Vulnerability to Low-Price Signals: An Experimental Study of the Effectiveness of Genuine and Deceptive Signals

Low-price guarantees help buyers make inferences about retailers’ prices. However, researchers are concerned that consumers might be vulnerable to relying on guarantees associated with high market prices. Furthermore, truly low-priced retailers that issue low-price guarantees might be vulnerable to consumers’ discounting of such guarantees. This article experimentally assesses these concerns and finds that the effects of adding a low-price guarantee to a low or high offer price on consumers’ pre-purchase perceptions depend on consumers’ confidence in their product category price knowledge and their decision involvement. The article explores the implications of the findings and provides directions for further research.     

The Road to Unintended Consequences Is Paved with Motivational Apps

Myriad automated interventions have been designed to help consumers set and achieve behavioral goals. Firms and governments are making significant investments in applications that help consumers manage their behavior. However, scant evidence demonstrates their effectiveness. Are such interventions effective? Are they worth our time and money? Might they do more harm than good? This study presents the results of an exploratory experiment using Self Determination Theory to test the efficacy of one type of motivational aid used in many apps—the automated prompt. We examine how effective this approach is at helping people make long‐term behavioral changes. We also test whether providing people with motivational wisdom—i.e., “it takes three weeks to form a habit”—has an effect on behavioral change. In addition to practical implications for consumers' health, productivity, and happiness, and policy implications, our project contributes to the literature on consumers' motivation and goal pursuit.     

Risk-reduction strategies in competitive convenience retail: How brand confusion can impact choice among existing similar alternatives

Consumers tend to deliberate over their options by relying on risk reduction to facilitate the entire purchase journey. The present study was designed to be the first to investigate how brand confusion can impact consumers’ choice among existing similar alternatives with the use of risk-reduction strategies (i.e., decision postponement and inertia) in competitive convenience retail. The findings reflect two opposing strategies that consumers adapt to, that is, respond rationally or irrationally to brand confusion. Consequently, such a response either delays their purchase to search for additional external information or motivates them to depend on their behavioral inertia; whereas cognitive inertia completely relegates the decision-making process to the behavioral type. Taken together, the findings imply that rational decision-making could not function well to choose among existing similar alternatives. Accordingly, the study also provides some recommendations for marketers to reconnect cognitive inertia back to the process of decision making, and thereby encourage the acceptance of the new belief system.     

Animating the big middle

A Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) perspective captures the motivating social and cultural contexts of retail patronage and purchase behaviors and the myriad motivating factors behind the retail purchase decision. A CCT perspective complements behavioral decision theory and social cognition research in retailing. For consumers, retailers represent a field in which operant resources interact. In these marketspaces, firms and consumers exert a mutual gravitational pull. Firms compete for a role in the culturally constituted projects that consumers pursue by offering certain resource combinations. A CCT-based approach to retailing strives to account for co-creation, namely, how consumers deploy their own cultural resources, aided by retailer-provided resources, to accomplish the pursuit of their personal identity and communal projects. The paper discusses strategic orientations for retail firms that spring from a resource view, four types of firm supplied operant resources, suggests some mechanisms through which consumers animate cultural resources and their motivations to do so, and offers suggestions for future research.     

Coping with Consumer Fraud: The Need for a Paradigm Shift

A review of recent informational initiatives to help consumers avoid being defrauded revealed that advice offered draws heavily on past fraud cases in which swindlers were successful in victimizing consumers. This article draws upon behavioral theory to argue that such case studies are limited in usefulness. It is further argued that a paradigm shift is needed to focus on unsuccessful efforts by swindlers to defraud consumers. An investigation that surveyed such case studies is summarized with illustrations presented of how its findings could be used to help consumers cope more effectively with threats posed by swindlers.     

Best seller!? Unintended negative consequences of popularity signs on consumer choice behavior

Popularity signs (e.g., “best seller”, “top rated”) are frequently employed by marketers to help consumers in their purchase decisions. Whereas extant research focused mostly on the positive aspects of such a strategy, we demonstrate that it can also have adverse effects on consumer post-choice behavior. Depending on consumer regulatory orientation, such popularity signs can make the decision task more complex and increase feelings of uncertainty. The results of seven studies, including real choice decisions and field data, show that the provision of popularity signs can have negative consequences on consumers with a prevention (vs. promotion) focus by increasing the heterogeneity of their consideration set, which in turn is associated with an increase in choice uncertainty and a decrease in choice commitment. Beyond their theoretical significance, our findings shed novel light on the ways to implement popularity signs for a more efficiently targeted marketing effort.     

