This dissertation demonstrates that a firm’s operational set-up, specifically how it structures people and paces tasks, can act as a marketplace cue that shapes consumer behavior. Although managers typically treat them as purely internal and logistical and rarely oversee these features with consumer inferences in mind, people nonetheless read them as signals of a firm’s values or the quality of its services, and these inferences translate into meaningful consumer behaviors. Essay 1 studies consumer responses to a firm’s structural configuration (organizational structure), which often emerges from internal coordination needs. In recent years, a growing number of companies have evolved toward relatively “flat” management structures with minimal hierarchical layers of management. Some even leverage this flatness as a defining element of corporate identity. Although organizational structure has been extensively studied across various disciplines, its influence on consumer response has received relatively little attention. This research reveals that a company’s organizational structure can shape consumer perceptions of and subsequent responses to the company. All else being equal, perceived organizational flatness (vs. tallness) tends to elicit more positive consumer reactions. This phenomenon occurs because consumers infer that flatter companies foster relational egalitarianism, which in turn enhances perceived company warmth. This effect, however, depends on consumers’ attitudes toward egalitarianism and weakens among those with less supportive views. Essay 2 examines consumer responses to a service firm’s workflow pacing (when a service is delivered within a promised deadline), which usually follows from the firm’s operational workflows. Firms offering expert services often structure their operations to ensure delivery by a set deadline, but the precise timing within that window is typically treated as operational, not strategic. This project demonstrates that delivery timing shapes consumer perceptions of how much effort a service provider has invested in the task, and it follows an inverted U-shaped relationship: Work delivered at an intermediate point is associated with higher perceived effort than work delivered either early or late within the timeframe. Moreover, perceived effort further shapes consumers’ expectations of service quality. Consumers anticipate that work delivered at an intermediate point will be higher in quality than work delivered either early or late.
Guanzhong Du (Thu,) studied this question.