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The idea that a significant portion of what consumers do, feel, and think is driven by automatic (or “implicit”) cognitive processes has sparked a wave of interest in the development of assessment tools that (attempt to) capture cognitive processes under automaticity conditions (also known as “implicit measures”). However, as more and more implicit measures are developed, it is becoming increasingly difficult for consumer scientists and marketing professionals to select the most appropriate tool for a specific research question. We therefore present a systematic overview of the criteria that can be used to evaluate and compare different implicit measures, including their structural characteristics, the extent to which (and the way in which) they qualify as “implicit,” as well as more practical considerations such as ease of implementation and the user experience of the respondents. As an example, we apply these criteria to four implicit measures that are (or have the potential to become) popular in marketing research (i.e., the implicit association test, the evaluative priming task, the affect misattribution procedure, and the propositional evaluation paradigm).

This study aims to explore whether fabric contents, specifically cotton and polyester, possess particular personality dimensions, as posited by Aaker (1997). The author examined both explicit (conscious, deliberate) and implicit (unconscious, automatic) perceptions of brand personality traits of cotton and polyester.

The convenience sample of this study included 51 students from different merchandising classes in a Midwestern university. Participants were first directed to the multidimensional implicit association test (md-IAT) and their implicit perceptions were measured for the content of the two fabrics (cotton and polyester) on five different personality attribute dimensions (sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness). After the IAT, participants completed the post-IAT survey, including explicit measures of brand personality attributes of cotton and polyester.

The findings of this study show that fabric contents can be successfully described and differentiated by Aaker’s brand personality dimensions. Compared with polyester, the distinctive brand personality of cotton was the favorable association between cotton and sincerity. This association was significantly higher than all other personality dimensions in both consumers’ implicit and explicit perceptions. Neither cotton nor polyester was significantly associated with the exciting, competent and sophisticated personality dimensions.

A unique contribution of this study is that it examines implicit perceptions of the brand personality traits of cotton and polyester. The use of the md-IAT in this study allowed the assessment of consumers’ automatic associations with cotton and polyester of which they may not be aware.

The aim of this paper is to examine whether Swedish employers implicitly/automatically hold negative attitudes toward Arab‐Muslims, an ethnic minority group subjected to substantial labor market discrimination in Sweden and, more specifically, associate members of this minority group with lower work productivity, as compared with native Swedes.

Adapted versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998) designed to measure implicit attitudes and productivity stereotypes toward Arab‐Muslims were used. Corresponding explicit measures were administered.

The results clearly show that employers have stronger negative implicit attitudes toward Arab‐Muslims relative to native Swedes as well as implicitly perceiving Arab‐Muslims to be less productive than native Swedes. Notably, the explicit measures reveal much weaker negative associations.

Since Arab‐Muslims are automatically perceived as being less productive, the present findings suggest that negative implicit productivity stereotypes could have significant effects on labor market outcomes, such as when employers make hiring decisions. Given that many hiring decisions are presumably based on “gut‐feelings”, implicit attitudes and stereotypes, more so than their explicit counterparts, may exert a substantial impact on how employers contemplate and make decisions regarding human resources.

Whereas traditional research has focused on self‐conscious, explicit work‐related attitudes toward various ethnic minority groups, the study offers a novel approach to understanding work‐related prejudice.

To date, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the use of implicit measures in the service research domain is limited. This paper aims to introduce implicit measures and explain why, or for what purpose, they are worthwhile to consider; how these measures can be used; and when and where implicit measures merit the service researcher’s consideration.

To gain an understanding of how implicit measures could benefit service research, three promising implicit measures are discussed, namely, the implicit association test, the affect misattribution procedure and the propositional evaluation paradigm. More specifically, this paper delves into how implicit measures can support service research, focusing on three focal service topics, namely, technology, affective processes including customer experience and service employees.

This paper demonstrates how implicit measures can investigate paramount service-related subjects. Additionally, it provides essential methodological “need-to-knows” for assessing others’ work with implicit measures and/or for starting your own use of them.

This paper introduces when and why to consider integrating implicit measures in service research, along with a roadmap on how to get started.

This paper aims to analyze the interviews conducted with preservice teachers. The analysis seeks to surface how colorblindness and stereotype threat may influence preservice teachers’ perceived implicit biases.

This is a mixed-methods study that used quantitative data from the implicit association test (IAT) over three-time points to determine the implicit bias levels of preservice teachers. This paper reports on the qualitative findings related to the stereotype threat of interview participants.

The interviews revealed that participation in the study caused a defensive reaction related to stereotype threat. Despite having participated in an intervention that, on average, reduces bias as measured by the IAT participants’ expressed stereotyped beliefs about children of color and minimized the salience of race e.g. saying they did not see color. However, the interviews reveal that the participants believed that the intervention had made them aware of their own implicit biases and that it was within their ability to change these biases. These findings indicate that although considering implicit bias makes teacher candidates uncomfortable, it may also be an effective addition to teacher preparation programs.

This study used the IAT and an intervention to make preservice teachers aware of their own biases. During the interview process, there was significant evidence of stereotype threat among the participants who agreed to participate in the open-ended session.

There has been contradictory evidence as to whether implicit attitudes are more indicative of food consumption behavior than explicit attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the predictive validity of implicit attitudes for food consumption behaviors with two popular indirect measures – the implicit association test (IAT) and the affective misattribution procedure (AMP).

