Search results

The purpose of this paper is to find out the relationship between the qualities of generic drugs perceived by the physicians and brand equity of the branded generics and to examine the physicians' perceptions of prescribing generic drugs for selective medical conditions in India.

The study was carried out across six major cities in Eastern India with 392 physicians. Here components of perceived quality, i.e. intrinsic cues and extrinsic cues are hypothesized to influence perceived quality of branded generics which in turn influence brand equity. It is also hypothesized that respondents' quality experience is assimilated towards their quality expectations, independent of small variations in objective quality of the drug.

Results showed that perceived quality of branded generics significantly, but indirectly, affected brand equity through the mediating variables, intrinsic cues and extrinsic cues. The results also showed that physicians' quality experience leads to quality expectations, independent of small variations in drug quality on five common yet serious diseases in India.

Current research finds that for prescription‐based branded generic drugs, perceived quality mainly depends on intrinsic cues; therefore, managers should be interested in intrinsic cues that increase brand equity and necessary marketing actions should be implemented accordingly.

No other scholarly article has been developed, so far, analyzing the effect of perceived quality on brand equity in the Indian branded generic drug segment. Besides providing evidence from the Indian pharmaceutical context about the impact of quality cues, the paper also presents evidence on physicians' quality observation of branded generics on five common yet serious diseases in India.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relative efficacies of intrinsic and extrinsic cues as drivers of customer loyalty to financial institutions between male and female bank customers.

A large-scale survey of 872 customers of a national bank serves as the study setting.

Results showed that extrinsic cues were the more effective correlates of customer loyalty and that gender does not moderate the relationships between image cues and customer loyalty.

The cross-sectional nature of the current study does not allow causal inferences. Therefore, future studies should adopt longitudinal designs.

Results suggest that, although transmitting a favorable image through extrinsic cues is critical, nevertheless, intrinsic cues (interactions among customers and bank personnel) should not be ignored. To reinforce this not only among current customers but also among potential customers, banks should use advertisements featuring favorable testimonials.

Empirical research in the banking services literature pertaining to the efficacies of intrinsic and extrinsic cues in forming customer loyalty is scarce. This study fills in the void. Also, in determining if the relationships between image and customer loyalty vary by gender, the authors not only looked at male versus female differences on the basis of average construct scores but also examined the structural relationships among the constructs.

This paper develops a conceptual framework, based on quality attributes and quality cues, to demonstrate the necessary requirements for effective communication of quality cues to customers in the supply chain and consumers at place of purchase. The “perceived quality” approach to product quality is adopted and the links between intrinsic/extrinsic cues and experience/credence attributes of a product are developed. The framework is applied to the UK meat sector by considering which attributes/cues are altered by farm assurance schemes and, hence, which type of cue is needed to signal these attributes, and what elements are necessary for effective signalling of this type of cue. It is shown that the necessary requirements for effective communication of each type of cue (intrinsic and extrinsic) vary considerably. Farm assurance schemes are shown to affect credence attributes; hence extrinsic cues must be used to signal these standards. It is concluded that the credibility of scheme standards and inspections to those standards is of crucial importance for the assurance scheme extrinsic cue (certificate/label) to be effective in predicting these credence attributes.

Based on cue utilization theory, this study aims to examine effects of the style (fashion vs basic) and licensing status (licensed vs nonlicensed) of university-related apparel products (URAPs) as intrinsic and extrinsic cues, respectively, impacting university fans’ responses (i.e. attitudes, purchase intentions and purchase behaviors) and the moderating roles of personal factors (i.e. perceived university prestige, quality consciousness and uniqueness seeking).

Data were collected via an online quasi-experiment employing a 2 (licensing status: licensed vs nonlicensed) × 2 (style: basic vs fashion) within-subjects design with a purposeful sample of 1,126 students and alumni of a Southeastern American university.

Results show that consumers generally responded more favorably to licensed (vs nonlicensed) URAPs, especially for basic styles, whereas their responses to fashionable URAPs were more favorable for nonlicensed (vs licensed) URAPs. Furthermore, the positive effects of licensing status were stronger for consumers with high (vs low) perceived university prestige or quality consciousness. Consumers generally more favorably responded to basic (vs fashion) URAPs, but this style effect was weaker among those with a high (vs low) uniqueness seeking tendency.

Theoretical explanations on URAP consumption have been scant in the product and brand management literature. This study fills this literature gap by conceptualizing extrinsic (i.e. licensing status) and intrinsic (i.e. style) cues crucial in URAP consumption from a cue utilization theory lens and demonstrating empirical evidence for the intricate interplays among the two cues and diverse personal characteristics.

Through the use of both sight and blind‐based quality metrics, the purpose of this paper is to ascertain the extent to which the sighted appreciation of a wine's intrinsic merit is confounded by extrinsic cues such as price and region of origin.

Using a database of sighted and blind tastings of three red South African wines (Cabernet, Merlot and Shiraz) over the period 1993‐2001, a series of multiple linear regression models is developed to explain sighted quality ratings.

The meta‐model, with an adjusted R² of 31 per cent, indicates three statistically significant explicatory factors, namely price, region, and intrinsic quality. The price cue alone explains 84 per cent of sighted quality assessments; the combined effect of both the region and price cue explains 95 per cent. This finding suggests that when quality is measured from a sighted perspective, area becomes a significant explicator, along with price. It is only once the cues of region and price have been factored into the meta‐model that intrinsic merit becomes relevant, and here, only to an extremely limited extent (5 per cent). The lack of correspondence between sighted and blind tasting scores, suggests that for sighted judgements – extrinsic cues appear to be masking the wine's intrinsic merit.

