Marketing seminar series

SCP Boutique Conference 2024 in Leeds: ‘Consumer Psychology of Brands’

The Marketing Department hosted the The Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) conference on 5^th - 7^th June 2024, Co-Chaired by Professor Josko Brakus, Professor Sonia Monga, Professor Sharon Ng and Professor Bernd Schmitt. The aim of this conference is to address the question: “Where are brands now?” by featuring contemporary research on the psychology of brands.

The evolution of branding is tightly intertwined with technological advancements such as data analytics, the metaverse, artificial intelligence, NFTs and others. Moreover, societal, economic, and political changes are fundamentally reshaping interactions between brands and consumers (Schmitt, 2012; Campbell & Price, 2021). Brands are supposed to be culturally sensitive; take stances on socio-political issues and be ecologically friendly and sustainable. These technological and socio-cultural forces shape marketing and brand communications and have implications for brand theory and measurement.

The conference will address these themes from a consumer psychology perspective. How do consumers perceive contemporary brands? How can the use of technology build brand loyalty? How do associations with socio-political causes affect brand perceptions?

By addressing and debating these contemporary questions, this conference and its participants will make an important contribution to current and future brand research.

Professor Jan Heide – The Governance of Offshore Outsourcing: The ‘Play’ and the ‘Rules’ of the Game

Abstract
Firms are increasingly outsourcing marketing functions to offshore parties. In general, a decision to outsource must be accompanied by the deployment of governance mechanisms that regulate the “play of the game” with an exchange partner. Offshore outsourcing raises particular challenges, since governance mechanisms are deployed in institutional contexts with unique “rules of the game”. We develop a conceptual framework based on the premise that particular governance mechanisms have unique requirements for institutional support. Ultimately, relationship efficiency depends on the interactions between governance mechanisms (which regulate the “play of the game”) and the institutional environment (which represent the “rules of the game”). Based on an empirical study comprising primary and secondary data, we show that standard governance mechanisms like financial incentives, formal contracts, and informal norms have important boundary conditions tied to the institutional context in which they are deployed. Furthermore, these effects themselves have boundary conditions related to the characteristics of an offshore partner. Our findings extend existing governance research and suggest specific guidelines for managing offshore outsourcing relationships.

7th Industrial Marketing Management Summit 2024

The Marketing Department just hosted the 7th Industrial Marketing Management Summit on 8^th – 11^th January 2024, Co-chaired by Dr Zhaleh Najafi Tavani and Dr Ghasem Zaefarian.

This 4 day event of the 7th Industrial Marketing Management Summit aims to continue the tradition of fostering debate, sharing cutting-edge research, and advancing the effectiveness and efficiency of industrial markets. The summit will feature recent advancements in theory and practice within global industrial and business-to-business marketing. Building upon the success of previous summits and the rich legacy of IMM, this event promises engaging discussions, thought leadership, and practical solutions. We are excited to introduce several new elements this year, including a doctoral summit, as well as an academic-practitioner event.  

The doctoral summit will feature doctoral dissertation research in industrial and business-to-business marketing topics. Selected students will have the opportunity to work with a mentor from among the senior faculty in attendance, as well as to present their work at the doctoral summit and obtain valuable feedback. Attendees at the doctoral summit also can look forward to a series of talks covering a wide range of topics.

Professor Lisa Scheer – P2P Relationships within B2B Relationships: The Need for Future Research

Abstract
In this presentation, several recent research projects that explore different types of P2P relationships within B2B relationships are summarized. We examine salesperson-buyer relationships and the importance of a salesperson's advocacy both (a) for the buyer to internal seller decision-makers and (b) for the selling firm to the buyer. We also explore internal buying-firm relationships between a focal buyer and others in the buying center in the context of the buyer's advocacy for a specific seller. After highlighting positive aspects of both interorganizational and intraorganizational interpersonal relationships, we consider how interpersonal relationships can become dysfunctional and result in boundary spanner corruption. In addition to discussing the important insights drawn from those studies, we will also highlight avenues for future research.  

Workshop on upcycled food 

As the Principal Investigator of a Research England Policy Collaboration Grant, Dr Alessandro Biraglia organized a workshop in collaboration with Leeds City Council on upcycled foods (i.e. the reuse of food byproducts that are perfectly edible but excluded from the food supply chain). 

