I might try it: Marketing actions to reduce consumer disgust toward insect-based food

Despite the potential health- and sustainability-related benefits of insect-based food products, many consumers do not perceive them as an alternative to conventional foods. This research provides a systematic approach to explain consumer reactions to insect-based food products conducting a series of multi-method studies involving implicit, self-reported, and actual behavioral responses to real insect-based food products (provided by a partner company). The authors investigate how product type (i.e., whether the insect-based food is utilitarian or hedonic in nature) and packaging characteristics (i.e., whether the image of a real or stylized insect is present on the front packaging or not) interact with consumer-related characteristics (i.e., health consciousness and food neophobia) to affect feelings of disgust, which in turn influence willingness to try insect-based food products. A distinctive feature of this research is that a partner company used the findings to change its marketing tactics and observed an improvement in its market performance. Our research has clear implications for marketing managers trying to overcome consumer resistance to eating insect-based foods, as well as retail managers considering marketing such food products.     

Exploring the relationship between consumer knowledge and purchase behaviour of value‐based labels

Despite an increasing market presence, little research has been conducted regarding consumer‐purchase behaviour of food products bearing ‘value‐based’ labels. Moreover, as the effectiveness of these labelling formats is dependent upon consumer's knowledge of their existence, this paper aims to explore the relationship between knowledge, openness to experience (i.e. validated personality trait related to intellectual capability) and purchase behaviour upon consumer behaviour in this context. Using structural equation modelling techniques, causal influences on purchases of fresh meat bearing ‘value‐based’ labels are identified and three multi‐attribute attitude models are proposed. The paper concludes that these labels are of value to consumers and that product knowledge plays a significant role in aiding purchase decisions. Consequently, marketing communication implications arising from the proposed multi‐attribute attitude models are discussed.     

Crowdsourcing and brand control

Crowdsourcing is the deliberate use of crowds to solve problems, create new products, and improve consumer experiences. When used by brands, crowdsourcing engages consumers by asking them to be part of a deliberate call to action. Crowdsourcing provides interesting and dynamic marketing opportunities for brands, given the consumer engagement it entails. This conceptual study examines the literature on crowdsourcing and brand community, and makes a series of propositions regarding this rich marketing arena. Herein, we discuss managerial implications of the relationship between crowdsourcing and brand community dynamics and propose a typology for brands to better assess customer bases and market realities.     

Some people just want to read: The roles of age,interactivity, and perceived usefulness of print in the consumption of digital information products

With the advent of digital technologies, both academic researchers and marketing practitioners alike continually seek a richer understanding of the way information is produced and consumed. Against this backdrop, this study explores the relationship between interactivity, consumer satisfaction and adoption intention in the context of digital information products. Drawing broadly on the services marketing literature, interactivity literature and diffusion theory, the results of our study suggest that in a utilitarian context, consumers are more likely to adopt interactive books than more traditional static e-books. However, satisfaction with interactivity is moderated by the age of the consumer, with older “digital immigrant” participants more satisfied by static e-books and younger “digital native” participants more satisfied by interactive e-books. Also, the less useful consumers find print products, the more likely they will be to adopt interactive digital books, and this effect is also moderated by the age of the consumer. Finally, with the proliferation of digital devices only expected to continue, these findings have important implications for both product development and marketing communication programs.     

Internet of things support for marketing activities

ABSTRACT

Internet-enabled consumer devices are to be developed by the manufacturers. In this article, we examine how the Internet of things (IoT) can support marketing activities, including customer relationship management, business intelligence, and product design. In particular, the research reported in this article examines how the IoT can provide communication channels to support targeted marketing for product owners and enhance customer relationship management and product support. In addition, in this article, we examine how data gained from the operational use of Internet-enabled devices can support business intelligence in terms of how consumers actually use a product and can also support new product design in terms what features of current Internet-enabled products are most commonly used and how they are used.     

An Alternative Explanation of Consumer Product Returns from the Postpurchase Dissonance and Ecological Marketing Perspectives

Research on consumer product returns has identified product failure, dissatisfaction, and fraudulent intent as primary causes. In recent years, however, consumers return products even before experiencing dissatisfaction and when products are not defective. Moreover, most consumers who return products are ordinary scrupulous people. Ironically, product returns are on the rise while overall product quality has improved. This suggests that there are other reasons for product returns yet to be uncovered. This study critically examines such types of recently observed product‐return behaviors from the postpurchase dissonance (PPD) and ecological marketing perspectives. A proposition emerged through the critical review that in the current competitive and consumer‐centered market environment, consumers increasingly choose product return over other options identified in the literature as a viable strategy to cope with their PPD. Two empirical studies and a recent major industry study on consumer product returns provided strong support for the proposition. Managerial and future research implications of the findings are discussed.     

