The influence of hedonic versus utilitarian consumption situations on the compromise effect

This article reports the influence of two specific consumption situations—hedonic and utilitarian—on the magnitude of the compromise effect. Based on the literatures of different valuation processes (valuation by calculation vs. valuation by feeling) and hedonic versus utilitarian consumption, the authors suggest that the compromise effect will be stronger under the utilitarian (vs. hedonic) consumption situation due to different valuation processes. Three experimental studies were conducted, and the results have supported the prediction. In addition, the authors successfully excluded alternative explanations such as differences in willingness to pay, justification, and attribute importance. The authors concluded with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implication of this research.     

Compromise and attraction effects in food choice

Food choices are being implicated as a key driver in the rising rates of obesity, as well as associated with other health problems that impact both individuals and society as a whole (Cawley and Meyerhoefer). Calorie listings, whether provided on menus or packaged goods, increase consumer's awareness of the calories in potential food choices and, as a result, make consumers more likely to evaluate a product relative to others in the choice set based on this attribute (e.g. choosing a higher or lower calorie option). In this research, we explore whether the provision of calorie information, when presented in the context of other food options, will result in (1) compromise effects, whereby individuals select intermediate (or middle) options in a choice set, and (2) attraction effects, whereby individuals gravitate towards items that are similar to others but also dominate these items in the choice set. In two experimental studies we find evidence for the compromise effect and the attraction effect. These findings extend work demonstrating that the context in which food decisions occur can impact choice, and builds on existing knowledge regarding the consequences of providing calorie information for food items. Although most work has shown that making calories salient has a beneficial impact on the accuracy of consumer calorie estimates and food choice, in this work we show that the compromise and attraction effects – two well‐established findings in decision‐making literature – can actually shift consumers to either higher or lower calorie options. This carries important implications for consumers making choices in information‐rich choice environments.     

Decision making in compromise situations: guidelines based on J. S. Mill's doctrine of political half‐measures

The purpose of this article is to offer guidelines to deal with hard choices, specifically in situations where some compromise among opposing values is inescapable. The guidelines are intended to help ethicists and practitioners to delineate different alternatives and to dismiss some of them as morally unacceptable. This article explores the view that compromises arise from negotiations but from ethical predicaments as well. For this reason, I distinguish between strategic and moral compromises. Both managers and employees are individual moral agents who have to confront the possibility of unpalatable and even disgusting compromises, so that they are forced to put their integrity into risk in certain compromise situations. However, I shall argue for the possibility of palatable moral compromises. The guidelines to cope with those situations and to identify the unpalatable compromises are based on J. S. Mill's moral philosophy. Mill suggested that half‐measures passed in Parliament must have certain key elements to be morally acceptable. I make use of this doctrine to put forward compromise guidelines in the form of a set of hallmarks, internal and external elements of palatable compromises. Two minicases are used to test the guidelines and to emphasize the importance of compromises for ethical decision making and commitment to company.     

Missing information,inferences, and evaluations

Research has shown consumers either form inferences to fill in missing information or adapt processing to accommodate missing values. This article illustrates that processing may influence which attributes are deemed necessary for the choice task and consequently inferred and that attribute-based processing,leads to inference use. The article also tests a framework that incorporates missing information, processing, inference use, and evaluation variables into a single parsimonious model that shows (1) the effects of missing information on processing and inference use and (2) the effects of inference use on evaluations. The model incorporates a link between processing and inference use that may help explain mixed results regarding the degree and direction of impact of missing information on evaluations. Finally, it explores other variables such as missing information overlap, product familiarity and importance, and attribute type that may also influence inference use.     

Information format‐option characteristics compatibility and the compromise effect

When consumers make a decision under preference uncertainty, they often select the compromise choice. Since the compromise effect of the middle option stems from the relational properties of the choice alternatives, an information format compatible with their characteristics makes the middle option more salient and attractive. Focusing on three studies, this article demonstrates that the middle option is (1) more attractive when presented in the middle position; (2) more attractive when information is presented jointly rather than separately; and (3) most attractive when presented in an information display board format, less attractive in a list by attribute condition, and least attractive in a list by alternative condition. These findings imply that information processing strategies and information format‐option characteristics compatibility work in tandem. These three studies thereby show that the information format‐option characteristics compatibility effect is robust and that such compatibility effect is not due to different information processing strategies, which makes these results meaningful for marketing practice. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Does competitive clutter in television advertising “interfere” with the recall and recognition of brand names and ad claims?

