Search results

This paper examines user generated social media content bearing on consumers’ attitude and belief systems taking the domain of natural food product as illustrative case. This research sheds light on how consumers think and talk about natural food within the context of food well-being and health.

The authors used a keyword-based approach to extract user generated content from Twitter and used both food as well-being and food as health frameworks for analysis of more than two million tweets.

The authors found that consumers mostly discuss food marketing and less frequently discuss food policy. Their results show that tweets regarding naturalness were significantly less frequent in food categories that feature naturalness to an extent, e.g. fruits and vegetables, compared to food categories dominated by technologies, processing and man-made innovation, such as proteins, seasonings and snacks.

This paper provides numerous implications and contributions to the literature on consumer behavior, marketing and public policy in the domain of natural food.

The authors’ exploratory findings can be used to guide food system stakeholders, farmers and food processors to obtain insights into consumers' mindset on food products, novel concepts, systems and diets through social media analytics.

The authors’ results contribute to the literature on the use of social media in food marketing on understanding consumers' attitudes and beliefs toward natural food, food as the well-being literature and food as the health literature, by examining the way consumers think about natural (versus man-made) food using user generated content of Twitter, which has not been previously used.

This paper aims to study the unexplored possibility that priming firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity in consumers’ minds may impact consumers’ preference for non-firm related consumption and lifestyle choice options with intertemporal trade-offs.

Across four experimental studies, the authors looked at the impact of CSR priming on the preference of participants for later larger versus sooner smaller money (Study 1), saving versus spending (Study 2) and healthy versus unhealthy food choices (Studies 3 and 4). These choice options were not related to the focal firm that practiced CSR. The authors measured the changes in participants’ consideration of future consequences (CFC) as a potential mediator for the results.

The participants in the CSR condition showed a higher CFC and a higher preference for the options with long-term benefits and immediate costs over the ones with long-term costs and immediate benefits, i.e. later larger over sooner smaller money, saving over spending and healthy over unhealthy food. The authors documented a mediation role for CFC.

All the participants in the studies were from the USA. Looking at the cultural differences can enrich the understanding of the impact of CSR on preference for the options with intertemporal trade-offs. Furthermore, this paper builds its theoretical justification based on the assumption of individuals’ acceptance of CSR activities. Nevertheless, consumers may have skepticism about these activities. Future studies may investigate the effect of CSR skepticism of individuals on the proposed effects. Additionally, investigating the moderating roles of individuals’ characteristics like their prosocial concern or their knowledge about choice options might be an avenue for future research.

The findings highlight the benefits of CSR priming on consumers’ welfare and normative behavior. Firms may use the findings to understand and manage the impact of other firms’ CSR communications on the evaluation of their own products.

This research is the first to highlight the impact of CSR priming on consumers’ non-firm-related consumption and lifestyle choices with intertemporal trade-offs. The results showed the positive effect of priming firms’ CSR activities on consumers’ CFC and the mediating role of CFC.

This paper aims to elucidate some of the complexity around food consumption by drawing from neuroscience research of food as a motivated choice (i.e. a neurobehavioral process sensitive to dopaminergic response to food and environmental cues such as marketing). The authors explore the single and compounded effect of the motivational salience of food’s intrinsic reinforcing value tied to its sugar content and that of two marketing food cues, price and in-store display, on actual consumer purchase behavior.

The authors test the above hypotheses in two perceived “healthy” product categories with a wide distribution of sugar content. The authors estimate a within-category model using three years of retail transaction data to test the effect on weekly sales.

The authors confirm the single effect of each of food’s and marketing cues’ motivational salience as well as their compounded effect with high-motivational-salience food being less price elastic and more susceptible to in-store display activities.

This research highlights the need to complement current reliance on unhealthy/healthy perception with finer grained objective evidence linked to the formulation of the food itself and the marketing applied to them.

The present study findings may help marketing managers and policymakers develop better targeted pricing and display strategies for low- and high-motivational-salience food, attempting to strike a better balance between consumer welfare and commercial performance.

This paper is one of the few that links real-world market outcomes to predictions derived from a unique combination of consumer neuroscience and neurobiology of food, advancing data-driven decisions.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of different types of corporate social responsibility (CSR; i.e. value-creating CSR, promotional CSR and philanthropic CSR) on consumer responses and the moderating role of corporate competence.

The authors tested the hypotheses by using two empirical studies – a survey and an experimental study. The evidence is generated based on generalized linear model repeated-measures ANOVAs for the survey study and two-way factorial ANOVAs for the experimental study.

The findings show that in general, consumers respond to value-creating CSR more favorably than to philanthropic CSR or promotional CSR. In addition, corporate competence moderates consumers’ responses to different types of CSR in such a way that promotional CSR is more likely to have the desired effects when carried out by low-competency rather than by high-competency firms, whereas value-creating CSR is more effective for high-competency firms than for low-competency ones. Philanthropic CSR works equally in both types of firms.

This research answers a long-term call to study the differential consumer effects of various CSR types. It also identifies perceived corporate competence, an important consumer-based corporate factor, as a potential moderator of consumers’ response to CSR types.

