Strategies to reduce product proliferation

Major problems associated with product proliferation include higher production, inventory, and record-keeping costs; increased expenses associated with trade promotions and slotting fees; added consumer confusion and stress; and increased susceptibility to stockouts. This article describes how a firm can limit product proliferation without incurring reduced sales or lowering consumer loyalty. An effective product proliferation reduction program needs to be based on several principles: resisting the temptation of asking consumers if a greater assortment is required; classifying goods into consumer behavior-based tiers; using interfunctional product pruning teams; practicing mass customization, where appropriate; placing absolute limits on product choice; and implementing effective strategies for product pruning.     

Linking Sources of Consumer Confusion to Decision Satisfaction: The Role of Choice Goals

Previous empirical research on the relationship between consumer confusion and customer satisfaction has largely neglected the role of choice goals. In a context of technologically complex products, the authors analyze the effect of selected choice goals on the consumer confusion‐decision satisfaction link. The empirical findings, which are based on a field study of smart phone users, show that different sources of confusion have distinctive effects on choice goals, which in turn influence decision satisfaction. For example, while confusion caused by ambiguous information and choice overload is found to reduce choice confidence, perceived attribute similarity between products or brands increases choice confidence. Among the choice goals, evaluation costs and negative affect are found to increase decision satisfaction. The findings have important implications for marketers and consumer policymakers in terms of marketing communication and customer satisfaction.     

Product customization: A profile of consumer demand

Increasingly, many brands are handing over to consumers the control of the design process, allowing for the customization of products, experiences, and services. While there is a clear demand for customization, the general assumption is that such demand is homogeneous among consumers. We propose that heterogeneity exists in consumer demand for customization and that a better understanding of these differences is important for brand managers to effectively develop and deliver to consumers the opportunity to customize. Drawing on configuration theory, we provide insights into consumer market segments for firms seeking strategic fit for more effective customization. Across multiple studies, a Latent Cluster Analysis is utilized to profile customization demand. Four distinct segments are identified: Non-Customizers, New Customizers, Active Customizers, and Lapsing Customizers, while studying their outcome considerations in terms of new product design. The varying patterns of customization preference and consumption patterns among segments provide opportunities for retail and service providers to target customization offers more effectively.     

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.     

The impact of consumer confusion from eco-labels on negative WOM,distrust, and dissatisfaction

For decades companies have added eco-labels to products to gain a competitive advantage and inform consumers about the environmental impact of products. Although benefits of eco-labels have been investigated previously, negative outcomes related to the proliferation of these labels have not been studied until this point. This study investigates the impact of eco-labels on a variety of forms of consumer confusion, specifically studying whether this confusion has a direct or indirect effect on negative word-of-mouth, distrust, and dissatisfaction, as mediated by negative emotion. The results from a quasi-experimental field study that employs a between-subject design from the food and detergent industries show that similarity, overload, and ambiguity confusion lead to negative emotion, negative word-of-mouth, distrust, and dissatisfaction. This study also shows that negative emotion mediates the effect of three confusion constructs on dependent variables, such as negative word-of-mouth, distrust, and dissatisfaction. This study presents theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future research avenues in the areas of consumer confusion and eco-labeling.     

Perceived assortment and consideration of customized products

Customization in the marketplace has become much more commonplace as information technology and flexible manufacturing systems continue to evolve. Consumer research into customization decisions has subsequently examined the implications of customization as compared to traditional assortment product offerings, finding that customization yields both positive implications for consumer preference matching as well as higher evaluations of retailers, chosen products, and even the process itself. The present research examines the implications that customization of products has on consumers’ decision processes, and on their perceptions of assortment and how they consider products. Two experimental studies suggest that customization decisions may negatively affect consumers’ perceptions of assortment, while also reducing the number of alternatives they consider, and that this in turn may have implications for their evaluation of, and willingness-to-pay for, customized products.     

Maximizing customer value via mass customized e-consumer services

While the Internet provides an ideal marketplace for customized services, its strategic potential has yet to be fully realized. In particular, multi-seller (or “cross retail”) partnerships are the key to a largely unexploited Internet strategy for mass customizing bundles of goods or services as value-added solutions to individual customer needs. This article uses mass customization successes to advance cross retailing as a comprehensive strategy that frames current Web initiatives specifically in terms of customer value. Exploiting the strategy will necessitate an understanding of the enablers and dimensions of mass customized “e-consumer services” (i.e., e-tail services, as well as service-related consumer products, that are defined and sold via the Internet). The overall success of the broader Internet marketplace will be determined not just by industry-wide cooperation, but also by the development of rich standards that allow for the highly customized bundling of products. More importantly, service providers will be differentiated by their ability to employ powerful Web interfaces within a strategy that comprehensively supports and extends a customer-controlled customization process.     

