38. 'Languages Across the Curriculum' Approaces to Internationalizing Business Education: Interdisciplinary Collaboration.
Fichera, Virginia M., Robert S. Owen, & Stephen Straight (2000). Presentation at the Thunderbird - EMU Conference: Language, Communication, and Global Management, Scottsdale, AZ, APR 00.

This panel will acquaint participants with recent, innovative efforts to create new academic programs through partnerships which integrate Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC). As part of a strategy to reengineer and internationalize business, economics, and foreign language curricula with cultural perspectives and original foreign language materials in the disciplines, these programs integrate resources and techniques from both print and electronic media. Participants will learn about the integration of foreign language materials into business courses, including some of the techniques that are used in developing web-based modules, and will be introduced to issues associated with institutionalizing such programs.

As internationalization and globalization transform the national and world economies and profoundly affect business practices and trade, colleges and universities find themselves challenged to respond to these evolving and irreversible trends. New courses and new degree programs which meet these growing needs must be adopted in order to prepare the student body for a far more challenging workplace. The major accrediting agency, AACSB, now requires evidence of the depth and breadth of international offerings in order to certify schools and degree programs in this dynamic and evolving environment. Further, the development of new technologies, such as the World Wide Web, is spurring the marketplace toward more comprehensive yet locally-tailored responses to globalization as well.

37. Faculty Across the Curriculum: Lessons from a Languages Across the Curriculum Program.
Fichera, Virginia M., Robert S. Owen, & Stephen Straight (2000). Presentation at the Eighth American Association of Higher Education Conference on Faculty Roles and Rewards, New Orleans, LA, FEB 00.

The Languages Across the Curriculum movement has brought together faculty from various disciplines at campuses across the nation in multiple models of interaction to internationalize curricula. The presenters (an administrator, a program director, a faculty member) discuss the successes, innovations, and disappointments encountered in attempts to establish an interdisciplinary consortium.

34. Using Programmed Branching to Automate Interactive Cases on the Web.
Owen, Robert S. (1999), Marketing Education Review, 9(3), 41-60.

Although teaching machines have existed for decades, the World Wide Web provides a method for automated teaching that is relatively low in cost and easily distributed across a large number of people. This article discusses the linear and branching approaches that have been used in the past with teaching machines and automatic tutoring, relating these approaches to some simple techniques that can be used with interactive cases on the Web. Sample HTML code and a brief interactive sales management case are provided.

33. A Time and Motion Study of Web Course Development.
Owen, Robert S. (1999), Prodeedings of the Eighth Annual SUNY FACT Conference on Instructional Technologies, 65-66. Elizabeth O. Sullivan (ed.). System Administration, State University of New York.

An activity log was kept during a five week, eighty-two hour overhaul of an existing classroom-based Web-assisted course. A tabulation shows that only about a quarter of the total time devoted to this task was used toward development of new assignments and resources associated with those assignments; more than half of the time was devoted to file maintenance and to tasks associated with html and graphics. Knowledge of the amount of time and effort that was devoted to specific tasks in this project can be useful in planning other such ventures, whether consideration is given to the work required in one's own course development or if one is an administrator attempting to assess the ongoing commitment that must be made if institutional policy is being considered in a movement toward Web-assisted course delivery.

32. An Application for Generating Interactive Practice Exams on the Web.
Owen, Robert S. (1999), Prodeedings of the Eighth Annual SUNY FACT Conference on Instructional Technologies, 66-69. Elizabeth O. Sullivan (ed.). System Administration, State University of New York.

Based on interest in a presentation at CIT 98, the author developed the Drop-down Exam Generator to automatically generate the HTML code for creating online interactive multiple choice practice exams. When using the HTML forms drop-down menu feature for exams which provide immediate student feedback, coding the HTML for these exams by hand is very time consuming. The application described here, the Drop-down Exam Generator, greatly speeds this process by allowing the user to enter questions, answers, and student feedback into prompt boxes; the HTML code is then generated from this information. The Drop-down Exam Generator can be downloaded to run offline or can be run online from a Web browser at: http://www.oswego.edu/~owen/teaching.

