Marketing Monthly - April 2013

March began with a roar with Mays Business School playing host to the TAMU Sales Competition In total 66 students from across the campus participated in the contest which began Friday afternoon March 1st Students and company reps simulated actual sales interviews through challenging role-play scenarios Nine marketing majors made it to the second round of competition on Saturday morning

Once the dust had settled after the rigorous final rounds marketing students emerged victorious with two of the top four prizes Seniors Kelsey McKey and Allyson Janes took second and fourth places respectively

Due to their competitive natures the junior contestants have vowed to come back next year and sweep all the prizes

This university wide competition is co-sponsored by three departments Professor Charles Futrell oversees the Department of Marketing contributions while Kerry Litzenburg organizes the Dept of Agricultural Economics end of things and Norm Clark handles the Dept of Industrial Distributionrsquos share

A total of 25 industry sales executives judged and played the part of buyers in the sales interview role-plays with the students Sixteen organizational sponsors made the whole event possible

1

Marketing Monthly

Texas AampM University Sales Competition

April 2013 Vol 8 Issue 2

Continued next page

Winners

Sales Competition Winners

2

Sales Competition (cont)

All participants came together for the Friday night banquet at the Memorial Student Center

Watching and judging the taped interviews Networking opportunities abound at the Competition

More networkinghellip

Sales contestants are judged on such things as their opening presentation of features handling of objections closing visuals and professionalism This yearrsquos first round case started out like this

Restever Community Hospital located in Restever Texas serves a generally rural community in the surrounding four counties You have talked to Andy the general manager of Restever on two previous occasions about converting their current manual hospital record system to the Premier Health Companyrsquos web-based patient data system hellip

New this year was the Industry Luncheon Itrsquos a way of saying thank you to our generous

participants and also provides a great opportunity for faculty and industry representatives to get together to discuss an overview of the program as well as the working details of the event $11750 in prize money was won by the top 20

competitors This is the 4th sales competitionmdash25 students

competed the first year The lsquobest of the bestrsquo took the sales challenge Twenty-one marketing majors one finance

major and one finance honors student competed to fulfill requirements for the Sales Certificate

3

Special Appreciation to the Sales Competition Sponsors

Platinum Reynolds amp Reynolds

Gold

McAfee Smith and Associates

SRS Distribution

Silver DXP Enterprises

MRC-Global Corporation Sewell

Energy Alloys Otis Elevator

TWG Insurance

Bronze ARMOR Wealth Management

Ferguson Hormel Foods LLC DOW AgroSciences

Hydraquip Union Pacific


Nine finalists from the Department of Marketing

Hard-working faculty and company reps at the new Industry Luncheon Jim Wright Reynolds amp Reynolds Sales Manager

MSC Friday night banquet

4

Marketing Research in the NEWS

Ram Janakiraman and Rishika Ramkumarrsquos research has garnered loads of media attention Their research investigates the pay offs to businesses that actively engage customers through social media Two news articles featuring Janakiraman were broadcast on April 2nd on the local NBC news Click here for links to the different interviews at 6pm and 10pm Title ldquoThe Effect of Customers Social Media Participation on Customer Visit Frequency and Profitability An Empirical Investigationrdquo In Information Systems Research March 2013 Authors Rishika Rishika (TAMU) Kumar Ashish (Aalto University Finland) Janakiraman Ramkumar (TAMU) Bezawada Ram (SUNY Buffalo) Abstract In this study we examine the effect of customers participation in a firms social media efforts on the intensity of the relationship between the firm and its customers as captured by customers visit frequency We further hypothesize and test for the moderating roles of social media activity and customer characteristics on the link between social media participation and the intensity of customer-firm relationship Importantly we also quantify the impact of social media participation on customer profitability We assemble a novel data set that combines customers social media participation data with individual customer level transaction data To account for endogeneity that could arise because of customer self-selection we utilize the propensity score matching technique in combination with difference in differences analysis Our results suggest that customer participation in a firms social media efforts leads to an increase in the frequency of customer visits We find that this participation effect is greater when there are high levels of activity in the social media site and for customers who exhibit a strong patronage with the firm buy premium products

and exhibit lower levels of buying focus and deal sensitivity We find that the above set of results holds for customer profitability as well We discuss theoretical implications of our results and offer prescriptions for managers on how to engage customers via social media Our study emphasizes the need for managers to integrate knowledge from customers transactional relationship with their social media participation to better serve customers and create sustainable business value The following are the media mentions garnered by this article TAMU Times Inccom Calcutta News Albuquerque Express Herald Globe India4ucom TruthDive News Track India Yahoo India News NewsroomAmerica India Vision NewsSmasHitscom Computing Now Press Newsorg Webindia123com Science Newsline PhysOrg Science Blog e Science News Business News Daily World News Innovations Report Noodls High Text Verlag Alpha Galileo Alpha Galileo (DE) Science Codex