Armed with the findings, companies can choose CSR practices that fit with their company characteristics. This research offers important and specific managerial implications to firms with different company profiles on their CSR choices.

Given that today’s managers are faced with the challenge of selecting desirable CSR activities from a group of options, the authors answered the call by studying the differential effects of a wide array of CSR choices and provide important practical guidance to managers. For the first time in the literature, the study also investigates the potential interactive effects between specific CSR types and corporate competence on consumer reactions. This inquiry bears significant relevance to the ongoing discussions concerning whether and how company characteristics generate influences on the outcomes of CSR strategies.

The focus of this paper is on the emotional experience of consumption and its impact on satisfaction in the context of extended service transactions. Drawing on a multi‐component perspective of emotions, we present a series of research propositions to specify how both retrospective global judgments of consumption emotions as well as their in‐process experience (i.e. their experience during the sequence of episodes composing the transaction) determine post‐purchase satisfaction in multiple ways. At the retrospective level, we propose that while the expected direct relationship between satisfaction and positive emotions will emerge, the equally expected inverse relationship between negative emotions and satisfaction will be found only for negative emotions attributed to the service provider. Negative emotions attributed to causes other than the provider (i.e. to the situation or to oneself) may be positively associated with satisfaction. At the in‐process level, we propose that the experience of distinct emotions at a certain stage of the service may influence the consumer’s expectations for and perceptions of the provider performance, and/or the expressions and behaviors of the consumer himself and those of the provider in the subsequent episode. Such in‐process effects of emotions will then determine their relationship with post‐purchase satisfaction. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

The purpose of this research is to examine how consumers form beliefs and evaluate derivatives (e.g. handheld computers) and branded derivatives (e.g. Palm handheld computers). The aim is to study how consumers combine two categories (e.g. “handheld products” and “computers”) to form beliefs, how the similarity between the categories influences beliefs, how the addition of a brand changes beliefs, and how the presence of brand associations impacts on evaluations.

Three laboratory experiments to test hypotheses were conducted.

Results of the studies show the modifier (e.g. “handheld” in handheld computer) dominates derivative beliefs, but the nature of its dominance changes with category similarity. Brand effects are surprisingly limited in belief formation due to modifier dominance. Brand beliefs only transfer to branded derivatives when the brand fits with the modifier category. The presence of brand associations induces more positive evaluations of branded derivatives when the brand fits with the modifier category and, under certain circumstances, when it fits with the header‐category.

The presence of multiple concepts (e.g. Palm handheld computer) is common in line and brand extensions, yet little research has examined such complex products. Their comprehension can be better predicted by utilizing conceptual combination theory.

Managers can better determine what kinds of line and brand extensions are best suited for their brands.

The originality and value lay in utilizing the conceptual combination approach to more deeply understand which extensions are best suited for which brands. This helps fill a gap in the literature on consumer perception of multiple‐concept extensions.

The thesis of this paper is that patient emotions have not been sufficiently integrated into patient-centeredness, a well-established organizing principle of health care management. We first review the scientific knowledge on emotions that is of relevance to support their being a core component of patient-centeredness. We then report a field study designed to investigate the mechanisms by which emotions influence care outcomes (specifically, patient satisfaction). Structural analyses performed on self-reports by 283 minor care patients in an Emergency Department revealed that both positive and negative emotions influence satisfaction indirectly by biasing patient perceptions of quality of care in a valence-congruent direction.Negative emotions have an additional direct effect on satisfaction. Patients who were made to wait longer to see the physician not only manifested a progressive deterioration of their emotional states (i.e. decrease in positive affects and increase in negative affects) but their satisfaction judgments became more importantly formed on the basis of emotions. Implications of the research for healthcare management are discussed.

Compared with the large brands, not only do the small brands attract fewer customers but also their customers buy them less frequently. This twin disadvantage of the less popular brands is termed “double jeopardy” (DJ). Earlier studies on the DJ effect have generally explained this as a behavioral phenomenon relating to the size structure of the market. This article aims to argue that the DJ effect is also influenced by the relationship between consumer choice antecedents and consumer buying behavior.

Using consumer attitudinal and behavioral data on various toothpaste brands collected by a leading consumer goods company, it is shown that small brands are jeopardized in terms of individual‐level choice antecedents of both loyal and switching consumers. In particular, small brands are further jeopardized for brand=switching consumers in terms of weaker attitude‐choice relationship.

The research findings have significant managerial implications. the research suggests that double jeopardy of small brands may not be as irreversible phenomenon posited. A more in‐depth understanding of the individual‐level antecedents of consumer choice should help small brands to develop innovative offensive and defensive strategies aimed at favorable individual choice antecedents of loyal and switching consumers. For example, it may be prudent for a small brand to concentrate on a selected few segments (such as brand‐loyal segments) instead of spreading scarce brand resources across scattered promotion and distribution strategies.

Examines the choice antecedents of consumers who either are loyal to a brand or are brand switchers.