Search results

Examines the influence on post‐war development of the consumer movement that ‘Which?’ magazine, the Consumers' Association organ has had. Considers factors which determined its introduction, examining promotional and testing methods, influence on manufacturers and purchasing habits of shoppers. Emphasizes that a consumer association seeks to redress the balance between manufacturers and retailers on the one hand, and the consumer on the other. Presents details of ‘Shoppers Guide’ in addition to ‘Which?’, even though this ceased publishing in 1963, and gives full information of the highs and lows of both. States that ‘Which?’ shot ahead of ‘Shoppers Guide’ when it decided to promote itself with sales promotion and press advertising. Concludes that the Consumers' Association remains the valuable supplementary source of information, advice and guidance which complements that available from manufacturers, retailers, neighbours, relations, and, on a more extreme scale, the media.

Purpose: This chapter investigates how researchers assemble market research test towns as hybrid sociotechnical arrangements. Researchers use various strategies in order to purify such hybrids into simplified representations of a fetishized imaginary, namely the average consumer.

Methodology/approach: The chapter is based on an analysis of secondary sources such as company documents. Theoretically, it draws on the concept of consumption assemblages and on anthropological theories of fetish.

Findings: Fetishization is a powerful way for both researchers and their clients to purify the hybrid assemblages they are part of into easily digestible categories such as “the real” and “the average.” In that process, the test town and its consumers emerge as a fetish that allows corporate clients to alleviate decision-making anxiety. Because of the nature of fetish, purification as a process remains incomplete.

Research Implications: These findings call for more social studies of market research as a set of practices that shape the identities of those who do the testing and forecasting. This chapter thus opens up test marketing and so-called test towns in particular as a field for consumer culture theory research.

Originality/value: This chapter provides insights into how market research creates test sites to simulate purchase behavior and pre-test consumer products. This chapter maps how different groups of actors and different technologies are enrolled in order to enact an ideal-type consumer averageness on an ongoing basis in a particular test town.

The purpose of this research is to investigate how the consumer’s trusting mechanism influences their behavioral adoption intention in the context of genetic testing.

Based on the technology acceptance theory and trust formation theory, the research posits and develops a comprehensive trust model by integrating trust-related factors that correlate to the consumer’s trusting beliefs and trusting intention. Survey data with 525 respondents allow to test and validate the model.

The tested model shows that technology institutional trust base, end-user’s cognitive trust base and social influence are significant determinants of trusting beliefs. The findings also reveal that mediation effects of performance expectancy and perceived risks exist in the relationship between trusting beliefs and trusting intention.

The foreseeable positive impact and rapid market growth of emerging healthcare technologies necessitate the strong need to study user acceptance. However, there is a lack of research on how consumers trust and their adoption intention of such innovations. Prior empirical evidence from different contexts and perspectives also show contradictory findings. This research extends the existing technology acceptance literature to a healthcare context, provides an improved generalized understanding of the consumer’s trusting mechanism in emerging biotechnology and discusses practical insights for regulatory authorities, healthcare institutes and medical professionals.

This study examines perceived transparency of direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing communication and measures its impact on consumers' trust, attitudes, and the intention to recommend the test to others.

An online survey of US–based adults (over 18 years of age) (N = 271) was administered by the online panel company Qualtrics Panels. The sample consisted of participants who have taken a DTC genetic test previously because only existing consumers could provide insight into companies' transparency about the entire genetic testing process (including the communication before, during, and after) as they experienced it. Participants were asked questions that measured intention to recommend DTC genetic tests to others, trust, attitude toward the DTC testing, and perceptions of transparency of the DTC companies' communication.

Results indicated that consumers who perceive DTC genetic testing companies to be transparent in their communication tend to trust the genetic testing process more, have more positive attitudes toward DTC genetic tests, and are more likely to recommend the tests to others.

This study integrates corporate communication and science communication through the theoretical framework of transparency. It empirically demonstrates that message transparency is key to increasing the publics' trust, attitude and behavioral intentions toward companies that involve sensitive health information or online privacy.