5

The Thirteenth Edition of Fundamentals of Selling Customers for Life through Service and the Twelfth Edition of ABCrsquos of Relationship Selling through Service by Charles Futrell are hot off the McGraw-Hill Irwin presses this month

Congratulations Charles--keep up the good work

Book Publications

Congratulations

Len Berryrsquos second publication from his 2012 field research in Wisconsin was published in the February 2013 issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings which reaches about 130000 physicians worldwide Title ldquoCare Coordination for Complex Patients in Inpatient and Outpatient Settingsrdquo Co-Authors Beth L Rock RN BSN OCN Beth Smith Houskamp RN MSN BBA Joan Brueggeman RN BSN and Lois Tucker RN BSN all affiliated with Gundersen Health La Crosse WI Abstract Patients with the most complex health profiles consume a disproportionate percentage of healthcare expenditures yet often receive fragmented suboptimal care Since 2003 Wisconsin-based Gundersen Health has improved the quality of life and reduced the cost burden of complex patients with an integrated Care Coordination program Those results are consistent with data from the most successful care-coordination demonstration projects funded by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services S pecifically Gundersenrsquos program has been associated with reduced hospital stays lower costs for inpatients less inpatient

utilization and increased patient satisfaction Gundersenrsquos success is rooted in its team-based approach to coordinated care Teams led by a subspecialty-trained RN have regular face-to-face contact with patients and their providers in both inpatient and outpatient settings involve patients deeply in care-related decisions access a system-wide electronic medical record that tracks patientsrsquo care and take a macro-level view of care-related factors and costs Gundersenrsquos model offers specific take-home lessons for institutions interested in coordinated care as they design programs aimed at improving quality and lowering costs This institutional case study provides a window into well-executed care coordination at a large health system in an era when major changes in healthcare delivery and reimbursement mechanisms are on the horizon

Continued next page

Suresh Ramanathan (Professor of Marketing David R Norcom 73 Endowed Professor) has been appointed to serve on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Retailing Ramanathan also currently serves on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of Consumer Psychology

Paul Busch has been selected as one of the three recipients of the 2013 Academy of Marketing Science Outstanding Teacher Award

Busch will be recognized and presented with the award at the 2013 annual conference of the Academy of Marketing Science scheduled to be held in May 2013 At a special session of the conference Busch and two other recipients of the award will share their insights on excellence in teaching

The AMS Outstanding Marketing Teacher program was initiated in 1999 to recognize and reward excellence in teaching and to provide a forum for outstanding teachers to share their classroom success with colleagues

6

Regents Professor Paul Busch

Paul Busch Wins AMS National Teaching Award

Janet Parish has been busy with community service speaking engagements lately On February 20 she spoke at a luncheon for the Arts Council of Brazos Valley The title of the talk was ldquoService Excellence Managing Expectationsrdquo

On March 6 Parish gave a presentation to high school students at Allen Academy about the principles of marketing

Janet Parish speaking to the Arts Council of Brazos Valley

7

Biases in Information-Seeking to Avoid Catastrophic Risk Robert J Meyer Gayfryd Steinberg Professor of Marketing and Co-Director of the Center for Risk Management and Decision Processes Wharton School University of Pennsylvania

Dr Meyerrsquos paper explores the biases that can arise when individuals have the opportunity to seek information that would allow them to avoid a potentially catastrophic financial event He says that individuals are great at anticipating incidence but really bad at anticipating

2013 Mays Marketing Research Camp

tail magnitude They are bad at learning from experience we almost never learn from the losses of others or near misses and one experience of a ldquonon-eventrdquo seems sufficient to wipe out effective memories of previous losses In some cases the culprit is not underestimating risk but rather avoiding knowing about it

