Student perceptions of ‘job politics’ as practised by those climbing the corporate career ladder

This study assessed the extent to which college students, tomorrow's executives, agreed with various commonly heard assertions regarding the tactics of those climbing the corporate career ladder. The study used essentially the same data collection instrument as that used in a recent study of business executives. The results indicate a highly significant relationship of the opinions to church affiliation, citizenship, and race of the subjects. Moderate levels of significant opinion differences related to the subjects' school, age, social class, and gender. The subjects' opinions were not significantly related to their academic department, gradepoint average, or work experience.     

Consumers' mood states: The mitigating influence of personal relevance on product evaluations

This article reports the results of two studies where subjects' mood states (good, bad) were manipulated. In keeping with previous findings, subjects' evaluations were biased by their mood state. As predicted, however, this bias was only discernible when the product evaluation was perceived to be relatively unimportant. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Situational effects on brand preferences for image products

The purpose of the study was to provide evidence for the influence of situational variables on consumer preferences toward the image product of men's fragrances, and to illustrate how these situational variables can be used to create positioning strategies. In a 3 × 3 experimental design, male and female subjects provided purchasing preference ratings for, and rated each cologne on, a number of scales related to price, brand image and packaging, scent, and inferred characteristics of the typical consumer. ANOVAs and a constrained unfolding analysis using GENFOLD2 were used to analyze the data. The analyses revealed that subjects' preferences were influenced by the purchasing target (self or others), and suggested that people's preferences may be mediated by person prototypes and situation prototypes. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The use of event related potentials brain methods in the study of Conscious and unconscious consumer decision making processes

The question of whether consumer purchasing decisions are conscious choices or unconscious has long been studied in marketing. The ability to measure mental changes with high temporal resolution makes the EEG-based event-related potentials (ERP) method very useful in studying the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness. Although experiences with brands significantly affect the awareness or unconsciousness of decisions to purchase, ERP studies have ignored experiences of consumers in relation to brand purchases. For this purpose, EEG recordings of participants were taken in the order they saw brand names: experienced brands, review-based brands, and unknown brands. Participants chose one of the three options for the brands they saw on the screen: buying, not buying, and no idea. 35 people participated in the study. The results indicate that early ERPs, which are unconscious mental reactions, related to purchase decisions for previously unknown brands. Late ERPs associated with conscious mental reactions are related to purchasing review-based brands or experienced brands. We conclude that purchasing decisions about unknown brands occur as a result of automatic, unconscious mental processes, whereas purchasing decisions about previously experienced brands and based on consumer reviews result from conscious mental processes. Our study is the first that demonstrates the relationship between ERP's and purchasing decisions, with an experimental design focused on consumer experience and consciousness.     

Advertising montage: Two theoretical perspectives

Building upon structuralist and phenomenological theories, this article explores the effects of video montage—camera cuts in particular—on the appeal and persuasiveness of television advertisements. The article proposes a structuralist method for objectively describing ad form and tests well‐known theories propounding that responses to a stimulus are a function of boredom and confusion. Camera cuts, boredom, and confusion were all found to affect subjects' attitude toward the ad. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The effect of experimenter bias in a cola taste test

In a simulated cola taste test, experimenters' nonverbal behaviors influenced subjects' cola choices, although subjects expressed no awareness of the experimenters' impact. Nonverbal intimacy behaviors may make subjects feel comfortable in same-sex pairs and uncomfortable in mixed-sex pairs, resulting in an association of these internal states with cola preferences.     

Country-of-origin effect in apparel choices: A conjoint analysis

The purpose of this study was to determine Canadian consumers' beliefs about, and preferences for apparel products made in Canada, China and some other low-cost nations. The importance of the country-of-origin of garments relative to other apparel attributes in consumers' purchase decisions was also examined. Information integration theory provided the theoretical foundation for a conjoint analysis of product ratings. A simulated purchase of fleece sweatshirts was designed to conduct the conjoint analysis experiment. Consumers' beliefs regarding various attributes of apparel products made in Canada, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea were also measured. Significant differences were found in consumers' beliefs about garments made in different countries regarding quality, price, style and fit. Canadian clothing was perceived to be superior in quality, style and fit, but the most expensive. Results of the conjoint analysis indicated that Canada was the most preferred country-of-origin. The effect of country-of-origin on subjects' evaluations of sweatshirts, however, was less important than that of either quality or price. Beliefs about quality, price, style and fit of garments made in Canada, China and South Korea were found to be significantly related to subjects' utilities for sweatshirts made in such countries. Differences in beliefs and utilities were found among respondents differing in awareness of country-of-origin, ethnic background, age and education, but not among those who held different opinions about supporting domestic industries.     

Can advertising influence experience?

A study is reported in which exposure to advertising has no immediate effect on subjects' beliefs, but subsequently influences the beliefs of those subjects who have had experience with the topic of the advertised claim. The study supports a model of advertising as an influence on the interpretation of experience.     

Consumer neuroscience the effect of retail brands on the perception of product packaging

Whereas classical marketing research is restricted to purely analyzing reported and/or behavioral data, the new research area of consumer neuroscience might be able to capture unconscious and emotional processes as well. The present study investigates the neural correlates associated with different retail brand frames. The authors assume that the integration of emotions and memories associated with the image and reputation of a retail brand can influence consumers’ perception of a product packaging.     

