Search results

The majority of past studies on the physical store environment have focused on the impacts of distinct store environmental cues like music, crowding and décor on consumers' responses. However, recent research posits that consumer is more likely to experience several cues in a combination, rather than in isolation, i.e. different categories of store environmental cues are likely to impact consumer psychology holistically. Hence, our study aims to identify the relevant factors of store atmospheric cues impacting consumer's attitude in physical retail store context and validate scales to measure such factors.

This research develops and validates psychometrically reliable scales to measure two broad store stimuli factors namely: attractive and facilitating store stimuli, following the scale development method suggested by Churchill (1979).

The study shows that attractive store stimuli predict affective and sensory store brand experiences. The facilitating store stimuli moderate the effects of attractive store stimuli on affective and sensory store brand experiences. Affective and sensory store brand experiences predict store satisfaction.

This research contributes to the existing body of store ambience research by empirically understanding the psychological mechanism through which customers perceive different store cues holistically leading to the elicitation of store satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of atmospherics in the creation of an hedonic retail experience by comparing the perceived differences between a retail environment attempting to provide an hedonic experience and one with a more utilitarian focus.

A qualitative methodology was employed, using protocol analysis and in‐depth semi‐structured interviews that were conducted with ten participants.

The paper highlights several atmospheric cues and their influence on the hedonic retail experience. The first category of cues – attractive stimuli – were those cues that attracted attention, exciting the participant and eliciting approach behaviours. The second category – facilitating stimuli – included those cues that were necessary in order to facilitate product engagement.

The paper provides a broad categorisation of atmospheric cues, providing factors that shop designers can be aware of when creating a store with the hedonic experience in mind.

The importance of influencer marketing is constantly growing. However, little empirical research has examined influencers’ success requirements. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring whether the requirements of influencers’ attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness are relevant for online influencer campaigns. An entry-level luxury fashion brand is the focus of the experiment.

A total of 288 participants completed an online survey evaluating the profiles of influencers who varied in terms of the three abovementioned requirements. The impacts of these requirements on brand image, brand satisfaction and brand trust as well as purchase intention and price premium were tested via structural equation modeling.

The results show that the most important requirement is trustworthiness, followed by attractiveness; surprisingly, the relevance of expertise is virtually nil.

To date, practitioners are still struggling with the success requirements of influencer marketing. They have focused on traditional advertising models and numeric requirements such as the amount of followers. However, regarding merely these requirements can result in wrong decisions. Considering the two requirements, attractiveness and trustworthiness, in a stronger way can provide a remedy to this struggle. In future research, the relevance of the requirements in different involvement conditions and for non-attractiveness-related products might be investigated.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to explore the success requirements that are directly related to influencers (e.g. attractiveness) rather than numeric requirements of their profiles (e.g. page rank) and the impacts of those requirements on brand image, brand satisfaction and brand trust as well as purchase intention and price premium. It adapts the Source-Credibility Model for influencers and shows that its requirements interact in a unique way that is counterintuitive and different from other endorser types such as celebrities or salespersons.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of destination images on tourists’ behavioral intention to select a destination for their next vacation. Most of previous studies investigated this relationship by interacting with tourists during their stay in the destination. However, this research examines the impact of destination images before tourists visit a destination, using functional technological-oriented magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) approach to track brain activation during the decision to select a destination.

The proposed model is adopted from the theory of planned behavior. Study participants divide a set of hotel destination images into two groups: attractive and non-attractive destination images. A blocked design experiment was used during fMRI scan to track brain activities resulting from presenting the two groups of images to participants, and record the strength of their intention to visit the attractive destination.

The level of brain activation at the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) increased when participants were asked to assess the attractive destination images compared with the level of activation for non-attractive ones. Also, the positive attitude toward an attractive destination led to higher intention to visit that destination.

This study enhances the authors’ understanding of how tourists analyze destination images to reach a decision on future action. It can also be used to help destination managers define an advertisement strategy that makes their destination more attractive.

Although the literature reports considerable research on destination image and its influence on tourists intention, this is the first exploratory study to use the fMRI technology to investigate tourists’ attitude toward destination images.

This study investigates whether colors red or blue in financial disclosure documents (Key Investor Information Documents – KIIDs) affect attention distribution toward the visual stimulus and the perception of financial attractiveness of the products.

In order to observe and measure financial consumers' visual attention, the unobtrusive methodology of eye-tracking is used on a sample of nonprofessional investors, applying an ecological protocol, through a cross-sectional design.

Financial information processing and visual attention distribution are influenced by the color of the KIID document, as red seems to attract attention, proxied by gazing behavior, more than blue. Red color, compared to blue, is also observed to push investors to rate the products as less financially attractive, especially when the product Risk Reward Profile is high.

The findings highlight the role of the basic visual properties of documents conveying financial information, prompting to investigate the unconscious and automatic mechanisms of individual's attention and its influence on decision making.

