College of Business Funded Research, FY2021
The college grants faculty research with the aim to advance scholarly publishing across our academic disciplines. These are our funded research projects in support of this goal.
Mental health worldwide under the COVID-19 pandemic
Dr. Jiyao Chen, associate professor of entrepreneurship and strategy, is conducting meta-analyses on the mental health of an adult general population, general and frontline healthcare workers, university students to analyze the prevalence rates of mental health symptoms across countries and regions under the COVID-19 pandemic. The research focuses on depression, anxiety, insomnia, and distress with the aim to provide evidence-based guides on the screening of potentially vulnerable segments of the population who are more likely to suffer mental health disorders during the pandemic so that scarce resources and time can be allocated to the people in need.
COVID-19 sensemaking and insights on decision-making
Dr. Satoris Howes, professor of management, researched with government agencies including the U.S. Forest Service early in the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020) to implement a continuous real-time communications system to support executive decision-making. Howes is using a grant to expand accessibility to the data collected from a total of 194 focus groups to promote the scholarly understanding of organizational complexities during the 2020 fire season and pandemic.
Using the next-gen of mobile apps while shopping
Dr. Ryann Reynolds-McIlnay, assistant professor of merchandising management, is researching how use of mobile apps while shopping — and the changes to customer-technology interface which includes virtual reality and augmented reality — to examine the interaction between sounds and simulated touch of product. The project includes development of a shopping app that will give shoppers haptic feedback (e.g., vibrations and sounds) through a mobile device while interacting with augmented reality/virtual reality shopping apps.
Nature, entrepreneurial well-being, & entrepreneurial performance
Ph.D. student Scott Kozlak and Dr. Violetta Gerasymenko, associate professor of entrepreneurship and strategy, investigate the relationship between nature,entrepreneurial well-being, and entrepreneurial performance. In particular, they are interested in understanding how exposure to natural areas “green space” affects entrepreneurial well-being and performance. The researchers plan to send out a multi-wave survey to a subsample of 500 family business owners/entrepreneurs who responded to a previous data inquiry from the OSU Center for Family Enterprise.
Loyal customers and word-of-mouth recommendations
Dr. Matthew Hall, assistant professor of marketing, is looking at data to determine how consumers respond when they find out that their recommendations (positive word-of-mouth) have not been followed by the recipient. He’ll look at what happens when brand supporters receive negative feedback from others in the form of unfollowed advice — e.g., their advice was unfollowed, and whether this leads these loyal customers to reduce their future support for the brand.
Does consumer bragging harm a brand?
Dr. Matthew Hall, assistant professor of marketing, has a second word-of-mouth research project investigating how consumers evaluate others’ motives for sharing content on social media, aiming to show that when consumers perceive others’ experiential sharing to be extrinsically motivated (i.e., attention-seeking, bragging, etc.), it decreases the perceived desirability of the shared experience. The aim is to consider whether firms can suffer adverse outcomes when their customers share positively about their experiences.
Measuring how people plan
Dr. Jason Stornelli and Dr. Colleen Bee are working to develop a scale that measures consumers’ propensity to plan. They’ll look at the factors that prompt individuals to be more or less likely to plan when they make their decisions about how to pursue goals in the course of everyday life (the intention-behavior gap). The insights could help researchers and companies to design interventions that make planning more likely and more effective in real contexts.
Retail displays: Maintaining customer service when shoppers interact
Dr. Ryann Reynolds-McIlnay, assistant professor of merchandising management, is researching how customer interaction with retail displays impacts a frontline retail employee’s perceived ownership and territoriality of product displays and the subsequent display avoidance by shoppers. The goal is to assist retail managers in supporting their employees during customer service interactions when the employee is completing display recovery and merchandising tasks.
Social media: How media types promote information spread
Dr. Tim Kaskela, assistant professor of business analytics, is researching the impact of social media content, specifically how media types (image or video) moderate the effect of emotional and informative posts on information spread on social media by analyzing Twitter data from a mobile device company. The study will measure comments and shares of these emotional or informative posts.
The attention economy: Measuring when consumers crave attention
Dr. Matthew Hall, assistant professor of marketing, is researching how the attention consumers receive from their consumption behavior enhances the value derived from that consumption. The research aims to measure the value of human attention by demonstrating that the theoretical principles of the attention economy are relevant to consumer behavior, and by demonstrating an additional way that consumers derive value from their shared experiences — when sharing facilitates the receipt of attention.
Firearms and advertising during change
Dr. Aimee Huff and Dr. Michelle Barnhart, associate professors of marketing, are studying how firearms marketing has responded to national regulatory changes and socio-cultural events in the US. The project looks at consumer firearms advertising over the past two decades, and will identify how messaging has changed after major events.