This paper answers previous calls to explore the organizational approach of science communication in the context of the under-examined companies in the science and health sectors, specifically the DTC genetic testing industry.

This paper aims to investigate the influence of consumer reviews on the evaluation, post-experience, of products with a combination of sustainable, hedonic and utilitarian properties.

In the first instance, consumer reviews for organic and non-organic cosmetics posted on the French Web site beauté-test.com were analyzed. Second, a full-factorial two product types (organic and non-organic) × three reviews (positive, negative and no reviews) experiment was conducted. Sixty French women tested a beauty product and evaluated it on hedonic and utilitarian (ambiguous and non-ambiguous) properties. In a second experiment, 132 English-speaking students evaluated an herbal tea at home, along a full-factorial two product types (fair-trade and non-fair-trade) × three product properties (hedonic, utilitarian ambiguous and utilitarian non-ambiguous) × two reviews (negative review and no review) between-subject design.

First, consumers are significantly less influenced by reviews for hedonic products compared to utilitarian products. In particular, they rely on reviews when evaluating utilitarian ambiguous properties (e.g. anti-aging properties) which they find difficult to judge on their own. Second, consumers are more resistant to the persuasive effect of reviews when the product focus is on sustainable (organic or fair-trade) credentials, in particular when judging ambiguous properties.

This paper explores a topic neglected in the literature so far: the moderating role of product properties and sustainability, in particular, on consumers’ responses to persuasion and consumer reviews in the context of this paper. Its originality lies in the demonstration that consumers learn through product testing for hedonic and utilitarian unambiguous product properties and through consumer reviews for utilitarian ambiguous product properties. Additionally, it highlights the resistance of sustainable products (organic and fair-trade in this research) to negative product reviews.

Predictive genetic tests (PGTs) have greatly increased their presence in the market, and, much like their pharmaceutical peers, companies offering PGTs have increasingly used direct‐to‐consumer advertising as part of their promotional strategy. Given many PGTs are available without a prescription or physician order and the lack of empirical research examining the effects of PGT‐DTC, this paper seeks to examine consumer attitudes, intentions, and behavior in response to a PGT‐DTC ad with and without a prescription requirement.

A single factor, between subjects online survey design with the presence or absence of a prescription requirement as the experimental variable was used to evaluate consumers' attitudes, intentions, and behavior in response to a predictive genetic test DTC advertisement. A minimum sample size of 198 was determined a priori and 206 surveys were completed within five hours of deployment to 600 randomly selected general consumer participants for a response rate of 34.3 percent (206/600), with 106 in the prescription requirement group and 100 in the non‐prescription group. Descriptive statistics, t‐tests, and chi‐square techniques were used to examine the various dependent variables (consumer attitudes, behavioral intentions, and the pre‐defined behavior measure) and their differences.

Overall, consumers hold favorable attitudes to PGT‐DTC ads, but did not intend to engage in physician discussion, take the test or perform information search behavior. The effect of a prescription requirement was not significant, as no differences were seen with the attitude and behavioral intention dependent variables.

At this still relatively young point in the PGT cycle, consumers still seem to be skeptical about the value of predictive genetic tests and their associated DTC advertisements.

The purpose of this paper is to address the issue of objective knowledge operationalisation with specific focus on varying levels of scale items’ difficulty. The ultimate goal of the study was to develop a scale to measure objective wine knowledge, which would address the domain of wine knowledge and differentiate varying levels of consumer wine knowledge.

The process of items’ development was guided by recommendations suggested by DeVellis (2003) in his influential work on theory and application of scale development. Examination of items’ performance was conducted through a series of field tests with consumer samples (N = 756) in a US wine region. Item response theory (IRT) approach was applied for items’ testing. The developed items were analysed using the two-parameter logistic model in Mplus Version 5.

The study offers a 44-item test suitable for assessing wine knowledge across a broad spectrum of expertise. For example, if the goal is to assess wine knowledge differences among relatively knowledgeable respondents, a subset of more difficult items could be chosen. Alternatively, a test for novices could be constructed from easier scale’s items.

