The effect of country-of-origin related stereotypes and personal beliefs on product evaluation

The country-of-origin effect has been the focus of numerous studies in international marketing. The concept of stereotypes assumes importance in the study of country-of-origin effects. However, past research has failed to consider the cognitive structures that influence a person's use of the country-of-origin factor in product evaluation. This article attempts to fill this gap through a conceptualization that suggests that the country of origin may be an outcome of a combination of two processes—cultural stereotypes and personal beliefs. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The role of consumers' construal level in art-infusion-type effect on retail product evaluation

What cognitive characteristic of consumers directs the art-infusion-type effect? This study inspected the impact of art-infusion type on product attitude through aesthetic judgment under different construal levels. This study was underpinned by “construal level theory” and “the model of aesthetic appreciation and aesthetic judgments.” The data were collected from a pretest (N = 280) and an experiment (N = 388). A moderated-mediation analysis displayed that to low-construal consumers, infusing figurative (vs. abstract) artwork into retail products elicits greater aesthetic judgment, leading to more favorable product attitudes. However, to high-construal consumers, such an effect did not occur. These results broaden the past art-infusion research by corroborating the existence of art-infusion-type effect and presenting the construal level as its new boundary condition. Furthermore, our results offer practical insights into utilizing artworks in product promotion.     

The effect of competition on product removal

Marketing Letters - The relationship between innovation and competition has been vastly studied over the past fifty years. However, one piece of the puzzle that has not been studied in...     

The effects of product knowledge on the evaluation of warranteed brands

This study explores the effects of consumer knowledge on respondents' evaluations of both known and unknown brands that include either a 2-year or a 20-year warranty. Both experts and nonexperts evaluated warranty as more important than brand name in their product quality decision. Warranty length was positively correlated with product quality perceptions for both known and unknown brands. With the unknown brand, nonexperts perceived significant improvement in product quality when the warranty length was increased from 2 to 20 years. For the known brand, nonexperts perceived little difference in quality for the two warranty lengths. Experts indicated no significant differences in perceived quality, given the four brand/warranty-length conditions. The results indicate that warranty length is most heavily weighted as a cue to product quality when consumers are not highly knowledgeable, and the brand name is not well known. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The effect of context attractiveness on product attractiveness and product quality: the moderating role of product familiarity

Prior research has investigated a number of drivers of consumers’ perceived product attractiveness, such as a product’s shape and color. The context, in which a product is presented, has so far been largely neglected in examining consumers’ aesthetic appraisal of products. Drawing on social cognition theory, this research investigates how the attractiveness of the visual context (e.g., websites, advertisements) influences consumers’ perceptions of product attractiveness and product quality for familiar versus unfamiliar products. Results of two experimental studies show that consumers perceive unfamiliar products as more attractive and, consequently, of higher quality when products are placed in an attractive context than when they are placed in an unattractive context. No differences in consumers’ perceived product attractiveness and perceived product quality exist for familiar products. The findings extend our theoretical knowledge of product aesthetics and provide managers with insights into the effective communication of their offerings’ attractiveness.     

The influence of tactile input on the evaluation of retail product offerings

Retailers can benefit from allowing customers to touch their products. The influence of tactile input on evaluation, however, remains undemonstrated in the literature. In four experiments, effects of tactile input were observed for product categories wherein tactile input was diagnostic, and depended on product quality. While this effect was moderated by individual differences in need for touch when there was no opportunity for multiple product comparisons, there was no support for a mediating role of affect. Implications for retailing theory and practice are discussed.     

The interaction effect of mobile phone screen and product orientation on perceived product size

Perceived product size is a key concern in online retail, particularly in fashion and grocery. The screen on which consumers view a product (e.g., desktop or mobile) might constitute a frame that biases size perception, on the basis of assimilation and contrast effects (pool and store theory). The rise of mobile commerce exacerbates this issue, as framing effects might be stronger versus desktop settings as screens are smaller. Further, as mobile phone's screen orientation varies situationally (vertical vs. horizontal), the perceived product size might vary, depending on the interaction of screen and product orientation. By introducing the framing ratio as a means to predict extent, dimensionality and symmetry of size biases, we generalize specific findings from extant research. Empirically, four experimental studies demonstrate that contextual frames (i.e., vertical vs. horizontal screens) and product orientation (e.g., jeans vs. shoes) interact to bias the size perception, in that sizes are overestimated on the dimension that approaches the frame (high framing ratio), compared with conditions where the frame is distant (low framing ratio). If product size is misperceived, willingness to pay might be affected (e.g., for groceries). Thus, size perceptions have a direct impact on managerially relevant variables.     

