Sina Aghaie
Assistant Professor of Marketing
W. Frank Barton School of Business
Wichita State University

Who Am I?
I'm an Assistant Professor of Marketing (graduated from Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina). I do marketing strategy research and my research interests lie within competitive dynamics, namely market entries and entry threats and market exits. Currently, I’m modeling empirically competitors' behaviors and examining firms’ marketing mix and their competitive dynamics in three essays. In particular, I’m investigating how firms react to a rival’s market entry and examining the dynamic effects of these actions on the new entrant’s survival. I’m working with Dr. Charles H. Noble (University of Tennessee, US), Dr. Carlos Lourenço (ISEG – University of Lisbon, Portugal), and Dr. Rafael Becerril Arreola (University of South Carolina, US).
Prior to joining the Ph.D. program at Darla Moore, I've obtained an MBA degree and a bachelor degree in mechanical engineering both from the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran-Iran.
Research Projects
Repelling Invaders: The Relationship Between Price and Quality Tactics of Incumbents and Low-Cost Entrants’ Market Exit Over Time
Dissertation Essay 1, with Carlos Lourenço and Charles H. Noble.
Under Review at Journal of Academy of Marketing Science
Accepted for the presentation at EMAC 2018 conference, Glasgow, Scotland
Accepted for the presentation at Competitive Dynamics conference, Queen's University Kingston, Canada
The proliferation of low-cost competitors has increasingly eroded incumbent firms’ market shares and profitability in recent decades. However, incumbents are still uncertain about how to respond to this new challenge. In this paper, the authors study a common and important phenomenon – the marketing actions that incumbent firms employ to drive new low-cost entrants out of the market. Specifically, the authors investigate how incumbents’ price, service quality, and service convenience influence an entrant’s market exit, and how this influence may change over time. The hypotheses are tested on a rich, longitudinal dataset from the US airline industry between 1997 and 2016, and by estimating challengers’ time-to-exit using a split population hazard model that accounts for challengers that ‘never’ exit. Instead of homogeneous results, we find that the magnitude and direction of the effects vary over time. For instance, a substantial price-cut initially delays but will later accelerate an entrant’s exit timing. The results suggest that managers should take into account the type (price vs. quality), timing (sooner vs. later after entry), and intensity (more vs. less) of defensive responses to a new low-cost entrant
“The New Kid on The Block: A Meta-Analysis of Incumbents’ Responses to Low-Cost Market Entrants”
Dissertation Essay 2 with Carlos Lourenço and Charles H. Noble.
Preliminary Data Analysis (Targeted to Journal of Academy of Marketing Science)
Accepted for the presentation at BI-JAMS thought leaders' conference on generalizations in marketing: systematic reviews and meta-analyses
The entry of a new firm into an existing market provokes incumbents’ defensive marketing actions to protect their markets. Although a large body of literature in marketing, strategy, and economics has been accumulated reporting incumbents’ reactions to entry, the main findings of these studies remain fragmented. Accordingly, researchers and practitioner still need a comprehensive framework that investigates the type, intensity, and direction of the incumbent’s response to the rival’s entry. To get a holistic view, the present study applies a meta-analysis technique to re-analyze existing research findings on the incumbents’ reactions to the new entry. Specifically, the authors draw a distinction between price and non-price strategies (including quality, advertising, and promotion) and compare price vs. non-price responses to the rival’s entry. The authors first provide a summary of the various findings regarding the incumbents’ responses to the entry. Then, they aggregate prior research findings to explore the type, intensity, and direction of these reactions. The findings of this study will help managers to better understand and predict competitors’ reaction to the entry and will offer several directions for future research
"Bluff or Real? Helping Incumbents Recognize How a Really Threatening Firm Looks Like"
With Carlos Lourenço , Charles H. Noble and Rafael Becerril Arreola
Preliminary Data Analysis (Targeted to Strategic Management Journal )
In this paper, we use a rich, multi-market longitudinal dataset from the US airline industry to explore determinants of bluff vs. serious market entry threats. The threat is bluff when the potential entrant is, ‘in reality’, not planning to enter the market. We will estimate the probability of threat being “real” as a function of market characteristics, a potential entrant’s and incumbents’ characteristics as well as their market network structure. According to the motivation-capability framework, we argue that threats are more likely to be real when the potential entrant has “motivation” to enter a market as well as the “capability” of doing so. To deal with the fact that it is not always possible to know whether a threat is serious or bluff when there is no market entry (because threat might be real, but incumbents’ deterrence strategies were effective to deter the entry), we employ state-of-the-art multiple imputation methodologies (e.g., MICE). All in all, the findings of this research will provide better insights for practitioners to more effectively and efficiently allocate their limited marketing resources over time to defend their market in the face of a rival’s threat of entry and actual entry