31. The Structural Environment of Diffusion.
Owen, Robert, Alfred Ntoko, June Dong, & Ding Zhang (1999), Developments in Marketing Science, 22, 244-248.

Diffusion of innovation in marketing is typically studied as a social process. Interest in many models is how a minority of consumers first adopts an innovation and how adoption spreads to the majority of consumers. Our interest is on the enabling environmental factors that must be in place before such a social process is possible. Specifically, this paper discusses factors that might be important structural elements in the environment, including a competitive backbone, a social backbone, and a technological backbone.

30. Some Techniques for Interactive Pedagogy.
Owen, Robert S. (1999). Developments in Marketing Science, 22, 263 (abstract only). Presentation as panelist, "Innovative Uses of Cases in Marketing Education" at the 1999 Annual Conference, Academy of Marketing Science, MAY 99.

Pedagogically, cases are useful because they cause the student to think about a situation and to integrate information in a way that leads to insights about methods and procedures, rather than to the mere storage of facts for future core dumping. The professor moderates a case discussion in an attempt to lead students toward certain ways of thinking, sometimes even tricking them deliberately toward a wrong answer so that a particular insight can be gained through critical thinking. If the professor moderates a discussion toward such predetermined pedagogical goals, why not simply use a programmed application to do the same during parts of an online case analysis?

One small online interactive case that the author has used follows student readings about budgeting in a sales class (http://www.oswego.edu/~owen/sales/bud_ex1.htm). Students are asked to read a one-page case on the Web about a direct sales situation, followed by a series of interactive questions. The questions are in multiple choice format, but are tricky in that the hope is that many students will be lured into the wrong answer. When the student makes a choice, a drop-down box provides some small discussion at the point of the answer (rather than flipping to another page). As with an in-class case moderation, the questions are designed such that they lead the student through a thought process and provide instant feedback when the student makes mistakes.

29. Serendipity and Some Potentially Generalizable Factors in the Successful Diffusion of Innovation.
Owen, Robert S. (1999), Marketing History: The Total Package, 243-250. Stanley Hollander, Diana Twede, Terrence Nevett, & Kathleen Rassuli (eds.). Proceedings of the Ninth Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing. Cosponsored by Michigan State University, Journal of Macromarketing, and Academy of Marketing Science.

Marketing and management studies have tended to use individual consumers as the main unit of analysis, maintaining a focus on understanding the individual traits of innovators, laggards, opinion leaders, and such. The present paper proposes that successful diffusion is because of product appeal to a mass audience through low cost, easy to use products, and that this appeal to a mass audience must occur through an enabling structure that is owned by all of society.

28. Macromarketing, Public Policy, and Diffusion of Innovation.
Owen, Robert S., Alfred Ntoko, Ding Zhang, & June Dong (1998), Paper Abstracts of the ISQOLS 1998 Conference, Shelly Rennick & Bruno Zumbo (eds.). (Full apstract available at http://quarles.unbc.ca/psyc/isqols/isqols98abstracts.html)

Marketers have studied diffusion of innovation with a primary focus on the individual consumer as a unit of analysis, the major types of findings being characteristics of adopter categories and opinion leadership. We propose that this perspective is not adequate from a macromarketing perspective, in which the goals are to set public policy or to create an environment which enables the diffusion of an innovation in a way that no single marketer could do alone. In addition to studying diffusion as a process of communication, as a diffusion spreads from innovators through laggards, macromarketing efforts could be enhanced by studying diffusion with a focus on an unsegmented mass market and on the technological infrastructure that can enable or inhibit the diffusion of an innovation. In setting public policy which can enable (or inhibit) difusion of innovation, a system composed of a technical infrastructure as well as a social infrastructure should be considered.

27. New Technologies, New Partnerships, New Strategies: SUNY-Oswego's WWW-Enhanced "Language and International Trade Major" Project.
Fichera, Virginia M., Robert S. Owen, & Said Atri (1998). Special Session presentation at the annual conference of the Academy of Marketing Science, Norfolk, VA, MAY 98.

