Scholars@Duke
William F. Boulding

William F. Boulding

J.B. Fuqua Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
Fuqua School of Business
bb1@duke.edu
Duke Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120
100 Fuqua Drive, Box 90120, Durham, NC 27708-0120
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Selected Publications

Consumer sophistication, word-of-mouth and “False” promotions

Journal Article Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization · August 1, 2018 Not all retail price promotions provide consumers with additional monetary value. For instance, a retailer might raise the retail price of an item just before a sale and then “promote” the product by listing the initial price as the sales price. This paper ... Full text Cite

Do we really need to change the decision maker? Counterintuitive escalation of commitment results in real options contexts

Journal Article Management Science · October 1, 2017 A robust finding in the escalation literature, termed as the preference e ect, is that involvement in the period 1 initial project assessment decision increases the tendency for decision makers to stick with a losing course of action during the period 2 pr ... Full text Cite

Controlling the Odds: Skill or Conceit?

Chapter · January 1, 2015 The success of a complex marketing project (e.g. the launch of a new product, the initiation of a major ad campaign, etc.) depends not only on factors related to the actions of the firm, but also on factors outside the firm’s control. However, marketing ma ... Full text Cite

The patient experience and health outcomes.

Journal Article The New England journal of medicine · January 2013 Full text Cite

Optimal admission and scholarship decisions: Choosing customized marketing offers to attract a desirable mix of customers

Journal Article Marketing Science · July 1, 2012 Each year in the postsecondary education industry, schools offer admission to nearly 3 million new students and scholarships totaling nearly $100 billion. This is a large, understudied targeted marketing and price discrimination problem. This problem falls ... Full text Cite

Relationship between patient satisfaction with inpatient care and hospital readmission within 30 days.

Journal Article The American journal of managed care · January 2011 ObjectivesTo determine whether hospitals where patients report higher overall satisfaction with their interactions among the hospital and staff and specifically their experience with the discharge process are more likely to have lower 30-day readm ... Cite

General alliance experience, uncertainty, and marketing alliance governance mode choice

Journal Article Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science · December 1, 2010 Drawing from transaction cost economics (TCE), the knowledge-based view (KBV), and real options theory (ROT), we propose that the general alliance experience of alliance partner firms moderates the impact of market uncertainty and alliance-specific uncerta ... Full text Cite

Patient satisfaction and its relationship with clinical quality and inpatient mortality in acute myocardial infarction.

Journal Article Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes · March 2010 BACKGROUND: Hospitals use patient satisfaction surveys to assess their quality of care. A key question is whether these data provide valid information about the medically related quality of hospital care. The objective of this study was to determine whethe ... Full text Link to item Cite

Alternative pay-for-performance scoring methods: implications for quality improvement and patient outcomes.

Journal Article Medical care · October 2009 BackgroundPay-for-performance programs typically rate hospitals using a composite summary score in which process measures are weighted by the total number of treatment opportunities. Alternative methods that weight process measures according to ho ... Full text Cite

Leadership development in the Duke Daytime MBA program

Journal Article Leader to Leader · August 5, 2009 Full text Cite

Pioneering plus a broad product line strategy: Higher profits or deeper losses?

Journal Article Management Science · June 1, 2009 Previous research suggests firms can build a market share advantage by preempting later entrants with a broad product line and expanding rapidly into related markets. Whether such a strategy leads to a pioneering profit advantage relative to followers also ... Full text Cite

Optimal market intelligence strategy when management attention is scarce

Journal Article Management Science · April 1, 2009 This paper extends the theoretical literature on firms' optimal information strategies to the situation when a firm's management attention capacity to process available data is scarce. In this case, a firm's optimal market intelligence strategy must trade ... Full text Cite

Disentangling pioneering cost advantages and disadvantages

Journal Article Marketing Science · July 1, 2008 Existing literature discusses a number of possible pioneering cost advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, we empirically test three different sources of long-term pioneering cost advantage - experience curve effects, preemption of input factors, and ... Full text Cite

A framework for quality improvement: an analysis of factors responsible for improvement at hospitals participating in the Can Rapid Risk Stratification of Unstable Angina Patients Suppress Adverse Outcomes with Early Implementation of the ACC/AHA Guidelines (CRUSADE) quality improvement initiative.