Comparing consumer-produced product reviews across multiple websites with sentiment classification

ABSTRACT

Online consumer reviews have been extensively studied. However, existing literature analyzing online consumer review data mostly relies on a single data source, resulting in potentially biased analytics conclusions. Many websites encourage consumers to post reviews of their purchased products, so that new consumers can evaluate these reviews for the same product across different websites to help them make purchasing decisions. Confusions often arise in this process, because there often exist substantial discrepancies in customer reviews across different retailers on the same product. Clarifying such confusions can help consumers reduce concerns to make up their mind for their purchases, therefore benefiting both consumers and retailers. Through text analytics and sentiment analysis, we comparatively examine the underlying patterns of online consumer reviews of three large retailers including Sears, Home Depot, and Best Buy for a same product. Afterward, we combine online consumer reviews from these large retailers and conduct an overall text analytics and sentiment analysis. The overall results are further compared with the results from individual retailers. The findings show that the sentiment of the online consumer reviews could vary substantially so relying on a single data source to make purchase decision is not a wise idea. Based on the results, we further devise a framework to comparatively examine and integrate multiple data sources for social media analytics of online consumer reviews. This study offers important managerial implications and identifies several new research directions for social media analytics.     

Customer satisfaction and customer behavior: The differential role of brand and category expectations

Previous research has suggested that consumers use multiple strands to evaluate their satisfaction with a product and to establish postpurchase behavioral intention. However, prior empirical research has focused on which individual standard best predicts satisfaction. In contrast, this article develops and tests a model of consumer satisfaction and postpurchase behavioral intention in which consumers simultaneously use multiple standards—perceptions of performance, brand expectations, and category expectations. The results of an experiment for a simulated service encounter provide support for the proposition that consumers use multiple standards and that these standards have differential effects on such postpurchase outcomes as satisfaction, repurchase intention, and willingness to recommend. Brand expectations are shown to be better predictors of affective outcomes (such as satisfaction), while category expectations are shown to be better predictors of behavioral outcomes (repurchase and recommendation). Consistent with prior research, perceived performance is shown to have a strong effect on both satisfaction and behavioral intention.     

Household Food Waste Solutions for Behavioral Economists and Marketers

ABSTRACT

Household food waste originates in three predictable stages – when shopping, storing, and serving. That is, food can be purchased and never prepared, prepared and never served, or served and never eaten. Building on behavioral economics insights, this framework focuses on why consumers waste food in these three stages and how marketers can help consumers reduce food waste and thereby help them get more value from their products by enjoying them more and wasting them less. For cost-conscious consumers, wasting less means saving more. For profit-conscious marketers, wasting less means making more profit.     

Behavioral research and empirical modeling of marketing channels: Implications for both fields and a call for future research

Game theoretic models of marketing channels typically rely on simplifying assumptions that, from a behavioral perspective, often appear naïve. However, behavioral researchers have produced such an abundance of behavioral regularities that they are impossible to incorporate into game theoretic models. We believe that a focus on three core findings would benefit both fields; these are: first, beliefs that are held by the various players regarding profit consequences of different actions are incomplete and often biased; second, players’ preferences and optimization objectives are not commonly known; and third, players have insufficient cognitive abilities to achieve optimization objectives. Embracing these three findings shifts the focus from rational decision making to how decision makers learn to improve their decision-making skills. Concluding, we believe that greater convergence of game theoretic modeling and behavioral research in marketing channels would lead to new insights for both fields.     

The influence of visually dynamic imagery on purchase intentions: The roles of arousal and lay rationalism

The presence of motion is increasingly common in online advertising. Despite the increase in spending on digital advertisements and decades of academic research on dynamic imagery in advertising, our understanding of this phenomenon remains limited. The dynamic default hypothesis posits that animated imagery should generate more arousal than comparable static imagery. However, research on advertisements containing dynamic imagery reveal inconsistencies in their ability to stimulate arousal. A potential explanation for these inconsistent findings lies in the behavioral urgency hypothesis, which postulates that not all motion is weighted equally in terms of its ability to generate arousal. We conduct three experiments to test this proposition. Interestingly, our findings show that imagery appearing to loom closer to consumers stimulates greater levels of arousal than either static or imagery appearing to recede away from consumers. Additionally, our work identifies moderating effects of lay rationalism which can work to strengthen or attenuate these effects. Together, this work provides a more comprehensive explanation for the varied findings in the literature.     