As internationalization and globalization transform the national and world economies and profoundly affect business practices and trade, colleges and universities find themselves challenged to respond to these evolving and seemingly irreversible trends. New courses and new degree programs which meet these growing needs must be adopted in order to prepare the student body for a far more challenging workplace. Further, the development of new technologies, notably the Internet and the World Wide Web, are spurring the marketplace toward more comprehensive yet locally-tailored responses to globalization as well.

Presentations of SUNY-Oswego's 1) new Language and International Trade Major Project, 2) WWW Curriculum Development Project, and 3) a participating Marketing Principles course will acquaint conference participants with recent, innovative efforts to create new programs from partnerships across the curriculum as part of a strategy to reengineer and internationalize business, economics and foreign language curricula with cultural perspectives and original foreign language WWW materials in the disciplines.

26. Non-CGI Interactive Course Materials on the Web
Owen, Robert S. (1998), Proceedings of CIT98: Seventh Annual SUNY FACT Conference on Instructional Technologies, 87-89. Elizabeth Sullivan (ed.). System Administration, State University of New York.

Experimental interactive course exercises have been used on the Web by the author since 1995. Relatively easy methods are available in which a web page can automatically interact with the student without the use of CGI programming. These include standard hyperlinks, various html forms functions, JavaScript-invoked browser windows, and JavaScript prompt and alert boxes. Additionally, JavaScript allows for html to be generated on the fly in response to the user's input, albeit with the requirement that the professor has some programming skills.

25. Measurement of Attention on a Computer Screen
Owen, Robert S. (1998). Presentation at Imaging the Mind: A Conference on Computing and the Cognitive Sciences, State University of New York, Oswego, NY MAR 98. Sponsored by SUNY Faculty Access to Computing Technology (FACT).

The "secondary task techniques" have been used since the late 1800s to study the limits in a person’s short-term capacity to process information (e.g., Jastrow 1892; Welch 1898). With these techniques, degraded performance on one task is taken to indicate that greater mental attention is required by a second concurrent task. For example, a person might easily be able to hold a weight at a relatively constant level if this is a task performed alone, but might experience trouble holding this at a constant level when asked to concurrently read a passage in a book or to concurrently perform mental math (cf., Welch). Greater degradation in the weight-holding task is taken to suggest greater attention to the concurrent process of reading or math performance.

These techniques fell into disuse at the turn of the century as interest in psychology shifted more toward behavioral approaches, but interest returned in the 1950s with problems of the multiple attention requirements of flying jet fighters and spacecraft. Posner (1971) began using the "RT-probe " technique as a way to obtain a reliable quantitative measure of the attention required by task. In this technique, a person is asked to give a simple response to a "secondary stimulus" while performing a concurrent "primary task," and a longer response time in performing the secondary task suggests greater attention to the primary task.

Lord, Burnkrant, & Owen (1989), for example, used the RT-probe technique to measure the amount of attention that television viewers allocated to particular places during a television show. Television viewers were asked to press a button whenever they heard a periodic "beep" sound during the show. During more mundane parts of the show, viewers responded very quickly to the beeps. During more suspenseful parts of the show, viewers took considerably longer to respond to the beeps, exhibited a wide variance in response times, and exhibited a high number of "misses" or button presses when there was no beep.

Although the RT-probe and other secondary task techniques certainly have some problems of validity in the measurement of mental constructs such as attention (cf., Owen 1991), they have the potential of being very useful in helping us to understand how it is that people attend to information placed on a computer screen. Computers have evolved to a point where it is now relatively easy to gain control over textual and visual elements on the screen without a substantial amount of programming work, and the measurement and data collection is, of course, conducted with the same computer (c.f., Owen, Lord, & Cooper 1995). Importantly, greater use of the computer in education and promotion via the World Wide Web has made it imperative that we understand how people process information that is presented on a computer screen. Use of these techniques in the measurement of attention to Web stimuli, then, is advocated.

24. The Global Village Blast to the Past
Owen, Robert S. (1997), Marketing History Knows no Boundaries, Proceedings of the Eighth Conference on Historical Research in Marketing and Marketing Thought, 203. (abstract only). D.G. Brian Jones & Peggy Cunningham (eds.). Cosponsored by Michigan State University, Queens University, Academy of Marketing Science, and Journal of Macromarketing.

