Previous research on marketing budget decisions has shown that profit improvement from better allocation across products or regions is much higher than from improving the overall budget. However, despite its high managerial relevance, contributions by marketing scholars are rare. In this paper,...

This study describes a cross-sectional and time series analysis of sales data over one decade in four major segments of the market for cardiovascular drugs. We estimate over 200 product life cycles (PLC) using a very flexible mathematical model to account for a variety of PLC shapes. Life cycles...

Driven by the pressure to permanently release a large number of books, publishers have to allocate limited advertising budgets across the wide range of newly released books. As in many creative industries, publishers often focus their advertising activities on potential top sellers written by...

Several legal music download services, including some that are free (e.g., Spotify), are now available to consumers. These services may be viewed as "new service interventions" that could potentially <i>change the mental models</i> of consumers toward illegal file sharing and result in fewer downloads...

Because hedonic aspects of products are difficult to evaluate prior to consumption, consumers seek signals to reduce their uncertainty. Opinion leaders, such as critics, may serve as key informants to consumers. This study considers the different roles and incentives of literary critics and how...

Despite consumer's widespread interest in reading, enjoying, and buying books, very little research has considered the critical success factors of books. This article focuses on similarities and differences between success factors when selling fiction books sequentially in hardcover and...

The rise of peer-to-peer networks starting with Napster in 1999 and later KaZaA and eMule had a substantial impact on the online distribution of media content. Millions of users at any given point of time illegally offer copyright protected files and internalize the cost of their behavior....

Increasing demand for marketing accountability requires an efficient allocation of marketing expenditures. Managers who know the elasticity of their marketing instruments can allocate their budgets optimally. Meta-analyses offer a basis for deriving benchmark elasticities for advertising....

More than 70% of global e-mail traffic consists of unsolicited and commercial direct marketing, also known as spam. Dealing with spam incurs high costs for organizations, prompting efforts to try to reduce spam-related costs by installing spam filters. Using modern econometric methods to reduce...