Observing viewers’ self-reported and neurophysiological responses to message appeal in social media advertisements

PurposeMarketing research mainly uses self-reported method to record respondents' perceptions of creativity, and while self-reported method has its own merits, there exists some critique, particularly in terms of its ability to adequately capture the influence of message appeal on creativity. This paper studies how viewers’ responses to message appeals in social media advertisement compare in terms of self-reported responses versus responses taken through a neurophysiological method of Electroencephalograph (EEG).MethodologyTwo social media advertisements are displayed through a laboratory experiment to 17 subjects observing the subjects' neurophysiological reactions as well as their self-reported responses with regard to the commercials’ emotional, informational, and brand-related content.FindingsResults show that neurophysiological method offers unique details about emotional appeal, which the self-reported method fails to reflect. Furthermore, the neurophysiological measure identifies differences across the two target commercials in the emotional content part, which again are not identified through the self-reported method.OriginalityThis paper advances advertising research in social media literature by comparing content evaluation within advertisement through neurophysiological and self-reported measure. These findings have implications for marketers to use and measure message appeals in advertisement on social media to influence consumer response.     

Creating Online Brand Personality: The Role of Personal Difference

This study explores the concept of online brand personality, creation of online brand personality, and the role of personal difference in terms of advertising effectiveness – memory and attitude. The primary research question is whether individual's matching personality to online brand creates different responses toward online brand in terms of advertising effectiveness, such as memory, attitude and behavior. The results found that: first, website structure is an important factor on subjects' attitude toward the website; second, individual's personality is an important moderator on the effects of website structure; and third, individual's personality and brand personality have a significant interaction effect on attitude and behavioral intention.     

Gender Differences in Ethical Frameworks and Evaluation of Others' Choices in Ethical Dilemmas

This paper examines the relationship between gender and ethical decision models employed by managers. Subjects completed a survey that measured the extent to which they focused on actions or the outcomes of those actions in determining whether a behavior was ethical or not. The study also examined subjects' reactions to other managers' responses to ethical dilemmas. Results suggest that men and women do not differ in their underlying ethical models, that they do differ in the way in which they evaluate others in ethical situations, and that ethical predispositions play an important role in those evaluations.     

Review and appraisal of subliminal perception within the context of signal detection theory

There are many claims that stimuli too weak to be detected can affect behavior in powerful ways. There are also many counterclaims that such phenomena are artifacts. The origins of the subliminal perception controversy are traced and some of the problems with the concepts of threshold and awareness are noted. It is suggested that any treatment of the phenomenon must consider the implications of Signal Detection Theory. The basic concepts of the theory are reviewed and the controversy is translated into its terminology. Some studies on masked-primes are summarized and evaluated within that context. While It is possible to obtain an effect for primes that are below a level of claimed awareness, such a subjective definition of the threshold is often problematic, because it confounds stimulus detectability with response bias. When an objective definition is adopted (i.e., d' = O), and proper psychophysical methods are followed, there is no support for the effectiveness of undetectable stimuli. Lastly, a recent approach is briefly described which uses phenomenal awareness as a basis for distinguishing between conscious and unconscious perceptual processes.     

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.     

The impact of interpersonal anxiety on consumer information processing

Effects of interpersonal anxiety on consumer information processing were investigated from a psychoanalytic perspective. Findings indicate that increases in the number and importance of others in subjects' decision environments heighten experienced levels of anxiety. In addition, the relationship of anxiety to information processing was found to be curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) as indicated by the total amount of information and the processing mode selected by subjects during a decision task. Implications for marketers and future research directions are provided.     

Intangibility and Perceived Risk in Online Environments

Product intangibility increases consumers' perception of risk. Previous research has examined the effects of multiple dimensions of intangibility on the various types of risk and found out that of the three intangibility dimensions, physical intangibility was the least correlated to the consumers' perception of risk in most situations, while mental intangibility and generality had great impact on most of the perceived risk dimensions. Little research so far has been conducted as to the differences between online and offline environments in which risk is perceived. The results from this study with generic vs. branded products in offline vs. online situations show that significant variations in the perception of risk were identified across different purchasing environments. In the online environment concerns of consumers have a significantly stronger impact on the different kinds of risk perceived than generality and mental intangibility. Whereas intangibility has a major impact on risk during the traditional method of shopping, an elevated perception of risk in the online environment is merely triggered by consumer's concerns about their privacy, the security of their purchases and the security of the system through which their transactions are completed.     

Beliefs,attitudes and behaviour towards Web advertising

To examine Web users' beliefs, attitudes and behaviour towards Web advertising, Pollay and Mittal's (1993) belief model is tested via structural equation modelling. The results suggest the model is a robust Web advertising effectiveness measurement tool. Underlying the study are the hypotheses that Web users' attitudes towards Web advertising are a function of several belief factors and influence users' behavioural intention. Results indicate the belief factors—product information, hedonic pleasure, and social role and image—related positively to subjects' attitudes towards Web advertising. Web users' beliefs about materialism, falsity/no sense and value corruption related negatively to their attitudes towards Web advertising. Web advertising attitudes impacted on reported behaviour towards Web advertising such that the more positive Web users' attitudes were towards Web advertising, the greater the likelihood that they would respond favourably to Web ads. In addition, the higher the respondents' income and education, the more negative their reported behaviour towards Web advertising.