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This study investigates broad versus specific levels of perceived variety seeking when choosing a vacation destination. In general, consumers use two criteria to evaluate where to vacation: the novelty of the destination relative to their current place and the potential variety of activities offered. Consumers’ perception about these criteria is regulated at a broad level through spatial distance information, and at a specific level through activity information. Findings from experiments indicate that people prefer taking vacations to distant (vs. close) places. However, when both types of vacation information are available, people prefer a destination with more activities regardless of spatial distance. Process evidence suggests that analytic (vs. holistic) information processing and variety seeking at a specific (vs. broad) level drive the findings.

Many older people who have emigrated from Vietnam to the United States continue to use the traditional medicines that they used in their country of origin. Clinicians trained in the West may not be familiar with these products. We reviewed 6 Asian traditional medicines that are popular among older Vietnamese people living in the United States. Each medicine has significant side effects that can lead to complications in patients undergoing surgery. Here, we present the case of a patient who used Cordyceps sinensis daily as a tonic and experienced prolonged bleeding after dental surgery.

The branding literature assumes that the higher a brand's equity, the greater is its behavioral loyalty. In this research, we develop a conceptual framework that explains the off-diagonal relationship between brand equity and behavioral loyalty (i.e., high equity but poor loyalty and vice versa) by identifying five shopper marketing related factors that potentially moderate this relationship. We adopt a multi-method approach by mailing surveys to collect shoppers' attitudinal data on brand equity and the moderators for ten brands in two product categories, and then merging it with each household's corresponding purchase data from a frequent shopper scanner panel to empirically test our framework. Findings reveal that approximately 40% of consumers exhibit high brand equity but low behavioral loyalty or vice versa. The relationship between brand equity and behavioral loyalty is accentuated by perceived in-store presence and importance of brand choice decision, and attenuated by the brand equity of competitors. Our findings provide several implications for retailers and brand manufacturers.

Supplemental material, APPENDIX_A for Variety-Seeking Behavior and Information Processing in Choosing a Vacation Destination by JungHwa (Jenny) Hong and Kalpesh Kaushik Desai in Journal of Travel Research

The current research investigates the interactive influence of self-construal and product feature centrality on product judgment tasks. Feature centrality refers to the extent to which a feature is integral to the product concept and its network of correlated features, and contributes to the coherence of the product’s conceptual representation. While the categorization literature suggests that central features (versus less central features) are weighted more when consumers make judgments about a product, across two studies we find such effect is bounded by individuals’ self-construal. In particular, whereas independent consumers, adopting an analytical thinking style, rely more on central features than less central features in product categorization and evaluations, interdependent consumers, employing a holistic thinking style, use both features to form their judgments.

Prior ingredient branding research has examined the influence of “stated” factors such as fit between partner brands on composite product (e.g., Tide with Downy fabric softener) attitudes. This research focuses on choice of composite products, and addresses three managerially relevant questions: Which consumer segments are more likely to adopt the composite product? Will the choice of the composite product have positive or negative reciprocal effects on partner brands? Will the introduction of the composite product benefit the primary or the secondary brand more? The authors use a brand choice model to investigate the “revealed” choice of complements-based composite products. Study results indicate that (i) despite high fit between the composite product and the primary brand, consumer segments may have different choice likelihoods for these products, whereas prior research suggests equal likelihood; (ii) the choice of a composite product may not provide a positive reciprocal effect to the secondary brand; and (iii) the introduction of a composite product may benefit the primary brand more than the secondary brand, whereas prior research suggests a symmetrical benefit for the partner brands. Finally, the finding that introducing a composite product may not cannibalize the sale of the primary brand extends the ingredient branding literature, which has been silent on this issue.

