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Third, as business schools embrace more and more international students, the resulting diversity challenges us to examine the cross-cultural implications of our research. Now the task encompasses extending the research into newer cultures where consumers hold different values and mindsets.
Here then, is where the baloney meets the road, and bafflegab, no matter how brilliant it might sound, just won’t cut it. As I strive for simpler language and more relevance for my research, I have learned at least three valuable lessons.
First, I think about how my research can have an impact on others. For example, its esoteric title notwithstanding, my dissertation simply said that consumers had a more difficult time choosing between disliked alternatives than choosing between liked alternatives. The challenging task was to think of situations when consumers are forced to choose between bad options (when for example, they cannot afford the more expensive, latest technology gadget and are forced to choose between the old-generation alternatives) and figuring out how one could reduce the difficulty of such decisions.
Second, I try not to think of research and teaching as a zero-sum game, i.e., the more time I spend on research the less time I spend on teaching and vice versa. I always make it a point to include my research in my teaching. Not only has this made me strip the research of all its bafflegab components, my students have often provided insightful comments that have added to the richness of my research and follow-up papers. For example, the pain felt by one of my students when the University Bookstore took back a discount that had mistakenly been credited to her purchase prompted me to think about the implications and roots of this marketplace reality: Even unexpected (and undeserved?) gains are mentally coded as losses if they are not realized.
Third, I try to think from the simple to the complex, and not the other way around. My research on the role of film critics on box office performance stemmed from a simple observation of my own behavior. I blindly follow the recommendation of Joe Morgenstern, the film critic of The Wall Street Journal. Although this is not a bad strategy — after all, Morgenstern won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005 for his reviews of the new films of 2004 — it intrigued me about the role of critics in general, i.e., if they merely predict your taste, or actually influence it, and has spawned substantial research on my part.
The results of that research? In plain language, critics — like professors who can clearly communicate the focus and results of their research — appear to have influence in the marketplace.
Subimal Chatterjee is professor of marketing, School of Management, Binghamton University. He teaches courses at the undergraduate, graduate and executive levels in consumer behavior, customer satisfaction, marketing management, product management and e-commerce. Chatterjee’s research investigates consumer decision making and how consumer judgment and choice can be altered in predictable ways by manipulating the decision task and context. In recent articles, he has studied how the persuasive power of different market signals can vary depending on the nature of market competition and the type of consumer. Chatterjee’s work has appeared in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Production and Operations Management, Organization Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, and Journal of Consumer Psychology. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and Marketing Science Institute.
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