In the workshop, they presented the results of the research aimed at understanding policies and best practices around upcycled food. The workshop gave a chance for representatives from local and national businesses, academics, and policymakers to network and explore opportunities for growth through upcycling implementations, together with reducing the impact food waste can have on the environment along the value chain. 

Northern European Consumer Research (NECR) Symposium

The Marketing Department just hosted the Northern European Consumer Research Symposium (NECR), co-chaired by Dr Maximilian Gerrath and Dr Aulona Ulqinaku.  
The one-day symposium took place on 12th June 2023 and attracted around 75 attendees.
The symposium takes place annually and is co-organised with leading research universities such as Copenhagen Business School, Stockholm School of Economics, Bayes Business School, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU), University of Amsterdam (UvA), University of Groningen and Aalto Business School.

The event was aimed at researchers with an interest in the field of consumer research—with a particular focus on behavioural and experimental types of consumer research. The event was attended by faculty members and doctoral students at the participating Northern European universities. Each participating university chose one junior faculty member or doctoral student to represent their institution and showcase their research. Presentations covered topics such as AI, body image and socio-political brand activism.

Professor Eduardo B. Andrade – Misperceptions of Ecological Footprint Inequality

Abstract
The wealthy harm the environment to a much greater extent than the poor. The reason for the enormous ecological footprint inequality is as clear as the phenomenon itself. Affluence increases consumption, which in turn increases ecological footprint. But whereas its prevalence, magnitude, and mechanism are well-documented, it is unknown whether the lay person intuitively notices it. In a series of preregistered studies conducted in a highly unequal socio-economic environment (Brazil), we demonstrate that people often fail to accurately perceive the massive ecological footprint inequality that surrounds them (studies 1 and 2). The misperceptions are explained by people’s (1) failure to realize the substantial impact of amount of consumption on ecological footprint and (2) tendency to associate wealth with superior environmental education, greater resources to act sustainably, and cleanness in the surroundings. Interventions directed at these mechanisms can predictably increase or attenuate the misperceptions (studies 3-4).

Professor David A. Griffith – The synergistic effect of customer-centric structure and customer-oriented strategy on the dynamic capability of new product portfolio innovativeness and firm profit

Abstract
Marketing managers are continually challenged to delineate how a firm’s focus on marketing drives firm profit. The authors draw on configuration theory to argue that a customer-centric structure, when matched with a customer-oriented strategy, allows a firm to gain an increase in profits through the dynamic capability of new product portfolio innovativeness. The model is tested using a 9-year panel dataset (2011-2019) in the consumer-packaged goods industry involving 500 firm-year observations comprising 7,154 product launches across 70 firms. The authors demonstrate that the dynamic capability of new product portfolio innovativeness mediates the positive synergistic effect of customer-centric structure and customer-oriented strategy on firm profit, and that the synergistic structure-strategy alignment effect on new product portfolio innovativeness is magnified by a firm’s investment in marketing intensity. In addition, they find a robust effect of the dynamic capability of new product portfolio innovativeness on firm profit, where the effect remains under varying conditions of industry turbulence and competitive intensity. The authors discuss the implications for both theory and practice.

Professor Anatoli Colicev – Blockchain-enabled innovations for consumers and brands: NFTs, smart contracts and cryptocurrencies 

Abstract 
Blockchain-enabled innovations (BEIs) are a novel set of applications based on the blockchain technology. The most prominent BEIs include cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), smart contracts, and play-to-earn (P2E) games. BEIs hold the promise of changing the marketing landscape for consumers and brands. For consumers, BEIs allow control over data and privacy, carry greater responsibility, and create higher expectations of brands' service environment. In turn, brands can utilize BEIs to harness the insights from blockchain data, allow for a better design of the technical aspects of consumer-brand interactions and generate enhanced customer experience. This presentation comprises a set of conceptual articles and early-stage empirical work on the wonderful world of blockchain in marketing. 

Professor Jan-Benedict Steenkamp 

Presentation 1: New developments in Latent Variable SEM 
In the last two decades, important advances in psychometric theory and software have been made in latent variable SEM (LVSEM), which are often not used by substantial business researchers, undermining the validity of their empirical work. I will provide an overview of several pertinent advances, including bootstrapping for mediation in LVSEM, LVSEM with DVs that are count or truncated variables, interactions and polynomial effects in LVSEM, measurement invariance analysis with many groups, and unrestricted factor analysis. Importantly, all these advances are available in Mplus, many also in R.

