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This research aims to analyze whether the self-regulatory focus, a consumer variable, moderates the impact of incongruity on consumer evaluations. A congruity or typicality arises when a product (e.g. champagne) is consistently consumed in certain occasions or is used in conjunction with other specific products. This typicality may remind people of the product with regard to specific contexts but may limit the product’s overall versatility. In line with the moderate incongruity effect, there may be an opportunity to extend a product usage to situations associated with moderate incongruity or atypicality.

Study 1 is a 2 (self-regulatory focus: promotion/prevention) × 3 (atypicality of product usage context: typical/moderately atypical/highly atypical) between-subject experimental design. Study 2 replicated Study 1 with a sample of different age, three different champagne usage contexts and a manipulation of self-regulatory focus. Study 3 is a 2 (self-regulatory focus: promotion/prevention) × 3 (atypicality of product usage context: typical/moderately atypical/highly atypical) × 2 (product replicates: red wine/pearl jewelry) mixed design with self-regulatory focus and atypicality as between-subjects factors and product replicates as a within-subject variable.

Promotion-focus consumers’ product evaluations for the moderate incongruity or atypicality are higher than those for congruity and extreme incongruity. The relationship takes an inverted-U shape. Prevention-focus consumers’ product evaluations decrease monotonically as congruity decreases. Moreover, compared with prevention-focus individuals, promotion-focus ones evaluate moderate incongruity more favorably.

There are some limitations to this research. First, it only investigates the moderate incongruity effect with regard to product use occasions and complementary products. To increase the external validity of self-regulatory focus as a moderator of incongruity-evaluation relationships, it remains to future research to extend the research setting to products which have been tightly bonded to specific users, locations, seasons or times. Second, although the experimental designs are similar to previous ones, the scenarios are nevertheless imaginary. Therefore, participants’ involvement levels in all manipulated situations, as well as the quality of their answers, remain unknown.

First, brand managers should target only promotion-focus customers to obtain the moderate incongruity effect, but should maintain a consistent marketing strategy for prevention-focus customers. Second, because both promotion- and prevention-focus individuals have unfavorable evaluations of extreme incongruity, drastic changes in marketing strategies should be avoided. Third, people from a Western (Eastern) culture exhibit more promotion (prevention) focus orientation. Therefore, the type of culture can serve as an indicator of regulatory orientation. Fourth, a gain-framed appeal is recommended for realizing the moderate incongruity effect from promotion-focus consumers. Finally, promotion-focus (vs prevention-focus) consumers will welcome a moderately nonalignable than alignable product upgrade.

Most prior research on goal orientation has found that promotion-focus (vs. prevention-focus) individuals are more inclined to adopt new products, but both types of people are unlikely to purchase new products when the associated risks become salient, while the research related to schema incongruity has suggested that the moderate incongruity effect may not exist when consumers perceive high risks. By combining both schema congruity and self-regulatory focus theories, this research provides a more precise picture of how and why a person’s goal orientation influences the relative salience of risks and benefits with an increase in incongruity.

Because of its omission of social influences, conventional animosity research has failed to sufficiently consider consumption context. To address this limitation, this research constitutes two interrelated parts: (a) investigating how normative influences (value-expressive and utilitarian influences) shape consumers’ animosity attitudes and purchase intentions; and (b) building on the normative influence perspective and separating consumption context into purchase (online vs. offline) and usage (private vs. public) contexts. The goal was to examine under the condition of preference conflict, how consumption contexts with different degrees of behavioral exposure affect purchase decisions.

One pretest, one survey and one experiment were conducted to empirically validate the proposed research model.

In an international crisis, consumers’ attitudes and behaviors were socially determined. Moreover, the online purchase with private usage (offline purchase with public usage) condition resulted in the highest (lowest) level of purchase intention.

This research pioneers in the animosity literature to identify the possibility of preference conflict in a situational international crisis, and to more delicately separate the conventional consumption context into purchase and usage contexts.

When consumers fulfill consumption goals they make decisions on first, from which product category to buy, and second, which brand to purchase within the product category. In this article, the relative effects of product‐level typicality and brand‐level typicality on goal‐driven consumer choice are examined. Which level of typicality is more diagnostic of choice? Empirical results show that consumers are, in goal‐derived usage contexts, more likely to choose a less typical and less favored brand from a typical product category than a typical and more favored brand from a less typical product category. Consequently, brands that consumers perceive as inferior may be chosen over superior brands because of the link between product categories and usage contexts. Our results indicate that it may be fruitful for marketers to associate brands and product categories with usage contexts, and that they need to consider brand competitors from other product categories.

This study aims to examine gender differences in the impact of imagining product use on purchase decisions. The authors argue that while imagination can enhance purchase intention for female consumers, it can be detrimental to male consumers. This study explores the conditions under which imagination can be turned into a positive device for male consumers.

Three experimental studies were conducted. The first two studies illustrate the differential effects of imagination on males vs females. Given the negative effect found among males, the third study focused exclusively on male consumers to identify conditions under which the negative impact of imagination on these consumers can be alleviated.

Studies 1 and 2 show that while an imagination tactic has positive or no effect on female consumers, a generic imagination request lowers male consumers’ purchase intention. Focusing on potential ways of alleviating this negative effect, Study 3 shows that for males without prior brand ownership experience, imagining product use in a less-typical context can increase purchase intention.

