双语品牌名称的呈现顺序对消费者品牌评价的影响

文章探究了中国市场大量出现的“品牌名称双语化”现象,检验了双语品牌名称的水平呈现顺序对消费者品牌评价的影响及其中介机制。两个研究结果表明,双语品牌名称的水平呈现顺序和有利的来源国形象对消费者品牌评价的交互作用显著。具体而言：当双语品牌名称的“左中右英”(vs.“左英右中”)呈现顺序对应于有利的中国来源国形象,或当“左英右中”(vs.“左中右英”)的呈现顺序对应于有利的欧美来源国形象时,能够提高消费者的品牌评价。其中,当双语品牌名称的不同呈现顺序与消费者相应的有利来源国心理图式相匹配时,图式一致性效用发挥中介作用。文章丰富了品牌命名理论,同时为企业根据消费者的来源国形象感知调整双语品牌名称的水平呈现顺序提供了导向性参考。     

What you touch,touches you: The influence of haptic attributes on consumer product impressions

The present research builds upon the touch literature to show that the salience of haptic product attributes related to product surface texture (smooth, rough) and weight (light weight, heavy weight) influence consumer product impressions. We propose that haptic cue congruity across texture and weight drive consumer product impressions depending on a consumer's need for touch (NFT). We show that high autotelic‐NFT consumers who touch for sensory pleasure enjoyed the incongruity between smooth texture and heavy weight haptic cues, and consequently showed favorable evaluations towards exciting brands. In contrast, low autotelic‐NFT consumers prefer the anticipated match between smooth texture and light weight haptic cues, which conformed to their expectation about the nature of a sophisticated brand personality. Further, we show how the interactive effect of haptic attributes and a consumer's autotelic‐NFT on willingness to purchase is mediated by product personality. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Congruity's role in website attitude formation

Retailers with physical stores that also have an online presence (one form of multi-channel retailers) have unique challenges. Consumers bringing their prior attitudes towards the retailer to the site is one such challenge. However, researchers studying website issues focus only on consumers' evaluations of website characteristics, failing to account for how prior attitudes towards the firm and congruity of the website with the retailer's physical store image might affect information processing and attitude formation. The current study draws on categorization theory, by proposing that increases in the congruity between the retailer's known offline and their online presence should decrease the emphasis new visitors place on website characteristics (a piecemeal process) and increase the influence of their prior attitudes towards the firm (an attitude transfer process). Results support predictions and provide guidance for multi-channel retailers.     

Human staff vs. service robot vs. fellow customer: Does it matter who helps your customer following a service failure incident?

The key to excellent service delivery is to ensure harmonious interactions between service actors. Therefore, in the event of service failure incidents, an understanding of the roles and interactions of these service actors is critical to achieving positive service outcomes. This research addresses the question: How do interactions between customers and these service actors (human staff/automated technological interface/fellow customer) influence their service experience following a service failure? We draw on role theory and answer this question via three experimental studies. Findings show that customers evaluate their service experience less favourably when receiving service recovery from fellow customers rather than firms (human staff and service robots). Furthermore, a firm’s instrumental recovery, rather than informational recovery, leads to a more favourable service evaluation, although this effect is absent when service recovery was given by fellow customers. Findings provide insights into the role of each actor in determining customer service evaluation.     

Effects of game‐product congruity on in‐app interstitial advertising and the moderation of media‐context factors

Advertising has become one of the major sources of game apps revenues and interstitial ads, in particular, are the most used monetization method among the types of in‐game mobile ad formats. Interstitial ads overlaid on top of a mobile game app have more obvious advertising intent and a higher degree of forced exposure and perceived intrusiveness. This study examined how the degree of congruity (high vs. moderate vs. low) between the promoted products in interstitial ads and the mobile game app environment affects consumers’ responses. The moderating effects of media‐context factors (i.e., excited– or calm–happiness game types and game immersion) were further assessed. The results of two experiments revealed that game‐product congruity lead to better consumers’ responses toward ads and advertised products. The positive effects of game‐product congruity were more salient when consumers played calm–happiness games and were less immersed in the game. Theoretical implications on integrating perspectives across disciplines such as schema theory, happiness, and immersion within the media‐context framework, as well as practical suggestions are discussed.     