The original abstract is too long to reproduce here, in addition to being copyrighted. Technology is making it increasingly difficult to remember the past just as calculators have made it increasingly difficult to remember how to make change when the cash register loses power. "Scholarly" articles increasingly review only the literature that keyword search tools can find from a limited archive of material. This author often references century old books and manuscripts, some of which have been purchased at "Friends" of the Library sales, and is concerned about the potential for these non-volatile information systems to be discarded forever from the eyes and minds of future generations. Our writings, as radio waves and electrons bouncing through a World Wide Web of satellites and servers, are once again vulnerable to change and obliteration, creating a full circle back to the days when the ancients scratched their knowledge in the sand.

23.Some Considerations in Using the Web as a Course Tool
Owen, Robert S. (1997), Proceedings of the 19th Annual American Marketing Association International Collegiate Conference, 32-38. William Gary Wolf (ed.).

The author’s experiences in using the World Wide Web as a course tool are discussed. Use of the web has provided a number of benefits, but a number of problems have been encountered as well. Information is not distributed or displayed on the web in the same way as it is in hard copy, and this provides both advantages and disadvantages. Using advanced features such as Java or JavaScript with the hope to create interactive and other dynamic applications has been especially frustrating as different versions of even the same browser can behave differently. A tremendous amount of time is required to merely maintain a site even after it has been set up, and the use of technically adept work study students to assist does not appear to lower the required time as much as one might imagine. Despite such shortcomings and frustrations, however, the web has proven to be useful as a powerful, interactive pedagogical tool with capabilities that are not possible in any other way.

22. Use of a Web Page for Posting Class Materials
Owen, Robert S., Clara R. Wu., & Timothy J. Sherman (1996), Proceedings of CIT96: The Fifth SUNY Conference on Instructional Technologies, 111-113. Paul Kramer & Elizabeth Sullivan (eds.). State University of New York Office of University Relations.

An experimental web page has been in use since the Summer 1995 semester in several undergraduate and graduate marketing courses. This site contains such course-related postings as the syllabus, class notes, sample multiple choice and essay exam questions, successful student answers to essay questions, grade distributions, and such. Students (n=89) were surveyed at the end of the Fall 95 semester regarding usage of the web page, which was optional. Most students who had used the course web site found it to be useful. Of those who did not use the web site, most indicated problems with campus access as the reason, with the remainder indicating a lack of computer proficiency as the reason for not using the site. Of those who had used the site, most had accessed the site by the second of three exams. Handwritten student comments and issues associated with professor maintenance of the web site are discussed. Overall, the site appears to be a worthwhile investment of the professor's time given student reactions to the site.

21. Some Problems and Issues in Using Microcomputer Measurements to Imply Mental Constructs
Owen, Robert S. (1995), Paper presented at the 1995 Annual Conference of the American Psychological Association, Division 23, Society for Consumer Psychology, New York City, AUG 95.

With ever increasing capabilities, microcomputers have become increasingly attractive as measurement instruments (e.g., reaction time to brand name). Any physical measurement, however, has finite limitations in resolution and accuracy. These limitations are often overlooked, but can result in the introduction of random and systematic error. To the researcher, the result is often an apparent lack of meaningful results when in fact "publishable" results were obtained but erroneously reported by the physical measurement system. (Examples can also be found of reported results that could not be physically possible.) The objective of this discussion is to define such physical measurement terms as resolution and accuracy; to discuss issues of resolution and accuracy associated with the use of CRT and LCD screens as stimulus presentation devices, of keyboards as input devices, and of system timers as timing devices; to discuss sources of random and systematic error in using such components; etc. Knowledgeable users could then better assess sources of error in taking physical measurements and could better assess the suitability of various instruments for particular measurement tasks.

20. Using Computerized Response Time Measurement for Detecting Secondary Task Distractions in Advertising
Owen, Robert S., Kenneth R. Lord, & Martha C. Cooper (1995), Advances in Consumer Research, 22, 84-88.