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to address an important gap in identity research – how does consumer identity affect satisfaction following an unambiguous product experience. Design/methodology/approach – Two experiments were conducted involving a product experience scenario and a service recovery encounter. Findings – Study results demonstrate that experience valence moderates the impact of identity on customer satisfaction. Specifically, we find that identity improves satisfaction with a positive (but does not increase dissatisfaction with a negative) experience, and this effect arises via enhanced performance perceptions under positive experience rather than expectations. Research limitations/implications – Our research investigates whether the prior research argument that identity is a powerful and “sticky” source of brand evaluation is robust to product experience. Specifically, we extend the disconfirmation paradigm of satisfaction by identifying identity as a driver of satisfaction and by testing whether identity effects emerge via biased perceptions of performance or altered expectations. Practical implications – Our findings offer interesting managerial implications in terms of using identity marketing to enhance customer satisfaction with positive experiences and to increase the effectiveness of recovery from brand failures, but identity marketing cannot shield a brand from negative product experience. Originality/value – To our knowledge, this research is first to demonstrate the joint effects of identity and experience information on satisfaction using two different identities and settings.

This research marries scanner panel choice data of consumers in single member households to their survey-based perception data and draws upon behavioral and modeling research to contribute to the variety seeking literature. It presents a new consumer-based measure of choice variety based on inter-product similarity perceptions and illustrates that others-based (i.e., researchers, managers, and retailers) measures of choice variety such as number of brand switches underestimate choice variety. Moreover, incorporating the consumer-based measure instead of others-based measures in latent class models improves their efficiency of classifying households into high versus low variety seeking. The consumer-based measure of choice variety is valid in terms of its positive relationship with consumer's intrinsic or trait-based variety seeking tendency. Theoretical (market structure, consideration set) and managerial implications (targeting of price promotions to reduce spending, product design, cross-price elasticity) of the findings are offered.

We examine whether the consumer trait of exploratory buying behavior tendencies (EBBT; Baumgartner, H., and Steenkamp, J.E.M. (1996). Exploratory consumer buying behavior: Conceptualization and measurement. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 13, 121–137.) can influence even choices made for others. The results of three experiments in a gift-giving context show that high (vs. low) EBBT individuals have greater salience of hedonic search motives and consequently form more diverse consideration sets while purchasing a gift. Further, when working with a specific gift budget, high EBBT consumers are more likely to diversify their gift choices by buying a greater number of relatively lower-priced gift items. We also find that the effects of the EBBT trait are significantly attenuated when the regulatory focus of the person making the gift decision is one of prevention rather than promotion. Discussion focuses on implications and future research directions regarding the relationship between exploratory buying behavior tendencies and consumer decision-making.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the informational role played by an intermediary in the service industry.Design/methodology/approachThe paper used survey and choice data collected from agents and customers, respectively, in the hotel industry.FindingsThe paper shows that informational role of agents in choice varies from mere facilitation of the transaction (e.g. making reservation) to a more active role involving accurate predictions about attributes that consumers will perceive important, more realistic performance evaluation of choice options and providing information about experience attributes. The results also show how an agent's role depends on customer's prior knowledge about the choice options, the goal underlying service consumption (e.g. business vs vacation travel), benefits sought by the consumer and the agent's perception about a long term relationship with the consumer. Finally, the results also reveal a unique pattern of differences between agents and consumers in the perceived importance and performance ratings of various features of the service.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is limited to agents in the hotel industry. The hypotheses should be tested on other service agent industries such as airlines and restaurants. Future research should consider other alternative sources of information that consumers may use, such as printed material.Originality/valueThe unique nature of the data set – that is, information from the agent as well as the consumer on the same transaction – offers a great opportunity to study the two different points of view and test some hypothesis regarding the degree to which the players understand each other.

Four studies, using chronic and situational self-construal, supported the proposition that individualists (collectivists) focus on within-category richness (between-category differentiation). Collectivists judged paired products as less similar than individualists did, but only at the higher level of a category hierarchy (studies 1 and 2). Further, collectivists were more context driven in product ratings in a categorization task (study 3). Study 4 focused on high-level pairs and found that under high involvement, chronic self-construal dominated judgments. Under low involvement, chronic and situational construals interacted: individualists (collectivists) were less (more) amenable to the situational construal. Implications for self-construal and categorization research are discussed.