Effectiveness of Marketing Cues on Consumer Perceptions of Quality: The Moderating Roles of Brand Reputation and Third‐Party Information

Consumers usually infer unobservable product quality by processing multiple‐quality cues in the environment. Prior research considering the simultaneous effects of marketing cues on consumer quality perceptions is sparse. Despite the growing importance of third‐party information, research examining its simultaneous effects with marketing cues on consumers’ decision making is especially absent. This research, drawing on cue‐diagnosticity, cue‐consistency, and negativity bias theories, proposes and tests a conceptual framework to reveal interplays among various marketing‐ and nonmarketing‐controlled product cues. The first study examines how two‐ and three‐way interactions of high‐scope (i.e., brand reputation) and low‐scope marketing cues (i.e., price and warranty) affect consumer perceptions. The second study examines a set of interaction effects between third‐party quality ratings and marketing cues (i.e., price and warranty) on consumers’ perceptions. Overall, the results reveal theoretical and managerial implications for processing multiple‐quality cues in consumers’ inference‐making behaviors and suggest that consumers generally aggregate perceptions in more complex ways than suggested in the prior literature when making global product quality evaluations.     

Product information and consumer choice confidence in multi-item sales promotions

This research augments efforts to produce a richer understanding of the drivers of consumer choice confidence. It examines the interplay between two marketing interventions that consumers encounter in retail marketplaces, diagnostic product information and multi-item sales promotions. Results indicate that the influence of product information varies as a function of sales promotion format. The information effect is weaker when consumers are allowed to select the products that will be included in the promotion. Perception of information adequacy is revealed as a mediator of the information diagnosticity effect. The implications for marketing theory and promotional strategy are discussed.     

Toward a contingency view of new product creativity: Assessing the interactive effects of consumers

Although creativity is widely recognized as a critical element for firms to develop new products, knowledge about how consumers evaluate product creativity remains far from definitive. The authors analyze how the relevance of novelty and appropriateness—two main elements of creativity—varies according to the characteristics of the consumer. A sample of 283 consumers indicates a negative interaction effect between novelty and appropriateness, suggesting that creativity depends on either, according to contingencies. Novelty is more relevant when consumers are highly involved or have little knowledge of the product. Appropriateness is more relevant when consumers are minimally involved or have significant knowledge. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided.     

What drives consumers to customize products? The mediating role of brand experience

Brands are increasingly seeking ways to engage consumers in deep and meaningful brand experiences. As technological advances have developed, brands have an increasing arsenal to draw on in creating brand experience. One increasingly common tactic is product customization, whereby consumers are provided the ability to create their own products from a set of options. With this study, we seek to understand the mediating role of brand experience in consumer decisions to customize products. Specifically, we investigate the interplay of non-brand drivers (those intrinsic to the consumer) and brand drivers (those extrinsic to the consumer) in the context of customization. In doing so, we develop an understanding of consumers' intention to use a customization toolkit and their subsequent intention to purchase customized products. We find brand experience drives intention to use a customization toolkit, mediating the relationship between individual factors and usage intentions. A customer's prior experience and their intention to use a customization toolkit are also direct drivers of customized product purchase intention.     

Relationship Marketing and Consumers: A Social Dilemmas Approach

In this article a Social Dilemmas approach is taken toward relationship marketing, and consumer and seller behavior. This approach offers several advantages. It explicitly takes into account the dilemma that results from the differences in interests between consumers and sellers, as well as their interdependency and tendency toward opportunistic behavior. It focuses simultaneously on the two parties in dynamic interaction. It therefore provides a more generic and encompassing perspective than the common consumer behavior perspective, or the one-sided emphasis in marketing on seller activities. In contrast to a non-marketing (or selling) orientation of sellers, both transaction and relationship marketing seek a cooperative win-win solution to the consumer-seller dilemma. This requiresboth parties to compromise and cooperate and refrain from non-cooperation. Cooperative and non-cooperative consumer and seller behaviors are described. In addition, the SD-approach suggests some factors that influence interactions, transactions and relationships between consumers and sellers and may stimulate cooperation in real-life commercial dilemma situations. Some implications for marketing and consumer behavior theory and research, and marketing practice are discussed.     

消费者创新性的结构测量及对创新性行为的影响

现有文献比较全面地揭示了消费者创新性与新产品创新性行为之间的多重关系,并探讨了这些关系产生的条件和机制。但绝大多数的理论和经验研究都将消费者创新性视为一个单维构念来进行操作性界定和测量,很少有研究去探索其内在结构并在此基础上检验每个维度与新产品创新性行为之间的关系。文章旨在探讨消费者创新性的结构维度并在此基础上观察不同类型的消费者创新性对创新性行为的影响。结论表明,消费者创新性是一个包括感知创新性和认知创新性的双维构念;作为整体的消费者创新性与新产品采用行为并没有显著的相关性,只有认知创新性才与新产品的采用行为正向相关,而感知创新性只与新产品的创新性信息搜寻正向相关。上述结论为消费者创新性提供了一个新的认识,也为今后学者从该角度来研究有关消费者创新性的其他问题提供了变量测量的工具,而且还为新产品的营销实践提供了新的管理启示。     

Iranian consumer animosity and U.S. products: A witch's brew or elixir?