Moderating effects of self-image congruity on the relationship between advertisement message strength and revisiting intention

This research note delineates the effect of restaurant customers’ perceived self-image congruity (i.e., the match between the image of a product or brand and customers’ image of themselves) on the relationship between the strength of a restaurant advertisement and customers’ intention to revisit that restaurant. This study posits that customers’ preference for a restaurant brand, formed by their perceived self-image congruity, can alter the effects of ad message strength on their revisiting intention. More specifically, due to the biasing effect caused by self-image congruity, the effect of an ad’s argument strength on behavioral intentions may be diminished when customers have a high perceived level of self-image congruity. The findings indicate that strong ad messages elicit significantly higher revisiting intentions than weak ad messages when customers perceive a mismatch between the image, the brand, and themselves; however, no significant difference in revisiting intentions was detected between strong and weak ad messages when customers perceived a match between image and restaurant brand. Furthermore, this study examines how gender-based information-processing tendencies influence this effect of self-image congruity on the relationship between ad message strength and revisiting intention. Overall, this study provides a theoretical understanding of the biasing effect of self-image congruity on customers’ information processing and has important managerial implications for restaurant marketing.     

The effects of schema congruity on consumer response to celebrity advertising

The trend of celebrity-branded products is on the rise, creating a new domain in which to explore the match-up hypothesis. Moving beyond the celebrity as an endorser, but rather, a brand promoting a brand extension, this article examines how perceived congruence between a celebrity's image and the brand image of products they have developed is related to attitudinal and behavioral measures of advertising effectiveness. Employing a 2 × 3 full factorial design, congruence between the celebrity's image and the brand's image was varied (less vs. more congruent), along with the use of the celebrity's image (present, absent, non-celebrity models) to determine how schema congruity influences consumer's response to celebrity advertising. The results of a multivariate analysis of covariance analysis indicating lower levels of congruence between the celebrity's image and the brand's image led to greater advertising effectiveness compared to higher levels of congruence. Specifically, the means of the attitudinal dependent variables in the less congruent condition were significantly higher than the means in the more congruent condition. These effects were more pronounced when a celebrity's image was featured in the advertisement compared to when it was not featured. The implication of the findings suggests that moderate violations in the consumer's celebrity schema may improve advertising effectiveness.     

Celebrity endorsement and brand passion among air travelers: Theory and evidence

The influence of brand characteristics on a consumer passion for a brand is firmly established in the literature. However, celebrity endorsers influence to the formation of brand passion remains largely untapped. Using three theoretical lenses- source credibility theory, relationship motivation theory, and congruity theory, the present study examines the influence of celebrity endorsement on brand passion using data from air travelers. To this end, we involved (n = 432) airline passengers to test the hypotheses in the service context. Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Structural Equation Modeling techniques were used as methods. When celebrity attractiveness, expertise, and trustworthiness were assessed, celebrity attractiveness was appeared to have the strongest influence on air travelers’ brand passion via relatedness need satisfaction. The moderation analysis reveals that the effect of celebrity attractiveness, expertise, and trustworthiness on relatedness needs satisfaction is salient when the celebrity and user having the opposite gender. Finally, implications for policy, research and practice are discussed.     

Destination gender: Scale development and cross-cultural validation

Destination gender traits have attracted considerable attention in the tourism marketing literature, inspired by the concept of branding. A scale to measure destination gender with a Chinese sample is first developed and validated in this study. Then, the scale is tested with a Western sample for comparison. Results show that destination gender is a second-order construct encompassing two first-order constructs (i.e., masculinity and femininity) and their sub-dimensions. Ultimately, a 25-item Destination Gender Scale (DGS) is assembled with four sub-dimensions of masculinity (i.e., dominance, vigor, courage, and competence) and four sub-dimensions of femininity (i.e., grace, softness, gorgeousness, and kindheartedness). Nomological validity results suggest that destination gender is positively related to individuals’ actual/ideal gender identity congruity and revisit intentions irrespective of their biological sex. This study contributes to the destination branding literature by considering destination image through a gender-based lens and presenting a reliable tool to assess destination gender. Destination managers can apply these findings to develop efficient marketing tactics around salient destination gender traits.     

Congruity of Multiple Performance Measures

In multi-action situation, there are losses of efficiency due to noise effect and incongruity effect. To isolate noise effect, we prove that the loss of efficiency is zero if and only if the objective of the principal is a linear representation of the performance measures when the performance measures are noiseless. Using this result, several definitions of incongruity are given. Our definitions extend the single performance definition given in Feltham and Xie （1994） to multiple performance measures situation, and reconcile the conflict between the definition given in Datar et al. （2001） and that in Feltham and Xie （1994）. A numeric example is analyzed to show the way that the variances of measures and correlation coefficient between measures affect the utility of the principal.