Using the eye-tracking tool, this study bridges neuroscience, color research, marketing and finance and provides new knowledge on the underlying neural mechanisms of financial consumers' behavior.

In order to deepen our understanding of contemporary social structures, we must often trace their distant origins in our evolutionary past. The origins of two structures are analyzed here. Both religion and collective ascription are shaped in part by a common imperative to access rewarding emotional arousal release protected by a special set of arouser screening rules. Only certain enhanced arousers with an attractive ratio of contrast values to access costs can regularly tap these emotional reservoirs. In these two cases, it is the larger social group context that must supply the enhancements. The result is that some group processes are marked by emotional dynamics deeply rooted in the pursuit of these extraordinary arousers.

Extending research on cultural differences in aesthetic appreciation, the purpose of this paper is to show how a more interdependent self-construal, a cultural and individual difference variable related to one’s social self, impacts the influence of visual harmony on consumer evaluations of marketing artifacts’ attractiveness.

Data were obtained via three studies from a total of 1,498 consumers in Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, and Italy. Marketing visuals included the design of products, packages, typefaces, and logos. Self-construal was both measured and manipulated.

The results indicate that a person’s self-construal moderates the effect of visual harmony on attractiveness. Specifically, the positive effect of visual harmony on attractiveness – through self-congruity – is more pronounced with consumers possessing a more interdependent self-construal, and with products that are more hedonic than utilitarian.

Given the pivotal role attractiveness has in influencing consumer behavior, understanding what differences, at the individual and cultural levels, impact the harmony-attractiveness relationship helps marketers to better match the visual design of marketing stimuli to target audiences.

This study is among the first to show how the social-self impacts consumer response to marketing visuals. Further, value stems from adopting a holistic perspective on design, clarifying the process mechanism, and identifying boundary conditions.

There are numerous design principles that can guide strategic decisions and determine good product design. One principle that has received considerable attention in the literature is the MAYA principle, which suggests that consumers seek a balance of typicality and novelty in products. The purpose of this paper is to test the MAYA principle specific to various categories of apparel. By drawing from the MAYA principle as a two-factor theory, the effects of specific aesthetic properties (i.e. typicality and novelty) of apparel products on consumer response were examined.

An experimental design in three phases was implemented.

Results revealed that typicality is the primary predictor of aesthetic preference relative to pants and jackets, while both typicality and novelty are significant predictors of aesthetic preference relative to shirts, suggesting that the MAYA principle better explains aesthetic preference relative to shirts.

Understanding consumers’ reactions to product design provides potential value for academics as well as practitioners.

Consideration of both aesthetic properties is needed when implementing the MAYA principle in apparel design.

Although studies have examined the MAYA principle relative to consumer products, few have examined how the principle operates relative to apparel products. The definition of a design principle, such as the MAYA principle, assumes that the logic proposed should apply to all types of products. Yet, this empirical study reveals that this is not the case when applied across different apparel categories.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how customers derive value (functional, emotional, social and epistemic value) from the design aesthetics of mobile banking applications and then form intention to adopt mobile banking. Furthermore, this research investigates the moderating effect of happiness, which is predicted – and showed – to strengthen the effects of design aesthetics on value.

A survey using screenshots of mobile banking applications was administered to a sample of 281 bank customers. Data were analysed using SmartPLS.

The results show that design aesthetics have a positive effect on functional, emotional, social and epistemic value. In turn, these value dimensions positively affect intention to adopt mobile banking. The findings also demonstrate that happiness moderates the effects of design aesthetics on these value dimensions.

This work can be useful to designers of banking applications and other practitioners to improve their policies and strategies related to mobile applications.

This research represents an initial attempt to examine how customers derive functional, emotional, social and epistemic value from design aesthetics in mobile banking. In addition, this research demonstrates that happiness moderates – and more specifically strengthens – the effects of design aesthetics on customer value. The results provide a theoretical contribution to the importance of value in customer decision making, and in the current case, in the seldom-researched area of mobile banking.

The objective of this study is to explore adolescent girls' knowledge about the types of beauty valued in contemporary American popular and commercial culture.

Eighty girls ranging from seven to thirteen years old participated in a card sorting and collage construction exercise using 47 advertisements that featured models.

Differences were found among girls according to age. Preferred beauty types were more complex with age. Furthermore, older girls made more product and brand associations.

The findings indicate that the beauty match‐up hypothesis holds among young girls.

Advertisers may be overlooking the audience of young women by neglecting to use models who represent their desired type(s) of beauty. They may even be alienating young girls by using anti‐ideals such as nudity and sexiness. Furthermore, advertisers must use models who convey the appropriate personality traits to create persuasive ads.

This study is important because it expands upon previous work that has assessed how and why young girls are affected by highly attractive models in ads. However, instead of conceptualizing physical attractiveness as a simple bipolar continuum from “attractive or pretty” to “unattractive or ugly”, this work considers the complex, multidimensional properties of beauty.