Search results

Recently, the popularity of store brands has resulted in some manufacturer brands being removed from shelves. The current literature lacks empirical work on the effect of manufacturer brand erosion on consumer assortment perception and repatronage intention. Based on signalling theory, the purpose of this paper is to manufacturer brands play a signalling role and contend that manufacturer brand erosion has detrimental effects on the assortment perception due to reduced signalling efficacy.

A 3 (low manufacturer brand erosion vs high manufacturer brand erosion vs manufacturer brand dominance) ×2 (assortment size: small vs large) between-subject experiment was conducted.

Manufacturer brand erosion exerts a negative effect on assortment attractiveness and consumers’ repatronage intention; the greater the erosion, the larger the negative effect. These negative effects are mediated by reduced consumer perceptions of assortment quality and variety. A large (vs small) assortment size attenuates the negative effect of manufacturer brand erosion by improving perceived assortment quality.

To engage in strategic positioning through efficient assortment management, retailers should cooperate with brand manufacturers, instead of promoting their own private labels. Nevertheless, a large assortment dominated by store brands signals that the retailer has built a strong private brand, which in turn gains a differentiation advantage.

This paper is among the first to take the signalling perspective and explicitly investigate whether and how manufacturer brand erosion exerts a significant impact on assortment perception.

Consumers’ motivations for purchasing counterfeit branded luxuries are a topic of heated discussion amongst academics and practitioners. Drawing on self-discrepancy theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of actual-ideal self-discrepancy on consumers’ attitudes towards counterfeit branded luxuries. It investigates how self-monitoring and perceived social risk moderate this effect. Furthermore, it explores cross-cultural differences in the impact of actual-ideal self-discrepancy.

A pilot study provides preliminary evidence that highlights the importance of actual-ideal self-discrepancy in counterfeit consumption. Based upon a large-scale survey across Hong Kong, the USA and Australia, the principal study explores the moderating effect of self-monitoring and perceived social risk as well as cross-cultural differences.

The results indicate that self-discrepancy increases consumers’ tendency to engage in symbolic consumption, and that consumption of counterfeit branded luxuries can serve the social function of self-expression to reduce the discomfort induced by self-discrepancy. Self-monitoring and perceived social risk have significant moderating effects, with the former strengthening and the latter attenuating this effect. Moreover, the effect of self-discrepancy is more pronounced amongst individualistic consumers than collectivistic consumers.

This is the first study to highlight the significance of self-discrepancy in the consumption of counterfeit branded luxuries. It examines the important moderating effects of self-monitoring and perceived social risk. Consumers from collectivistic and individualistic cultures define their self-concept differently, thus the findings provide meaningful cross-cultural information on the impact of self-discrepancy in counterfeit consumption.

To influence consumer perceptions, firms often manipulate online product reviews on their own websites or third-party forums by anonymously adding positive reviews, deleting unfavorable reviews or offering rewards to encourage favorable reviews. This study aims to investigate consumer perceptions of online review deceptions and how these perceptions influence their subsequent purchase behavior. In particular, consumers’ awareness, suspicion and detection are studied and specific manipulation tactics are evaluated.

Both qualitative and quantitative studies are relied upon to understand consumer perceptions of online review deceptions. In-depth interviews with 16 experienced online shoppers were conducted to collect the illustrative accounts concerning consumer awareness of online review deceptions, their suspicion, detection and evaluation of different manipulation tactics. A survey of 199 consumers was then followed to validate and corroborate the findings from the qualitative study and generalize the interview results onto the general public.

The results from in-depth interviews suggest that consumers take a negative view toward online review deceptions, but the degree of negativity varies across different manipulation tactics. Moreover, different types of manipulations vary in terms of perceived deceptiveness, ease of detection and unethicality, as well as their effect on consumer purchase intention and perceived helpfulness of online product reviews. The findings from the survey further confirmed the qualitative findings.

The findings have a number of meaningful managerial implications for industry associations and policymakers on whether and how to regulate online review deceptions.

This study applies and extends information manipulation theory and deception detection literature to an online context to increase the richness of the relevant theories. It is among the first to empirically investigate online review deceptions from a consumer’s perspective, as opposed to a firm’s perspective as previous studies have done.

Most previous studies have indicated promotional attributes separately (e.g. time pressure, giveaways, price discounts, exclusivity) and found controversial effects. This paper aims to explore how different attributes can be aligned with each other and integrated with different levels of brand strength to influence sales or purchase intention according to the fit logic.

Both field data and controlled experiments are used to understand the effectiveness of promotion configurations. This paper first conducts an exploratory study using qualitative comparative analysis, based on 625 online promotion campaigns. This paper identifies several effective configurations of promotion attributes, leading to the development of two hypotheses. Three experiments are then designed to test the validity of these two hypotheses.

The results show that strong brands should adopt nonmonetary promotion, whereas weak brands should adopt monetary promotion; exclusivity and time limitation should be used separately.