In particular Meyer and co-author C Jeffrey Cai focus on a stylized case where an investor makes a series of choices whether to put funds into a safe asset that yields a certain small return or a risky asset that yields a much higher return but that also carries the risk of a catastrophic loss At each point in time the investor may purchase information about the probability of catastrophic loss occurring in a given period The authors first explore this problem theoretically Their research shows that if investors hold reference-dependent preferences they will not only tend towards inertia

in choosing the risky asset but theyrsquoll also value information asymmetrically Those holding positions in the risky asset undervalue information (an ostrich effect) while those holding positions in the safe asset overvalue information (a curiosity effect) relative to risk-neutral optimal benchmarks

Authors then report the findings of an experimental investigation in which participants display this state of dependence when deciding whether to purchase information as well a number of other biases in both information gathering and asset choice Findings reveal that information-gathering is influenced by hedonic factors that would not arise in a normative assessment of information value such as how close participants are to achieving a wealth goal and curiosity among those no longer subject to risk

Continued next page

Robert Meyer talks about information seeking at Marketing Research Camp

Many thanks to PhD student Krista Li for taking copious notes and writing this report

8

Questions amp Answers What about people who have had one bad experience

does that experience make them more likely to anticipate bad events People only suffer a short period of time but rarely learn from that experience after a while

Could inaction and underestimation of the probability and consequences of bad events be because people assume other agents should control for such events People have erroneous beliefs about probabilities

Is this a one period game or infinite horizon game This is an infinite horizon game but can end at any period Individuals solve this recurrent decision

In the case that consumers are not gathering information is that a bias or a rational action That is the purpose of this study We will study if that is a correct decision or not

Wealth matters because you would lose everything if the catastrophic event happens Yes Normally risk aversion is not a function of wealth

Did you try de-biasing Anchor and adjustment work It has important public policy implications

What if people are not looking at financial outcome but at excitement as when playing a video game People are motivated to do well in the experiment

The decision to gather information is in the risky state You can also look at information gathering in the safe state Theory predicts that people at the safe state should gather information at a higher rate than in the risk state But this was not found in the data because people generally do not gather information

2013 Mays Marketing Research Camp (cont)

Continued next page

Robert Meyer chats with MKTG PhD student Jun Ho Lim and a PhD student from the Department of Economics

9


Robert Meyer and Rajan Varadarajan Venky Shankar Qi Li (ECON professor) and Robert Meyer

The Mays Marketing Research Camp is an annual research workshop that is aimed at bringing leading edge marketing scholars together to stimulate high-quality research discussion and thinking Each year this one-day event is focused on a hot research topic External speakers along with a Mays marketing faculty member present their current research The workshop is attended by faculty and graduate students from marketing and related disciplines such as management economics and psychology

10

2013 Research Camp ~ Lehmann(cont)

A Research Sampler 2013 Don Lehmann Dr Lehmann gave an overview of current research in three domains of marketing and presented two of his recent works

There is a tendency for firms to overstate quality in advertisement Lehmannrsquos research paper titled ldquoQuality and Quality Claims the Impact of Competition and the Cost of Overstating Qualityrdquo studies firmsrsquo decision to advertise the quality of products Previous work that studies this decision is limited to the monopoly setting The impact of competition on firmrsquos decision is unclear Lehmann studied two symmetric firms that compete on quality price and advertised quality and found interesting results

When the cost of overstating quality is low competition drives both firms to overstate quality

(by about 20) ie in equilibrium advertised quality is greater than actual quality When the cost of overstating quality is high actual quality is lower than when the cost of overstating quality is low Thus imposing legal costs on quality overstatement ironically leads to firms supplying lower quality goods

The second paper ldquoStrategically Ordering Brand Extensionsrdquo studies how a firm should order the introduction of a brand extension Should firms follow a specific order or diversify broadly early on to set consumer brand expectation and concept Lehmann and his co-authors conducted a series of experiments which vary orders and measure consumer reactions to different orders Interestingly results show that disorderly introduction leads to better results

Don Lehman George E Warren Professor of Marketing Columbia Business School Columbia University

