Browsing by Author "Katherine W. Klein, Committee Member"

Filter results by typing the first few letters
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • No Thumbnail Available
    The Effects of Affective Priming and Aging on Ratings, Thoughts, and Recall for Advertisements.
    (2003-03-27) Rosenberg, Daniel Crown; Thomas M. Hess, Committee Chair; Katherine W. Klein, Committee Member; Samuel S. Snyder, Committee Member
    The purpose of this study was to investigate age differences in the influence of irrelevant affective information on consumer judgments. Celebrity endorsement of a product in a print advertisement played the role of the irrelevant affective information (i.e., the affective primes). Due to age-related declines in cognitive efficiency and the self-initiation of controlled cognitive processing, older adults were expected to engage in less elaboration and show more susceptibility to the irrelevant affective information when compared to younger adults. Thirty-six young and 35 older adults viewed two advertisements for each of three product types (total of six ads), rated their purchase intent, provided attitude ratings and thoughts, and free-recalled the ads' content. For each product type, one ad had a nonfamous endorser while the competing ad had a famous endorser of varying likability (high, neutral, or low). Older adults produced more relevant thoughts about the advertisements than did the younger adults. As expected, purchase intent was not affected by the manipulation. Advertisements with the negative prime received significantly lower ratings than did advertisements with the positive and neutral primes; however, there were no age differences in priming effects for the attitude ratings. Famous endorsement boosted advertisement recall, especially for younger adults. Both age groups recalled more relevant than irrelevant information, but this difference was greater for the younger adults. Older adults recalled proportionally more irrelevant information than did the younger adults. Although older adults seem more susceptible than do younger adults to task irrelevant information when retrieving facts from long-term memory, in certain contexts they may focus more than the younger adults do on relevant information in the short-term. Thus, conscious mental processing may be a stronger influence than more automatic mechanisms when motivation is high enough.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Individual and Sub-organizational Factors Affecting Industry Membership in University-based Cooperative Research Centers.
    (2009-04-23) Rivers, Drew Charles; Katherine W. Klein, Committee Member; Denis O. Gray, Committee Chair; Lynda Aiman-Smith, Committee Member; Adam W. Meade, Committee Member
    Since the early 1980s the US government through federal legislation has worked to increase public-private partnerships to help drive industrial innovation and economic progress (National Science Board, 2006). Cooperative Research Centers (CRCs) are one such mechanism, enabling industrial organizations to collaborate with both universities and government agencies. These university-based CRCs operate as linkage mechanisms (Gray, 1998), bridging the culture gap between academia and the private sector. Understanding the motivations and processes through which these partnerships initiate and evolve is important to their continued success. From existing research we know what environmental and organizational factors signal an increased likelihood for partnerships to occur. However, beyond these initializing conditions little is known about how organizations discover potential partners and subsequently decide whether to pursue a formal partnership arrangement. This current study applied a mixed methods approach to identify factors within organizations that could explain how industry-university partnerships happen. Two preliminary studies were conducted to explore pre-collaborative exchanges between university-based CRCs and their prospective member organizations. These first two stages of research revealed underlying communities of university researchers, industrial technologists, and government scientists. Within these communities reside networks of actors engaged in dynamic relationship exchanges that propagate formal partnership considerations. Further, semi-structured interviews with organization representatives brought to light a varied and often increasingly elaborate process regarding decisions to partner with university-based CRCs. The final stage of research administered a structured survey to a sample of industrial and public organizations. The decision process is described as it unfolds within organizations considering CRC membership. Further, a series of regression models identified the unique and relative effects of decision outcome predictors across several domains of analysis. I found support for network-based perspectives on the development of industry-university partnerships. However, the influence of network relationships rested primarily on the initiation of the partnering decision. Technical and non-technical characteristics of the CRC, as well as sub-organizational and individual variables, were found to be most predictive of actual decision outcomes. Implications of this research for CRC directors, prospective member organizations, and policymakers are offered.