Consumer–Brand Relationships: A Contrast of Nostalgic and Non‐Nostalgic Brands

This research examined how consumer–brand relationships change when one contrasts brands perceived as nostalgic with brands perceived as non‐nostalgic. Paired comparisons of brands in six product categories revealed that brand attachment, self‐brand connections, and storytelling, as well as, the propensity to offer the brand as a gift and collect brand‐derived products, depend on the nostalgic status of the brand. On a sample of 606 consumers, the results showed that a brand's nostalgic status has a positive effect on attachment, self‐brand connections, and storytelling. These effects had not previously been considered in nostalgia research. Furthermore, the nostalgic status of a brand has positive effects in terms of intention to purchase the brand as a gift and collect brand‐derived products. Moreover, ANOVA results illustrate that consumer relationships with nostalgic brands are systematically stronger than with non‐nostalgic brands. Finally, results indicated that product category moderates all of the dimensions of brand relationships while gender does not.     

A path to altruism: Investigating the effects of brand origin and message explicitness in CR‐M campaigns

An increasing number of fashion brands are employing cause‐related marketing (CR‐M) campaigns to promote their social responsibility. However, with growing consumer skepticism about CR‐M, it is becoming more difficult than before to encourage consumers' positive responses to these campaigns. Based on construal level theory and rhetorical theory, this study examined the way brand origin (local vs. global), and its interaction with message type (explicit vs. implicit), influence consumers' perceived brand altruism and brand favorability. Two experimental studies were conducted with a total of 574 U.S. consumers. The results of Study 1 indicated that consumers exhibited higher perceived brand altruism and brand favorability toward a local brand's CR‐M campaign than a global brand's, showing that psychological distance can influence a CR‐M campaign's effectiveness. In addition, the results of Study 2 revealed that an explicit CR‐M message was more effective for global brands, while an implicit message was more effective for local brands, and perceived brand altruism mediated both effects. This suggests the importance of framing messages according to brand origin to maximize CR‐M campaigns' ability to achieve their goals effectively, in which perceived brand altruism plays a key role. The study's implications and limitations are discussed.     

The role of ethical problems related to a brand in the purchasing decision process: An analysis of the moderating effect of complexity of purchase and mediation of perceived social risk

The objective of this article is to identify the effect of the perception of a brand's ethical problems on consumer behavior. The research contemplates two experimental studies, in which different brands were used in different product categories. Based on the results of the experiments, we verified the moderating effect of the perceived purchase complexity and the mediating effect of perceived social risk in the relationship between the perception of ethical problems related to a brand and the declared purchase intention, both by university students and by real consumers. Through the analysis of means differences and conditional models analyzed with PROCESS (Hayes, 2012), we identified that the perception of ethical problems related to a brand affects consumer confidence and, in some cases, the perception of product quality. In addition, we find that for products with low purchasing complexity, the effect of ethical problems is mitigated both in relation to the purchase intention and in the formation of the perception of social risk linked to consumption.     

“Retail is detail! Give consumers a gift rather than a bundle”: Promotion framing and consumer product returns

Retailers often use the promotion strategy of offering supplementary products (e.g., free gift, bundle) to attract consumers and increase sales. Despite the growing literature on the promotions that are differently framed but offer economically identical values, little research has examined the link between promotion framing and consumer product returns. The current article sheds light on this relationship, hypothesizing that a free gift promotion would be superior to a bundle promotion in reducing consumer product returns. The findings suggest that a gift‐framed promotion leads to a lower product return intention than an economically equivalent bundle promotion, because consumers tend to perceive more loss from giving up the gift‐framed (vs. bundle‐framed) deal. Further, this study examines a moderating role of brand familiarity (familiar vs. unfamiliar) and shows that the merits of free gift framing on product return intention via perceived loss are amplified (attenuated) when the promoted brand is familiar (unfamiliar). Overall, the investigations of this study imply that it is better to frame a promotion as a “free gift” than a “bundle” to increase perceived loss in returning the purchase and thus to decrease consumer product returns. This strategic intervention works especially when the gift is offered by familiar brands.     

Product difficulty incongruity and consumer evaluations of brand extensions

Ever since the appearance of Aaker and Keller's (1990) seminal article, the brand extension research stream has intensively investigated factors that impact consumer evaluations of brand extensions. However, the main effect of product difficulty and the interactions between the parent brand quality and fit variables have not been consistent across studies. We conjecture that this inconclusiveness of findings is due to an equivocal conceptualization and operationalization of the key concepts – product difficulty and product difficulty incongruity. The existing studies mainly focus on product difficulty, i.e., the perceived difficulty level of designing and making the extension, whereas the latter refers to the difference between consumers’ perceptions of the difficulty of designing and making the parent product and the difficulty in designing and making the extension product. We specifically propose that product difficulty incongruity will negatively impact consumer evaluation of brand extensions, and this negative effect is stronger for high parent brand quality and consumers with high levels of need for cognition. The findings from two empirical studies well support our predictions.     