Journal Article Am Heart J · December 2007 BACKGROUND: Hospitals are under increasing pressure to improve their quality of care. However, a key question remains: how can hospitals best design and implement successful quality improvement (QI) programs? Hospitals currently employ a variety of QI init ... Full text Link to item Cite

The Periodicity of Pricing

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · August 2006 Retail pricing data combine multiple decisions (e.g., regular pricing and discounting) that are possibly made by multiple decision makers (e.g., retailers and manufacturers). For example, temporary price reductions (high-frequency price changes) c ... Full text Cite

Stuck in the past: Why managers persist with new product failures

Journal Article Journal of Marketing · April 1, 2006 In this research, the authors examine the phenomenon of escalation bias in the context of managing new product introductions. In particular, they identify three general paths - Decision Involvement Inertia, Decision Involvement Distortion, and Belief Inert ... Full text Cite

A customer relationship management roadmap: What is known, potential pitfalls, and where to go

Journal Article Journal of Marketing · October 1, 2005 The goal of this preface is to describe how the special section on customer relationship management (CRM) was developed. In May 2003, Richard Staelin, Executive Director of the Teradata Center for Customer Relationship Management at Duke University, propos ... Full text Cite

Sustainable Pioneering Advantage? Profit Implications of Market Entry Order

Journal Article Marketing Science · January 1, 2003 There is strong theoretical and empirical evidence supporting the idea that "first-tomarket" leads to an enduring market share advantage. In sharp contrast to these findings, we find that at the business unit level being first-to-market leads, on average, ... Full text Cite

Consumer sophistication, word-of-mouth and “False” promotions

Journal Article Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization · August 1, 2018 Not all retail price promotions provide consumers with additional monetary value. For instance, a retailer might raise the retail price of an item just before a sale and then “promote” the product by listing the initial price as the sales price. This paper ... Full text Cite

Do we really need to change the decision maker? Counterintuitive escalation of commitment results in real options contexts

Journal Article Management Science · October 1, 2017 A robust finding in the escalation literature, termed as the preference e ect, is that involvement in the period 1 initial project assessment decision increases the tendency for decision makers to stick with a losing course of action during the period 2 pr ... Full text Cite

Controlling the Odds: Skill or Conceit?

Chapter · January 1, 2015 The success of a complex marketing project (e.g. the launch of a new product, the initiation of a major ad campaign, etc.) depends not only on factors related to the actions of the firm, but also on factors outside the firm’s control. However, marketing ma ... Full text Cite

The patient experience and health outcomes.

Journal Article The New England journal of medicine · January 2013 Full text Cite

Optimal admission and scholarship decisions: Choosing customized marketing offers to attract a desirable mix of customers

Journal Article Marketing Science · July 1, 2012 Each year in the postsecondary education industry, schools offer admission to nearly 3 million new students and scholarships totaling nearly $100 billion. This is a large, understudied targeted marketing and price discrimination problem. This problem falls ... Full text Cite

Relationship between patient satisfaction with inpatient care and hospital readmission within 30 days.

Journal Article The American journal of managed care · January 2011 ObjectivesTo determine whether hospitals where patients report higher overall satisfaction with their interactions among the hospital and staff and specifically their experience with the discharge process are more likely to have lower 30-day readm ... Cite

General alliance experience, uncertainty, and marketing alliance governance mode choice

Journal Article Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science · December 1, 2010 Drawing from transaction cost economics (TCE), the knowledge-based view (KBV), and real options theory (ROT), we propose that the general alliance experience of alliance partner firms moderates the impact of market uncertainty and alliance-specific uncerta ... Full text Cite

Patient satisfaction and its relationship with clinical quality and inpatient mortality in acute myocardial infarction.

Journal Article Circ Cardiovasc Qual Outcomes · March 2010 BACKGROUND: Hospitals use patient satisfaction surveys to assess their quality of care. A key question is whether these data provide valid information about the medically related quality of hospital care. The objective of this study was to determine whethe ... Full text Link to item Cite

Alternative pay-for-performance scoring methods: implications for quality improvement and patient outcomes.

Journal Article Medical care · October 2009 BackgroundPay-for-performance programs typically rate hospitals using a composite summary score in which process measures are weighted by the total number of treatment opportunities. Alternative methods that weight process measures according to ho ... Full text Cite

Leadership development in the Duke Daytime MBA program

Journal Article Leader to Leader · August 5, 2009 Full text Cite

Pioneering plus a broad product line strategy: Higher profits or deeper losses?

Journal Article Management Science · June 1, 2009 Previous research suggests firms can build a market share advantage by preempting later entrants with a broad product line and expanding rapidly into related markets. Whether such a strategy leads to a pioneering profit advantage relative to followers also ... Full text Cite

Optimal market intelligence strategy when management attention is scarce

Journal Article Management Science · April 1, 2009 This paper extends the theoretical literature on firms' optimal information strategies to the situation when a firm's management attention capacity to process available data is scarce. In this case, a firm's optimal market intelligence strategy must trade ... Full text Cite

Disentangling pioneering cost advantages and disadvantages

Journal Article Marketing Science · July 1, 2008 Existing literature discusses a number of possible pioneering cost advantages and disadvantages. In this paper, we empirically test three different sources of long-term pioneering cost advantage - experience curve effects, preemption of input factors, and ... Full text Cite

A framework for quality improvement: an analysis of factors responsible for improvement at hospitals participating in the Can Rapid Risk Stratification of Unstable Angina Patients Suppress Adverse Outcomes with Early Implementation of the ACC/AHA Guidelines (CRUSADE) quality improvement initiative.

