Douglas T. Breeden - Duke University's Fuqua School of Business

Mary Frances Luce Professor of Marketing
Research focus: Health care marketing and decision making
Courses: Health Care Marketing (The Duke MBA—Daytime and
Weekend Executive); Business Management Principles and Tools
for Nephrologists in the 21st Century (Executive Education);
Seminar in Consumer Behavior (PhD)
A Fuqua graduate who returned to the marketing faculty
in 2003, Mary Frances Luce (PhD ’94), seeks to understand
the role of emotion in decision making, particularly
in situations involving high-stakes decisions and
health-related decisions.
Luce and her research collaborators are working to
bridge the gap between marketing knowledge and health
behaviors. “Many people in marketing are interested in
explaining the behavior of the consumer population,” Luce
said, “and marketing has lots of tools that get people to
adopt certain behaviors.” Luce notes that one challenge of
applying marketing thought and knowledge to health
behaviors is the intervening role that emotion can play in
health-related decisions.
“For example, it is quite common for a woman who has a
mammogram to receive false-positive test results,” says
Luce of her interest in the emotional responses women
have to the experience of false positive test results—since
for a time these women are forced to live and cope with the
possibility that they may have breast cancer. In many cases
women may be dissuaded from having regular mammograms
because of the fear of a possible cancer diagnosis
that is generated by a false positive test result, especially in
combination with the physical discomfort of the actual
mammogram process. On the other hand, says Luce, the
stress of a false positive test can be counterbalanced by
the feeling of vulnerability it elicits in many women
because “it makes them think, which can be motivating
toward testing and protective behavior.”
Luce and her colleague Barbara E. Kahn have found
that you can decrease these women’s levels of anxiety by
providing them with some simple coping behaviors and
interventions to help them manage the stress of false
positive test results.
Luce also explores the emotions that are generated by
the process of making decisions. This is joint work with
Fuqua colleagues Jim Bettman and John Payne. The team
has explored emotions that are generated by considering
the tradeoffs that are inherent in most decisions.
Of particular interest to Luce are situations that are
considered “low probability/high consequence.” Such
decisions are fundamentally different from general
consumer decisions, says Luce. In low probability/high
consequence decision situations, people will seek to
minimize and manage the emotions that result from the
decision process, which in turn will alter the person’s
decision. “In the past, researchers might argue people
would opt out of certain decisions because they were
conserving cognitive resources, a view that can make
consumers sound ‘lazy,’” she says, “but we’ve since
learned that sometimes people don’t do the right thing
because it is emotionally costly.”
For instance, in the domain of car purchases, people are
often willing to sacrifice safety for price when shopping for
a new car. “People want a safe car, but safety is not the only
factor they consider when shopping. In order to manage the
emotions that are brought about
when considering ‘what if’ scenarios
about the need for car safety, we
shoppers may use another consideration
to rule out choices,” Luce
says. For example, people may
exclude all cars over a certain price,
and then use safety as a key consideration
within their remaining purchase
options. In the process of trying
to manage their emotions, people
may initially rule out the safest
car by labeling it “too expensive,”
even if it is only slightly more
expensive than the car they ultimately
end up purchasing.
Luce’s work has led her to conclude
that people often want to simplify
their decision-making processes in
a way that minimizes the emotional costs of tradeoffs. “So
it is easier to use some sort of rule to eliminate a choice
from consideration than to go through the emotional exercise
of weighing the pros and cons of a particular option,”
she notes.
Luce cites Duke’s intellectual environment and focus on
interdisciplinary work as driving forces behind her decision
to return here. She also credits her students with providing
new perspectives and insights to her work. “There are great
synergies between the classroom and my research,” she
says. A resident from Duke University Medical Center
participates in Luce’s Duke MBA—Daytime health care
marketing course, and provides an interesting counterpoint
to discussions of health care marketing strategy and tactics.
“And in turn, I think it helps the resident to see the ways in
which health care marketers affect physicians,” says Luce.
Luce also teaches in The Duke MBA—Weekend
Executive program and finds that hearing about health
care managers’ problems first hand provides her with
new questions to explore in her research. “We have a broken
health care system, but it is not clear how to fix it,” she
says. “We have many opportunities to bring management
tools into the marketplace to help bring about positive
change. My teaching here at Duke helps me see tremendous
opportunities to bring research to bear on the practice of
health care communication and marketing.”
summer 2007 29