Today’s consumers demand and expect a wealth of choices in everything from sneakers to potato chips, but while large product lines provide abundance and variety, they don’t always result in sales—and can even take away from a company’s bottom line. In new marketing research, Desautels Professor Demetrios Vakratsas explores breadth and depth in product lines to determine their role in consumer choice-making today.

Jalapeño cheddar or zesty lime. Crinkle cut or wavy. Potato chips are as varied as people’s appetites – and the chances are pretty good that everyone’s local corner store features dozens of choices to suit every taste. But do the countless variations of this humble snack food satisfy consumer demand for variety, or intimidate the indecisive by making it too difficult to choose?

Authors: Ceren Kolsarici, and Demetrios Vakratsas

Publication: Journal of Advertising, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2018

“We are drowning in information and starving for knowledge”

On May 25, 2017, more than 60 marketing academics in Canada gathered together for the 5th Empirical and Theoretical Symposium for Canadian Marketing Strategy at the Desautels Faculty of Management to present research ideas, provide feedback, and share commentaries. Through the conference, topics relevant to today’s changing markets, such as how news media portrays advertising and how firms conduct product recalls, were discussed.

Deloitte Analytics and other companies have been pushing Canadian universities for years to produce more data-literate graduates to fill their talent needs. Their efforts appear to be paying off, with business schools ramping up their offerings in data analytics. [...]

The proliferation of new offerings includes new MBA-level analytics concentrations at Montreal’s McGill University and Ottawa’s Carleton University. McGill is also in the process of approving a new master of management in analytics at its Desautels Faculty of Management.

Authors: Kolsarici, C. and Vakratsas, D.

Publication: Management Science