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This paper explores the influence of mental intangibility on the size of the consideration set, for both tangible products and services. The research also examines the moderating effect of purchase involvement and objective knowledge on the set. Two experimental studies were conducted to examine these relations. Overall, the results indicate that mental intangibility positively influences the size of the consideration set, regardless of the offering type (product or service). This effect is stronger in low levels of knowledge. Consumer involvement does not seem to have a moderating effect on this relation. The studies' implications and recommendations for future research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Group marketing uses the psychological mechanisms underlying group influence to drive customer behaviors that are beneficial to the firm. It is predicated on the firm’s ability to guide two necessary and sufficient conditions: (1) a customer’s awareness of an affiliation with the focal group and (2) exposure to group norms. By examining what it means to be affiliated with a group; determining how group norms are inferred, applied, and maintained; and testing a wide variety of ways in which these conditions become manifest, this research demonstrates the theoretical foundations of group marketing. Groups influence purchase behaviors by altering information and identity appraisals during decision making. Time in a purchase domain emerges as a critical determinant of the strength of group influence. Although previous research has suggested that social influence diminishes over time, a longitudinal field study and an experiment reveal that this prediction holds only when information appraisal dominates; an opposite effect arises when identity appraisal dominates. Group efficacy strengthens, but product price weakens, the effects of groups on purchase behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generation and use of customer insight in marketing decisions is poorly understood, partly due to difficulties in obtaining research access and partly because market-based learning theory views knowledge as a fixed asset. However, customer insight takes many forms, arrives at the organisation from increasingly diverse sources and requires more than mere dissemination if it is to be useful. A multiple case study approach is used to explore managerial practices for insight generation and use. Multiple informants from each of four organisations in diverse sectors were interviewed. Findings reveal the importance of value alignment and value monitoring across the insight demand chain, to complement the information processing emphasis of extant research. Within the firm, the study suggests the importance of customer insight conduct practices including insight format, the role of automation and insight shepherding, to complement the much-researched process perspective. The study provides a basis for assessing the effectiveness of insight processes by both practitioners and scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When new products and brands are introduced into other cultures, the speed and extent of the product's acceptance are important concerns for marketers. The spread of positive word of mouth (WOM) and the lack of negative WOM about the product or brand by early adopter groups are critical to the product's successful diffusion in a population. This is the first study to investigate the effects of consumers' cultural values on their WOM behavior. Data analysis from two samples indicates that the pattern, type, and target receivers of consumers' WOM activity depend on their cultural values. The authors use Hofstede's four cultural dimensions to test the effects of cultural values on WOM behavior to social in- and out-groups. They find that all four dimensions have significant effects on WOM engagement to those groups. Although the authors could not determine the causal nature of the relationships because of the sample design used, they argue that marketers should monitor the cultural values of their market to anticipate in- and out-group discussions and the choice of appropriate brand communication strategies in other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many markets, there is likely to be correlation both across periods in terms of the choices of one consumer and across consumers in terms of their choices in each period. The former is caused by consumer heterogeneity, and the latter may be the result of demand common shocks across consumers. Furthermore, if firms partially observe these common shocks, their market decisions may end up being endogenous and correlated with the common shocks. Because researchers cannot typically fully observe consumer heterogeneity and the common shocks, the estimation method must account for the endogeneity of firms' decisions. In this article, the authors present a test for endogeneity under unobserved consumer heterogeneity and common shocks, which is based on a quasi-likelihood estimation method, to estimate the model parameters consistently when endogenous firm behavior, unobserved heterogeneity, and common shocks are present. The test examines the differences in general method of moments coefficient estimates of a model with and without instrumenting for the explanatory variables. The authors show theoretically that in their estimation method, unobserved heterogeneity does not affect the consistency of the parameter estimates, but if it is not accounted for, endogeneity may bias the results. They present estimation results from simulated and scanner panel data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies show that information used to screen alternatives becomes less important than information acquired later in the search process simply because it was used to screen. Experiment 1 shows that the tendency to deemphasize prescreening information leads to systematically different choices for decision makers who screen alternatives compared with decision makers who do not screen alternatives. Additional studies show that screening encourages decision makers to shift their emphasis from prescreening information to postscreening information (Experiment 2). Prescreening information is deemphasized because of the categorization that occurs when people create a consideration set of retained alternatives (Experiments 3 and 4). Together, the results show that a brand's strength of consideration (i.e., how highly an option ranks on screening criteria) may have little influence on the likelihood of it being chosen in a postscreening choice process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines several advantages of using structural modeling for policy evaluations and some of the challenges presented by marketing problems. The authors note that a primary goal of research in marketing is to evaluate and recommend optimal policies for marketing actions. A structural model begins with a view that observed behavior is the outcome of a decision process in which a consumer or firm makes optimal decisions based on a maximization of an objective function subject to resource constraints. All too frequently, researchers in marketing are viewed as net consumers of work from other fields. They also discuss how marketing data are dramatically richer than those in economics in a variety of important ways.

