Browsing by Author "Kalra, Ajay"

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    Hotel Management in the Digital Age: Empirical Studies of Reputation Management and Dynamic Pricing
    (2016-04-01) Wang, Yang; Pazgal, Amit; Kamakura, Wagner; Kalra, Ajay; Sizova, Natalia
    Although a hotel’s basic purpose of providing a temporary place of lodging has not changed fundamentally over the course of history, the industry has continuously evolved with the newest innovations in architecture, technology, and culture. The most recent evolution is the digitization of the hotel marketplace. This thesis investigates two areas heavily influenced by the digital marketplace – online reputation management and dynamic pricing. The first study of this dissertation addresses one important facet of reputation management. How do managers’ responses to online reviews alter the opinion of subsequent reviewers? By analyzing a dataset of approximately 17 million hotel reviews, we demonstrate that managers’ responses can change the opinion of subsequent reviewers, but not always in a positive way. Responses to negative reviews generally improve subsequent opinion but responses to positive reviews can sometimes negatively influence subsequent opinion. A deep learning topic analysis of response and review texts reveals that tailored responses to positive reviews can actually negatively impact subsequent opinion. The findings in this study are shown to be consistent with the predictions of reactance theory. The second study seeks to uncover the degree to which managers’ pricing heuristics are optimal. Analyzing a year’s worth of spot prices for a focal hotel and its two competitors in the Las Vegas market, we show that managers do not price optimally in two peculiar ways. First, managers are able to set close-to-optimal average prices during off-season but dramatically underprice during peak-season. This result is consistent with agency theory that suggest the observable binary outcome of selling out the hotel may attenuate managers’ aggressiveness in setting prices. Second, managers, like untrained experimental subjects in prior literature, tend to make price changes that are too small. Furthermore, this study investigates the revenue gains due anticipating competitors’ pricing behavior and mean reversion tendencies in online reviews.
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    The Impact of Diversity and Social Cues on Consumer Judgments
    (2020-04-24) Chowdhry, Nivriti; Kalra, Ajay
    Essay 1: How Familial Cues Impact Judgments of Competence Service providers and product manufacturers alike often use familial cues in their narratives, such as highlighting that they have pursued the same profession as their parent. Such cues are prominent in medical, financial, educational, and maintenance services, handmade products (e.g., furniture), and consumable goods (e.g., juice, snacks, baby products). This research demonstrates that familial cues shape judgments of the service provider’s competence, and that perceived engagement in a career or profession mediates the effect of familial cues on consumer judgments. In understanding this relationship more deeply, we identify boundary conditions where the cue is less effective or ineffective, and test for and eliminate alternative explanations such as intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, and perceived natural ability. Essay 2: How Diversity Impacts Judgments of Morality This research investigates how the racial, gender, and nationality diversity of a team representing a firm influences perceptions of moral traits and immoral behavior. Our main proposition is that diverse teams are perceived to be more moral and less likely to engage in immoral behaviors as compared to homogeneous teams because they are perceived to have be exposed to broader perspectives. Members of diverse teams are consequently inferred to incorporate more perspectives in their decision making, and engage in perspective taking. Therefore, diverse teams are likely to self-regulate and exercise restraint in actions detrimental to consumers. Essay 3: How Spouse’s Attractiveness Impact Judgments of Morality People form judgments about others based on their appearance, but how do judges form impressions of people based on the people they choose to spend their time with, especially their spouses? This research investigates the effect of spouse’s attractiveness on the perceived morality of a focal person, as well as credibility of the firm represented by the focal person. We propose that when a man is married to a less-attractive woman, their relationship will appear to be stronger because of its communal nature (as opposed to an exchange relationship) based in a common value of morality traits. This association is attenuated when the focal person is female and when the judges are male.