The moderating effect of individual level collectivist values on brand loyalty

In today's dynamic business environment the success of a firm often depends on its ability to create brand loyalty. While there is a large body of research exploring brand loyalty and its antecedents, little has been done to examine how the relationship between these antecedents and brand loyalty is moderated by consumer differences in individual level collectivist values. This understanding is important however as consumers high in individual level collectivist values have been found to make different brand choices than consumers low in individual level collectivist values. We develop and test theory that suggests consumer differences in individual level collectivist values have a significant moderating effect on the relationship between perceived value, perceived quality, brand trust and brand loyalty. The results show that consumers high in individual level collectivist values are significantly more loyal to a focal brand, especially when brand trust and perceived quality are at relatively low levels.     

What Did You Do to My Brand? The Moderating Effect of Brand Nostalgia on Consumer Responses to Changes in a Brand

Previous research on consumer nostalgia has concluded that nostalgic feelings primarily have a positive effect on consumers, boosting positive feelings and affective responses. However, evidence suggests that consumers who hold nostalgic feelings toward a specific brand sometimes respond negatively to updated or modified versions of the brand. This research tests the moderating effect of consumers’ brand nostalgia on their responses to changes to a brand. Across four studies, the authors find that consumers who are nostalgic toward a specific brand exhibit a positive bias toward the original version of the brand that leads them to perceive the brand as having changed more than do less nostalgic consumers. Further, when the change to the brand is perceived to be large, individuals who are highly nostalgic for a brand show a significantly sharper decrease in reported attitude and behavioral intentions toward the changed brand than do their less nostalgic counterparts. This effect is in opposition to the positive effects of a general tendency toward nostalgia proneness. These results are replicated across multiple product categories and both manipulated and real changes, and the effect is found to be mediated by the consumer's biased perception of how much the brand has changed.     

Connected consumers' responses to negative brand actions: The roles of transgression self-relevance and domain

Brand misdeeds abound in the marketplace, but prior research indicates that having a strong connection with a brand buffers consumers from adverse effects of brand transgressions. However, the present research questions the scope of this buffering effect. The studies in this research demonstrate that strongly connected consumers are not so forgiving of a brand transgression if the brand's actions are personally relevant to them or if the negative actions are of an ethical nature rather than related to product performance. In particular, this research finds that the well-documented buffering effect emerges only when negative brand actions are not self-relevant for the individual consumer and the negative actions lie in the product, not ethical, domain. Therefore, contrary to the findings of prior research, connected consumers' brand attitudes are far from immune to brand misdeeds. Implications for managing brand crises conclude the article.     

If all their products seem the same,all the parts within a product seem the same too: How brand homogeneity polarizes product experiences

Many different factors affect brand homogeneity, including the different products associated with a brand, how they are made, and how they are branded. How does the perceived homogeneity of a brand’s offered products, in turn, affect consumers’ experiences with those products? Nine experiments reveal that consumers have more polarized judgments of product experiences when the sampled products are perceived to belong to more homogeneous brands. When a consumption experience is positive, the consumer has an even more positive experience when they think the sampled product came from a homogeneous brand; however, when a consumption experience is negative, the consumer has an even more negative experience when they think the sampled product came from a homogeneous brand. This polarization occurs because the individual product inherits the brand-level quality of perceived internal consistency—when a brand seems homogeneous (i.e., consisting of homogeneous products), consumers also perceive any individual product from the brand as similarly consisting of homogeneous ingredients or parts. We suggest that brand homogeneity leads to selective processing of individual product experiences, which makes products seem more coherent, products rated faster, and ratings of different product ingredients or features more highly correlated. The perception that all of the parts within the individual sampled product are homogeneous in quality polarizes judgments of the product experience.     

Being True to Oneself: Investigating Celebrity Brand Authenticity

Celebrity brand authenticity is introduced as a construct that represents consumer perceptions of celebrities being “true to oneself” in their behaviors and interactions with consumers. A scale is developed through two purification stages and the scale's predictive validity is assessed. First, the meaning of celebrity brand authenticity to consumers is explored. Second, the Authenticity Inventory from the psychology literature is adapted to develop a scale for consumer perceptions of celebrity brand authenticity. Celebrity brands are perceived as true to self when they appear genuine in their relationships with consumers and behave in accordance with their perceived held values. Evidence of the convergent and discriminant validity of the celebrity brand authenticity scale is provided, which confirms celebrity brand authenticity as distinct from celebrity attachment, despite containing relational items. Finally, the predictive power of celebrity brand authenticity is confirmed through positively influencing consumer intentions to purchase an endorsed brand. Brand managers can use celebrity brand authenticity to position or develop celebrity brands, as well as in the selection of celebrity endorsers.     