This paper provides empirical insights on how promotion elicits sales in terms of the configuration of promotional attributes and brand strength. This paper examines the integrative effect of types of giveaways, promotion duration and promotion target as well as brand strength on promotion effectiveness. Future research can explore other promotional attributes. This study is a first attempt to introduce and apply the set-theoretic approach to address strategic research issues and inform strategic decisions and managerial actions.

The findings can facilitate marketers’ understanding and predictions of deal recipients’ responses to promotions.

This paper adopts a holistic view to investigate how different promotion attributes interact with one another to stimulate sales. It explores the integrative effect from field data and finds converging evidence through a set-theoretic approach and controlled experiments.

This paper aims to study how price and sales level information influence consumer product perceptions and choices in online settings. It, in particular, tests whether displaying sales level information increases consumer price sensitivity, which is a potential strategic risk to retailers.

Study 1 uses eBay data to investigate whether the interaction effects between price and sales level can be observed in an existing market. Study 2 involves online experiments across three product categories. Participants choose from product pairs that are shown with either the same or different prices and with no, the same or different sales levels.

Study 1 shows strong effects of a product’s displayed sales and price level on its daily sales but finds no interaction effect. Study 2 shows strong effects of price and sales levels on product choice but similarly finds no evidence that sales level information influences consumer price sensitivity, although it reveals an effect on quality perceptions. The results show how perceptions of quality, sacrifice and popularity mediate the effects of price and sales level information on product choice.

Study 1 has limited control over prices and sales levels. Study 2 involves only hypothetical choices.

These findings indicate that businesses can use sales level information to manage consumer product quality perceptions and choices without having to be concerned that this will make consumers more price-sensitive.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to investigate how sales level information affects consumer responses to price differences in online contexts.

To improve the transmission efficiency and reduce the damage to pipes in the hydraulic systems of tunnel boring machine subjected to random vibration, this paper aims to propose a novel dynamic characteristic analysis method that considers random vibration.

A fluid-structure interaction motion equation of the pipe is established by using Hamilton’s principle. The finite element method and discrete analysis method of random vibration are used to construct a model of the dynamic behavior of the pipe.

The influences of fluid parameters and external excitation parameters on the dynamic characteristics of pipes are analyzed. The experimental results are found to be in good agreement with the simulation results, which demonstrates that the proposed analytical method can provide a theoretical reference for the design and selection of hydraulic pipes subjected to random vibration.

The proposed method can be regarded as a future calculation method for pipes subjected to random vibration, and the transmission efficiency of the pipe can be improved.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of innovativeness, change seeking and cognitive effort on consumer responses to traditional versus virtual testing environment.

The empirical study collects concept evaluations of five heterogeneous consumer appliances, from 400 members of an online panel. Generalizability theory (hereafter G theory) is used to assess the psychometric quality of the evaluation data in different testing environments.

The results show that subjects with high innovativeness and change seeking report significantly more favorable concept evaluations and generate better quality data. However, the effect of innovativeness on testing outcomes and data quality would be reduced in virtual testing environment.

The results indicate that using firm or industry norms to interpret the testing outcome will be biased unless it accounts for whether the screening processes result in equally innovative or variety seeking samples of respondents.

Managerially, the current results indicate that a product manager wanting to concept test a pool of appliance concepts can benefit from screening for the respondents, who will provide higher quality concept testing data in a traditional testing environment. However, the effects of traits on data quality are mitigated in a virtual testing environment. The findings provide a surprising insight that subject selection is not a more critical issue in virtual testing.

New product concept screening, i.e., selecting a few viable innovative concepts from numerous candidates, involves high stakes and is complicated and resource intensive. Over the years, there has been heated debate about the relative merit of monadic (sequential) tests vs that of preference-based paired comparisons. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study proposes the Generalizability Theory as a framework to assess and compare the performance of traditional monadic test with the Adaptive Concept Screening (ACS) in terms of their testing results and psychometric quality.

Using 50 yogurt concepts and two independent groups of respondents, the results indicate that ACS requires a significant smaller sample of respondents to achieve a necessary minimum G coefficient for decision making. Moreover, ACS offers a more discriminating and reliable solution for early stage concept screening as manifested by a higher G coefficient and greater percentage of variance due to the selected concepts given the same sampling design.

The results lend strong support to ACS as a more cost-effective method for screening new product concepts and the Generalizability Theory as a systematic framework for assessing concept testing methods.

This study adopts the Generalizability Theory framework to assess the validity of new product concept screening method.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand current concept testing practice and its role in the new product development process; identify the relationship, if any, between concept testing design and perceptions of its effectiveness; determine what evidence product managers or research consultants have for the reliability and validity of current concept testing.

A survey of new product managers collected detailed information on their organization's most recent traditional or conjoint concept testing project. In the study of marketing research consultants, 100 firms were asked to provide the publicly available information about the reliability and validity track record of their concept testing services.

There are differences between practices for incrementally and radically new concepts. Practitioners prefer to keep their information proprietary, so little has been learned about how concept tests should be designed, despite the thousands of concepts tested every year.

The paper identifies current concept testing practice, including which methods/models are used, what is known about their reliability and validity, and the perceived problems and desired improvements.

The paper identifies how concept testing is currently carried out and those issues most in need of future research.