Journal Article Am Heart J · December 2007 BACKGROUND: Hospitals are under increasing pressure to improve their quality of care. However, a key question remains: how can hospitals best design and implement successful quality improvement (QI) programs? Hospitals currently employ a variety of QI init ... Full text Link to item Cite

The Periodicity of Pricing

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · August 2006 Retail pricing data combine multiple decisions (e.g., regular pricing and discounting) that are possibly made by multiple decision makers (e.g., retailers and manufacturers). For example, temporary price reductions (high-frequency price changes) c ... Full text Cite

Stuck in the past: Why managers persist with new product failures

Journal Article Journal of Marketing · April 1, 2006 In this research, the authors examine the phenomenon of escalation bias in the context of managing new product introductions. In particular, they identify three general paths - Decision Involvement Inertia, Decision Involvement Distortion, and Belief Inert ... Full text Cite

A customer relationship management roadmap: What is known, potential pitfalls, and where to go

Journal Article Journal of Marketing · October 1, 2005 The goal of this preface is to describe how the special section on customer relationship management (CRM) was developed. In May 2003, Richard Staelin, Executive Director of the Teradata Center for Customer Relationship Management at Duke University, propos ... Full text Cite

Sustainable Pioneering Advantage? Profit Implications of Market Entry Order

Journal Article Marketing Science · January 1, 2003 There is strong theoretical and empirical evidence supporting the idea that "first-tomarket" leads to an enduring market share advantage. In sharp contrast to these findings, we find that at the business unit level being first-to-market leads, on average, ... Full text Cite

The quality double whammy

Journal Article Marketing Science · January 1, 1999 This research focuses on how consumers perceive the quality level of a complex stimulus (in our case, a service encounter) and how this perception affects consumers' overall assessment of the quality level of the firm. As such, it should be of interest to ... Full text Cite

Pulling the Plug to Stop the New Product Drain

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · February 1, 1997 Although an important aspect of managing new product introductions is to recognize and quickly take action when a product launch has failed (i.e., “pull the plug”), senior managers in a new product launch setting tend to remain committed to a losing course ... Full text Cite

Pulling the plug to stop the new product drain

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · January 1, 1997 Although an important aspect of managing new product introductions is to recognize and quickly take action when a product launch has failed (i.e., "pull the plug"), senior managers in a new product launch setting tend to remain committed to a losing course ... Full text Cite

The price of safety

Journal Article Journal of Consumer Research · June 1, 1996 This article presents a simple economic model to assess consumers' valuation of safety features. In particular, we model the benefit from safety as the reduction in the probability of death, and the associated economic value of this reduction. We then appl ... Full text Cite

Identifying Generalizable Effects of Strategic Actions on Firm Performance: The Case of Demand-Side Returns to R&D Spending

Journal Article Marketing Science · 1995 This paper provides an approach for assessing generalizable effects of strategic actions on firm performance. We identify five key issues that need to be addressed before one can have confidence in the obtained strategic generalization. In addition, we sug ... Cite

Understanding Managers' Strategic Decision Making Process

Journal Article Marketing Letters · 1994 Cite

A Look on the Cost Side: Market Share and the Competitive Environment

Journal Article Marketing Science · May 1993 In this paper we develop a model relating market share to average costs. We start with a theoretical model of the factors that affect the firm's average cost curve, partitioning these factors into (a) measurable firm and competitive environment ch ... Full text Cite

Differentiation via the marketing mix

Journal Article Marketing Letters · October 1, 1992 In this paper we investigate the conjecture that increasing marketing mix specialization enhances firm performance. We start by identifying two dimensions of specialization - absolute (concentration of expenditures) and relative to competition (distinctive ... Full text Cite

Pioneering and Market Share: Is Entry Time Endogenous and Does it Matter?

Journal Article Journal of Marketing Research · 1991 Cite

Environment, Market Share, and Market Power

Journal Article Management Science · October 1990 In this paper we develop a process model relating market share to firm profits. In particular, we specify average price and average cost equations as a function of previous year market share position, changes in market share, environmental conditi ... Full text Cite

Note—Conjoint Reliability Measures

Journal Article Marketing Science · November 1989 Researchers have used a variety of measures for the assessment of conjoint analysis reliability. In this note we critically evaluate two different measures and identify potential shortcomings for each one. We identify the context for which a given ... Full text Cite

Conjoint Analysis Reliability: Empirical Findings

Journal Article Marketing Science · August 1988 This paper looks at the comparative reliability of different methodological variants of the conjoint analysis procedure. It differs from previous studies in that it looks at three methods of data collection (Full Profile, Trade-off Matrices, and P ... Full text Cite