Presentation 2: Brand Equity in Good and Bad Times: What Distinguishes Winners from Losers in CPG Industries? 
We examine why some brands are able to ride the wave of macroeconomic expansions, while other brands are better able to successfully weather contractions. Using a utility-based framework, we develop hypotheses how the impact of these shocks on brand equity is moderated by six strategic brand factors—price positioning, advertising spending, product line length, distribution breadth, brand architecture, and market position. We utilize monthly data on 325 CPG national brands in 35 categories across 17 years from the United Kingdom to obtain quarterly sales-based brand equity estimates. 

Martin Eisend – Humor in Advertising – Explaining Cultural Differences

Professor Werner Reinartz – How to craft a great manuscript for publication?

Abstract
Economic conditions may significantly affect households’ shopping behavior and, by extension, retailers’ and manufacturers’ firm performance. By explicitly distinguishing between two basic types of economic conditions—micro conditions in terms of households’ personal income and macro conditions in terms of the business cycle—this study analyzes how households adjust their grocery shopping behavior. The authors observe more than 5,000 households over eight years and analyze shopping outcomes in terms of what, where, and how much they shop and spend. Results show that micro and macro conditions substantially influence shopping outcomes, but in very different ways. Microeconomic changes lead households to adjust primarily their overall purchase volume—that is, after losing income, households buy fewer products and spend less in total. In contrast, macroeconomic changes cause pronounced structural shifts in households’ shopping basket allocation and spending behavior. Specifically, during contractions, households shift purchases toward private labels while also buying and consequently spending more than during expansions. During expansions, however, households increasingly purchase national brands but keep their total spending constant. The authors discuss psychological and sociological mechanisms that can explain the differential effects of micro and macro conditions on shopping behavior and develop important diagnostic and normative implications for retailers and manufacturers.

Tuck Siong CHUNG – Myopic cut in Marketing Investments: The effect of top executives' mental framework and business environment

Abstract:
For this very informal talk, I am presenting the findings and approaches for the three papers that I have published, or which is under the advanced round of R&R. These three papers deal with the common topic of Myopic cuts in Marketing budgets. I will be sharing some of the constructs I used in these papers namely market and technology turbulence, CEO mental frameworks (regulatory focus and overconfidence), and the dynamics of the Top Management Teams (i.e., the effect of CMOs, analysts, and boards) and how they are operationalized. The papers showed that these external and internal factors affect a firm’s propensities for Myopic Marketing Management. Thus, they provide a more nuanced understanding of how firms strategically manage their marketing budgets. Due to the time available for the presentation and the number of papers I am covering I meant this talk to cover more the conceptual rather than the empirical aspects of these papers. 

Rhonda Hadi – A Feast for the Eyes: How Augmented Reality Influences Food Desirability”.

Professor Amir Grinstein and Professor Marina Puzakova: Research Seminar

Professor Johannes Habel – Variable Compensation and Salespeople’s Health

Professor Neil Morgan – Examining Why Market Share Drives Firm Profits: Market Power, Efficiency, or Quality Signaling?
 
Abstract
Many firms use market share to set marketing goals and monitor performance. Recent meta-analytic research has provided new insights into the average size of market share’s economic performance impact and identified some factors affecting its value. However, empirical understanding of why any market share-profit relationship exists and varies is limited. In this study, we simultaneously examine the three primary theoretical mechanisms linking firm market share with profit. On average, we find that most of the variance in market share’s effect on future profits is explained by market power and quality signaling, with little support for operating efficiency as a mechanism. We also find no support for a theorized negative effect of market share via competitor orientation. Using these insights, our analyses show that the economic value of market share differs significantly in predictable ways between firms and across industries, providing new understanding of when managers may usefully set market share goals. Our research also provides new insights into how market share should be measured for goal-setting and performance monitoring purposes. We find that revenue share is a predictor of firm profits while unit share is not, and that relative measures of revenue market share generally provide greater predictive power

Professor Sharon Ng – “Uncertainty Evokes Consumers’ Preference for Brands Incongruent with Their Global-Local Citizenship Identity”

Abstract

This research demonstrates that under states of certainty consumers with a relatively stronger global (local) identity prefer global (local) brands, whereas under states of uncertainty, consumers with a relatively stronger global (local) identity prefer local (global) brands. This effect occurs because a state of uncertainty (certainty) evokes a divergent (convergent) thinking style, which results in a preference for options that are more distant from (closer to) the identity to which consumers more strongly associate. The effect holds both when individuals’ global-local citizenship identity is measured and when it is manipulated. The research further establishes an important boundary condition for the effect. The effect holds in the citizenship identity context because people normally associate themselves with both local and global citizenship identities, and situational or dispositional factors only influence the degree to which they associate with each identity. The effect does not surface when local-global citizenship identities are construed as interfering, such that holding one identity is conceived to conflict with holding the other.

