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Online shoppers are taking longer to research their purchases, according to a study of consumer behavior across 32 large online retailers. Rather than buy on impulse, they first use the Web to gather information and compare prices. The finding was reported by NetElixir, a firm that helps retailers acquire customers online. NetElixir found that, before purchase, the average consumer was repeatedly clicking on its clients' search ads, the advertisements that accompany search results. That behavior signals that the consumers are running repeated searches in the same product category. Such clicks are up about 15 percent from two years ago, and consumers are taking about 12 percent longer from first click to final purchase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-definition televisions have entered American homes with startling speed; 56 percent of households now have at least some HD channels and an HD set, according to Nielsen. Among consumer technologies, that speed of adoption is rivaled only by the VCR. But the average television viewer is still unlikely to watch television in high definition. One reason is that people watch some standard channels on their HD sets. But a more important reason for the low HD viewing rate is that most homes have several televisions, of which the HD set is only one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When a new consumer product comes to market, both its brand name and its marketing tag line are the fruit of intense research. Consumers generally realize slogans are a marketer's attempt to hawk a product, and they unconsciously respond by doing the opposite of what the slogan urges, according to a study to be published next year in The Journal of Consumer Research. But they do not take the same skeptical view of brand names, and are likely to act in accordance with the brand's ''persona.'' Thus, in one experiment, students who had been ''accidentally'' exposed to brand names associated with thrift, like Wal-Mart and the Dollar Store, tended to act more miserly, in a hypothetical situation, than they otherwise would have. But exposure to thrifty slogans, like ''Saving keeps you going'' or ''The best deals are always here,'' had the opposite effect, driving the students to spend more. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Researchers have known for 80 years about a symbolic connection between speech and size: back-of-the-mouth vowels like the ''o'' in ''two'' make people think of large sizes, whereas people associate front-of-the-mouth vowels like ''ee'' with diminutiveness. Marketers can use this effect to make consumers think a discount is bigger or smaller than it truly is, according to a study soon to be published in The Journal of Consumer Research by Keith Coulter of Clark University and Robin Coulter of the University of Connecticut. In one experiment, researchers told consumers the regular and sale prices of a product, asked them to repeat the sale price to themselves, and then, a few minutes later, told them to estimate the size of the discount in percentage terms. Products with ''small-sounding'' sale prices (like $2.33) seemed like better deals than products with ''big-sounding'' sales prices (like $2.22). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Retailers fear, with reason, the vengeful consumer. Angry customers, if not assuaged, can post complaints online, or even create Web sites denouncing the guilty party. A study soon to be published in the Journal of Consumer Research studies the psychology of consumer revenge. In one experiment, the researchers spent eight weeks observing 172 angry consumers who posted complaints at Ripoff Report and ConsumerAffairs.com. Most customers reported over time that their desire for revenge against the companies decreased. But for previously loyal customers, the desire for revenge was replaced with a strong desire to avoid the offending business in the future. Casual customers did not feel the same desire for avoidance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Psychologists recognize that certain behaviors can be automatic. For example, unrecognized external stimuli can unconsciously stir us to anger, spur us to loyalty or incite us to rudeness without our knowing it. A new study finds that seeing food ads on television can induce people to eat more snacks while watching. In one experiment, conducted by researchers from the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, 118 children, ages 7 to 11, were each given bowls of Goldfish crackers and then left to watch a 14-minute cartoon. During the commercial breaks, some of the children saw ads for games and entertainment; others watched four spots for unhealthy snacks like waffle sticks with syrup, fruit roll-ups and potato chips. The children who saw the food spots ate 45 percent more Goldfish than those who watched the game commercials. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It should be simple to unsubscribe from a company's e-mail list: follow the link, and click the button. But, in reality, that click sets off a cascade of actions behind the scenes. First, the user's e-mail address joins a suppression list, and then the marketer's software compares the list with a queue of e-mail messages to be sent, sometimes stacked several days deep. Often, that process goes awry. In August, Return Path, a provider of software and services, unsubscribed from e-mail lists belonging to 46 large consumer brands including Disney, Tiffany and Priceline. The company found that more than a quarter of the companies were still sending out messages three days after it had asked to be unsubscribed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Can consumers tell the difference between a five-megapixel photo and a humble one-megapixel shot? Is sunscreen with an SPF of 30 twice as effective as 15-SPF? Consumers lean heavily on product specifications in choosing what to buy -- but a paper recently published in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that such numbers are easily manipulated, and often uninformative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Readers of Sunday newspapers are more likely than other Americans to use coupons, according to a survey released recently by Scarborough Research, which measures consumer shopping habits. The survey found Sunday papers continue to be the most popular source of coupons: 53 percent of households clip coupons from the Sunday newspaper, as opposed to 35 percent from advertisements that arrive in the mail, the next most popular source. Only 11 percent of households regularly look to the Internet for coupons, up from 6 percent in 2005, the study found, though the Internet is proportionally the fastest-growing source of coupons. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents information on findings of a consumer research by the "Journal of Consumer Research" showing money spent by people on their shopping. The findings show that $6.68 is the average amount spent by shoppers who think about their wallets. $9.09 is the average amount spent by shoppers who think about their financial accounts.

The article focuses on a paper published in the "Journal of Consumer Research," which examined people's responses to sale prices for fictional items. The paper focused on people's reactions towards differing right-hand digits in prices figures. The paper was authored by two professors, Keith S. Coulter of Clark University and Robin A. Coulter of the University of Connecticut.

The article focuses on a paper that was published in the "Journal of Marketing," according to which, discounts make customers expect the product for less. The paper compared two kinds of discounts to analyze which one performed better at keeping consumers' future price expectations high. It was found that both of them were equally effective at inducing people to buy.

The article focuses on the effects of self-restraint on impulse buying with special reference to a research published in an article in "The Journal of Consumer Research." The research revealed that average sum spent by college students after undergoing an experiment in self-control was higher as compared to the average sum spent by those students not having exercised self-control.

The article presents information on a study related to co-relation between increasing prices and marketability of all-in-one products. The study, titled "Jack-of-All-Trades or Master of One?," which is to be published in "The Journal of Consumer Research" found that if all-in-one products are more expensive, consumers will go for specialized products only.

The article offers information on the impact of advertising on people. According to a research, published in the December 2006 issue of the "Journal of Consumer Research," people are more receptive to happy advertising after buying some products at a discount. It shows that 49.1% consumers yielded to the temptation of advertisements while 63.6% resisted. This kind of research could be useful to online retailers.

The article states that according to a paper that appeared in the October 2006 issue of the "Journal of Consumer Research," people who get a bad deal on an hotel room are more reluctant to go shopping than those paying the same price for a good room. Professor Robert J. Meyer, of the University of Pennsylvania and one of the authors of the paper, said that when one sees a price is unexpectedly low they have this positive prime of feeling flush.

Reports on developments related to business in the U.S. Result of the study conducted by the online marketing research company Intelliseek Inc. regarding the behavior of ad-skippers or people who avoid advertisements on television or Internet; Unemployment rate for the month of September 2005; Performance of the ISM Manufacturing Index.