This research investigates the animosity of more than 900 Iranian consumers toward the U.S. and their propensity to purchase U.S.-made products/brands in the context of a prolonged hostility between the two countries. Our results suggest that the antecedent demographic variables of education, age and foreign travel experience are inversely related to consumer animosity whereas women and students tend to hold greater consumer animosity feelings than men and non-students. Additionally we found a strong and significant inverse relationship between Iranian consumer animosity and intention to buy U.S.-made products, but no moderating effects based upon product importance or product necessity were uncovered in our consumer animosity model. The major managerial implications of our study are threefold: (1) MNCs are well advised not to ignore or underestimate the economic value of hostile markets; (2) within hostile markets, MNCs ought to be proactive and pursue alternative oversight strategies when constrained by national institutions; and (3) local and foreign competitors may exploit such animosity to better position their own products against the products of a country that is a target of consumers’ animosity.     

“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.     

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.     

Conceptualising consumer regiocentrism: Examining consumers' willingness to buy products from their own region

The key objective of the study is to address the gaps by building a theoretically based conceptual model to examine the influence of consumer regiocentrism and its moderators, and community involvement on consumers’ willingness to buy products from their own region. A mail survey of 2000 consumers from the Western Australian metropolitan area, supported four of the five proposed hypotheses. The results revealed that consumer regiocentric tendencies and community involvement positively influenced consumers’ willingness to buy products from their own region. Community involvement was also found to positively influence consumer regiocentric tendencies. Although perceived product necessity moderated the relationship between consumer regiocentrism and consumers’ willingness to buy products from their own region, perceived economic/personal threat did not moderate the relationship between consumer regiocentrism and consumers’ willingness to buy products from their own region. The study offers several implications to public policy makers as well as strategic and communication managers of regional products and brands.     

Use of persuasive techniques on Internet shopping sites

Huge strides in technological development combined with marketing strategies have led to dramatic changes in the way information is transmitted and communicated to the consumers, and subsequently used by the consumers. Information has become a dominant factor in determining why, where, what, and how consumers shop, process information, and make decisions. While marketing information has always been an important factor in consumer decision‐making, its provision on demand and added convenience via the Internet has created a need to research the nature and amount of information that these technologies provide. Advertisements use different forms of persuasion to gain consumer attention, meet their economic and emotional shopping needs, to create a positive image of the product, brand, and the shopping medium, and influence consumers to purchase the product. Persuasion may be classified as functional congruity and self‐congruity routes to persuasion (Johar & Sirgy, 1991). Fifty websites were studied for utilitarian and value‐expressive forms of persuasion by product differentiation. The websites were classified as those selling tangible products only and those selling intangible products only, and those selling both tangible and intangible products. The paper will present results of the study along with a discussion and conclusion with implications on consumer well‐being.     

新品牌规避消费者预期效应的产品营销路径探索

产品营销关乎企业生存与发展,面临众多大品牌的激烈竞争,对于一个新品牌来说,如何规避消费者对新品牌的不信任预期,使自己企业的产品受到更多消费者的青睐,是一个普遍存在的问题.因为知觉恒常性和知觉定势的存在,消费者在购买产品之前就会形成自己的预期,改变消费者的预期会对产品营销带来非常巨大的作用.改变消费者的预期可以通过消费者...     

Whether to trust chatbots: Applying the event-related approach to understand consumers’ emotional experiences in interactions with chatbots in e-commerce

Chatbots can be used in marketing services to substantially improve the consumer experience. Based on cognitive appraisal theory, this study applied an event-related potential (ERP) approach to investigate consumers’ emotional experiences and consumer trust in passive interaction with chatbots versus humans, taking into account objective or subjective tasks in e-commerce. The results showed that chatbot (vs. human) service interactions automatically drew more consumer attention at the subconscious stage (i.e., a larger P2); consumers purposefully allocated more resources to regulate the negative emotions elicited by chatbots at the conscious stage (i.e., a larger LPP); and there was a lower trust in chatbots than in humans. Moreover, under subjective tasks, the differences between chatbots and human agents in emotional experience (as reflected by LPP) and trust were amplified. The findings will encourage e-retailers to improve the emotional service experience of their chatbots and prioritize the application of chatbots for objective tasks in customer service.     

The Effects of Idealized Advertising Imagery on Social Comparisons,Psychological and Emotional Outcomes,and Consumer Vulnerability: A Conceptual Model

This article integrates marketing and social psychology theories and findings into a conceptual model that describes the conditions for which idealized advertising images induce positive (or negative) consumer outcomes. Extending Bessenoff's moderated mediation model, the authors propose that: (1) effect of social comparison on the relationship between exposure to idealized advertising images and psychological/emotional outcomes will be moderated by internalization of ideals and self-discrepancy; (2) effect of psychological/emotional outcomes on the relationship between social comparison and consumer vulnerability will be moderated by attainability of ideals; and (3) product claims should moderate the relationship between psychological and emotional outcomes and consumer vulnerability.