11

2013 Research Camp (Lehmann cont)

Questions amp Answers bull A forward-looking monopolist would overstate

to create a barrier of entry True This game is a simultaneous game with symmetric firms without entries

bull Why are firms better off at lower levels (50) What is the intuition that both firms would want to under-advertise quality Firms do so because if they overstate quality they would be punished in the second period If you are honest you do not pay a legal cost

bull All tire makers lie and overstate quality Consumers donrsquot trust any of the advertised quality

bull What is the effect of WOM on firmrsquos decision If there is no legal cost would the WOM effect lead firms to truly advertise quality There are verifiable quality and unverifiable quality The verifiability of quality may change the results

bull What is the real world example of the reversing order GE and Mitsubishi

bull How does credibility affect consumer perception Confidence is used as the contract in this paper Once the evaluation is set and is strong then the surprise versus fit will affect evaluation This is a sequential process

bull Do you get similar results if the products are not so different Not so much

Dr Lehmann discusses research with PhD student Wonjoo Yun

12

2013 Research Camp ~ Mayzlin (cont)

Promotional Reviews An Empirical Investigation of Online Review Manipulation Dina Mayzlin Associate Professor of Marketing Marshall School of Business University of Southern California Online reviews could in principle greatly improve the match between consumers and products However the authenticity of online user reviews remains a concern Firms have an incentive to manufacture positive reviews for their own products and negative reviews for their rivals Mayzlin presented her empirical paper on promotional (fake) reviews which is a follow-up of her job-market paper that studies promotional reviews with an analytical approach

Mayzlin examines both the extent to which fakery occurs and the market conditions that encourage or discourage promotional reviewing activity Specifically she examines hotel reviews exploiting the organizational differences between two travel websites Expediacom and Tripadvisorcom While anyone can post a review on Tripadvisor a consumer could only post a review of a hotel on Expedia if the consumer actually booked at least one night at the hotel through the website Mayzlin isolates hotels with a disproportionate incentive to engage in promotional reviewing activity by exploiting the differences in the distribution of reviews for a given hotel between Tripadvisor and Expedia

Several interesting results are obtained First the net gains from promotional reviewing are likely to be highest for independent hotels that are owned by single-unit owners and lowest for branded chain hotels that are owned by multi-unit

owners Second hotels with a high incentive to fake have a greater share of five star (positive) reviews on Tripadvisor relative to Expedia Furthermore the hotel neighbors of hotels with a high incentive to fake have more one and two star (negative) reviews on Tripadvisor relative to Expedia

Dina Mayzlin talks about online hotel reviews

13

2013 Research Camp (Mayzlin cont)

Questions amp Answers Do you know which review is real and which is

fake There could be very positive and very negative reviews which are real Consumers may not read the detailed reviews and could be influenced by the overall volume of positive and negative reviews Yes it is very hard to judge the fakery of reviews Some sophisticated consumers may write fake reviews

Would the number of true reviews overwhelm the fake reviews In the analytical paper it is positive for firms to manipulate reviews even though there is a cost of faking reviews

Could the ownership structure also measure the difference in the quality The big hotels have high quality Consumers may not need to look at reviews to make decisions The small hotels are unfamiliar to consumers so consumers would want to read reviews

Do both websites list the same hotels Are their variations in hotel listings Do they have the same algorithm to list the hotels in a similar order Data didnrsquot show any major differences

What happens to the links between Tripadvisor and other websites Smaller hotels may care about reputation more because that is all the hotel has to lose Bigger hotel chains may care less about reputation as they can absorb adverse information internally

Do large hotels have social media marketing policy Smaller hotel managers have more incentive to fake Bigger chains are less likely to fake reviews

Orbitz publishes both verified and non-verified reviews Are their summary statistics of the two kinds of reviews Larger hotels absorb negative reviews internally instead of publishing that information to public They can compensate consumers with low satisfaction

Are there other confounds for using Tripadvisor and Expedia to figure out the

proportion of fake reviews The focus of the paper shifts more toward the neighborsrsquo competition rather than the ownership structure

Does the total number of reviews matter The ratio of positive reviews out of 100 reviews could be more objective than the same ratio of positive reviews out of 2 reviews A robustness check can be done If the total number of reviews doesnrsquot matter it can strengthen the result

