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The purpose of this chapter is to explore the differences in consumers’ willingness to pay for different types of design attributes due to different levels of specific anticipatory emotions evoked by them. The research aims to show how firms can benefit by leveraging the findings that different types of design attributes – that is, functionality, aesthetics, and environmental sustainability – affect profit margin per unit differently. Further, the chapter claims that design is a core competency that can pay dividends in terms of profit margins for firms. It is important for firms to develop expertise in understanding and leveraging relationships between the types of design attributes, specific emotions, and consumers’ willingness to pay.

The chapter uses the product categories of cell phones and laptop computers in the three experiments to test the hypothesized relationships between design attributes (functionality, aesthetics, and environmental sustainability), specific emotions, and willingness to pay.

The research finds that different attributes of design – functionality, aesthetics, and sustainability – evoke different types of emotions and different levels of willingness to pay.

The data were primarily collected via experiments in a behavioral laboratory.

Firms can leverage different attributes of design to position and price products according to emotional requirements of the target customer segment to match their willingness to pay and maximize profit margin per unit.

The research specifically measures willingness to pay in joint presentation – independent evaluation scenarios to assess differences in how functionality, aesthetics, and sustainability impact willingness to pay.

This study seeks to investigate significant factors influencing consumers' willingness to pay a premium for three different socially responsible products – organic cotton, sustainable cotton, and US‐grown cotton shirts.

Through random‐digit‐dialing, the study data were collected from 500 respondents nationally via telephone surveys. The survey data were analyzed using stepwise regression and mean comparisons.

More than half of the respondents indicated that they were willing to pay a premium for organic, sustainable, and US‐grown cotton shirts ($5.00 or more for these cotton shirts at the $30.00 retail value). Consumer attitudes toward socially responsible apparel, attitudes toward environment, age, and gender were found to be significant factors for consumers' willingness to pay a premium. Four apparel product evaluative criteria, brand name, laundering requirements, color, and fit, were also found to be important for consumers' willingness to pay a premium.

Generalization from the study findings must be assumed with care due to the telephone survey mode.

Apparel businesses planning to offer organic, sustainable, or US‐grown cotton apparel products may want to emphasize certain tangible benefits, such as strong brand, reasonable price, easy care, color, and fit, concurrently with intangible benefits, such as feeling good by helping society and environment.

The findings showed relationships among attitudes, product evaluative criteria, demographic characteristics, and willingness to pay a premium for three different options of socially responsible cotton apparel, in order to help close the gap between attitudes and behavior in consumer research.

This study aims to investigate the factors that motivate Muslim consumers to pay for halal-certified food.

Data were collected through a survey of 272 Muslim consumers in Malaysia. The data were analyzed using the partial least squares technique.

The results showed that animal slaughter, halal logo, food quality and religious commitment have a positive effect on the willingness to pay for halal food. Religious commitment positively moderates the relationship between storage and transportation and the willingness to pay for halal-certified food.

Policy makers as well as managers of halal food companies can benefit from this study which provides insight into ways to increase demand for halal food.

The findings contribute to the literature on halal foods by illustrating the factors that determine Muslim consumers’ willingness to pay for halal food. This study also extends the literature by testing the moderating role of religious commitment.

Aquaculture is, an important animal farming activity, and fish welfare has recently become an important issue in the EU. Driving forces behind the promotion of fish welfare are demands from retailers and consumers. Given this background, it is the main objective of this paper in a Danish setting to investigate the willingness of consumers to pay for farmed rainbow trout with a quality label certifying good fish welfare. It also aims to describe consumers’ perception and consumption of farmed fish and their beliefs about fish welfare.

A contingent valuation approach was used to evaluate consumers’ willingness to pay for fish welfare, using an open‐ended elicitation technique. To determine the factors that may influence consumers’ willingness to pay for fish welfare the binomial logit model was used. Data were collected from an online survey of Danish consumers in the spring of 2009, sample size 1,000.

Of the sample, 48 percent were on average willing to pay 25 percent extra for welfare rainbow trout. Primarily women with a longer education, belonging to higher income households are willing to pay extra, also older consumers are more willing to pay more than younger consumers. Consumers who emphasize eco‐friendly production of welfare fish, freshness, and animal welfare also tend to be willing to pay extra.

While much literature has addressed animal welfare and willingness to pay for it, only a few studies have specifically considered consumers’ perception of fish welfare and their willingness to pay for welfare fish.

Consumers are giving greater attention to the selection of food due to the improvement in income and urbanization. Meanwhile, in recent years, the vegetables' farmers in Malaysia have been reported using an excessive quantity of pesticides. The vegetables exported to Singapore and China have been rejected in 2018 and 2017 due to the presence of excessive levels of pesticides. Such incidences have created massive concern to improve the safety standard of the vegetable industry. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate consumers' willingness to pay for food safety attributes of tomato.

Discrete choice experiments has been used, and 490 respondents have completed the survey.

Results suggested that consumers were willing to pay RM4.18 more for wholesome tomato relative to slightly damage tomato. Consumers also were willing to pay RM2.75 more for organic tomato relative to inorganic tomato. They were also willing to pay RM2.30 and RM1.29 more for certified and tomato sold at supermarket relative to uncertified and tomato sold at the wet market, respectively. The willingness to pay for safety attributes of tomato also varied according to the income, age and education level of the consumers.

If the farmers can respond effectively to the changes in consumers demand, it can be translated into business opportunities.

This research able to provide relevant information related to the consumers' willingness to pay for food safety attributes of tomato in Malaysia.

