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Although consumers do not usually take kindly to price increases, their perceptions of fairness of price increases are contingent on relevant factors. This study investigates consumers' perceptions of the fairness of retail price increase by a domestic versus a foreign brand, as moderated by consumers' ethnocentricity, bias toward inferring a profit motive from a price increase (i.e., “profit stickiness”), and relevant contextual information. Over the course of two sets of experiments, the authors find that ethnocentricity does not necessarily lead to the intuitively expected favorable (unfavorable) bias toward (against) a domestic (foreign) brand's decision to raise prices, subject to profit stickiness and contextual information. These findings have implications for theory, practice, and further research.

Based on recalculations of effect size (Cohen's d) and confidence intervals around these estimates (ESC forthcoming) re-interpret some of the findings from our 2011 Journal of Business Research article (Dutta and Pullig 2011). In response, we critique two aspects of P&S's conclusions, the use of ES&CI in a dichotomous nature and the assumed superiority of the ES&CI approach. In addition, we discuss the implications of the ES&CI results for the substantive domain of our research and findings. Specifically, the ES&CI results do not “overturn” our conclusions, but indicate that for two variables our results should be considered tentative while for two variables the ES&CI approach leads to similar conclusions. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the larger debate between reporting traditional null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST), ES&CI, or both in behavioral research in marketing and business-related disciplines.

Brand crises are adverse events that threaten brand reputations. Research indicates that corporate responses to crises play a role in restoring brand equity. However, there is confusion as to the best type of response. On the one hand, there is a strong advocacy for a singular type of response strategy, corrective action, regardless of the crisis type, while on the other, there is support for a contingency-based view suggesting that the relative efficacy of responses depends on other factors. We contribute to this contingency-based view by comparing the efficacy of three major response strategies (denial, reduction-of-offensiveness and corrective action) in restoring post-crisis brand confidence and choice likelihood. We find that the relative effectiveness of response strategies depends on the nature of the brand crisis. Consequently, a “one type fits all” strategy for post-crisis responses can be suboptimal. We discuss the implications of our findings and provide directions for future research.

In this research we distinguish between ads that compare two different brands (Across-Brand Comparison or ABC ads) and those that compare different versions of the same brand (Within-Brand Comparison or WBC ads). Results from an experiment indicate that when comparative ads use attributes that are relevant to product performance, ad type and brand image interact such that an ABC ad leads to less favorable consumer perceptions than a WBC ad when image of the sponsor brand is low but not when it is high. However, when the ads use attributes that are irrelevant to product performance an ABC ad leads to less favorable consumer outcomes than a WBC ad, regardless of the image of the sponsor brand. We further propose and show that ad believability mediates these effects. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed and directions for future research are provided.

Low price signals (LPS), pricing tools where retailers promise to match or beat competitors' prices, have been increasingly popular in offline and online markets. We compare consumer evaluation of offline and online LPS as a function of how deeply they process the signals. Results of an experiment indicate that regardless of retail media consumers accept an LPS as an indicator of low price when they do not elaborate sufficiently on the signal. However, at high levels of elaboration, consumers challenge the assumptions underlying their acceptance of the signal at lower levels of elaboration whereby they become more skeptical of an online signal than an offline signal resulting in lower efficacy of the former. Implications of these findings for consumer vulnerability to false low price signaling are discussed along with other theoretical and managerial implications. Additionally, directions for future research are provided.