The effect of involvement on visual attention and product choice

Our study examined the effect of consumers' level of involvement on visual attention to product, information sign and price sign guided by the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). We also investigated the relationship between visual attention captured by eye fixation on information and price sign and product choice for garden plants. Using a Tobii X1 light eye tracking device, we obtained data from 101 respondents in Texas and Michigan. We found that participants who had high (vs. low) product involvement paid more attention to the product and its information as demonstrated through higher fixation count (FC), longer total fixation duration (TFD), and total visit duration (TVD). We also found highly involved participants processed price information as a central rather than a peripheral cue. In addition, total visit duration (TVD) on an information sign was found as the strongest predictor of product choice.     

The effect of exogenous product familiarity on endogenous consumer search

When a consumer is familiar with one product but not its competitor, she is faced with a decision: either buy what she knows, or engage in search to learn more. When search is costly, competing firms may attempt to encourage or discourage search by adjusting prices. In this paper we consider how competitive dynamics between two quality differentiated firms are affected if one product enjoys a familiarity advantage. Familiarity is defined as a consumer’s ex-ante knowledge of fit for a particular product. An increase in the level of familiarity for one product allows a firm to charge higher prices since there are more consumers with information on that product relative to the competition. We call this the direct effect of familiarity. However, an increase in familiarity also has an indirect effect, since it gives the rival firm a stronger incentive to decrease price in order to encourage searching, in turn increasing overall competition. The effect of familiarity on profits depends on the magnitudes of these effects, and it is moderated by the level of quality differentiation between products. For very high or very low levels of differentiation, the results are relatively straightforward. However, when the level of differentiation is moderate, the results are more nuanced, with the higher-quality firm realizing higher profits from more familiarity, even if it must lower prices due to the indirect effect. We also find that, contrary to conventional wisdom, overall competition may be higher when firms are more quality differentiated. This is driven by the fact that higher quality differences bolster the indirect effect, with a lower quality firm providing deeper price cuts to counter increased familiarity of a high quality rival. We conclude by examining how changes in the cost of searching impact equilibrium outcomes.

     

The effect of physical possession on preference for product warranty

Peck and Shu (2009) found that touching a product causes greater endowment effect. We seek to replicate and extend this finding to the case that whether touching a product consumers have just bought may increase the willingness to pay (WTP) for warranty. Loss aversion, the tendency to prefer avoiding losses over obtaining equivalent monetary gains, often explains product warranty purchases. This tendency will be stronger when the buyers consider the product as part of their endowment. Touching the product promotes stronger ownership perception and thus shifts consumer's reference point. The new reference point causes consumers to anticipate greater pain from the loss of the product and thus leads to higher WTP for product warranty protection. We find support for this hypothesis in two field studies with a total of 104 participants.     

The effect of 3-D product visualisation on the strength of brand attitude

This study investigates the effect of 3-D product visualisation on attitude accessibility and attitude confidence, two non-evaluative dimensions of attitudes that have not been studied in previous research. The experiment analysed two versions of a website (3-D vs 2-D), in which the capacity to interact with the product has been manipulated. The results show that consumers’ brand attitudes formed via an interactive 3-D product are more accessible and held with greater confidence, in comparison with those formed via the product presented in a static 2-D mode. The study also reveals the mechanism underlying such influences – that is, the enhanced perceived diagnosticity and mental imagery, as well as their interaction, account for the effect of 3-D product visualisation on the strength of brand attitude.     

The effect of 360-degree rotatable product images on purchase intention

In three experiments, we tested the effectiveness of 360-degree rotatable product images on retail websites. In Study 1, participants reported higher purchase intention in response to a 360-degree rotatable image than a two-dimensional static image. In Study 2, participants who were primed for cognitive busyness by writing about activities that kept them busy (vs. writing about typical daily activities) reported lower purchase intention than in Study 1. In Study 3, we found a similar effect by directly manipulating cognitive busyness: participants memorized long or short number strings while performing a shopping task. Furthermore, sensory vividness fully mediated the effect of 360-degree rotatable images on purchase intention for the less busy participants, not the highly busy participants. Theoretical and practical implications for virtual product presentation are discussed.     

The effect of product category on customer motivation for customer engagement behaviour

Recently, research on customer engagement behaviour (CEB) has rapidly developed. However, comparative studies on the motivational drivers of CEB across different product contexts are lacking. This study aims to understand the nature of customer motivation (CM) and investigate how its elements and impact on CEB differ between product settings (tangible vs. intangible and high involvement vs. low involvement). Based on surveys of 2080 consumers, this study validates CM for CEB as a construct comprising hedonic, normative, and gain dimensions. The findings highlight significant differences in the importance of hedonic and normative dimensions as affected by the product category. The findings of this study can help marketing and brand managers understand how they can improve their engagement strategies by stimulating motivation-based CEB.     