For the first time, blind and sighted tasting results are collated into one database and statistically interrogated. The findings show how we are deleteriously distracted by the apparent efficacy of extrinsic cues.

A recent stream of research has focused on typicality associations – those that bring origins and products together. Most of the research has focused on typical products but atypical products have received very little attention, even though they are more and more present on the market. As it has yet to be reviewed, the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic product cues and product evaluations is examined in this paper for typical and atypical origin products.

Wine was used as the stimulus, and consumer evaluations of typical and atypical wines were reviewed. Consumers were segmented based on their knowledge of the product category. French respondents (n = 370) participated in an online questionnaire regarding the product cues they found most important, depending on if the wine was from the New World or the Old World.

The results show that extrinsic cues are just as important as intrinsic cues in the evaluation of origin products, contrary to what prior research suggests. Furthermore, consumer knowledge moderates the evaluations of origin products; the results empirically confirms the theoretical country of origin – elaboration likelihood model (CoO-ELM) proposed by Bloemer et al. (2009) for atypical origin products, but show typical products are evaluated differently.

This is the first study that empirically tests the CoO-ELM and includes the added dimension of typicality. The results allow for a better understanding of consumer perceptions of origin products and their cues.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the utilisation of product choice cues in a retail environment and the impact of consumer involvement on this utilisation. It further investigates the impact of product knowledge on product choice cue utilisation and its moderating role on the impact of consumer involvement.

The case of wine as an exemplary product category is considered, given the importance and variability of choice cues that have been found to affect product choice. Analysis is conducted on survey data from a sample of wine consumers in Ontario, Canada. Product choice cues are grouped into extrinsic, intrinsic and marketing mix. The importance of how these cues are influenced from different dimensions of consumer involvement is illustrated.

The results show that product knowledge has a positive impact on intrinsic product cue utilisation and further moderates this relationship improving the predictability of the hypothesised model. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.

From an industry viewpoint, the focus in the past has mostly been on using packaging to attract attention/create awareness, create an image of desirability, etc., but not nearly as much on the functionality aspects thereof; for example alternative smaller packaging sizes to the standard 750 ml wine bottle.

The study uses a multi-dimensional approach to measure the impact of enduring involvement on utilisation of product choice cues.

A model for analysis of consumer behaviour towards food is developed. This model is intended to bridge the gap between the objective quality approach pursued in food sciences, the product characteristics approach, and the subjectively perceived quality approach, the product attribute approach as pursued in the consumer behaviour literature. The focus is on the information processing by the consumer. Information on the product quality is supplied to the consumer in the form of cues received while shopping or consuming. A distinction is made between extrinsic and intrinsic cues, and between search‐, experience‐, and credence‐quality attributes. Within the credence attributes, three categories are distinguished: food safety, health, and all other credence quality attributes. It is demonstrated that public policy should use minimum standards for regulating food safety, information and consumer education on health issues and definitional standards to regulate the other credence qualities. In the case of search quality, no public intervention is needed. In the case of experience quality, reputation is a means of reducing the quality erosion inherent for experience quality attributes. In the case of those foods which are not sold prepacked over the counter, these means are restricted. Here the public regulators could consider backing up the private quality policy efforts on labelling by implementing traceability schemes and defining the requirements for specific label claims.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of self-purchasing versus gift-giving situations on the importance of product cues and the moderating effect of brand schematicity.

Data were collected via an online survey of 285 French consumers for wine and 139 French consumers for whisky. The interaction effect of the gift-giving situation and brand schematicity on the importance of product cues was then investigated.

The results differed, depending on the importance of brand cue. For the whisky category (high brand importance), brand schematicity had no influence on the importance of cues. For the wine category (low brand importance), brand schematicity moderated the influence of the gift-giving situation on the importance of extrinsic cues such as commercial brand. Brand schematicity and the situation of gift-giving also influence the number of important cues which consumers take into account when making their choice. In low-involvement purchasing situations, brand-aschematic consumers use fewer choice criteria than brand-schematic consumers, whereas in high-involvement purchasing situations, regardless of their level of brand schematicity, consumers use the same number of criteria to make their selection.

When the commercial brand is a salient cue and regardless of the purchasing situation, it is important to provide information on the brand to consumers through any format, such as social media, leaflets, flash codes, in-store digital display, etc. When the commercial brand is not a salient cue, brand schematicity may be relevant to a segment of consumers because this consumer profile may need more information and will focus on the commercial brand. Brand managers could develop a specific approach to schematic consumers based on brand content, for example, brand managers could provide marketing materials (e.g. leaflets, flash codes, mobile apps) to retail store managers explaining the origin and value of the commercial brand. Consumers could also be provided with digital devices (such as tablets), which they could use to search for information according to these cues before choosing their product. Social media and online brand community could also provide more details about the brand and may provide an interactive area for discussions with consumers.

There has been little research on the effect of brand schematicity on the importance of product cues. To the authors’ knowledge, the interaction between brand schematicity and purchase according to product category has not previously been studied. The influence of brand schematicity changes depending on the importance given to brand cues.

This study aims to explore how specific cues with new manifestations (i.e. herding message and price discount information) and customer cognitive style influence attention allocation and purchase intention.

To empirically validate the research hypotheses, an eye-tracking experiment with a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed design was conducted on a sample of 44 participants recruited from a university in China. Repeated measures analysis of variance was employed for data analysis.

The results show that herding message and price discount information play different roles in viewers' attention and have an interactive effect on attention. Moreover, individual cognitive styles moderate the impact of herding message on attention allocation. Still, two cues positively affect customer purchase intention.

This study guides future research by applying cue utilization theory to investigate the effects of two cues in live streaming. Findings offer practical implications for how live streaming cues affect viewers' attention allocation and purchase intention.