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STUDY BRIEFS cannot afford the real thing but wish to emulate the wealthy; and proletarians, who have no motiva- tion to purchase luxury goods as a sign of status. In their study, the authors write that, ironically, "While many par- venus believe they are saying to the world that they are not have- nots, they may also be signaling to patricians, the group they want to associate with, that they are not one of them." Marketers in the luxury goods category can use this study to develop better ways to distinguish their brands. For instance, to attract patricians, they can use subtle sig- natures to signify their brands, such as Gucci's use of bamboo on its products, rather than highlighting their logos. And while marketers might not want their logos to be ubiquitous—which risks devaluing the brands—they could build their brands by creating marketing cam- paigns that have wide appeal and that send an aspirational message to those who cannot currently afford to purchase their products. The paper, "Signaling Status with Luxury Goods: The Role of Brand Prominence," was published in the July 2010 issue of the Jour- nal of Marketing. n SALARY GAP A Harvard Business School report titled "From Bench to Board: Gender Differences in University Scientists' Participation in Commer- cial Science" finds that women on faculties in the sciences receive paid advisory positions only about half as often as men. The study authors came to this conclusion after analyz- ing years of data on more than 500 biotechnology firms. The gap was largest at the most elite institutions, such as MIT, and more modest at universities with formal technology transfer offices that might provide a greater range of contacts for women on the faculty, the authors speculate. The paper was authored by Waverly Ding of the University of California, Berkeley; Fiona Murray of MIT; and Toby Stuart of Harvard University. It is available for download at ssrn. com/abstract=1658475. n A BETTER WAY TO BRAND? Three researchers have created a new method for marketers to benchmark the strength of their brands against those of their competitors. Called Strategic Brand Association Map- ping, the method was developed by Daniel Baak, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Den- ver's Daniels College of Business in Colorado; Brian Till, a visiting pro- fessor at Loyola University Graduate School of Business in Chicago; and Brian Watermen of BJC Healthcare in St. Louis, Missouri. All three are principals of the Brand Cartography Group. The co-authors demonstrate their method by examining five pea- nut butter brands according to five features of consumers' brand associ- ations: strength, favorability, unique- ness, relevance, and the number of associations consumers make involving the brand. To identify each brand's "Core Brand Essence," they mapped how strongly 106 study participants associated each brand to a particular feature. The paper, "Strategic Brand Association Maps: Developing Brand Insight," is forth- th- coming in the Journal of Product and Brand Management. n THE PUBLIC'S NEED TO KNOW Researchers at the Arizona State University's Carey School of Busi- ness in Tempe; research institute RTI International in Research Tri- angle Park, North Carolina; and Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania, sur- veyed 2,000 Americans to learn how much they want the government to tell them about terrorist threats. The researchers—V. Kerry Smith, Carol Mansfield, and H. Allen Klaiber, respectively—found that what Amer- icans want to know depends on the nature of the threat. Eighty-three percent want to know about threats to airlines, but only 24 percent want to know about threats to disrupt Internet service and credit card processing at commercial banks. Published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the study can be found at www.nber.org/papers/ w16232. n z BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2010 53