The authors examined the predictive validity of the IAT and AMP for focal and incidental food consumption behaviors (n=277).

Results revealed that the IAT and the AMP were more context-dependent than initially expected. The IAT only predicted incidental consumption behaviors in Study 1, and the AMP only predicted incidental consumption behaviors when preceding the IAT. However, the indirect measures provided unique variance for predicting incidental consumption behaviors. Only a direct, self-report measure predicted focal behaviors.

These findings suggest that both the AMP and the IAT can predict incidental consumption behaviors, but the presence and strength of these effects may be moderated by unsuspected variables such as task order.

The current study provides evidence for the benefits of utilizing implicit measures in addition to self-report measures during consumer and market research.

This research reevaluates the predictive validity of the IAT and AMP for food consumption behaviors and employs two measures of food consumption behaviors.

In Brazil, over 4.7 million women enrolled in university in the year 2017. However, Brazilian women have been consistently overrepresented in humanities and care majors and underrepresented in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Given that observed gender differences in math-intensive fields have lasting effects on gender inequality in the labor market, and that observed gender variations do not necessarily associate with differences in innate ability, in this paper we explore the paths of societal gender bias and gender differences in a Brazilian university.

We conduct a social experiment at a University in Southeastern Brazil, applying the gender-STEM Implicit Association Test.

We found that women in STEM are less likely to show gender-STEM implicit stereotypes, compared to women in humanities. The results indicate a negative correlation between implicit gender stereotyping and the choice of math-intensive majors by women.

The stereotype-congruent results are indicative of the gender bias in Brazilian society, and suggest that stereotypes created at early stages in life are directly related to future outcomes that reinforce gender disparities in Brazil, which can be observed in career choices.

Although the investigation of brand extension strategies has gained importance, existing research focusses primarily on consumer attitudes to brand extensions, and to date, little research has been made on the luxury market. Moreover, studies on the impact of brand extensions have been limited to explicit measurement methods. Therefore, the aim of this study is to provide new insights by focussing on the change of consumers’ brand perception related to downgrading and upgrading brand extensions strategies in the luxury market based on an implicit association test (IAT).

In this exploratory study context of examining the spontaneous reaction time with reference to the luxury concept by confronting respondents with adequate verbal brand extension stimuli, a ST‐IAT was considered for the empirical tests of these hypotheses.

The study results give evidence that consumers’ perception of an upgrading or downgrading strategy of a brand varies in accordance to these hypotheses. Hence, the reaction time of the H&M subjects decreased after having read the upgrading stimulus whereby, in the case of Karl Lagerfeld, the ST‐IAT reaction times showed that the downgrading information resulted in a weaker association of Karl Lagerfeld with luxury.

The use of implicit measurement methods is becoming increasingly important for assessing consumer reaction to the new product line. Particularly, when luxury brands apply a downgrading strategy, the risks of possible damages to the core brand are much higher than in the case of an upgrade of a basic brand to the luxury or premium segment.

Building on both the uncanny valley and construal level theories, the analyses detailed in this paper aims to address customers’ explicit and implicit attitudes toward various service robots, categorized by the degree of their human-like appearance, namely, mechanoids (low human-likeness), humanoids (medium human-likeness) and realistic robots (high human-likeness).

The analyses reflect a mixed-method approach, across three studies. A qualitative study uses focus groups to identify consensual attitudes. An experiment measures self-reported, explicit attitudes toward the three categories of robots. Another experiment explores customers’ implicit attitudes (unconscious and unintentional) toward robots, using three implicit association tests.

Customers express both positive and negative attitudes toward service robots. The realistic robots lead to both explicit and implicit negative attitudes, suggesting that customers tend to reject these robots in frontline service settings. Robots with lower human-likeness levels generate relatively more positive attitudes and are accepted to nearly the same extent as human employees in hospitality and tourism contexts.

Because customers reject, both consciously and unconsciously, very human-like robots in service encounters, managers should leverage this key finding, along with the more detailed results, to inform their strategic introduction of robots into hospitality frontline service settings.

The combined qualitative and quantitative studies specify and clarify customers’ implicit and explicit attitudes toward robots with different levels of human-likeness, in the real-world setting of hospitality and tourism services. Such insights can inform continued research into the effects of these service innovations.

An argument for the importance of unconscious processes is emerging across social science literatures (Petty et al.; Uleman). The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of implicit attitudes on the formation of digital piracy desires and behavioral intentions. If implicit attitudes are found to contribute to consumer digital piracy intentions, then marketers face an additional challenge in developing effective strategies and appeals designed to attenuate the practice.

The study captures both indirect and direct measures of implicit attitudes to test the research model. A total of 285 respondents provided data in a controlled lab setting for purposes of structural equation analyses.

The results first contribute to growing evidence generally supporting the importance of attitudinal influences in the formation of digital piracy intentions. The reported study further suggests the necessity of including implicit attitudinal considerations in explanatory models of these behaviors, particularly attitudinal explanatory models. Specifically, marketers attempting to manage DP should consider implicit attitudes in explanatory models of DP intention formation in addition to traditional self‐report measures of attitudes.

The study presents the first known empirical evidence supporting the contribution of implicit attitudes to digital piracy desires. Considering implicit influences in this process offers the promise of increasing our understanding of how digital piracy behaviors form, which can offer insights into how to more effectively attenuate the practice.