This article addresses the Lucas critique with the idea that economic agents are forward rather than backward looking and adapt their expectations and behavior to new policy. The authors suggest that there are three key requirements for the critique to be relevant, such as economic agents are aware of the policy change, economic agents are motivated to change their behavior as a direct consequence of the policy exchange and economic agents are able to change their behavior. These requirements imply that behavioral changes may be more applicable for models that focus on long-term rather than short-term decisions. There seem to be many research opportunities in substantive marketing areas in which agents can be assumed to be forward looking.

This paper presents the authors' opinion on an article by Bradlow, Hu and Ho (BHH) concerning conjoint research. They assert that BHH properly characterized their proposal as a model of learning. The authors find the model and their work to be appealing in a broad sense because they question the validity of the partial-profile solution. They note that for respondents, inference making is not an option when faced with partial information. In contrast, an enduring issue in inference research pertains to the likelihood that inferences will be generated spontaneously. It would be imprudent to argue that all conjoint responses are devoid of inference. In some models, learning is operationalized in terms of the respondent's ability to predict a criterion value from associated variables.

The author investigates scenario generation and analogical reasoning as potential sources of bias in new product forecasting. In a series of studies, scenarios and analogies are shown to have persistent effects on judgment, despite subsequent use of corrective analytic techniques (e.g., counterfactual reasoning, counterscenarios, counteranalogies, decomposition, accountability). These findings demonstrate the robustness of nonanalytic processes on judgment and the need to be aware of their seductive effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the impact of a new brand extension introduction on choice in a behavioral context using national household scanner data involving multiple brand extensions. Particularly, the authors investigate the reciprocal impact of trial of successful and unsuccessful brand extensions on parent brand choice. In addition, the authors examine the effects of experience with the parent brand on consumers' trial and repeat of a brand extension using household scanner data on six brand extensions from a national panel. In the case of successful brand extensions, the results show positive reciprocal effects of extension trial on parent brand choice, particularly among prior non-users of the parent brand, and consequently on market share. The authors find evidence for potential negative reciprocal effects of unsuccessful extensions. In addition, the study shows that experience with the parent brand has a significant impact on extension trial, but not on extension repeat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors explore whether choice patterns are sensitive to the potential of relevant trade-offs to elicit negative emotion. Across three experiments, decision makers increasingly use a choice strategy that maximizes quality at the expense of some currency (usually price) when the quality attribute is rated as more inherently emotion-laden (Experiment 1) or involves losses rather than gains (Experiments 2 and 3). These emotional trade-off difficulty effects on choice are obtained even after controlling for effects that are attributable to subjects' relative importance weights for the quality versus currency attributes. A fourth experiment validates that tasks requiring losses (versus gains) on quality attributes are assessed as particularly emotion-laden by naive subjects. Overall, it appears that coping with potentially emotion-laden choice trade-offs is one factor influencing consumer choice strategies. Thus, emotional trade-off difficulty is a factor that marketers should consider when attempting to predict and explain consumer choice patterns. These conclusions are consistent with recent research that argues that avoiding or otherwise coping with negative emotion is an important goal that guides decision behavior (e.g., Larrick 1993; Luce, Bettman, and Payne 1997; Simonson 1992). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Viral marketing is used to widely distribute content. To achieve this goal, the basic decision‐making process from content reception to interaction must be clarified. This paper examines the decision‐making process of individuals in viral marketing using a new dynamic model. In addition, this work reviews the existing literature on viral marketing and structures to identify existing issues for further research. The decision‐making process is basically divided into two stages. In the first decision stage, individuals decide whether content should be considered. When individuals agree to view the content, they decide in the second stage whether they want to interact with it. These two decisions are influenced by three factors: the framework conditions, content, and interaction aims. With the help of the decision model, this paper summarizes the most important findings from viral marketing research over the last 20 years. In addition, this work provides new opportunities for further research in the field of viral marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Economica is the property of University of Banja Luka, Faculty of Economics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article reports on a study examining the influence of psychological and physical factors of product performance on customer satisfaction. The authors focus on the relationship between consumer expectations, product performance, and customer satisfaction. The authors illustrates patterns in consumer behavior by proposing purchasing situations related to products and services. The study is intended to help marketing executives make decisions related to project management. It is suggested that marketing personnel use the results of the study to develop promotional copy.