Consumer confusion from own brand lookalikes: An exploratory investigation

Lookalikes are a new generation of own brand products that have similar packaging and labelling characteristics to leading branded products. Their current success and proliferation (in Britain) has raised ethical and legal issues about whether they confuse consumers. A set of factors that foster or inhibit consumer confusion adapted from a framework on consumer confusion, were tested on a sample of 50 shoppers at the end of their shopping visit. No incidents of consumers having falsely bought a lookalike product were identified. However, low‐price products subject to impulse buying were found to be more likely to confuse shoppers. Additionally, elderly and impulsive shoppers appear to be more susceptible to confusion. Thus, effective brand identification or confusion‐protection strategies are more important for the above sets of products and shoppers. However, future research should concentrate on what extent consumers infer “misleading” that the original brand attributes are similar to the lookalike brand attributes and how this is linked to their choice.     

Consumer empowerment: global context,UK strategies and vulnerable consumers

Globalization has created new consumer needs and wants, and resulted in consumer confusion regarding the increasing complexity of products and services. This has stimulated global interest in educating and empowering consumers. The UK government has made a very ambitious commitment to ensure that the framework for consumer empowerment and support is at the level of the best in the world by 2008. The government, many consumer organizations and regulators believe that empowered consumers are key to the success of competitive markets. Two national strategies to co‐ordinate activities in the UK have been developed by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The OFT consumer education strategy aims to deliver targeted, effective consumer education by increasing co‐ordination and making the best use of available resources. The FSA is leading a financial capability strategy designed to deliver change to improve the UK's financial capability. Both strategies share a vision of educated and confident consumers making informed choices about the products and services they buy, and both aim to empower vulnerable consumers. Given the global interest and the development of national strategies, it is useful to consider what is meant by the term consumer empowerment. Is there a shared view of consumer empowerment internationally? Does the education of consumers result in empowered consumers? To what extent do the national strategies address the empowerment of vulnerable, disadvantaged, excluded or susceptible consumers? These questions will be addressed in this article which reviews the global context for the consumer education and empowerment agenda and considers key UK developments, with particular reference to the needs of vulnerable consumers. The study found that the language of consumer empowerment is gaining prominence in policy and strategy documents at the highest levels internationally in the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Community, and nationally in the UK.     

Toward Mass Customized Product Deployment in E-Commerce: The Modularization Function and Postponement Strategy

Strategically deploying customized products in an e-commerce environment not only helps businesses respond with greater agility to customer needs and strengthen their market position, but also helps businesses gain competitive edge and increase profitability. Underlying successful mass customization within the digital marketplace, a firm needs a methodology for striking a balance between the degree of customization and product pricing and delivery time—a critical supply chain issue. Providing either too much or too little customization can negatively impact both the business and the customer.

This study introduces a decision-making method for product customization. This method takes into account the level of customization, production costs, and the product delivery time and applies the concept of postponement strategy to the product supply chain to boost overall supply chain effectiveness and customer satisfaction. Bicycle customization is used as an example to demonstrate the feasibility of the new approach to determine the optimal level of customization in product deployment.     

Overcoming information overload in retail environments: Imagination and sales promotion in a wine context

Information overload is a common problem in retail environments. Reducing information in a retail environment is not always feasible or desirable given the plethora of products and extent of limitations on retailers in terms of merchandising and display decisions. Therefore, retailers need other ways of overcoming information overload than simply reducing the amount of information. However, extant research is unsettled with respect to arguments in favor of and against adverse effects of information overload. To enhance our understanding of these issues, the present research presents two studies that investigate the moderating role of consumer decision processing approaches in an information overload retail space. The findings reveal that the consumer imagination offers a more efficient processing route, circumventing the frustration associated with information overload and leading to enhanced consumer outcomes compared to the less efficient consideration route. Further, heuristic processing triggered by sales promotions in high information retail environments lead to piqued arousal and enhanced consumer imagination, ultimately bolstering consumer responses to the product. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.     