In recent years, there has been a big increase in the use of ethical attributes as marketing appeals. The purpose of this paper is to examine consumers’ willingness to pay for three selected ethical attributes, namely “Organic”, “Recyclable Packaging” and “Fairtrade” in monetary terms.

A modified choice-based experimental design with manipulation of the key constructs was used to estimate the mean value of how much consumers are willing to pay for the selected attributes attached to a box of premium chocolates. The results are based on the responses of a total of 208 consumers.

Of the three attributes, “Recyclable Packaging” has the strongest influence on the purchase decision, although this attribute generates the least additional value. The aggregated result shows that although consumers are willing to pay more for the product with ethical attributes than the one that is without, still around a half of them are not willing to pay more. In terms of demographics, the results show no significant differences between the two genders or different age groups in their willingness to pay for ethical attributes. As might be expected, willingness to pay was correlated with the level of consciousness of the ethical attributes.

The findings of this study help management to think practically about the value consumers willing to pay for the selected attributes. The results show a significant synergy in a combination of ethical attributes in products.

This paper aims to examine how health consciousness, perceived nutrition of cereals, hedonic eating values and utilitarian eating values would influence consumers’ attitudes towards cereal consumption, willingness to pay for cereals, actual consumption of cereal products, cereal product consumption satisfaction and continuance of cereal consumption.

The research embraced a quantitative approach. The examination was completed in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa (SA). A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 380 Generation Z consumers of cereal products. Structural equation modelling analysis was used using the smart partial least squares software to test the hypothesized model.

The results uncovered that the study variables were significantly associated, and surprisingly, the relationship between hedonic eating values and attitudes towards cereal consumption was found to be insignificant. It was also found that attitudes toward cereal consumption positively and significantly mediated the relationship between health consciousness and willingness to pay for cereals, perceived cereal nutrition and willingness to pay for cereals, hedonic eating values and willingness to pay for cereals and utilitarian eating values and willingness to pay for cereals.

This research adds new, fresh knowledge to the established body of knowledge on cereal consumption behaviour. This area has had little research attention in developing African countries like SA.

Although scholars highlighted the need to close the interactive marketing gap and enhanced understanding of willingness to pay more in settings where customer participation in the service delivery process is paramount, research addressing this issue is scare. This study investigates the effect of perceived employee commitment to service delivery and customer involvement on customer value and willingness to pay more. The study also examines the extent to which customer value mediates the effect of employee commitment and customer involvement on willingness to pay more for banking services.

The analysis was based on a sample of 211 Nigerian bank customers procured through a mall-intercept survey technique. The partial least squares structural equation modelling procedure and the Preacher–Hayes Bootstrapping technique aided hypotheses testing.

This study demonstrates that elements of employee commitment to service delivery and customer involvement have significant positive effect on the components of customer value. It also shows that customer value components have significant effect on customers' willingness to pay more. Additionally, the study shows that components of customer value mediate the effect of employee commitment to service delivery and customer involvement on willingness to pay more.

The study contributes to closing gaps in interactive marketing literature by uncovering how willingness to pay more for services is influenced by customer perceptions of employee commitment (affective and calculative) service delivery, customer involvement and customer value (hedonic and utilitarian).

It is important for managers to put in place measures that will help them know the kind of commitment cues their employees are emitting to customers as well as levels of customer involvement during service encounters.

This study breaks new ground in three unique ways. First, the study represents the first attempt to examine the combined effect of employee commitment to service delivery and customer involvement on consumer value perceptions. Second, the study also demonstrates that hedonic value has a more pronounced effect on willingness to pay more for banking services than utilitarian value. Finally, the study shows the extent to which customer value (hedonic vs utilitarian) mediates the effect of employee commitment to service delivery and customer involvement on willingness to pay more.

This paper aims to study the influence of organic food perceived values (utilitarian vs hedonic) on consumer willingness to buy and willingness to pay in a developing country.

This paper utilized a survey of 467 Tunisian consumers of organic olive oil. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the reliability and validities of constructs, as wells as model fit and the structural model.

The findings indicate that both utilitarian and hedonic values have significant influence on consumer willingness to buy and to pay for organic olive oil. The hedonic value has a stronger influence on willingness to buy while the utilitarian value has a stronger influence on willingness to pay.

This study contributes to knowledge regarding the relationships between organic food perceived value and consumer willingness to buy and to pay. Findings provide clear ways for practitioners to communicate the perceived values of their organic foods in order to increase their consumption.

This paper is one of the rare studies that focuses on willingness to buy and to pay for organic food in a developing country. In addition, it is a first attempt to test the consumer perceived values of organic olive oil in the context of one of the biggest producer countries of this type of food.

Drawing on consumer brand relationship theory, this study aims to investigate online brand engagement, brand trust and consumer brand identification as antecedents of brand love, amongst Generation Y and Z consumers. It explores the role of brand love in predicting consumers’ intention to co-create value and willingness to pay a premium price for the brand, for brands followed on social media.

Data from a study of 332 followers of brands on social media were analysed using structural equation modelling.

Results highlight the role of brand love in mediating the relationship between antecedents online brand engagement and consumer brand identification on intention to co-create value and willingness to pay a premium price. Consumers who trust the brand are more likely to intend to co-create value and are more willing to pay a price premium and these relationships are enhanced when the brand is loved.

Findings provide guidance for managers seeking to build brand friendship relationships with young consumers through social media. Results caution against a form of “superficial” friendship where the consumer may interact and co-create value online, yet fail to value the brand, evidenced through a willingness to pay a premium price.

The research identifies the critical role of brand love in fostering relationships with brands that young consumers follow on social media. The study reveals that neither online brand engagement nor consumer brand identification will result in co-creation of value or willingness to pay a premium price unless the consumer experiences brand love.