About

Stephen J. Carson is the David Eccles Professor of Marketing and Chair of the Marketing Department at the David Eccles School of Business. He joined the school in 2000 after earning a Ph.D. in Marketing from the University of Minnesota. His academic background also includes an M.B.A. from the University of Texas-Austin and an A.B. in Economics from the University of Illinois. His research focuses on marketing strategy, marketing channels, and digital marketing, with his work published in leading journals such as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, and the Academy of Management Journal. Carson has received awards including the Brady Superior Teaching Award and the Faculty Research Excellence Award. He currently teaches the core marketing strategy class in the Professional MBA program.

Research topics

• Business
• Marketing
• Econometrics
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Economics
• Finance
• Industrial organization
• Statistics
• Advertising
• Accounting
• Demographic economics
• Law
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Differences in Online Review Content between Old and New Products: An Abstract

  Developments in marketing science: proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science · 2023-01-01

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Varying Returns to Diversification Along the Value Chain

  Strategy Science · 2022-07-20 · 5 citations

  article

  This study examines whether the benefits of diversification vary across different value chain activities. The returns to diversification in product development and distribution activities are analyzed using a framework grounded in the intraindustry diversification literature and the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. The study uses data from cocreation arrangements in the motion picture industry in which value chain activities are nearly decomposable—that is, split across producers and distributors—as a natural field study. Results based on 779 movies linked to 57 different production studios and distributed via 30 unaffiliated distributors or vertically integrated distribution branches show that greater focus in film production has a positive effect on profitability, whereas the level of focus/diversification in distribution is unrelated to profitability. This result holds regardless of whether the two functions are carried out within an integrated organization or across independent firms. Moreover, there is significant heterogeneity in the extent to which production studios benefit from increased focus which is tied to the composition of their product portfolios. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2022.0171 .

  PublisherDOI

• Women and Minority Film Directors in Hollywood: Performance Implications of Product Development and Distribution Biases

  Journal of Marketing Research · 2022 · 21 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Demographic economics

  With representation issues in Hollywood coming under intense scrutiny, the movie industry is wrestling with gender- and race-related imbalances in its power structure. One area of concern is the small proportion of women and people of color retained as film directors, coupled with little evidence of improvement in representation among widely released U.S. movies over time. In this study, the authors examine factors that explain gender- and race-related performance disparities in the movie industry. They estimate a two-stage model that accounts for the effects of selection in matching director gender and race to (1) projects of varying potential, (2) production budgets, and (3) the number of screens secured during distribution. They use instrumental variables for revenue, budget, screens, and audience reviews and find that once endogeneity and selection are captured by the models, gender- and race-based performance differences disappear. The results show evidence of biases favoring male, nonminority directors in project assignment, budgeting, and distribution. These biases are stronger for movies with female and minority lead actors but weaker for directors with high clout and for international directors. A matched-sample analysis illustrates that women directors produce similar outcomes with lower budgets and that minority directors produce outsized revenues with equivalent budgets.

  PublisherDOI

• Industry conditions, market share, and the firm’s ability to derive business-line profitability from diverse technological portfolios

  Journal of Business Research · 2022 · 24 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Industrial organization
  • Marketing
  PublisherDOI

• History Matters: The Impact of Online Customer Reviews Across Product Generations

  Management Science · 2021 · 24 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Econometrics
  • Marketing

  We examine how online customer reviews for one generation of a product affect sales of another generation in the same product series. The main intriguing result is that previous generation valence has a positive impact on current generation sales; however, current generation valence has a negative impact on previous generation sales. The positive impact of previous generation valence becomes even stronger (1) as the uncertainty (standard deviation) in reviews for the current generation increases and (2) when the current generation valence is high. In contrast, it becomes weaker (1) as the uncertainty in reviews for the previous generation increases and (2) when the current generation has been on the market for a longer period of time. Other results are discussed. Our data consist of intergenerational pairs of point-and-shoot cameras on the largest online seller of such devices, Amazon.com. We estimate the current and previous generation models jointly, allowing for errors to be clustered at the daily and product levels. In addition, we address endogeneity concerns over the online word of mouth measures by using instrumental variables. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

  PublisherDOI

• History Matters: The Impact of Online Customer Reviews Across Product Generations

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• An Integrated Power and Efficiency Model of Contractual Channel Governance: Theory and Empirical Evidence