This paper contrasts the effects of competitive clutter on the recall and recognition of information from ads for familiar brands. An experiment was conducted utilizing ads for the type of relatively familiar brands typically advertised on network television; the dependent variables were recall and recognition of brand names and ad claims. Results showed that brand name recall scores were substantially reduced by competitive clutter. However, exposure to competitors' ads had little effect on ad claim recall. These data are consistent with the view that information about familiar brands will tend to be compartmentalized in memory, reducing interference effects in attribute recall. Exposure to competitive clutter had relatively little effect on recognition task performance. Suggestions for future advertising research considering competitive interference and brand familiarity issues are provided.The authors thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their guidance. Ray Burke. Frank Kardes, James Kellaris, Karen Machleit, Joe Mandese, and Don Schumsky provided helpful comments on various aspects of this research.     

Priming a Cross‐Category Brand Alliance: The Moderating Role of Attribute Knowledge and Need for Cognition

Firms often enter cross‐category advertising brand alliance strategies with the goal to increase their market share by association with popular but noncompeting brand allies. However, firms are often not aware of the effects of these alliances on consumer perceptions of participating brands. This research explores the factors moderating brand attribute inferences following exposure to a cross‐category advertising brand alliance. It is proposed that attributes of a brand ally may serve as anchors that produce assimilation effects and move perceptions of a target brand toward the ally's attribute value, or as standards of comparison that produce contrast. This work provides evidence that attribute judgments in a cross‐category advertising brand alliance are moderated by attribute knowledge and individual differences in information processing motivation as reflected in self‐reported need for cognition (NFC) ratings.     

Mindfulness: Nurturing Global Mind‐set and Leadership

In this article, we attempt to explore global leadership and global mind‐set from the perspective of mindfulness. Through a synthesis of the literature on mindfulness and scholarship on global mind‐set and global leadership, this article explicates the importance of mindfulness in developing a global mind‐set and, thereby, acquiring global leadership competencies. Taking a task‐analytic approach to global leadership, we attempt to elaborate on how mindfulness can act as an important antecedent for global mind‐set and hence for global leadership. Implications for future research and managerial practice are highlighted. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Recurrence: A Neglected Aspect of the Sraffian Critique of Marginalism

The significance of ‘reswitching’—that great symbolic issue of the Cambridge capital debates—has sometimes been denied on the ground of a low probability. This article investigates the industry‐level return, in different equilibria, of the use of one or more (or all) inputs. Such phenomena, which we call ‘recurrence’, are generically far more probable than the return of a whole economy‐level technique and can be triggered, not only by a change in the interest rate, but also by a change in relative primary input prices. Since recurrence alone, without reswitching, is damaging to standard marginalist conceptions, one should not attribute too much importance to any low ‘probability of reswitching’.     

Investigating Gender‐Schema Congruity Effects on Consumers’ Evaluation of Anthropomorphized Products

Anthropomorphism refers to the tendency to attribute humanlike characteristics, intentions, and behavior to nonhuman artifacts. Prior research has established a product‐schema congruity effect by suggesting that successful anthropomorphism necessitates a product with schema‐congruent features next to the promotion message. This article extends this body of research for the specific case of gender anthropomorphism by proposing a gender‐schema congruity effect. Specifically, the results of two experimental studies demonstrated that when a human gender schema is primed, that is, congruent with consumers’ own gender, consumers show more preferential evaluations and are more likely to perceive the product as human, even when no product‐schema congruent features are present in the product. Results indicated that perceived anthropomorphism mediates the gender‐schema congruity effect and the product‐schema congruity effect on product evaluations.     

Reducing uninformed responses: The effects of product‐class familiarity and measuring brand knowledge on surveys

Consumers often give answers to survey questions about which they are uninformed. Although research has documented this phenomenon and examined the conditions under which it occurs, the current research project is the first to examine how survey researchers might reduce uninformed response bias through the use of additional questions added to surveys that measure knowledge of brands for which consumers might be uninformed. In the current study, adding brand knowledge questions pertaining to an unknown (fictitious) brand reduced the likelihood of respondents providing uninformed responses when later asked to evaluate that brand. However, the effects of asking for brand familiarity on uninformed response rates differed by consumers' level of product‐class familiarity and the relative placement of the brand knowledge and brand attitude questions on the survey. Brand knowledge questions can suggest the existence of brands, placing them within a knowledge schema, thus leading to more uninformed responses from consumers low in product‐class familiarity. These results, coupled with recent other research findings suggest that researchers must consider the effects of related knowledge on what have been previously considered completely uninformed responses. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

To Be or Not to Be Price Conscious—a Segment‐Based Analysis of Compromise Effects in Market‐Like Framings

Numerous researchers have investigated the compromise effect, according to which a middle option of a consideration set is assumed to be perceived more attractive by consumers, thus becoming more likely to be chosen than the extreme options. However, a closer examination of the experimental designs that were used in previous studies on compromise effects clearly reveals a lack of realism in terms of forced choices between fictitious options in hypothetical choice settings of student samples. This article reports two consecutively implemented studies demonstrating that the compromise effect is robust even in an enhanced design that incorporates basic conditions of real purchase decisions in laboratory‐based experiments. Specifically, the relative share of the middle option increases significantly in an overall analysis when experienced consumers make unforced decisions between real brands in a binding choice context. However, segmented analysis indicates substantial differences, meaning that (1) the compromise effect is strong and significant among quality‐seeking consumers, whereas (2) the compromise effect is weak and insignificant among price‐conscious subjects.     