Use of the secondary task technique in the measurement of the distraction potential of prospective media environments is advocated and briefly discussed. Although there are a variety of secondary task methods that can be used to detect and measure the various attention related constructs, the current discussion focuses on the "RT-probe" technique, whereby the response time (latency) to a secondary task is taken as an indicator of mental attention devoted to a primary task. The proliferation of microcomputers brings this method within reach of most advertising researchers, albeit with some cautions and limitations that are discussed.

19. A Review of Bundled and Unbundled Post-Sale Service Options
Owen, Robert S. & Md. Abdul Mobin (1995), Developments in Marketing Science, 18, 304-311.

Products have become increasingly complex in recent years, thereby increasing the post-sale risks to the purchaser. Although a variety of ways for obtaining post-sale product servicing have evolved from a customer perspective, little discussion is devoted to post-sale product planning in marketing texts. Various options for the provision of post-sale product service are reviewed from the seller's perspective, including both bundled and unbundled options. A matrix of post-sale service options is proposed for use in product planning.

18. Post-Sale Field Service: Options, Costs, and a New Option
Owen, Robert S., Md. Abdul Mobin, & John R. Grabner (1994), Developments in Marketing Science, 17, 305-309.

Some basic general options for providing post-sale product maintenance are outlined. These traditional options are then contrasted with an additional option introduce here, modeled after Wilson's EOQ inventory model. This latter option might in some cases help lower costs/pricing as well as result in a higher level of customer service.

17. Early History of the American Marketing Association and Journal of Marketing
Lewis, Phillip R. & Robert S. Owen (1994), Contemporary Marketing History, 487-495. Jeffrey B. Schmidt, Stanley C. Hollander, Terence Nevett, & Jagdish N. Sheth (eds.). Cosponsored by Michigan State University, Emory University, Academy of Marketing Science, & Journal of Macromarketing.

Many marketing practitioners and academics are too young to recall the early days of the marketing discipline, and most have been involved in the discipline for only a small fraction of its scholarly history. Those without first hand knowledge of the discipline's history might be impelled to ask, "Where did we come from?" The focus of this review, based on early newsletter and journal publications, is on events which led to the formation of the American Marketing Association and on the few decades which followed. The evolution of the American Marketing Association is traced from the two decades preceding its formation to the early 1960s. Through its first two decades of publication, the Journal of Marketing reflected the diversity of the AMA membership and the changing interests of its readers.

16. On the Dimensions of Consumer Mental Workload
Owen, Robert S., Thomas E. Nygren, & Clark Leavitt (1993), Proceedings of the Society for Consumer Psychology, 55-59. Karen A. Finlay, Andrew A. Mitchell, & F. C. Cummins (eds.). Society for Consumer Psychology, Division 23, American Psychological Association.

Although constructs such as "information load" or "elaboration" are important in consumer research, the underlying structure of these and of the broader concept of mental workload is not intuitively obvious. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted in an attempt to discover the natural dimensions that might underlie mental workload, revealing three factors that appear to concur with a physical analogy of workload on the dimensions of time, quantity (resource demands), and force (motivation to expend effort). These results provide insights that might be used in the future development of scales to measure various workload-related constructs such as effort, elaboration, capacity, and so on.

15. Time and Consumer Information Load
Owen, Robert S. & Curtis P. Haugtvedt (1993), Developments in Marketing Science, 16, 55-59.

Changes in product labeling requirements stimulated interest in the influence of information quantity on the quality of consumer judgments two decades ago. Although the hope of policy makers was that more information might lead to better consumer decisions, results of consumer studies revealed that consumers can make poorer judgments in the presence of increased information. In the present study, the effect of time to process as well s information quantity were varied in order to gain some initial understanding of the determinants of an "information overload" construct.

14. Polychronic Time Use: Implications for a Developing Workforce
Owen, Robert S. & Kizito Wademi (1993), Marketing and Economic Re-structuring in the Developing World, 427-433. Luis V. Dominguez (ed.). International Society for Marketing and Development.

Researchers in marketing have recently shown an interest in people's allocation of time to concurrent activities (e.g., Kaufman, Lane, & Lindquist 1991), termed "polychronic time use." This notion appears to have some relationship to the study of attention switching, division, and sharing by engineering psychologists (cf., Owen 1991). A propensity for polychronic behavior could have important implications for workforce efficiency. Based on empirical evidence from engineering psychology, the present paper speculates on some factors that might moderate the propensities of individuals toward polychronic behavior in more or less industrialized parts of the world.