Are there persistent differences between reviews of two sites over time Would the difference vanish over time Would you look at prevention and promotional reviews Difference between the two sites could lead to different ratings on the two sites There could be fundamentally different types of consumers who post reviews on Tripadvisor versus Expedia

Do you have the number of reviews in the model as a control variable Missing variables could affect the average The three neighbor variables are correlated It is difficult to interpret the ldquohas a neighborrdquo effect

Dina Mayzlin and Venky Shankar

14

Effects of Focus of Attention on Desires and Resistance Towards Temptations Suresh Ramanathan Professor of Marketing Mays Business School Texas AampM University Co-author Wilhelm Hofmann University of Chicago Booth School of Business Ramanathanrsquos research examines why people indulge themselves He presented three studies in support of a modified dual-process model of indulgence that proposes elaboration on desires as the driving mechanism

In Study 1 using a visual probe task Ramanathan and his co-author measured participantsrsquo attention biases towards hedonic options relative to healthy ones and found that sustained attention towards hedonic options predicted subsequent indulgence behavior

In Study 2 he manipulated attention towards hedonic or healthy options and measured the moment-to-moment desire and resistance towards desserts Using a novel analytical technique called Recurrence Analysis he established that impulsive people had more recurrent or repeated patterns of desires and were stuck in a state of desire longer in the hedonic focus condition than in the control and health focus conditions but did not differ in levels of resistance Prudent individuals had more recurrent resistance when they focused on either hedonic or healthy options (vs control) but were not different in desire across the conditions

In Study 3 the timing of reward sampling moderated these effects with reward sampling before attention focus revealing an ironic rebound in desires for impulsive people focused on healthy options

2013 Research Camp ~ Ramanathan (cont)

Suresh Ramanathan speaks on desires and temptations

15

2013 Research Camp ~ (cont)

Suresh Ramanathan and Sanjay Jain

Len Berry and Don Lehmann

The Mays Marketing Research Camp under the leadership of Venky Shankar has been an annual event since 2006 Previous camps have featured scholars from the following universities Northwestern University University of Chicago Duke University New York University DartmouthCollege Carnegie Mellon University University of Michigan University of California-Los Angeles University of Southern California University of Florida-Gainesville Georgia Institute of Technology Emory University Georgia State University and many others

The following paper by Tarun Kushwaha rsquo07 (UNC) and Venky Shankar has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Marketing Title Are Multichannel Customers Really More Valuable The Moderating Role of Product Category Characteristics Abstract How does the monetary value of customer purchases vary by customer preference for purchase channels (eg traditional electronic multichannel) and product category The authors develop a conceptual model and hypotheses on the moderating effects of two key product category characteristicsmdashthe utilitarian versus hedonic nature of the product category and perceived riskmdashon the channel preferencendashmonetary value relationship They test the hypotheses on a unique large-scale empirically generalizable data set in the retailing context Contrary to conventional wisdom that all multichannel customers are more valuable than single-channel customers the results show that multichannel customers are the most valuable segment only for hedonic product categories The

findings reveal that traditional channel customers of low-risk categories provide higher monetary value than other customers Moreover for utilitarian product categories perceived as high (low) risk web-only (catalog- or store-only) shoppers constitute the most valuable segment The findings offer managers guidelines for targeting and migrating different types of customers for different product categories through different channels

16

Congratulations

At the 2013 AMA Marketing Educatorsrsquo Winter Conference our distinguished colleague Venky Shankar was presented the 2012 American Marketing Association Marketing Strategy Special Interest Group Mahajan Award for Lifetime Contributions to Marketing Strategy Research Education and Practice

You might enjoy watching a portion of the video from the award ceremony The video clip has two parts The first part is a toast by one of Venkyrsquos former doctoral students Thomas Dotzel (with input from his other former doctoral students) highlighting some unique traits of Venky which underlie his impressive scholarly accomplishments They include Venkytasking Venkyhours Venkynap Venkyspeed Percevenkyrance Venkypassion and Venkyachievements

Thomasrsquo presentation includes some very complex equations on the above traits The second part of the video clip is Venkyrsquos acceptance speech Click here to see the video

Venky Shankar receives the 2012 Mahajan award from Prof Roger Kerin former Editor of Journal of Marketing