This research investigates if commitment towards a target brand limits set size and preference towards competing brands in memory-based consideration sets across three situations: (1) situations in which the situational goal matches the benefit offered by the target brand; (2) situations in which the situational goal matches the benefit offered by a competitor brand; and (3) situations in which a new benefit is introduced in the category for the first time. Findings confirm the set size and preference biases of committed consumers against a competitor brand in the first two situations. However, in the third situation, committed consumers favorably or unfavorably view the competitor brand depending on whether it is the first brand to introduce the new benefit in the category. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The contribution of this research lies in the use of real-world data to test several hypotheses about the role of two signals—sequels and advertising expenditures—in the motion picture industry. The authors analyze the data with a dynamic simultaneous-equations model of the drivers and the interrelationships of the behaviors of movie audiences, studios, and exhibitors. Specifically, the authors test for the attenuating role of third-party information sources, such as critics' review consensus and cumulative word of mouth, on the strength of the two aforementioned signals. The authors find evidence of such an effect both at the release phase across movies and over the postrelease phase for any movie. Notably, they hypothesize and show that sequels and advertising expenditures have a positive interaction effect on box office revenues. This is an important finding because though most firms use multiple signals for their products, empirical work on the interaction of two or more signals is rare. This study offers several new and interesting empirical insights into the market dynamics of the motion picture industry.

Academic research pertaining to the marketing of cultural products such as Broadway shows, books, music, and movies has identified a product’s genre (or type), star power, and critics’ reviews as important factors influencing the market performance of an individual product. Prior research, however, has not investigated the joint influences of these factors. The current study extends previous research by empirically investigating the managerially relevant interactive influences of these factors within the context of the motion-picture industry. For example, should producers of more familiar genre movies, such as dramas and comedies, feature popular, but expensive, stars? Real-world data from two distinct time periods are used to test the hypotheses. The findings are consistent across the two time periods and reveal that for more familiar genre movies, star power and the valence of critics’ reviews have less impact on the movie’s performance in the market. In contrast, for the less familiar genre movies, stronger (vs. weaker) star power and more (vs. less) positive reviews have positive influence on the market performance. Further, for movies with less star power, the valence of critics’ reviews has no impact on the performance. In contrast, for movies with greater star

This research investigates how consumers form an overall store price image (OSPI) of grocery stores. Whereas prior research on this topic has explored the influence of the number of products offered at lower prices and of the magnitude of such price reduction, this study addresses the following two questions: How do the (lower) prices offered on different types of products influence OSPI? Does such influence vary across consumers, and, if so, how? A general framework of product-price saliency on consumers' OSPI is developed and tested. Specifically, based on two product-related factors—consumption span (length of time required to finish the consumption of a standard unit of the product) and unit price, grocery-store products are classified into four exhaustive and mutually exclusive product groups, and the relationship between OSPI and group-level price perceptions across the four product groups is examined. The framework also examines to what extent this relationship is moderated by consumers' shopping-basket size. Consistent with the proposed framework, this research finds strong empirical evidence of a systematic but differential relationship between OSPI and product group-level price perceptions and also a systematic interaction effect with consumers' basket size. The findings help to identify focal product categories across distinct consumer segments and thus hold important strategic implications for category management and target marketing that are likely to increase the overall effectiveness of retail promotional strategies. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

How do consumers perceive new product variants that are positioned on atypical attributes? The authors investigate the joint effects of three factors? brand familiarity, retail shelf display, and consumer goal orientation. The study focuses on snack foods positioned on the atypical attribute of low fat. There are three main findings. First, although high (vs. low) brand familiarity causes relatively unfavorable perceptions on the positioning attribute, it also creates sufficiently favorable perceptions on another determinant attribute, product taste, resulting in a net positive effect for brand equity on purchase likelihood. Second, goal-based versus taxonomic shelf display (i.e., placement with health foods vs. regular snack foods) results in relatively negative perceptions on the positioning attribute, yet more favorable buying intentions. Finally, more (vs. less) health-oriented consumers rate such product variants less favorably on fat content but more favorably on product taste; the former segment is also more likely to buy such product variants.