Professor Nick Lee – The Book of Nature is written in the language of mathematics’

Abstract:

This statement by Galileo Galilei could be said to sum up what might be called the ‘received view’ of science, held by the general public and many who work within scientific research. However within social science, and business research (including marketing) in particular, views diverge over whether or not quantitative approaches to research are dominant, or even appropriate. To some extent, as quantitative analytic techniques have become ever-more sophisticated, discussion over what they can and cannot tell us about the world of marketing which we study has become ever-rarer, today focusing almost entirely on issues of causality in terms of research design and analysis. At the same time, discussion of how theory should inform empirical research, and of the appropriate drawing of conclusions from empirical research, has all but disappeared from contemporary marketing research. During this presentation, Professor Lee will outline some significant problems in extant thinking regarding marketing and business research (especially the so-called ‘rigor and relevance’ debate), and discuss a number of key philosophical challenges for marketing researchers, drawing from open issues in the current philosophy and practice of science itself. In doing so he will show that doing strong marketing and business research requires an understanding of key issues in philosophy of science, and lack of such understanding has substantial potential for missteps that may lead to potentially meaningless theories, and empirical work. 

Professor Tek Thongpapanl – Sustainability in the Face of Institutional Adversity: Market Turbulence, Network Embeddedness, and Innovative Orientation

Abstract:

Drawing from research on strategic choice, this study investigates the relationship between market turbulence and firms’ sustainable behavior, in the context of sustainability-related institutional adversity. It argues that the relationship between market turbulence and sustainability is mediated by network embeddedness, and this mediating role in turn is moderated by a firm’s innovative orientation. Data collected from a sample of Ontario restaurants inform predictions about firms’ propensity to adopt local wines in their portfolios, despite the limited market and normative support that these wines receive compared with imported wines. The study shows that market turbulence enhances sustainable firm behavior, through the development of strong network relationships. Furthermore, the mediating effect of network embeddedness is particularly salient among firms that exhibit a stronger innovative orientation. These findings reveal how and when turbulent market conditions can contribute to a firm’s sustainable behaviors in the presence of limited institutional support for such behaviors.

Professor Rebecca Slotegraaf – Fast and Furious? Unpacking Mimetic Product Introductions Following a Market Shift

Abstract:

A new entrant’s product introductions have the potential to destabilize a market and significantly shift market demand. As companies manage their product portfolio, they face several important decisions regarding whether to mimic the new entrant’s product, add other new products to their portfolio, and determine when to introduce these products to the market. Although extant research on competitive responsiveness to new entrants has centered on how quickly an incumbent launches a new product, it has not considered the different types of new products incumbents could launch. The authors recognize three nuances of this phenomenon wherein 1) incumbents may introduce different types of new products 2) these product types may be introduced multiple times, and 3) the introduction of one type precludes neither its repeat introduction nor the introduction of other types. To accommodate these features, the authors use two empirical approaches and illustrate the joint value of sequence analysis and a multivariate hazard model. They apply the model to data from the yogurt market following a significant shift in market demand and demonstrate that incumbent characteristics and dynamic portfolio decisions differentially influence launch speed across product types. Implications for both theory and practice regarding new product introductions following a market shift are explored.

Professor Michael Tsiros – When Limiting the Total Donation Amount Increases Consumer Responsiveness to Cause-Related Marketing Campaigns

Abstract

Both the total amount to be donated and the way it is communicated can influence consumers’ reactions to cause-related marketing (CM) campaigns. In a series of five studies, we find that consumers often respond more favorably to campaigns with maximum donation frames (e.g., up to $10 million will be donated) than those with minimum donation frames (e.g., at least $10 million will be donated) despite the superiority of the latter for the recipient cause. Importantly, while companies often choose not to explicate any donation limit to consumers, we find that donation frames can enhance consumer responsiveness to CM. Also non-intuitive is the finding that the promise of a smaller total donation amount may generate more favorable consumer response than a larger one specifically when a minimum donation frame is used. We demonstrate that these effects are driven by consumers’ desire to make a personal contribution to the cause and are more likely to be observed when consumers are highly involved with the cause. These effects are obtained with actual expenditures as well as attitudes and behavioral intentions.