Alina Sorescu Sorin Sorescu Bart Devoldere (2011 visiting scholar from Vlerick Business School Belgium) and Will Armstrong (Texas Tech) have won the Best Proposal Award at the Strategic Management Society Lake Geneva Special Conference for their paper ldquoEpochal Innovations and Stock Market Bubblesrdquo The theme of the conference was Strategizing Practices from the Outliers Enabling ldquoBig Bangrdquo Innovations The program included 110 academic presentations and was held Mar 20-23 2013 Conference website

17

Continued next page

Paul Buschrsquos MKTG 347 Advertising Classes recently benefited from

Advertising Career Panel Day Students were free to ask any

question related to an advertising career Breakfast and lunch were served and students were able to

mingle with the panelists between sessions

Panelists

Michael Albrecht Love Advertising Travis Hopper OampH Brand Design

Lindsay London Slingshot LLC Maria Sommer The Marketing Arm

Mallory Schatte TM Advertising

Student Takeaways

Advertising Career Panel

Career Panel Day

~The main things I learned from the career panel are the ways to make a successful impression at work You should always act professionally regardless of the occasion You should always be willing to stay after to complete your work or help others The fastest way to build ties is to build a network by helping each others in their time of need This will not only help you with work relationships it will help you climb the career ladder

~hellipit was very enlightening One of the major aspects I learned about was an advertising career in general They discussed two different sides the client v agency side

I hadnrsquot thought about these areas being so distinctively different before Also I have never heard much about cultures of advertising agencies This panel gave me some insight into the fun creative social and sometimes competitive environment of agencies The most valuable lesson I took away was very basic to any profession--the advice on using your networks even when they donrsquot seem promising Make sure you triple check everything you write because that is essential Finally be aware and try to make everyone around you better that in turn will make you better

~I learned about different positions within ad agencies and how their day-to-day duties and relationships with clients change I also learned about different types of ad agencies some are focused primarily on design while others are geared more towards promotional work

~hellipfinding an agency that

aligns with your values goals and ideas is critical If you do not fit in with the culture no matter how qualified you are odds are they will not hire you Also excellent writing and communication skills are a must

Over 2000 students participated in the 2013 H-E-B Day at Texas AampM University Twenty executives crisscrossed campus speaking in the colleges of business liberal arts and agriculture Their goal was to showcase the diverse job functions and necessary expertise

required to successfully run the San Antonio-based grocery chain

It surprises many people that H-E-B is a $20 Billion Dollar retail business With bakeries warehouses dairies truck fleets and multiple store formats including Central Market Joe Vrsquos and Mi Tienda H-E-B is the largest privately held company in Texas It employs over 75000 people and annually receives almost 1 million applications

ldquoH-E-B is committed to being the best retail store in Americardquo said Rob Hall VP of the Gulf Coast Region ldquoIt is also an extraordinary place to workrdquo Hall along with many other partners who attended a luncheon with students has almost 30 years of experience with the company His cousin Jody Hall Director of Global Sourcing recruited him Together they emphasized the diverse career opportunities with the company including store operations finance HR data analysis and more They also spoke about values ldquoThe partnership with Texas AampM is very special We share common values in integrity community service excellence and leadershiprdquo said Rob Hall

Innovation was another theme In his presentation to students in MKTG 425 Retail Merchandising Jody Hall described H-E-Brsquos commitment to finding the best products for its customers anywhere in the world Recent finds includes a line of tomatoes from Israel and a Spanish based-bakery that will open in San

Antonio bringing new jobs and new flavors to Texas In total H-E-B offers over 11800 of its own brand products Private label is only growing

We thank H-E-B and the H-E-B leaders who participated for sharing of their time and knowledge at Texas AampM University

Rob Hall Gulf Coast Regional Group Vice President Melissa Mueller Director of Human Resources for Gulf Coast Region Juan Alonso Regional Vice President for Houston West Region amp Mi Tienda Division Patrick Walther Director of Loyalty Advertising and Software Development Centers Jim Alcock Sr Facility Leader of Transportation Ron Ozment Director of Supply Chain Strategy at HEB Jody Hall Director of Global Sourcing Thomas Greenway Manager of Supply Chain Tony Atkins Unit Director in College Station Mike Newkham Unit Director in College Station Lynette R Padalecki Group Vice-President Corporate Planning amp Analysis Rich White Unit Director in Bryan Sarah Blanchard Continuous Improvement Manager for the Manufacturing Division Mike Warren Director of Corporate Merchandising amp Grocery for the Houston Division Mike Jarzombek Vice President of Meat Operations Susan McCloud Director of Recruiting Derek Kirchner Director of Product Safety and Quality Assurance Joe Gonzales Regional Merchant for Market for Houston Division