Effects of Lightness‐Location Congruency on Consumers’ Purchase Decision‐Making

A considerable body of psychological and neuroscientific research has demonstrated the existence of robust sensory correspondences between various features, attributes, or dimensions of experience in different sensory modalities. Despite findings indicating the importance of sensory correspondences to human information processing, research on purchase decision‐making has not to date focused sufficiently on this phenomenon. The present study examines how the lightness of packaging colors, and the location of products on a display shelf interact to affect consumers’ purchase decision‐making via perceived visual heaviness. As predicted, a display with light (dark) colored products positioned in the upper (lower) shelf positions increases shoppers’ perceptual fluency and facilitates their visual search, thus leading to the suggestion that “light” (heavy) locations are most appropriate for light (dark) colored products. Moreover, the lightness‐location congruent display is shown to influence people's choice behavior positively as well. This research also demonstrates that when consumers consider the lightness (in terms of their weight) of the products, they are more likely to choose light (vs. dark) colored products located in the upper shelf positions. These results therefore demonstrate that consumers’ purchase decision‐making may be promoted by in‐store environments designed to be congruent with their sensory correspondences.     

Impact of patient portal behavioral engagement on subsistence consumers' wellbeing

Subsistence consumers, representing almost half the global population, live on low incomes, possess low levels of literacy, and generally experience poor health. Technology is a tool used to facilitate stronger connections between consumers and support services, including for subsistence consumers. Given the unique characterization of subsistence marketplaces, research needs to examine potential associations between subsistence consumers' individual resource integration and wellbeing via their behavioral engagement with technologies. Research is also warranted that investigates the factors that can moderate this association. A 45-day customized patient portal app was delivered via 26 healthcare service providers, resulting in the surveying of 336 subsistence consumers who used the portal. The results indicate positive associations between subsistence consumers' individual resource integration, patient portal behavioral engagement, and wellbeing. They also indicate that these associations are strengthened by service provider's resource support and subjective norms, and weakened by medical mistrust. Theoretical and managerial implications from this study's findings are discussed.     

It’s all in the mindset: Effects of varying psychological distance in persuasive messages

The current research shows that the persuasive impact of messages can be maximized if their framing is matched to where target consumers are in their decision making process at the time they evaluate the message. Results from two experimental studies show that consumers who are in the predecisional phase of decision making are more likely to be persuaded by messages framed using psychologically distant orientation (i.e., focusing on the future or targeting a distant other), whereas consumers who are in the postdecisional phase are more likely to be persuaded by messages using psychologically close orientation (i.e., focusing on the present or targeting a close other). Evidence of the process through which these effects occur is provided by showing that consumers in a pre- versus postdecisional mindset identify their actions in terms of the actions?? high- versus low-level identities, respectively.     

Intermediate Choice Lists: How Product Attributes Influence Purchase Likelihood in a Self-Imposed Delay

Many online retailers enable consumers to postpone a purchase decision by placing a desired item onto an intermediate choice list, such as a wish list or saved-for-later list. This research demonstrates that using a list in this way decreases purchase intent for the wait-listed products, relative to the same choice made without the option to delay the decision. The findings of five experiments show that purchase likelihood is affected by a shift in the importance, or weight, of product attributes. Specifically, the attributes that are weighted more heavily in the decision to place an item on an intermediate choice list are then weighted less heavily in the decision to purchase an item from that list. This shift in attribute weighting suggests that consumers may switch from more noncompensatory to more compensatory decision-making between the initial decision to use an intermediate choice list, and the later decision of whether to purchase the item from the list. This process tends to diminish the importance of the attractive attributes that encouraged consumers to put these items on lists in the first place. These findings have implications for retailers who wish to understand the risks and benefits of wish lists and related tools, and for consumers who desire to reduce impulsive purchases.     