Professor Kelly Hewitt – The Role of Domestic Regulatory Environments in the Internationalization of Emerging Market Brands

Abstract: 

Most of the rapid growth in emerging markets is argued to be in its early stages, with estimates suggesting these markets will account for nearly two-thirds of global consumption growth by 2030. One factor contributing to such growth is pro-active efforts by policy makers in emerging markets to grow product exports and thus increase the competitiveness of domestic firms. By investing in such initiatives and advancing regulatory change, policy makers shape domestic institutional conditions that may empower emerging market firms to seek opportunities beyond their home market. This study explores whether and how emerging market firms can capitalize on home regulatory institutional conditions and regulatory changes when expanding brands to foreign markets, and how such conditions impact emerging market brand growth in host markets over time. Whereas prior research has tended to focus on the role of host market institutional conditions, and differences between firms’ home and host market conditions in particular, this study investigates the important and largely overlooked role of domestic institutional conditions above and beyond the role of such differences. To investigate these issues, the authors built a comprehensive longitudinal database that tracks the brand export decision for 853 brands from 14 emerging markets and subsequent export growth of 153 brands from five emerging markets over a period of 10 years, as well as institutional conditions in both home and destination markets over that same period. The results offer an intriguing and distinctive view of the interplay among home and host market institutional conditions, domestic firms’ brand export strategies and export performance over time.

Professor Leonidas Leonidou – “How to write a good academic article”.

Professor Sjoerd Beugelsdijk – Dimensions and dynamics of national culture: synthesizing Hofstede with Inglehart

Abstract

Cross-national research on cultural values intersects multiple disciplines but the prominence of concepts varies by academic fields. Hofstede’s dimensional concept of culture, to begin with, dominates in cross-cultural psychology, marketing and international management. Inglehart’s dynamic concept of culture, by contrast, prevails in sociology and political science. We argue that this disciplinary division is unfortunate because the two concepts are complementary, for which reason a synthesis rectifies their mutual weaknesses. Indeed, while Hofstede’s dimensional concept neglects cultural dynamics, Inglehart’s dynamic concept is dimensionally reductionist. We demonstrate empirically that combining these two concepts leads to an improved understanding of cultural differences. Inspired by Hofstede’s cultural dimensions we use data from the European Value Studies and World Values Surveys for 495,011 individuals born between 1900-1999 in 110 countries and then show that change on these dimensions proceeds as Inglehart and his collaborators suggest. Most notably, younger generations have become more individualistic and more joyous. But even though economic development and generational value shift drive this cultural change, roughly half of the variation in national cultural values is unique to each country’s specific history and geography. We discuss the implications for cross-national cultural research.

Professor Peter LaPlaca – How to Write a World-Class Paper

Abstract:

There are over 20,000 academic journals in the world and academic researchers have ample opportunities to have their manuscripts published. Yet most of the leading journals in all fields routinely have rejection rates of eighty, ninety, ninety-five percent or higher. With over 2200 journals, Elsevier is the largest publisher of scientific articles in the world and is well aware of the very high rejection rates experienced by many authors. This causes problems to the process of journal publication, because many manuscripts are routinely sent to journal after journal after being rejected. Many potentially good manuscripts are rejected simply due to poor presentation. To combat this problem, over forty editors from Elsevier’s broad array of journals have gotten together to develop a seminar on How to write a World-Class Paper.  In this seminar I will discuss what these editors have put together in an illustrative presentation highlighting the dos and don’ts for preparing better manuscripts and significantly increasing the likelihood of acceptance.

Professor Costas Katsikeas – Unpacking the Relationship between Sales Control and Salesperson Performance

Abstract

The literature examining the effect of sales control on salesperson performance is, at best, equivocal. To reconcile inconsistencies in empirical findings, this research introduces two new types of salesperson learning: exploratory and exploitative learning. Drawing on regulatory focus theory, the authors conceptualize exploratory learning as promotion focused and exploitative learning as prevention focused and find that salespeople exhibit both exploratory and exploitative learning, though one is used more than the other depending on the type of sales control employed. The results also suggest that fit between salesperson learning and customer (i.e., purchase-decision-making complexity) and salesperson (i.e., preference for sales predictability) characteristics is critical to salesperson performance and that salesperson learning mediates the relationship between sales control and salesperson performance (Study 1). Study 2 corroborates the findings using new panel data collected over two waves. The results of this research have important implications for integrating sales control, salesperson learning, and salesperson performance.

