit has caused up to 27 deaths. Early reports indicate the Philippines has been spared the widespread destruction caused by Super Typhoon Haiyan in 2013. Hagupit (called Ruby in the Philippines) forward motion slowed on December 4, 2014 before reaching the Philippines. After hitting Samar in the eastern Philippines Hagupit's continued slow movement resulted in high rainfall amounts along the typhoon's track. These high rainfall totals meant that flooding occurred frequently along the typhoon's track.
When NASA/Japan Aerospace Exploration ...
2014-12-09
Most consumers have experienced online ads so garish, loud, or aggravating that they can't possibly be ignored. But a new study in the Journal of Marketing Research suggests that this way of forcing customer's attention may actually be bad for business.
"Annoying ads are interesting because they both make and cost money for publishers. They make money because advertisers pay publishers to run ads. They cost money when annoyed users abandon a site, leaving the publisher with less advertising revenue," write authors Daniel G. Goldstein, Siddharth Suri and Fernando Diaz ...
2014-12-09
Boulder, Colo., USA - In the late 13th century, Kublai Khan, ruler of the Mongol Empire, launched one of the world's largest armada of its time in an attempt to conquer Japan. Early narratives describe the decimation and dispersal of these fleets by the "Kamikaze" of CE 1274 and CE 1281 -- a pair of intense typhoons divinely sent to protect Japan from invasion.
These historical accounts are prone to exaggeration, and significant questions remain regarding the occurrence and true intensity of these legendary typhoons. For independent insight, we provide a new 2,000 year ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] David and Goliath: When do underdog businesses benefit from neighborhood giants?