18

CRS News amp Updates

H-E-B Day

Giles Bowman Senior Vice President of Merchandising The Home Depot Giles Bowman is senior vice president of merchandising and building materials for The Home Depot He oversees the lumber building materials bath electrical and millwork departments

Giles has more than 22 years of experience in the home improvement industry Prior to his current assignment he was senior vice president of merchandising hardlines for The Home Depot He previously held several positions of increasing responsibility including merchandising vice president of building materials merchandising vice president of the Eastern Division merchandising vice president of Canada vice president of sales and service for the Southwest Division divisional merchandise manager of the Southwest Division and millwork merchant for the Southwest Division

Bowman visited Mary Zimmerrsquos Retailing and Consumer Behavior classes on February 6 and provided many insights about the target consumers of The Home Depot Giles described three segments the Do-It-Yourself Customer the Do-It-For-Me customer who is a little older more affluent and wants more services and the smallest most profitable customer the Contractor

The Home Depot customer wants value first both a good price and more benefits Second they want new products The latest and greatest comprise about a third of online sales Third they find innovations appealing For example easy to install products lightweight materials and easy to understand instructions help sell products

Giles emphasized that merchants live and die

19


Retail Speaker Profile by numbers His background in mathematics has been put to good use He also focused on people His business is all about relationship building with both consumers and vendors

2


All participants came together for the Friday night banquet at the Memorial Student Center

Watching and judging the taped interviews Networking opportunities abound at the Competition

More networkinghellip

Sales contestants are judged on such things as their opening presentation of features handling of objections closing visuals and professionalism This yearrsquos first round case started out like this

Restever Community Hospital located in Restever Texas serves a generally rural community in the surrounding four counties You have talked to Andy the general manager of Restever on two previous occasions about converting their current manual hospital record system to the Premier Health Companyrsquos web-based patient data system hellip

New this year was the Industry Luncheon Itrsquos a way of saying thank you to our generous

participants and also provides a great opportunity for faculty and industry representatives to get together to discuss an overview of the program as well as the working details of the event $11750 in prize money was won by the top 20

competitors This is the 4th sales competitionmdash25 students

competed the first year The lsquobest of the bestrsquo took the sales challenge Twenty-one marketing majors one finance

major and one finance honors student competed to fulfill requirements for the Sales Certificate

3



Gold


SRS Distribution




TWG Insurance








4




5



Book Publications

Congratulations



Continued next page





6






7








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10








11











12







13
















14







15







16

Congratulations






17

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Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



3



Gold


SRS Distribution




TWG Insurance








4




5



Book Publications

Congratulations



Continued next page





6






7








Continued next page



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Continued next page


9




10








11











12







13
















14







15







16

Congratulations






17

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Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



4




5



Book Publications

Congratulations



Continued next page





6






7








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10








11











12







13
















14







15







16

Congratulations






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Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






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5



Book Publications

Congratulations



Continued next page





6






7








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10








11











12







13
















14







15







16

Congratulations






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Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19






6






7








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11











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13
















14







15







16

Congratulations






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Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






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7








Continued next page



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9




10








11











12







13
















14







15







16

Congratulations






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Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



8











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10








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12







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14







15







16

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Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



9




10








11











12







13
















14







15







16

Congratulations






17

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Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



10








11











12







13
















14







15







16

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17

Continued next page





Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



11











12







13
















14







15







16

Congratulations






17

Continued next page





Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



12







13
















14







15







16

Congratulations






17

Continued next page





Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



13
















14







15







16

Congratulations






17

Continued next page





Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



14







15







16

Congratulations






17

Continued next page





Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



15







16

Congratulations






17

Continued next page





Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19





16

Congratulations






17

Continued next page





Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19



17

Continued next page





Panelists




Student Takeaways


Career Panel Day















18


H-E-B Day






19











18


H-E-B Day






19








19



Documents

Marketing Monthly - April 2013