Can a Celebrity Serve as an Issue‐Relevant Argument in the Elaboration Likelihood Model?

While celebrity endorsement has been traditionally perceived as a peripheral cue in the elaboration likelihood model, several conceptual studies suggest otherwise that it may play a significant role in delivering issue‐relevant information when celebrity–product congruence exists. The current study provides empirical evidence that a celebrity indeed serves as an issue‐relevant argument by investigating the interaction effects between endorser–product congruence and product involvement on consumer responses in two different match‐up conditions. Moderated regression analysis results indicated that product involvement strengthened the effect of expertise‐based endorser–product congruence on consumer responses. However, the relationship between attractiveness‐based endorser–product congruence and consumer responses generated insignificant results. Research findings entail that a celebrity persuades consumers through the central route when the expert image in particular fits well with the endorsed product. Further analyses indicated that attitude toward the brand mediated the relationship between attitude toward the advertisement and purchase intention in both match‐up environments.     

Regular Price $299; Pre-order Price $199: Price Promotion for a Pre-ordered Product and the Moderating Role of Temporal Orientation

Retailers typically use the strategy of providing a discount to induce the sale of a new product at a pre-order stage. Despite the prevalence of this strategy, providing discounts might not be effective for all consumers. The present research shows that the positive effect of a discount depends on consumer temporal orientation. Results from four experimental studies reveal that a large discount positively affects present-oriented, but not future-oriented, consumers. The findings suggest that perceived financial risk and perceived product quality sequentially mediate the effect of discount size on value toward the deal and purchase intention. A third-party product quality rating boosts quality perceptions, which in turn reduces perceived financial risk and positively enhances value toward the deal along with purchase intention. Our findings demonstrate that when the brand itself acts as a reliable signal of quality, a discount has its intended effect for both present- and future-oriented consumers. Overall, the findings of this research suggest that a retailer can use quality cues along with a discount, especially for a new brand, to appeal to the broadest group, as it will attract both future- and present-oriented consumers.     

Measuring consumer vulnerability to perceived product-similarity problems and its consequences

Abstract

The brand clutter in many product categories and increasing numbers of similar products, some of which are deliberate look-alikes, make it more difficult for consumers to distinguish between brands, which can lead to more mistaken and misinformed purchases. Moreover, increasing brand similarity is likely to influence important consumer outcomes. To examine this phenomenon, a perceived product-similarity scale developed in Germany was administered to 220 consumers in the United Kingdom. Following the formulation of testable hypotheses and assessments of the scale's reliability and validity, the scale was used to measure perceived product similarity (PPS) across three different product categories, while examining the impact of PPS on brand loyalty and word of mouth. Structural equation modelling revealed that PPS significantly affects word of mouth but not brand loyalty. In addition, cluster analysis identified three meaningful and distinct PPS groups. Implications for marketing managers, consumer policy makers, and marketing research are discussed.     

The role of destination personality fit in destination branding: Antecedents and outcomes

Drawing from fit research in strategic management, this study develops and investigates a model predicting destination attitude and (re)visit intention. The study introduces the concept of destination personality fit on the basis of how well consumer perceptions of a tourist destination's brand personality fits that of what the destination brand manager wishes to convey. A model incorporating destination advertising awareness as an antecedent of destination personality and consumer‐manager destination personality fit is tested on international consumers with the destination personality of Switzerland as the study setting. Structural equation modeling results reveal that destination advertising awareness does indeed relate positively to both stronger perceived destination personality and destination personality fit in consumers’ minds. Interestingly, the subsequent destination personality–destination attitude relationship is moderated by consumer–manager destination personality fit in such a way that the link grows stronger in cases where fit is high. The results have important implications for destination brand managers in that they reinforce the importance of strong and distinct destination personalities. The findings also show the importance of actively communicating the destination brand to consumers since the positive outcomes of a strong destination personality increase in magnitude when successfully communicated, and the vision of the destination brand manager has been adopted by the consumer.     

“Seize the Deal,or Return It Losing Your Free Gift”: The Effect of a Gift‐With‐Purchase Promotion on Product Return Intention

The current article sheds light on an important issue in marketing: how marketers can prevent consumers from returning previously purchased goods. This research examines the relationship between a gift‐with‐purchase promotion and consumer product returns, hypothesizing that consumers who purchase products that come with a free gift will be less likely to return the products. Evidence shows that a gift‐with‐purchase promotion reduces consumer product returns and that this relationship is mediated by perceived loss in returning a product. Then, the results indicate that the choice of free gifts reduces product return intention and that this relationship is serially mediated by perceived ownership and perceived loss. The findings further suggest that when consumers with high product involvement can select free gifts among alternatives, they tend to perceive more ownership and loss and thereby are less likely to return the promoted product. Overall, the current research proposes that consumers prefer to seize the deal rather than to return it when they get a gift‐with‐purchase, have a chance to select a free gift, and are highly involved with the product.     