13. Consumer Mental Workload: Meaning and Measurement
Owen, Robert S. (1992). Unpublished Dissertation. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University. Martha C. Cooper, advisor. UMI order number DA9227347, 340 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International vol. 53-5, p. 1592A.

Consumer psychology researchers have explored the issue of "information overload", attempting to determine if consumers can and will make product choice errors if they consider too many product alternatives or product features. The present dissertation is an extension of these pioneering studies in exploring the questions, What is mental workload, conceptually, theoretically, and operationally? What is the relationship between "mental workload" and "information load"? What is the role of attitude-laden situational "cues" under differing conditions of mental workload?

An exploratory factor analysis was conducted in the first two studies in an attempt to discover the natural dimensions that might underlie mental workload. Study 1 resulted in a list of workload adjectives. Study 2 consisted of a workload generating task followed by the list of adjectives; subjects were to indicate how well each adjective described the workload task just completed. In the workload generating task, subjects (n=344) were to choose the "best" product from a choice set. This was a between subjects design, with "load" varied by the number of products in the choice set and by the amount of time allotted to the task. LOGIT analysis indicated that "load" had been manipulated. Factor analysis of measures associated with the adjective list suggested dimensions of time, quantity (resource demands), and force (motivation to expend effort).

A third study was conducted to empirically trace a Workload Operating Characteristic curve to test the plausibility of a proposed Integrated Model of Attention and Attitude Change (IMAAC). Study 3 (n=290) was similar to Study 2, except that interest was in the role of "peripheral cues", product sales agents that differed with respect to attractiveness and credibility. Differences in subject confidence and performance based on the location of individual alternatives in the choice set were used to determine an "overload" point. Measures of recall and attitude with respect to the sales agent "cues" suggest that IMAAC is a plausible model to help explain the role of cues under differing conditions of mental workload.

12. Clarifying the Simple Assumption of the Information Load Paradigm
Owen, Robert S. (1992), Advances in Consumer Research, 19, 770-775.

Debate over the "information overload" phenomenon has continued for almost two decades. This paper argues that further theoretical and managerial interest in the subject of consumer mental workload should be directed less toward issues of information quantity and more toward changes in processing quality as consumer mental workload is increased. Recent advances in our understanding of issues relevant to consumer mental workload are reviewed.

11. Integrating Polychronic Time and Attention Theory
Owen, Robert S. (1991), Marketing: Toward the Twenty First Century, 98-101. Robert L. King (ed.). Southern Marketing Association.

An integration of issues of polychronic time use and attention theory is attempted. Polychronism refers to performance of multiple activities within a single time frame. This paper proposes that time or attention division, sharing, or switching is an aptitude as well as a skill.

10. Serendipity, Diffusion, then Foresight: Hindsight Supporting Sheth's 'LDC' from the Marketing of the Model T and Other Discontinuous Innovations
Owen, Robert S. (1991), Marketing History: Its Many Dimensions, 324-341. Charles R. Taylor, Steven W. Kopp, Terence Nevitt, & Stanley C. Hollander (eds.). Academy of Marketing Science and Michigan State University.

Examples from the diffusion of the automobile, microcomputer, and other discontinuous innovations suggest that successful diffusion is often accidental and tends to occur through initial appeal to a "mass" audience, but also suggest that sustained competitive advantage results from market segmentation after, and only after, initial diffusion.

9. Clarifying the Simple Assumption of the Secondary Task Technique
Owen, Robert S. (1991), Advances in Consumer Research, 18, 552-557.

The secondary task technique has been used in the detection and measure of constructs described variously as attention, effort, elaboration, cognitive capacity, processing intensity, and such, which in turn might provide an indication of learning and automatism. The assumption that the secondary task provides evidence for the detection of such a variety of constructs might not always be valid. This paper attempts to clarify our current theoretical understanding of how the secondary task technique works.