Martin Kilduff – Making a Theoretical Contribution in Your Empirical Paper: Is It Necessary? How Can It Be Accomplished?

Abstract

There is a long-standing expectation that an article published in our top empirical journals (e.g., ASQ, AMJ, SMJ, JIBS, JM) should make both an empirical and a theoretical contribution. But this expectation has been challenged recently by those who claim there is an agency problem in requiring those who develop theory to also test theory in the same article. I review the arguments for and against this double requirement of both an empirical and a theoretical contribution. And I discuss the ways in which authors can make theoretical contributions in the context of empirical research.

Professor Jaideep Prabu – Marketing and the Poor: A Research Programme

Abstract

Nearly 4 billion people around the world earn less than $9 a day (adjusted for purchasing power parity). A vast majority of these people live in developing countries, work outside the formal economy, and face significant unmet needs in core areas such as health, education, energy, and financial services. For years this large population was either the target of aid or came under the purview of governments. More recently, however, private sectors firms, both large and small, along with NGOs and governments, have begun to see the “bottom of the pyramid” as a market opportunity and have begun to design market-based solutions to meet these unmet needs.

Professor Zeynep Gürhan Canlı – Superior vis-à-vis Whom? Competence Construals and Effectiveness of Direct versus Indirect Comparative Claims

Abstract

Firms extensively use different comparative claims (e.g., "Dunkin' Beats Starbucks"; "Fairy is the Best Oily Grease Removal") in their marketing communication campaigns or as part of their branding strategy. However, despite the frequency of comparative claims in the marketplace, research on different types of comparative claims has been limited, and findings on their relative effectiveness have yielded mixed findings. This research bases its framework on achievement goal theory, and suggests that the way individuals construe competence would influence how they evaluate different comparative claims through the activation of persuasion knowledge. Across four studies, we demonstrate that when consumers come across comparative claims that are consistent with the way they construe competency, consumers’ persuasion knowledge would be more likely to be activated which results in lower brand attitudes and purchase intentions. In contrast, when the way consumers construe competency and brands’ claims of competency are not consistent with each other, consumers’ persuasion knowledge would be less likely to be activated leading to relatively higher brand attitudes and purchase intentions. These effects only appear under high personal relevance.

Professor Sebastiano Delre – Positioning and Strategic Budget Choices of Experience Goods: The case of the Motion Picture Industry.

Abstract

In cultural industries firms spend hefty sums producing and advertising experience goods. How do they position their products respect to the target segment? How do they make their strategic budget choices? And how do these choices affect their profitability? To address these questions, this study proposes a location model in which two studios compete to attract a heterogeneous population of consumers by first choosing positioning and then budget. We find that if firms move away from the mainstream, advertising budget increases and profits decrease. We test our results on the US motion picture industry, using a large dataset which includes ad expenditures, production budgets, profits and a number of other variables for almost 2000 movie projects. Our empirical analysis confirms that mainstream movies profit more than less mainstream movies.

Professor Jan Heide 

Professor Rajesh Chandy  

Abstract

This research seeks to address a significant constraint to growth among businesses in emerging markets: business skills.  Improvements in business skills offer the possibility of increased growth and prosperity, however, there exists substantial evidence that it is not abundant among micro and small businesses.  We present evidence from the first randomized controlled trial examining the impact of marketing skills, relative to finance skills, on firm performance.  The empirical setting of the study is among small business owners in urban and slum neighborhoods across Cape Town, South Africa.  We offer intensive marketing and sales training to one randomly selected group of firm owners, intensive finance and accounting training to another randomly selected group of firm owners, and no training to a control group.  For the next two years, we measure the effects of the interventions on the practices and performance of these small businesses.  Our findings are threefold.  One, marketing skills and finance skills each have a positive and significant effect on firm performance, including increases in: employment, sales, profits, and survival.  Two, the pathway to prosperity differs for marketing relative to finance: profit and survival effects are roughly equal across the two interventions, yet entrepreneurs who receive marketing training tend to achieve these gains by increasing sales and hiring more staff (i.e. top line focus) while those who receive the finance training tend to enhance profits by decreasing costs (i.e. cost focus).  Three, an entrepreneur’s prior exposure to different business contexts can influence her potential returns from training: developing skills in marketing and sales appears to be most beneficial to small business owners with (ex ante) narrow exposure.