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The purpose of this paper is to understand the implications of anticipated discrimination for women and racial minorities when they lose out on an opportunity for a promotion to a similarly qualified non-minority colleague.

A sample of 248 participants who were full-time working adults residing in the USA were randomly assigned to one of four versions of the scenario in which a coworker was either a White male, a White female, a Black male or a Black female coworker is offered a desired promotion. Participants reported on the extent to which they anticipated discrimination (i.e. expect discriminatory behaviors enacted toward them in the future) in the hypothetical workplace.

Women and racial minorities reported anticipated discrimination at greater levels than non-minorities when passed over for a promotion. The authors also found that intersectionally stigmatized, racial minority women reported the highest levels of anticipated discrimination.

The authors recommend transparent and honest communication about organizations’ decision-making processes that have career-related implications for underrepresented populations. Doing so may help alleviate concerns or perceptions that employees may have in regard to organizational practices being (intentionally or unintentionally) discriminatory.

While research has examined the psychological implications of receiving a promotion, substantially less work has focused on the characteristics of the promoted coworker or considered how those characteristics shape perceptions of anticipating discrimination.

The aim of the research presented in this paper is to enhance our understanding of self-gift giving behavior. Self-regulatory theory is used as a conceptual support to achieve this objective. The main idea that is explored is that consumers’ self-gift purchase intentions vary across contexts and situations to the extent that these are compatible or not with their self-regulatory mindset, whether it is chronic or situational.

Two studies, using a scenario-based experiment, were conducted to investigate the effects that regulatory focus has on consumers’ intentions to buy themselves a gift.

The results support the proposition that the chronic form of regulatory focus in success and failure situations has a significant impact on the intention to purchase a gift to oneself and show that the situational form of regulatory focus has an influence on self-gift purchase intention as well. They also confirm that situations that are congruent with consumers’ self-regulatory mindset lead to stronger self-gift purchase intentions.

The main contribution of this research lies in delineating the role that some specific dispositional and situational factors play in shaping consumers’ perceptions of success and failure events and how this impacts the eventual purchase of a gift to oneself. This contrasts with previous research on self-gift giving, where success and failure situations are assumed to be perceived similarly by consumers. Marketing managers wishing to stimulate consumers’ propensity to buy themselves gifts should consider using regulatory focus as a segmentation basis. Marketing communications should be adapted to consumers’ self-regulatory mindset.

Previous research indicates that the goals consumers have when shopping influence their attention to and processing of information they encounter. The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of consumers' pre‐purchase goals on their responses to price promotions.

In three experiments, the existence of consumer goals (i.e. with or without a pre‐purchase goal) were manipulated and promotion characteristics including message framing, promotion format, and promotion depth were systematically varied to examine how consumers respond to these price promotions.

Consumers with a pre‐purchase goal were found to be more attracted to the promotion than those without a goal. More importantly, pre‐purchase goals interact with promotion characteristics and produce differential effects on willingness to buy. Consumers with a pre‐purchase goal are more attracted to promotions emphasizing reduced losses while those without a goal responded more favorably toward promotions emphasizing gains. Moreover, consumers with and without a pre‐purchase goal respond differently to various discount levels.

Existing research on price promotions has not examined the influence of consumers' pre‐purchase goals. This paper brings a new dimension to price promotion research. Understanding these variations in pre‐purchase goals across consumers will help sellers design more effective promotion programs

Codes of conduct have been adopted very broadly on both sides of the Atlantic in the last two decades. They have been introduced for both elected representatives and appointed officials. Though the accountability mechanisms vary, elected politicians prefer self-policing and enforcement. For appointed officials who carry out specialized functions with exposure to particular, clearly identifiable, ethical risks, where the need for public trust and confidence is great, it is important but also relatively straightforward to develop codes of practice. For generalist public servants, the situation is different. The range of ethical risk to which civil servants are exposed is broader. It is less easy to be specific about the risks involved.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether the simple exposure to different types of products can trigger different motivational orientation on consumers (prevention vs promotion), which in turn would match message frame and increase persuasion.

Three experiments test whether exposure to product categories can trigger consumer’s regulatory focus orientation. Participants in the pilot study are students, while participants in the two other studies are consumers.

A first pilot study randomly exposed participants to a product that could trigger promotion orientation (e.g. orange juice) versus a product that could trigger prevention orientation (e.g. sunscreen). Participants exposed to promotion (prevention) product suggest more promotion (prevention) strategies to reach a particular goal (preparing for their final exam). Study 2 shows that gain (vs loss)-framed messages using health appeals have better evaluations when featuring promotion (vs prevention) products. Study 3 generalizes these results using another sample and different product categories.