A decision of increasing importance is how ingredient attributes that make up a product should be labeled or branded, if at all. The authors conduct a laboratory experiment to consider how ingredient branding affects consumer acceptance of a novel line extension (or one that has not been introduced before) as well as the ability of the brand to leverage that ingredient to introduce future category extensions. The authors study two particular types of novel line extensions or brand expansions: (1) slot-filler expansions, in which the level of one existing product attribute changes (e.g., a scent in Tide detergent that is new to the laundry detergent category) and (2) new attribute expansions, in which an entirely new attribute or characteristic is added to the product (e.g., cough relief liquid added to Life Savers candy). The authors examine two types of ingredient branding strategies by branding the target attribute ingredient for the brand expansion with either a new name as a self-branded ingredient (e.g., Tide with its own EverFresh scented bath soap) or an established, well-respected name as a cobranded ingredient (e.g., Tide with Irish Spring scented bath soap). The results indicate that with slot-filler expansions, a cobranded ingredient facilitates initial expansion acceptance, but a self-branded ingredient leads to more favorable subsequent category extension evaluations. With more dissimilar new attribute expansions, however, a cobranded ingredient leads to more favorable evaluations of both the initial expansion and the subsequent category extension. The authors offer interpretation, implications, and limitations of the findings, as well as directions for further research.

Prior research has examined the composition of memory-based consideration sets in usage situations in terms of the specific products included in them. To shed more light on how much effort it would take consumers to choose from a memory-set and how difficult it would be for a product to enter or remain in that set, this research examines the composition of memory-sets in terms of their descriptive characteristics: stability, or how consistent the set is across similar situations; size, or how large the set is; variety, or how distinct the products within the set are; and preference dispersion, or how equal the preferences are toward the set products. To pinpoint the specific elements of usage situations that influence these properties and to address the limitation of inconsistent operationalizations of usage situations both within and across prior studies, this research operationalized usage situations in terms of two key elements: usage occasion and usage location. Results of two studies using 32 situations that varied on occasion and location familiarities in two replicate product classes revealed that memory-sets of more familiar occasions had lower stability, larger size, and marginally greater variety. Similarly, sets of more familiar locations portrayed lower stability than those of less familiar locations, as well as set variety equal to those of less familiar locations. Finally, the underlying explanation of the above results, the process of forming memory-sets—direct retrieval of items from memory in more familiar situations and use of situation goals in less familiar situations—was also confirmed.

Marketing practitioners seem to have become more intrigued with and informed about complex emotional motives for consumption than academicians. Using affective persuasion strategy to help brands achieve their strategic objectives of acquiring, developing, and retaining customers is one area in which the above statement is likely to be true and is the focus of this article. Review of the extant literature and examples from the real world are discussed to support this argument. Next, drawing on the literature on affect- vs. cognition-based attitudes, a set of propositions are presented that not only examine the conditions under which affect- compared to cognition-based persuasion strategy helps brands achieve the above three strategic objectives but also delineate the influence of using affect- compared to cognition-based persuasion strategy on various outcome measures related to each of the three strategic objectives.

Some food items that are commonly considered unhealthy also tend to elicit impulsive responses. The pain of paying in cash can curb impulsive urges to purchase such unhealthy food products. Credit card payments, in contrast, are relatively painless and weaken impulse control. Consequently, consumers are more likely to buy unhealthy food products when they pay by credit card than when they pay in cash. Results from four studies support these hypotheses. Analysis of actual shopping behavior of 1,000 households over a period of 6 months revealed that shopping baskets have a larger proportion of food items rated as impulsive and unhealthy when shoppers use credit or debit cards to pay for the purchases (study 1). Follow-up experiments (studies 2–4) show that the vice-regulation effect of cash payments is mediated by pain of payment and moderated by chronic sensitivity to pain of payment. Implications for consumer welfare and theories of impulsive consumption are discussed.