The article reports on the results of a survey study which investigated the issue of consumer reactions to deceptive marketing research practices. It was found that consumers consistently differentiated the ethical acceptability of various questionable techniques. It is said that there is a temptation in the business community to mistake criticism from the general public for mere distrust of business in general. This view is not supported by the study results, which indicate that consumer perceptions of marketing research practices reflect the existence of consistent ethical standards by which businesses are judged.

A new brand choice model that has the capacity to include explanatory variables is described and its use illustrated in an application to a particular brand. In this application, pricing and certain consumer demographics provide an explanation of the purchase behavior for the brand studied. The model provides a good fit to empirical data as well as some important insights for marketing decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chakravarti, Mitchell, and Staelin (CMS) draw a number of conclusions about judgment based models that agree with our field experience. However, we question whether their experiments form an adequate basis for ascribing negative effects to decision calculus models. A key part of the laboratory task is to estimate five model parameters, given between six and 18 observations of a share-advertising time series and no further market information. By contrast, in our field experience a major advantage of decision calculus models is that managers base their calibrations on multiple information sources and detailed knowledge of market and consumer behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the presence of a dynamic marketing decision making environment, there is a need to develop market response models which can adjust automatically to changing data patterns. This paper demonstrates the use of feedback approaches to develop self-adaptive market response models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Methodologies for analysis of industrial marketing decision systems are extended to allow systematic comparisons over decisions and over firms. Three such systems used by two firms to price and plan volumes for the French market are compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the consumer behavior of young people has become of increasing interest to marketing practitioners and public policy makers little empirical data are available to be used in effective decision making. This paper presents an analysis of adolescent consumer behavior and provides empirical data useful in understanding differences among teenage consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors develop a joint estimation approach to segment households on the basis of their response to price and promotion in brand choice, purchase incidence, and purchase quantity decisions. The authors model brand choice (what to buy) by multinomial logit, incidence (whether to buy) by nested logit, and quantity (how much to buy) by poisson regression. Response segments are determined probabilistically using a latent mixture model. The approach simultaneously calibrates sales response on two dimensions: across segments and the three purchase behaviors. The procedure permits market-level sales elasticities to be decomposed by segment and purchase behavior (i.e., choice, incidence, and quantity). The authors apply the approach to scanner panel data for the yogurt category and find substantial differences across segments in the relative impact of the choice, incidence, and quantity decisions on overall sales response to price. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author studies the optimality of advertising pulsing under the assumption that demand follows a discrete and interpretable Markov process and that the advertising budget is constrained. The author develops two main results. First, when pulsing is optimal, the prevalence of advertising effects on switching or repurchasing affects the length of the pulse (shorter versus longer, respectively), as well as the optimal level of advertising. Second, the author identifies the functional forms of the short- and long-term effects of advertising in the discrete Markov process and shows that pulsing can be optimal if the transition probabilities are concave in advertising. As an alternative to a pure Markov carryover (if any), the author considers that carryover effects of advertising also might be caused by accumulation of memory for the advertisement. Although general results are difficult to obtain, the author analyzes