Role of product entry and exit on the attraction effect

The attraction effect illustrates a violation of the regularity assumption in consumer choice. This effect increases the share of a target brand, relative to a competitor, when a third alternative is added to the choice set such that the target dominates the third alternative completely but the competitor does not. The effect has important marketing implications for design and presentation of choice sets to consumers. This paper studies the influence of sequential product entry and exit on the attraction effect; specifically, it focuses on the differences among simultaneous entry, delayed product entry, and product exit. Using two experiments, the paper shows that even sequential actions, such as entry or exit of products, predictably produce the attraction effect.     

The effect of product diversification strategies on the relationship between international diversification and firm performance

Previous studies have provided mixed evidence on the interaction effect of product and international diversification on firm performance. This study extends this stream of research by investigating the differential impacts of product diversification strategies on the relationship between international diversification and firm performance. We find that while related product diversification positively influences the performance of multinational firms, unrelated product diversification negatively moderates the international diversification–performance relationship. The evidence is robust for different models of international diversification and firm performance, and holds for firms in both the service and manufacturing industries. Our findings highlight the importance of distinguishing different product diversification strategies, and provide a potential explanation for prior mixed evidence.     

The effect of product visibility upon the relationship between price and quality

Previous studies have suggested that the relationship between price and quality for certain types of consumer goods often is not positive. Investigators have hypothesized that the experience of value, or the relationship between quality and price, may be less relevant for product categories in which a consumer's self-worth may be elevated through the act of purchase. Brands within such product categories would appear to be particularly susceptible to image building strategies involving the use of premium pricing to infer high quality. This study examined the relationship between price and objective quality from 1961 through 1978 for 878 brands of 54 products within three broad product categories of toilet articles, cosmetics, and clothing. Generally, the relationship for products within these categories was weak which suggests that marketing managers of some brands may well be basing prices on intangible as well as tangible values.     

The impact of product knowledge on consumer product memory and evaluation in the competitive ad context: The item‐specific‐relational perspective

Research evidence to date suggests that the combined presence of item‐specific and relational processing is necessary to induce higher memory performance of the target ad and proper evaluation of the target brand. This elaborative processing, however, requires cognitive capacity. In this paper, an item‐specific‐relational processing framework was employed to explain the roles of consumer product knowledge in the competitive and non‐competitive ad contexts. Findings from an experimental study suggest that high‐ and low‐knowledge consumers differed in product memory and evaluation in competitive and non‐competitive ad contexts. Such differences could be explained by consumers' engaging in item‐specific and/or relational processing depending on whether target brand information was presented with or without information on competing brands. It appears that competitive ad context would benefit low‐knowledge consumers by serving as a reference. In contrast, high‐knowledge consumers did not seem to be affected by ad context. Both theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The effect of naturalness claims on perceptions of food product naturalness in the point of purchase

Recent trends in marketing highlight an increased focus on naturalness claims with the hope of a higher consumer perception of product naturalness, but does this always make sense? This research examines this question in two experiments. Results show that the perception of naturalness depends on the types of points of purchase, those that convey a sense of naturalness, such as traditional markets, leading to more perceived naturalness. Importantly, results show that point of purchase type interacts with naturalness claim salience such that highly salient claims leads to higher perceived naturalness for product being displayed in a point of purchase that conveys a sense of naturalness. Finally, results show that the authority which claims the naturalness of the product is of major importance, brand-independent naturalness claims leading consumers to perceive the claim as more credible and consequently the product as more natural.     

The effect of a no-pain, no-gain lay theory on product efficacy perceptions

We document the existence of an inference strategy based on a no-pain, no-gain lay theory, showing that consumers infer pharmaceutical products to be more efficacious when they are associated with a detrimental side effect or attribute. Study 1 finds that consumers high in need for cognition infer a bad-tasting cough syrup to be more effective than a good-tasting one. However, taste does not impact efficacy beliefs of consumers low in need for cognition. A second study conceptually replicates these results, showing that consumers who take allergy medications (i.e., those high in issue involvement) infer an allergy medication with common side effects to be more effective than one with rare side effects. Our final study builds on these findings by demonstrating that consumers high in need for cognition believe a pain killer with common side effects to be more effective than one with rare side effects. Demonstrating a boundary condition of this inference strategy, the effect is observed only when the pain killer has been on the market for a relatively long period of time.