For researchers, the study offers conceptualisation of the wine knowledge domain, suggests a parsimonious instrument to measure the construct, offers a valid and reliable measure for use in testing theories of consumer knowledge and provides empirical evidence of the value and usefulness of the developed scale.

For professionals, the proposed test may be used to test consumer knowledge and to help assess a prospective employee’s general knowledge of wine. The test can also be given at hospitality programs, outreach and continuing education programs.

The current paper takes an alternative approach to classical test theory and offers an objective wine knowledge scale tested through IRT. This approach avoids shortcomings associated with classical measurement and offers an original scale that can discriminate among respondents with different levels of wine knowledge.

Consumer responses of attribute liking and intensity as well as overall liking of commercial chocolate were evaluated in four types of testing situations (central location, in‐home, teaching laboratory and formal sensory laboratory). The aim was to determine if there were differences in these responses based on testing situation. This was also an attempt to evaluate and validate the use of in‐home testing for product development samples. Perceptions of certain attributes were found to differ in different testing situations but liking scores of these attributes did not. Consumers were more critical of attributes when tested in a formal sensory laboratory. All four locations tested gave similar results, meaning that, conducting sensory panels at home is as valid a method of collecting consumer opinion as traditional locations. It should be noted that the use of a formal sensory laboratory might have an impact on cost effectiveness of new product development. Results are more likely to indicate the need to continue formulation in order to perfect attribute scores, although this may not actually improve consumer‐liking scores. This continued product development only serves to increase the costs and slow the speed to market.

The frequency and sophistication of consumer boycotts continue to increase from already high levels. Surprisingly, only limited research in marketing has investigated this topic. The purpose of this paper is to provide a strategic analysis of an actual consumer protest with implications for better managerial decisions.

The animosity model of consumer purchase behavior was employed in two longitudinal studies to investigate an ongoing marketplace protest – Australian consumers' boycott of French products. Study 1 was carried out while France was engaged in nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Study 2 was carried out 1 year after the resolution of the conflict.

Results from Study 1 show that Australian consumers' animosity toward France was negatively related to their willingness to purchase French products. Consistent with a key prediction from the animosity model, this effect was independent of evaluations of French product quality. The findings from Study 2 show that, a year after the cessation of nuclear testing, Australian consumers continue to have strong negative affect toward France, which in turn, had negative marketplace consequences for French products.

While the results from Study 1 show that consumer anger over nuclear testing did not necessarily lead to the denigration of the quality of French goods, the second study indicates that, beyond the duration of the official protest, there may be repercussions for products associated with the offending party. Accordingly, managers should consider implementing communications programs which, over time, effectively reinforce the quality of their products in the minds of protesting consumers.

The purpose of this paper was to evaluate the differences between common Brazilian beer and pure malt beer in the responses of hedonic scaling, willingness to pay and emotional response.

Two types of beer were selected to be tested – a common beer: Pilsen Skol and pure malt beer: Pilsen Eisenbahn. All the analysis was conducted under three labeling conditions: blind; labeled; inverted label with 70 participants in each test. A nine-point hedonic scale evaluated the acceptance. The consumer was questioned how much he/she would be willing to pay for a bottle of beer that he/she tasted. A questionnaire was elaborated based on the EsSense profile to evaluate emotions; 25 emotions were evaluated using a five-point scale. The socioeconomic status was defined based on consumer's household characteristics.

The acceptance score, positive emotions and willingness to pay were higher for pure malt beer in the labeled test and for common beer (labeled as pure malt) in the inverted test. The findings highlight that information, such as beer type and socioeconomic status, could influence consumer responses by altering hedonic perceptions, emotions and commercial value attributed to different beers. In general, the beer type did not affect the evaluated variables.

Brewing industry should explore in their marketing strategies and state clearly the pure malt label. In restaurants, owners can explore pure malt beers as a strategy for garnering different customer profiles. Technological and production investments should be encouraged to reduce the product price, favoring the final consumer.

This study contributes to understanding the growth in the consumption of pure malt beers in Brazil. Moreover, it brings an overview of the influence of the label/information on regular Brazilian consumers.