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market in the spring of 2008. Sanders found Shane Sanders that factors such as candidates' academic special- ty and gender, as well as how their PhD programs were ranked and whether they earned degrees in Eng- lish-speaking countries, affected their choice of research specialty. However, the location of the economics depart- ment had no effect, writes Sanders, "on a given student's propensity to choose a general field, a field within macroeconomics or monetary economics, a field that advertises an empirical methodology, or a field related to traditional business studies." He concludes that these findings provide "strong case evidence that administrative location of an aca- demic department does not affect the nature of its educational output." "Does Administrative Location of an Academic Department Affect Edu- cational Emphasis? The Case of Eco- nomics," was published in the August 2009 issue of the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management. Do Promotions Affect Other Product Categories? Peanut butter and jelly. Coffee and dairy creamer. Cheese and crack- ers. Certain products go together. The question is whether—and how much—promoting a product in one category increases sales of products in complementary categories, says Subir Bandyopadhyay, a market- ing professor at Indiana University Northwest's School of Business & Economics in Gary. To measure the effects of cross- category promotions, Bandyopad- hyay and a research team stud- ied data from The Kroger Co., a supermarket chain based in Cincinnati, Ohio. They specifi- cally examined data involving the sale of four brands of ice cream, two brands of ice cream toppings, and three brands of frozen yogurt. They had access to scanner data for 97 consecutive weeks. The researchers were not surprised to find that promotions of frozen yogurt did not significantly affect the sales of ice cream toppings. How- ever, they discovered that ice cream promotions did—and that specific ice cream brands affected toppings sales in different ways. For instance, directly after stores promoted Texas Gold brand ice cream, sales of Hershey's top- pings increased by 137 units, but sales of Nestlé toppings increased by only 12 units. Similarly, a promotion of Breyer's brand ice cream led Subir Bandyopadhyay to a 10.5 percent increase in units sold of Nestlé toppings over the next eight weeks, compared to an 8.7 percent increase in units sold of Hershey's toppings. That indicates that Nestlé and Hershey's could do well to mer- chandise certain brands of ice cream within promotions of their own toppings, says Bandyopadhyay. He realizes that marketers may not be enthusiastic about promoting products from companies other than their own. But he maintains that this cross-category analysis model could help both retailers and manufacturers identify shopping patterns that could inspire more advantageous product stocking, shelf place- ment, and coupon combinations. This model is not as effective for evaluating brands new to a category, says Bandyopadhyay. But when it comes to established brands, he writes, the cross-cate- gory competition model "unravels the competitive dynamics within and across categories." "A Dynamic Model of Cross- Category Competition: Theory, Tests, and Applications" is due to be published in the November issue of the Journal of Retailing. How Branded Components Are Changing the Market There once was a time when Dodge pickup trucks represented only the Dodge brand. Today, a Dodge pickup truck may share equal billing with the Cummins engine inside, says George John, chair of the marketing depart- ment at the University of Minneso- ta's Carlson School of Management in Minneapolis. "When component brands become powerful, it changes the industry," John says. John and Mrinal Ghosh, market- ing professor at the University of Arizona's Eller College of Manage- ment in Tucson, studied a number of component brands, including Intel processing chips inside Dell computers and Detroit Diesel engines inside GM vehicles. They found that on 30 percent of the BizEd NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009 49