Marketing

The authors examine two aspects of brand loyalty, purchase loyalty and attitudinal loyalty, as linking variables in the chain of effects from brand trust and brand affect to brand performance (market share and relative price). The model includes product-level, category-related controls (hedonic value and utilitarian value) and brand-level controls (brand differentiation and share of voice). The authors compile an aggregate data set for 107 brands from three separate surveys of consumers and brand managers.

To understand really new products, consumers face the challenge of constructing new knowledge structures rather simply changing existing ones. Recent research in categorization suggests that one strategy for creating representations for these new products is to use information already contained in familiar product categories. While knowledge from multiple existing categories may be relevant, little research has examined how (and if) consumers process information drawn from more than one domain.

The authors investigate two competing hypotheses about how chronic vividness of imagery interacts with the vividness and salience of information in decision making. Results from four studies, covering a variety of decision domains, indicate that chronic imagery vividness rarely amplifies the effects of vivid and salient information. Imagery vividness may, in fact, attenuate the effects of vivid and salient information. This is because, relative to nonvivid imagers, vivid imagers rely less on information that appears obvious and rely more on information that seems less obvious.

Although diffusion models have been successfully used to predict the adoption patterns of new products and technologies, little research has examined the psychological processes underlying the individual consumers adoption decision. This study uses the knowledge transfer paradigm, studied often in the context of analogies, to demonstrate that both existing knowledge and innovation continuity are major factors influencing the consumers adoption process. In two experiments, the authors demonstrate that the relationship between expertise and adoption is relatively complex.

It has been recently suggested that sponsor identification may be biased in favor of prominent brands. All things equal, consumers are more likely to attribute sponsorship to brands that they perceive to be more prominent in the marketplace, such as large-share brands. This article offers additional empirical evidence for this phenomenon and examines the underlying processes. The results of a controlled laboratory experiment replicate the phenomenon and show that this bias arises only when consumers are unable to retrieve the name of the sponsor directly from memory.

In view of the distressingly low rate of success in new product introduction, it is important to identify predictive guidelines early in the new product development process so that better choices can be made and unnecessary costs avoided. In this paper, a framework for early analysis based on the success potential embodied in the product-idea itself and the circumstances of its emergence. Based on two studies reporting actual introductions, several determinants are identified that significantly distinguish successful from unsuccessful new products in the marketplace.

We examine consumers' price sensitivity using a new approach that incorporates probabilistic thresholds for price gains and price losses in the reference price models. We model the threshold as a function of company, competitor and consumer specific factors. Model application to scanner panel data for coffee shows that our model is superior in fit compared to ordinary logit and two existing reference price models.

This paper considers the current thrust in marketing to create global products, brands and strategies but also to "act local" when appropriate. Deciding which elements have similar effects and which are significantly different conceptually requires meta-analysis of each of the elements. Reviews some applications of marketing meta-analysis with a focus on international research.

For almost half a century, researchers have examined consumer knowledge of prices, often with disturbing and conflicting results. Although the general findings suggest that consumer knowledge of prices is poorer than assumed in neoclassical economic theory, significant variations among results exist. The authors synthesize findings from prior studies to determine the impact of research design choices on price recall accuracy measures.