A psychological approach to Bitcoin usage behavior in the era of COVID-19: Focusing on the role of attitudes toward money

During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers are more likely to adapt and use Bitcoin for their daily transactions. Responding to this trend, this study examines the antecedents (i.e., perceived behavioral control, subjective norm, and financial self-efficacy) and consequence (i.e., behavioral intention to use Bitcoin) of general consumers’ attitudes toward money (i.e., power-prestige, retention-time, distrust, quality, and anxiety) based on the theory of planned behavior. This study employed three waves of data collection from general consumers in the United States who were interested in Bitcoin. The findings revealed that perceived behavioral control had significant influences on power-prestige, retention-time, distrust, quality, and anxiety. The results also indicated that subjective norm had a significant impact on retention-time, distrust, and anxiety. The outcomes addressed that financial self-efficacy significantly affected power-prestige, retention-time, distrust, quality, and anxiety. Lastly, the results found that behavioral intention to use Bitcoin was significantly influenced by power-prestige, retention-time, and distrust. Based on the empirical findings, this research proposes theoretical and practical implications for the cryptocurrency context.     

The decision processes of innovative communicators and other adopters

Based on the nature of their involvement with the target product category three market segments of consumers of fashion innovations are identified. It is hypothesised that each segment of consumers should use a different decision process when adopting an innovation. The major findings of this study are that the more innovative consumers used a less extensive pattern of decision making activity than consumers who were either less involved with the product category or were concerned about how the purchase would effect their perceived social status. These findings suggest that involvement with the category is different to involvement in the decision making process, and that the latter is somewhat contingent on situational factors.Thanks are expressed to John Rossiter, Judy Zaichkowsky, and the editor and reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft.     

A green experience with eco-friendly cars: A young consumer electric vehicle rental behavioral model

Considering climate change and global warming, a transition from gasoline cars to electric vehicles (EVs) can progress toward reducing the carbon footprint and improving air quality. As young consumers prepare to become future automobile users, this research focuses on their EV perception, attitude, and cost considerations in a car-rental setting. Consumer confidence and affordability are the main barriers to the widespread adoption of EVs. Consumers remain skeptical about the functional and service quality of these new eco-friendly vehicles. The use of rental EVs can help consumers deal with these barriers because the stakes are relatively lower in a car-rental decision as compared to a vehicle purchase. Therefore, this study investigates the role of environmental protection attitude, subjective norms, perceived functional quality, post-rental service quality, price value, and willingness-to-pay regarding consumers rental intentions for EVs. Based on 502 survey respondents, this study tests the hypotheses using a covariance-based structural equation model. The results show that young consumers who are conscious of their environmental responsibilities, social norms, and quality are likely to rent an EV. The result also shows that price value does not directly impact the rental intention of young consumers, but rather indirectly through the mediating effect of willingness to pay. This finding is likely attributable to the fact that for this segment of the consumers, their household income determines their perceived price value and propensity to spend on eco-friendly vehicles.     

Sexual orientation and consumption: Why and when do homosexuals and heterosexuals consume differently?

The increasing visibility of homosexuality in society, combined with the lesbian and gay community's considerable buying power, has triggered marketers and researchers' interest in understanding homosexual consumers' consumption patterns. Prior research on whether homosexual consumers behave differently from heterosexual consumers has yielded mixed results, and researchers and practitioners still do not know whether any substantial differences exist, what these differences look like, and how they can be explained. The findings from a meta-analysis reveal that sexual orientation explains on average <1% of the variation in consumption behavior across 45 papers, indicating only slightly different consumption behaviors. Findings from a moderator analysis contradict conventional wisdom and lay theories, while partly supporting assumptions that are rooted in evolutionary and biological theories that show consumption differences decrease with age; they increase when comparing homosexuals and heterosexuals of the same gender. These findings, which question long-held beliefs about homosexual consumers, help marketers to successfully adjust their strategies.     

Consumer acceptance of the mobile Internet

Technological innovations are often designed to help consumers save time. However, some consumers refuse to use innovations and downgrade their usability with increasing usage time. The purpose of this research is to find out how consumers?? personality in younger (vs. older) men (vs. women) affects behavioral choices of the mobile Internet, as an example of new technology, and how usage time affects perceived ease of use of innovative (vs. established) media. The study shows that innovativeness, low desire for social contact, and technology optimism, in interaction with demographics, determine whether consumers choose mobile Internet services over substitutes. Job-related dependency on technology and gender directly affect choice behavior. The study reveals that ease of use is downgraded as more time is spent using the mobile Internet, whereas there is no such relation for established media. The results help explain overoptimistic forecasts that were made in the field of technology acceptance.