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Marketing Division

Markets, Consumers and Exchanges are the three broad themes that define the focus and contribution of the marketing group at the Weatherhead School of Management. The research outputs of the marketing faculty make unique and substantial contributions to the knowledge base in each of these broad areas, and to the dynamics that tie them together.

Online Research for the 21st Century:

To leverage the power of the Internet to facilitate the collection of primary research data, Professor Ellen Garbarino recently launched a web site that can serve as a central access portal for web-based data collection for the academic community at WSOM. Developed after several years of painstaking research, Professor Garbarino explains the complexity of the underlying design…

“The resources of the site involve three primary functions: 1) the posting of projects that can be completed directly online (i.e., online experiments and surveys), 2) the scheduling of appointments for traditional offline projects, and 3) a panel of respondents willing to participate in research projects. In addition the site includes substantial information about current practices in online research, sources for online samples, summaries of the findings of past research, reviews of survey software, and some discussion of our experiences with various online data collections.”

Already, the site has proven to be ground breaking. Over 20 on- and off-line projects have been hosted thus far, with new projects being added every month. Projects have included online surveys of both internal and external audiences, opinion polls and experiments in both Economics and Marketing.

Professor Garbarino gave an example of a recent study using the online website.

“I just completed a nation-wide online survey of consumer perception of the expensiveness of online retail prices relative to offline prices. I matched the survey data to a secondary database of actual online and offline prices. I found that perceptions have changed dramatically over time such that people now expect online out-of-pocket prices (i.e., after shipping and taxes are accounted for) to be more expensive than comparable offline prices even though the reality is that online out-of-pocket prices still tend to be lower than offline out-of-pocket prices. This finding has important implications. Since online price perceptions are higher than reality, price sensitive customers may be less inclined to even explore online outlets. This could unnecessarily constrain online markets.”

You are welcome to explore the WSOM Online Research Website but please remember that posted projects are active research and don’t disrupt ongoing data collections. The WSOM Online Research Website was made possible by the generous support of the Weatherhead Connection.

Professor Garbarino specializes in Internet marketing in both her teaching and research activities. Her research focuses on Internet retailing and the behavioral and psychological responses to price both on- and off-line. To learn more about Professor Garbarino’s research or that of any of the Marketing faculty please visit our faculty profiles via the button at the top of the page.

Being interesting teachers and good researchers is what being a member of the Marketing faculty at Weatherhead is all about. So please, look around, and contact any of us if you have questions or special interests that fit with what you see here.

July 2005