  Journal of Marketing · 2019-05-09 · 42 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Power theories (e.g., social exchange theory, resource dependence theory) and efficiency theories (e.g., transaction cost analysis) offer very different perspectives on the design of contractual governance in marketing channels. Whereas power theory suggests that governance will reflect the preferences of powerful firms, efficiency theories argue that governance will maximize joint value. In this research, the authors provide an integrative framework that reconciles power and efficiency perspectives in the context of contractual marketing channel relationships. This framework discriminates between two methods of exercising power: ex ante (through a tightly specified, efficient contract that rewards the powerful firm through the price mechanism while providing strong safeguards for the weak firm) or ex post (through a loosely specified, inefficient contract that allows the powerful firm to exploit its power during renegotiations). The authors argue that power will cause channel governance to deviate from the efficient choice, but only to the extent that the powerful firm cannot price out (i.e., extract) the value it offers to the weaker firm ex ante. As exchange conditions become more uncertain, power will demonstrate stronger effects on governance. This theory is supported with data from studies on contractual research-and-development relationships and procurement contracts for customized industrial products.

  PublisherDOI

• The Effects of Positive and Negative Online Customer Reviews: Do Brand Strength and Category Maturity Matter?

  Journal of Marketing · 2013-07-12 · 496 citations

  articleCorresponding

  Research has shown brand equity to moderate the relationship between online customer reviews (OCRs) and sales in both the emerging Blu-ray and mature DVD player categories. Positive (negative) OCRs increase (decrease) the sales of models of weak brands (i.e., brands without significant positive brand equity). In contrast, OCRs have no significant impact on the sales of the models of strong brands, although these models do receive a significant sales boost from their greater brand equity. Higher sales lead to a larger number of positive OCRs, and increased positive OCRs aid a brand's transition from weak to strong. This creates a positive feedback loop between sales and positive OCRs for models of weak brands that not only helps their sales but also increases overall brand equity, benefiting all models of the brand. In contrast to the view that brands matter less in the presence of OCRs, we find that OCRs matter less in the presence of strong brands. Positive OCRs function differently than marketing communications in that their effect is greater for weak brands.

  PublisherDOI

• A theoretical and empirical investigation of property rights sharing in outsourced research, development, and engineering relationships

  Strategic Management Journal · 2013-01-25 · 49 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article considers the use of property rights to structure ex post bargaining positions in client‐sponsored RD & E . By focusing on the positive externality created by uses of the technology not targeted by the client, the theory produces a novel set of predictions that diverge from standard transaction cost and property rights reasoning; that is, greater contractor property rights are associated with more transaction‐specific investments by the client. Contractor property rights are also predicted to increase as environmental uncertainty increases and as more applications of the technology fall outside the client's intended fields of use. Contract‐level data from 147 RD & E agreements in technology‐intensive settings provide support for these predictions. A secondary examination shows that clients who share property rights with their contractors face reduced opportunism during project execution . Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  PublisherDOI

• Extending the firm vs. industry debate: Does industry life cycle stage matter?

  Strategic Management Journal · 2013-01-10 · 137 citations

  article

  A series of Strategic Management Journal studies have debated the extent to which business‐unit, corporate parent, and industry effects explain variance in firm performance. Despite evidence that the industry life cycle impacts competition and performance, the life cycle concept has yet to be incorporated into the firm vs. industry debate. Building on ideas from systems theory, we use longitudinal data from 1,957 firms in 49 industries to examine the relative importance of business‐unit, corporate parent, and industry effects during the growth, maturity, and decline stages of the industry life cycle. We find that corporate parent and industry effects increase as industries move through the life cycle while business‐unit effects decrease between maturity and decline. Thus, the life cycle concept should be incorporated within the firm vs. industry debate . Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• George John

  Bharathidasan University

  6 shared

• Ekaterina V. Karniouchina

  5 shared

• Anoop Madhok

  York University

  5 shared

• Tao Wu

  National University of Defense Technology

  5 shared

• William L. Moore

  University of Utah

  4 shared

• Jake D. Hoskins

  Westminster University

  3 shared

• Shyam Gopinath

  Indiana University

  3 shared

• Grahame R. Dowling

  University of Technology Sydney

  3 shared

Labs

• Marketing Department, David Eccles School of Business, University of UtahPI

Education

• Ph.D., Marketing

  University of Utah

  2005

• M.S., Marketing

  University of Utah

  2000

• B.S., Marketing

  Brigham Young University

  1998

Awards & honors

• Brady Superior Teaching Award
• Faculty Research Excellence Award