Research needs for assessing online value creation in complex consumer purchase process behavior

Consumers face considerable frustration when purchasing structurally and/or semantically complex high-involvement products online. Reliance on computer-mediated communications for their information needs may result in functional and emotional frustration from information overload and lack of personal trust. This paper proposes a responsive real-time information system as a proxy for a perceptive sales representative who assesses customer needs based on information exchanges and then offers appropriate responses. By tracking and analyzing a consumer's online activity, vendors can offer information relevant to the consumer's real-time needs, facilitating their purchase process. In essence, this is a real-time value co-creation process based on the consumer offering cues to vendors through their key strokes and mouse click activity. This allows for differentiated information offerings for inexperienced and more experienced consumers, creating value by dynamic information serving. Where appropriate value is created, consumers will experience less frustration and continue online, rather than possibly moving offline or to alternative vendors. In examining the bases of consumer information needs in complex purchases, this paper identifies the data required to enable a responsive dialog between vendors and consumers.     

The study of service innovation for digiservice on loyalty

Advocates of management of service innovation see this area as a new and promising research field. As services are increasingly becoming driving forces of economies, the introduction of new services to satisfy customer needs is becoming a critical issue for managers. This research attempts to address the consumer issue of service innovation. The research entails a comprehensive study of the impacts of service innovation on consumer loyalty in the digiservice context. The study examines service innovation loyalty from the consumer perspective; namely, technology leadership, service leadership, switching cost, brand equity, and customization. Personal interview data from 475 consumers provides the data for empirical hypothesis testing of the relationships between variables. The conceptual model investigates the relevant relationships among the constructs by using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM). Findings from the research sample support the argument that technology leadership, service leadership, brand equity, and customization are the key determinants of loyalty. The paper also includes a discussion on the theoretical and managerial implications of the research findings.     

Greenwash and Green Trust: The Mediation Effects of Green Consumer Confusion and Green Perceived Risk

The paper explores the influence of greenwash on green trust and discusses the mediation roles of green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. The research object of this study focuses on Taiwanese consumers who have the purchase experience of information and electronics products in Taiwan. This research employs an empirical study by means of the structural equation modeling. The results show that greenwash is negatively related to green trust. Therefore, this study suggests that companies must reduce their greenwash behaviors to enhance their consumers’ green trust. In addition, this study finds out that green consumer confusion and green perceived risk mediate the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust. The results also demonstrate that greenwash is positively associated with green consumer confusion and green perceived risk which would negatively affect green trust. It means that greenwash does not only negatively affect green trust directly but also negatively influence it via green consumer confusion and green perceived risk indirectly. Hence, if companies would like to reduce the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust, they need to decrease their consumers’ green consumer confusion and green perceived risk.     

What determines firms’ intention to postpone product differentiation?

Abstract

In present-day Japan, more firms are beginning to apply postponed product differentiation in favor of providing mass-customized products. Mass customization can lead to competitive advantages in satisfying consumers’ individual needs. We propose a causal model to describe why and how Japanese distributors decide to postpone product differentiation and supply mass-customized products. The model was empirically tested by structural equation modeling with a dataset from Japanese automobile dealers, who have employed highly advanced mass customization systems and are world leaders in this practice. The results show that two environmental factors, uncertainty and innovation, affect firms’ expectations of their customers’ intentions to purchase mass-customized products and, in turn, firms’ decisions regarding postponing product differentiation in favor of mass customization. Mass customization has a high potential for growth in the future due to increasing levels of uncertainty and evolving forms of innovation.     

The effect of attribute originality on consumers’ adoption intention of customization: The role of construal level

As consumers' preferences become increasingly diversified, many companies strive to satisfy individual needs by offering customization options for products or services. To enhance the effectiveness of customization strategies, managers need to decide what type of attributes to provide for consumers to customize and also take consumers' individual differences into consideration. The current research investigates the joint impacts of the originality of the attributes involved in a customization option and consumers' construal level on their intention to adopt customization. Findings from two experiments consistently demonstrate that, in comparison to customization options that include common customizable attributes, offering customization options that includes original customizable attributes undermine consumers’ adoption intention. However, such negative effects will be mitigated when consumers have a high construal level.     