one case of the compound dynamics of the Markov process and memory effects for advertising with results similar to the pure Markov process. Similarities and differences with continuous-time models, as well as managerial implications, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of product definition, during which a firm establishes the product specifications, has a vital influence on the success of a product but has attracted little attention from researchers. Conventional wisdom stipulates that a firm should finalize its specifications early in the product development process. However, in industries facing rapid technological change, stiff competition, and uncertain customer needs, specifications set too early could become outdated by the time of market launch, thereby decreasing the product's benefits to the customer. The authors discuss an alternative approach, in which a firm delays commitment to product specifications and finalizes them just in time for the market launch after careful deliberation, thereby benefiting from the evolution of core technologies and customer preferences. Because such an approach introduces new managerial challenges, it would be appropriate only under certain circumstances. The authors develop a simple model of the product definition process that offers insights about how a firm should customize the process to suit its needs. They capture these insights as a managerial framework and illustrate them with industry examples involving the development process for laser printers and network test kits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new approach to inferring hierarchical models of consumer choice is described. A classification algorithm is used to estimate decision trees at an individual level without requiring prior assumptions about tree form. Derived models are analyzed within a modeling system that summarizes the diversity of decision rules in a sample as well as their implications for aggregate market shares. An application to the analysis of panel data and a comparison with disaggregate logit analysis are reported. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Closed-ended contingent valuation surveys are used to assess demands in hypothetical markets and recently have been applied widely to the valuation of (non-market) environmental resources. This interviewing strategy holds considerable promise for mare general market research applications. The authors describe a new maximum likelihood estimation technique far use with these special data. Unlike previously used methods, the estimated models are as easy to interpret as ordinary least squares regression results and the results can be approximated accurately by packaged probit estimation routines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A behavioral simulation in a laboratory setting was used to investigate decision makers' evaluation and use of marketing research results. Propositions about the persistence of the decision makers' prior beliefs under various research design conditions (qualitative interview or quantitative survey, convenience or probability sampling, large or small sample size) were tested. Support for most of the propositions is found, suggesting that research confirming prior beliefs tends to be rated higher and used whereas research contrary to prior beliefs tends to be evaluated as poor and is less likely to be used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals' home choice behaviors are examined at different stages of the choice process by an alternative method measuring the dynamics of the choice process. This new method incorporates information about the decision maker's decision plan in arriving at predictions of subsequent choice behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of a stochastic model of individual buyer behavior relative to a set of gasoline diary panel data is explored. Use of the model for pricing decision making under a set of assumptions about competitive behavior in a market situation is discussed and illustrated through the use of numerical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the results of a study that focuses on identifying patronage motives that may be important in the choice among competing food retail stores. The author focuses on a semantic differential that an outlet's management team can employ to obtain market information on the variables that drive consumers' decision making habits. Ways of evaluating a store's advertising strategy, while taking into consideration competitive behavior within the industry, are recommended. Merchandising components relative to specific consumer groups are analyzed.