The Tipping Point of Design: How Product Design and Brands Interact to Affect Consumers’ Preferences

Existing research on product design has demonstrated the importance of aesthetics in generating favorable consumer responses. However, the literature has only recently begun to explore if and to what extent the impact of product design is influenced by brand strength. Whereas some research indicates that strong brands may benefit less strongly from aesthetically attractive designs, other research suggests that attractive designs are more persuasive when they are paired with a strong brand. In this research, these two competing predictions were tested through three studies with German car buyers. In Study 1, participants were exposed to a fictitious car that was paired with a randomly chosen brand name. In Study 2, participants were presented with a set of existing cars and were asked to choose one. Both studies yield converging evidence and show that product design and brands interact in a positive fashion, suggesting that attractive designs exert a greater influence on consumers’ decision processes when they are accompanied by a strong brand. Study 3 extended these findings by demonstrating that strong brands only increase the impact of attractive designs when perceived risk is high but not when it is low.     

The Eyes Have It: How a Car's Face Influences Consumer Categorization and Evaluation of Product Line Extensions

This research focuses on a previously unexamined risk associated with the widely used new product development strategy of line extensions. Specifically, it explores consumer reactions when line extensions become too visually similar and examines both short‐term and longer term strategies for solving the problem. Examined in the context of consumer durables, specifically, automobiles, the results show that consumers who make categorization mistakes when trying to distinguish between two visually similar product lines have more negative attitudes not only toward the product but also toward the parent brand. The results of Study 1 confirm that providing a design vocabulary that articulates the car's design features is effective in reducing consumer's categorization mistakes. In addition, results of Study 2 indicate that changes to the car's “eyes” (headlights) are more effective than changes to the car's “mouth” (grille) in helping consumers to differentiate among cars in the line.     

How far can brands go to defend themselves? The extent of negative publicity impact on proactive consumer behaviors and brand equity

Negative publicity, defined as the public disclosure of a problematic incident associated with a brand, is a critical issue for fashion brands, as it vitiates the image of targeted brands and drives consumers’ voice and exit behaviors. Despite the impact of negative publicity, few studies have compared the impact of product‐related versus personnel‐related negative publicity, or explored the extent to which brands’ coping strategies can prevent consumers’ anti‐brand behavioral intentions and recover brand equity. This study used multivariate analyses of variance to analyze responses from 594 American consumers, which revealed that when negative publicity is about a product‐related issue, none of the brand's different recovery efforts are effective in decreasing consumers’ voice and exit intentions and protecting brand equity. However, for a personnel‐related issue, functional and informational recovery strategies were effective in decreasing consumer voice and exit intentions, and affective, functional, and informational recovery strategies positively impacted most domains of brand equity (brand judgement, brand feelings, and brand resonance). The following analysis of variance and post hoc analyses revealed the comparative effectiveness of specific recovery types. Discussions and implications of the findings are provided.     

Brand alliance and customer‐based brand‐equity effects

This research examines brand alliances, a specific marketing strategy designed to transfer the positive brand equity of two or more partner brands to the newly created joint brand. The study explores how customer‐based brand equity (that is, brand equity as seen from the customer's perspective) of partner brands affects consumer evaluations of an alliance brand; how the brand equity of one partner brand affects the other; how customer‐based brand equity of the partner brands affects consumers' evaluations of the search, experience, and credence attribute performance of the alliance brand; and how product trial influences such evaluations. Results suggest that merely the act of pairing with another brand elevates consumers' evaluations of the partner brands' customer‐based brand equity, and high‐equity partners enhance pretrial evaluation of experience and credence attributes that are relevant to the high‐equity partner. As hypothesized, product trial moderates the equity value of the alliance partner for experience attributes, and brand equity of the partner brands influences consumer perceptions of the alliance brand's equity. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Consumers' response to other consumers' participation in new product development

In this paper, we investigate how consumers react to information that the brand has involved other consumers in the development of its new product. More specifically, we investigate how the participation of other consumers in either the ideation, where consumers come up with product ideas, or selection, where consumers select which out of many products the brand should produce and market, impacts on consumers' evaluations of the product and perceptions of the brand. Drawing from the literatures on brand schema and congruity, we hypothesize that by way of its effects on perceived brand uniqueness and brand attribution, consumer participation in new product ideation (selection) impacts more favorably on product and brand ratings when the product is incongruent (congruent) with the brand. An experimental study with 386 consumers supports the hypotheses.