The impact of adopting customization policy and sustainability for improving consumer service in a dual-channel retailing

In recent decades sustainability and dual-route retailing have been adopted by many big industries. Companies are now bound to maintain such strategies that fulfill the sustainable goals developed by the United Nations. Industries face a huge penalty if carbon emissions exceed a certain boundary. Moreover, factories should maintain sufficient flow in retail chains and product quality. This paper demonstrates 3-pillar sustainability in dual channel retailing, empowering firms to integrate the financial-economic pillar with the non-financial (environmental, social, and ethical) pillar. The core product is made available through the traditional channel and customized products are through online channels. The model is enabling the customers with customization provisions where they can influence the products. Thus, as a novel approach, the article incorporates a presumed threshold limit on the product's (standard and customized) selling price difference. Due to customization, a new product is developed which needs extensive quality checks. The study introduces an investment in checking the quality of the customized product which reduces the probability of customization defects exponentially. Additionally, current research adapts the carbon emission cost, penalties charged to a firm for overshooting the limit, and social costs in a smart supply chain. It also exemplifies that production is directly proportional to financial investments in meeting sustainability objectives. The numerical analysis reflects that as production increases, penalty costs decrease at a significant rate but after reaching optimal production penalty cost again starts to increase. It is observed that the downfall of penalty is 20% more for the single-channel than dual. Adaptation of the customization policy makes the retailing strategy more cost-effective. The model exemplifies that it is more economical to adopt dual-channel retailing compared to single-channel as there is approximately a 14.0625% reduction in total cost in dual-channel retailing. Moreover, an 80% improved quality is observed with a financial investment, which improves consumer satisfaction.     

The impact of consumer decision‐making styles on consumer confusion in Mauritius: An empirical analysis

This article investigates the effects of consumer decision‐making styles on consumer confusion and harm. While consumer confusion has been well documented in the literature, this investigation attempts to bridge our understanding on its relationship with consumer decision‐making styles. Empirical data was collected from a field survey where 400 consumers selected at 20 supermarkets in Mauritius were asked to respond to a questionnaire measuring three variables under study: consumer confusion, consumer decision‐making styles, and situational factors. Findings from the MANOVA parametric test showed that there is a significant difference between consumer decision‐making styles and consumer confusion. Even when covariate situational factors were controlled through the parametric test MANCOVA, results still showed a significant difference between consumer decision‐making styles and consumer confusion. More specifically, ANCOVA tests showed that the findings were specifically significant for three types of confusion: product confusion, packaging confusion, and product complexity. The study tends to confirm that a consumer's style of decision making does impact on consumer confusion.     

The effect of information overload on consumer choice quality in an on‐line environment

As more and more consumers become part of the net population, retailers and manufacturers as well as dot‐com storefronts are touting consumers by providing an ever‐increasing amount of product information. Their long‐term survival and profitability may be determined by how much and how well their product information is presented to and processed by the consumers. By combining both the traditional and structural approaches to the information‐overload phenomenon, this study investigates the impact of Web site information on consumer choice and psychological states in an on‐line environment. Varying the number of alternatives and attributes (traditional measure) and attribute level distribution across alternatives (structural measure), this study asks subjects to choose the best (dominant) CD player in a given set. Their subjective states such as satisfaction, confidence, and confusion are also measured. Results show that the number of attributes and attribute level distribution are good predictors of the effect of information overload on consumer choice. In addition, the study finds that on‐line information overload results in less satisfied, less confident, and more confused consumers. Implications and suggestions for future research are provided. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Lookalikes and customer confusion in the grocery sector: an exploratory survey

This paper discusses the issue of copy-cat branding, an issue that has dominated the marketing and retail trade press recently. Brand owners have claimed that lookalike own-label products confuse consumers. Retailers, mean-while have claimed that similarities in packaging design are essential to enable consumers to recognize own-label products. There is, however, relatively little academic research on the issue of lookalikes and consumer confusion.

This paper reports the results of an exploratory survey which show that a considerable number of consumers are confused by the packaging of own-label products. It is also shown that consumer confusion varies by store, product and frequency of shopping. Safeway shoppers were found to be more confused by own-label packaging than shoppers who used other retail outlets. Significantly, shoppers at Sainsbury's - the store that has been criticized most heavily over the packaging of its own-label products - were found to be considerably less confused than the 'average consumer'. The purchasers of Coca-Cola, Head & Shoulders and Nescafe Gold Blend were found to be most confused by own-label packaging.