Impulse purchasing is an important aspect of customer in-store behavior as discussed in the previous article. The authors of this paper indicate that the concept, as presently employed, has limited usefulness as a basis for marketing decisions. They outline the problems marketers must confront in order to make the unplanned purchasing concept operational for marketing decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Improved retail decisions can result from attempts to measure customer response to price, display store lay-out and other controllable variables. In this article, the author shows how the combination of entrance interviews and direct observation can provide management with more meaningful information from the study of customer in-store behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer decisions are extremely difficult to predict with reasonable accuracy. If they could be predicted, marketing men would be able to initiate changes that would give the consumers more nearly what they desire. This matching of consumer desires and the available supply of products continues to be done largely through trial and error. In order to predict consumer decisions more accurately and thus to satisfy consumer desires, we need available data that adequately express the outcome of previous trial and error solutions. The problem of fully utilizing past experience stems largely from the fact that the outcome of one experience cannot be directly compared with that of another experience. In an effort to make experiences comparable, psychologists have found it useful to simplify past experiences to the point of expressing them in terms of risk and reward. When decisions are reduced to the simple form of risk and reward, there is a large sacrifice of realism. At the same time it enables them to generate synthetically large amounts of decision-making data that hold interest to marketing men. Conclusions are being reached about general risk-taking patterns that appear to exist: people do like to gamble; they do not gamble in a "mathematically correct" way; their willingness to gamble is definitely influenced by certain factors, one of which is the extent to which they are satisfied with their present position (the ratio of past winnings to past losses). We believe that experimental games will contribute significantly to our understanding of consumer decision making. Experimental games offer a promising method of studying the uncertainty consumers feel about reaching goals and obtaining satisfaction. Although the study of experimental games is still in its infancy, we feel sure that taking this approach is a good gamble. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a number of major areas identified by marketing professionals as crucial areas of study in the field. According to the author, pricing and management decisions surrounding price setting is one of the central marketing problem in business at the time of publication. The author notes pricing strategies such as the basing point method and price fixing. Another major issue highlighted by the author is the problem of surplus farm products. Other areas labeled for further study include consumer buying habits, attitudes and motivation, as well as trends in distribution costs.

motivational researchers sought to uncover unconscious motives for consumers' purchases, lately marketers have been more concerned with the rational methods people use to process marketing information. One application of the cognitive structure approach has been to use the relationships among various product attributes or values to predict a person's attitudes toward a particular brand or product This study tested the proposition that because of differential expectancies about information flow, decision makers and non-decision makers process information differently. Specifically, this study explored the applicability of cognitive tuning theory in explaining such differences, since the theory posits that people activate different cognitive structures under different conditions of anticipating dealing with information. The findings of this study have particular implications for industrial marketing since they provide some insight into the role of expectation in buyer-seller interaction-a factor ignored by most industrial purchasing models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative factors influence media selection. This review article attempts to identify and group these factors. Sources of measurement data on these factors are identified and techniques are suggested for obtaining that measurement data presently not provided by syndicated data gatherers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows that regional fears, jealousies, and animosities constitute invisible barriers to increased trade within CACM, and that the attitude toward the people of a given country is a factor in existing preconceptions regarding the products of that country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Prior research in ingredient branding (IB) has identified several important decision variables consumers use when evaluating IB alliances. This exploratory research aims to investigate the relationship between these variables and consumers’ buying likelihood of the IB alliance and the relative importance of these variables for low- vs high-involvement product categories.Design/methodology/approach A study with the participation of 458 mTurkers was conducted and the data were analyzed using random forests.Findings Findings reveal relative importance of different variables for an IB alliance and that these differ for low- vs high-involvement categories.Research limitations/implications Being exploratory in nature, this research has several limitations, such as using only one high- and one low-involvement categories.Practical implications Results of this research will help brand managers as they make decisions entering an IB alliance as well as with investing their budget on different aspects of their brand, and tailoring their marketing activities for low- vs high-involvement product categories.Originality/value To the best of authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to discuss the relative importance of different decision variables in an IB context empirically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses importance-performance analysis, a method used to determine the effectiveness and consumer acceptance of marketing programs. According to the author, marketers must first identify the key features of their marketing mix, using methods such as personal interviews, focus groups and managerial judgment. The author notes that importance measures and performance should be kept separate from one another. Also noted is the ability the of importance-performance to bring marketer's attention to aspects of a marketing program that need improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article contains the author's reply to a criticism of his article "Consumer Store Images and Store Loyalties," published in the October 1973 issue. It is suggested that most of the comments and corrections made in the criticism were unfounded. The author discusses alleged inefficiencies that exist within a raw store image measurement method proposed in the criticism. A multivariate technique used by the authors of the criticism is also examined and rejected. The author references the document "Research for Marketing Decisions," by Donald S. Tull and Paul E. Green to further his argument.

Results of controlled-store studies do not necessarily represent true consumer behavior. The controlled-store study reported here of sales of experimental beef cuts, shows that findings may be biased by the store or stores selected for an experiment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]