8. The Role of Bundled Maintenance Warranties
Owen, Robert S. & Martha C. Cooper (1991), Developments in Marketing Science, 14, 212-216.

Signal Theory posits that a product warranty functions as a cue to product reliability and there functions to lower risk to the consumer, The results of the survey reported here suggests that this notion is not universally true in some situations involving a long-term microcomputer maintenance warranty. These results suggest that the strategic desirability of bundling a long-term maintenance warranty with a complex product is limited.

7. The Secondary Task Technique and the Measurement of Attention, Effort, Elaboration, Etc.
Owen, Robert S. (1990), Progress in Marketing Thought, 476-479. Lewis M. Capella, Henry W. Nash, Jack M. Starling, & Ronald D. Taylor (eds.). Southern Marketing Association.

The secondary task technique has increasingly been used in the detection and measure of constructs described variously as attention, effort, elaboration, cognitive capacity, processing intensity, and such, which in turn might provide an indication of learning and skill acquisition. The application and theoretical basis of the secondary task technique are discussed. Greater use of the secondary task technique in marketing research is advocated.

6. Integrating Attitude and Attention Theories
Owen, Robert S. (1990), Developments in Marketing Science, 13, 52-55.

The Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion and the dual-process theory of attention are contrasted. Although these two approaches to the mechanism of information processing are not the same, this paper proposes that these two theories are conceptually consistent and that the concurrent use of both approaches might provide better insights into factors involved in the processing of marketing communications than the use of either approach alone.

5. What Makes for Defined (However Good) Service Encounters?
Owen, Robert S. (1990), Proceedings of the Eleventh Annual Industrial/Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior Graduate Student Convention. Emily L. Haus (chair). The Ohio State University.

In a historical review of the service encounter, Hollander (1985) summarized our current state of understanding of the service encounter with one final question: "What makes for good (however defined) service encounters?" This paper proposes that we might be better able to answer this question if we view services from a process, rather than product, perspective. This approach departs somewhat from the services-as-a-product perspective of most Marketing research, and departs somewhat from most Organizational Behavior research by viewing services within the framework of the total "offering" of a tangible goods product.

4. Some Definitions and Issues in Instrumentation and Measurement
Owen, Robert S. & Martha C. Cooper (1990), Working Paper Series of the College of Business, #WPS 90-49. Columbus, OH: The Ohio State University.

Several terms are defined which are often misunderstood or misused in discussions of instrumentation and associated measurement methods. Several issues which are often neglected or misunderstood are also discussed, including the implications of accuracy, precision, and resolution on the results of a measurement process. Guidelines are provided for error averaging, for the determination of negligible error, and for unit conversion. The Order of Magnitude Rule is advocated for the determination of proper instrument resolution and accuracy.

3. The Value-Added Role of Boundary-Spanning Employees
Owen, Robert S., John R. Grabner, & Martha C. Cooper (1990), Developments in Marketing Science, 13, 513-516.

A goal of this exploratory study was to gain insights into the role which boundary spanning employees play in the formation of consumer preferences for products. Consumers were surveyed regarding their most recent sales encounter with a life insurance agent. Regression and factor analyses reveal that the most important aspects measured in this study were those which describe the agent rather than the core product. This exploratory study indicates that variables such as the personality and trustworthiness of boundary spanning employees might be more important than core product attributes in the formation of some consumer product preferences.

2. An Experimental Comparison of Self-Report and Response Time Measures of Consumer Information Processing
Lord, Kenneth R., Robert E. Burnkrant, & Robert S. Owen (1989), AMA Educators' Proceedings: Enhancing Knowledge Development in Marketing, 196-200. Paul Bloom et al. (eds.). American Marketing Association.

Published research in marketing and consumer behavior has ocasionally advocated the use of response time measures of information processing as an alternative to obtrusive and bias-prone self-reports, but the former method has seen minimal application in a marketing context. An experimental comparison of the two methods in a television commercial processing situation assessed their relative validity as measures of consumer information processing. Results showed the self-report and response time measures to be low in convergent validity, with response times demonstrating superior predictive validity.

1. A Modern Metronome
Owen, Robert S. (1986), ReRun (March/April), 41-43. CW Communications.

Computer timing program and article.