The results provide evidence that gender impacts the effectiveness of imagination in improving product evaluation. Furthermore, the context of imagination and previous brand experience can be used together to determine how male consumers respond to imagination.

The study’s findings warn against the blind use of imagination tactics. Instead, retailers need to customize imagination tactics based on gender, previous brand experience and product usage context.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first papers to examine the impact of gender on the influence of imagination on product evaluation.

Although the literature provides insights into the role of experiential learning based on prototypes in identification of latent customer need, it offers different views on the role of product prototypes in improving the efficacy of learning customer need, and also neglects the role of vicarious learning in prototype-based experiential learning. In a data-rich environment, market big data create new opportunities to learn from vicarious, digitalized experiences that are not observable with prototype-based learning. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to compare the effects of product prototype strategies – basic prototype strategy and enhanced prototype strategy – on identification of latent customer needs, and determine how each prototype strategy interacts with vicarious learning based on market big data to identify latent customer needs.

We collected data from 299 Chinese manufacturing firms via on-site surveys to explore our research question. All of our hypotheses were supported by the regression results.

This study finds that both the enhanced and basic prototype strategies (experiential learning from direct market experience based on prototyping) have positive effects on latent need identification, but the effect of enhanced prototypes is stronger. Furthermore, the enhanced and basic prototype strategies have different interaction effects with market big data (vicarious learning from indirect market experiences) on latent need identification.

This research extends the literature on prototype-based learning for latent need identification. It also contributes to the experiential prototype-based learning literature by exploring the role of vicarious learning based on market big data.

Purpose – With the rapid proliferation of digital technology for creating and disseminating content in different forms – textual, music, video – both firms and consumers have a number of alternative technology and formats available for creating and consuming content. While this has led to more value for consumers, the firms have had mixed results. Some firms have seen their value erode through the adoption of newer formats as compared to the older ones (e.g., streamed music format vs. CD format), and other firms have been generally reluctant to embrace newer technology and formats for the similar reasons.Design/methodology/approach – In this chapter, we review the research issues in designing and pricing such digital content and formats and the various strategies that firms can adopt in ensuring that both firms and consumers benefit through the use of newer formats.Findings – We review and discuss the extant research in this domain and identify research issues for future research.Value/originality – As more traditional products morph into digital services, it is critical that these issues are addressed so that the content creation industry can survive in the short term and prosper in the long term.

To investigate consumer innovativeness (CI) from a hierarchical perspective and examine the simultaneous impacts of hierarchical perspective of CI and perceived risk on new product adoption.

An extended innovativeness and perceived risk model was developed. A structural equation model was used to test the hypotheses using empirical data from 746 respondents in a high technology product context.

The results provide support for the hierarchical perspective of CI; domain specific CI mediates the relationship between global CI and new product adoption. Specifically, cognitive and domain‐specific innovativeness enhances the actual adoption of new products; whereas sensory innovativeness and perceived social and physical risks enhance consumers' propensity to acquire novel information about new products. Financial risk, on the other hand, has a negative impact on the propensity to acquire novel information about new products. Time, performance, psychological, and network externalities risks show no significant relations with the tendency to acquire novel information about new products.

The findings provide an explanation to the less than consistent relationship between consumer innovativeness and new product adoption. However, a single research context of high tech consumer goods may be a limitation and future studies need to replicate this hierarchical perspective of CI as a predictor of new product adoption in different research contexts for greater generalizability.

The findings of the study provide some guidelines to marketers on how to increase the new product commercialization success. Marketers should tap into the cognitive and domain‐specific innovativeness to enhance the new product adoption. The sensory part of CI and perceived social and physical risks have implications for the promotion and communication aspects of new product marketing.

Provides new insights about consumer innovativeness trait as a useful predictor of new product adoption.

The study demonstrates the viability of situational segmentation in a market outside the USA. A number of situational segmentation studies in the USA have examined the snacking market. This study examines situational segmentation opportunities in the context of the Japanese snacking market. The study attempts to delineate a situationally‐defined market structure for a broadly defined array of snack products. This is done by characterizing 18 snacks in terms of pertinent situational factors via dummy variable regression analysis; and grouping the snacks in terms of the similarity of their situational characterizations via cluster analysis. The study reveals four multi‐product snack segments, including solitary snacking cluster, socializing ensemble cluster, high gravity socialization cluster, and morning home snack. The results show that situational segmentation is as effective in complementing more traditional segmentation approaches in Japan as it is in the USA.

This paper aims to present a conceptual model that highlights the complexities associated with foreign banks wishing to operate with the Indonesian marketplace.

The paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon the marketing literature and theory to present a number of propositions.

The paper melds key international marketing constructs by positing that Indonesian consumers using foreign banks yield utilitarian, hedonistic and symbolic benefits. These underlying consumer outcomes are modeled into variables likely to impact purchase intentions.

This paper represents the first attempt to conceptualize the many challenges facing foreign banks operating within an Indonesian setting. As Indonesia has a diverse range of cultures and values systems the model highlights the considerations associated with operating in such a diverse country.

A number of important implications are presented for bank decision makers operating within Indonesia.

A conceptual model is presented and the paper suggests a future research agenda applicable to both the Indonesian and wider banking context.