The effects of scent on consumer behaviour

This article presents a systematic review of extant research on the effects of scent on consumer behaviour for readers of the International Journal of Consumer Studies. Although many articles have been published on this topic in recent years, there is a need for a comprehensive summary of up‐to‐date findings in this area of research. A systematic literature review is conducted with selected Chartered Association of Business Schools‐ranked journals in the fields of marketing and psychology, covering the period between 1980 and 2015. Thematic areas include the impact of scent on consumers’ cognitive and affective responses, attitudes and perceptions, as well as memory and behaviours. Relevant mediators and moderators of the effects of scent on these variables include affect, cognition, awareness and individual or environmental stimuli. Gaps for future research are identified and include the role of consumer awareness of scent and its influence on behaviour. Although this article provides a systematic review of the literature within the fields of psychology and marketing, it acknowledges that a large body of research regarding human responses to odours exists within other disciplinary fields such as neuroscience. The potential for, as well as the ethical caveats of, using scent stimuli for marketing purposes are also considered. This article makes a significant contribution to the consumer behaviour literature given its systematic article selection and review process, encompassing the most up‐to‐date research and focusing on all key thematic areas related to scent and consumption.     

Antecedents of Taiwan Chinese Consumers’ Purchase Intentions Toward U.S.- and Japanese-Made Household Appliances

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to understand the factors influencing Taiwan's Chinese consumers’ purchase intentions toward U.S. and Japanese household appliances. The authors attempt to develop and test a comprehensive model linking such purchase intentions to several constructs including Taiwan Chinese consumers’ openness to foreign cultures, consumer nationalism, product familiarity, traditional cultural values orientation, and product-country image. The result of analysis using structural equation modeling shows that consumer nationalism has a strong indirect effect on purchase intention via the product-country image construct. Taiwan Chinese consumers’ traditional cultural values orientation and openness to foreign cultures have direct effects on consumer nationalism and, hence, are important antecedents in explaining the purchase intentions toward foreign-made goods by Taiwan Chinese consumers. With the growing importance of the Chinese domestic market, this study provides international marketing managers with practical implications in important areas such as market segmentation, branding strategy, and market research and practices in the Chinese consumer market.     

The effect of buying decisions on consumers' assessment of their tastes

Building on the notion that consumers are often uncertain about their tastes or weights, this research examines the proposition that consumers might infer their importance weights from their choices and the choice sets they evaluate. It is also hypothesized that the degree to which choice affects self-assessed weights depends on the consumer's familiarity with the product category and the available product information. The results of an experiment demonstrated that consumers' assessments of their importance weights can be influenced by the choice set they previously evaluated. This effect, however, was not moderated by familiarity or provided product information.     

Compromising the compromise effect: Brands matter

Consumer behavior research has a long history indicating that preferences are influenced by the relative positions of members of a choice set. The realism of this work, however, is somewhat limited because alternatives are typically labeled with letters rather than with real brand names. We investigate the boundaries of prior research by testing whether preferences for alternatives in compromise and superior positions generalize to a more realistic market scenario that includes choices between real brands. In particular, we conduct two studies that examine if preferences for brands in a choice set are moderated by the inclusion of more or less familiar brand names. We find that consumers prefer extreme brands when compromise brands are relatively less familiar and compromise brands when they are relatively more familiar. In this scenario brand familiarity and not the position of the alternatives determine choice. In situations where a choice alternative is superior, we find no moderation due to brand familiarity.

Buying group choice: The effect of individual group member's prior decision frame

This article reports the results from two experiments that tested decision‐framing effects on choices made by simulated organizational buying groups. The first experiment showed that the choice of suppliers by buying groups varied depending on the nature of the decision frame. Moreover, group influence seemed to intensify the effect of the loss decision frame. The second experiment tested whether mixed‐frame groups used a lexicographic strategy to make multidimensional supplier choice decisions. Buying groups faced with a choice between two suppliers that differed with respect to price and quality chose the supplier that was best on the most important attribute—quality. Also, the decision frame associated with the important attribute affected the buying groups' choices. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.