The paper uses some product categories and including other categories would increase external validity.

The practical implication is to help marketers to choose the right health argument to match the product category they are trying to sell.

Theoretically, the results from three studies show that exposure to products can temporarily trigger a consumer’s regulatory focus and that messages using health arguments that are consistent with this regulatory focus are more persuasive than those that are not. Managerially, these results help managers to adapt the right message in function of the product category.

Research conducted over the last decade, on the influence of brand inertia or variety seeking on promotional response, has yielded mixed results. Variety seekers have been found to be more price‐sensitive by one set of researchers, while another stream of work finds them to be less sensitive. Reconciling the two findings, the current study empirically addresses the proposition that variety seekers use price promotions strategically, as a way to experiment with different brands over time. Although consumers evaluate price promotions differently according to whether the promoted brand is more or less intrinsically favored than a reference brand, high and low variety seekers respond to brand comparisons differently, leading to differences in evaluation and responsiveness to price promotion offers. The empirical results confirm that high variety seekers are less sensitive to the preference order of considered brands, but only within a limited range of intrinsic brand favorability. Once differences in brand favorability are accounted for, moreover, finds that high variety seekers are more sensitive to promotional effort. This is compatible with the notion that, within an acceptable set of brands, variety seekers use price promotions as a low‐cost strategy for experiencing different brands over time. This understanding of the relationship among promotional offers, specific brands and consumer segments, provides valuable insights to brand managers as they consider their strategic promotional options, and design an effective promotional strategy.

This paper aims to examine the effect of price promotion presentation formats on consumers’ green purchase intentions across various levels of greenness. Despite the increasing awareness of environmental issues and green products among consumers, there is a gap between their green attitude and purchase intentions. Previous studies show that consumers’ degree of greenness varies and that price plays an important role in their green consumption decision-making.

Two between-subject experiments with 236 participants were used to examine our hypotheses and conceptual model.

The results show that different formats of price promotion presentations influence consumers’ purchase perceptions differently. Consumers with a high degree of greenness are attracted to promotions emphasizing gain, while those with a low degree of greenness prefer promotions underlining reduced loss. In addition, medium-greenness consumers show similar reactions to both formats. Our studies further demonstrate that consumers’ perceived value mediates the moderated effects of perceived quality and perceived savings on green purchase intentions.

This research helps marketers better design price promotions, taking into account the various levels of consumers’ greenness. The focus of reduced loss or gain of the promotional programs should be targeted at consumers with different levels of greenness.

This is the first paper to examine the role of price promotion presentation formats in consumer decision-making regarding green consumption. The study provides new insights concerning how to design price promotions to enhance the green purchase intentions of consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the heterogeneous effects of gains and losses on the perception of new products. It seeks to argue that the heterogeneity in these effects (partly) stems from the price-perceived quality relationship which is more important for quality-seeking customers.

A multilevel logit model was applied to household panel data on purchases of new yoghurt and sausage products in Germany. The multilevel model allowed to estimate heterogeneous price effects and accounted for the nested structure in panel data.

Significant variation in the effects of gains, losses, and promotions were found. Internal reference prices (IRPs), which served as indicator of loss-averse vs quality-seeking customers, were found to moderate these effects. Monetary losses have less negative effects for customers with high IRPs. Negative interaction effects of IRPs with monetary gains and promotions indicate that quality-seeking customers are less attracted by gains and promotions.

The heterogeneity in the price effects confirms the strategic importance of new product prices to influence customers’ perception of value. The price-quality relationship is an explanatory approach for heterogeneous price effects and should not be neglected in price setting. The inclusion of customer-specific reference price information yields deeper insights into customers’ use of prices to evaluate new products.

This study is the first to estimate asymmetric gain and loss effects in the analysis of new product trial. A customer-specific view in price setting is emphasized by taking customer-specific reference prices into account.

The purpose of this study is to shed greater light on the factors that influence consumer compliance behavior, e.g. SRF, in compliance dependent services (CDS). CDS, e.g. weight loss, retirement savings, education, credit repair, are long term in nature, often requiring lifestyle changes. In addition, and importantly, the customer's role in CDS extends beyond the face‐to‐face interaction and requires the consumer to comply with prescribed behaviors when away from the service provider.

The subjects were 243 female clients (aged 20 to 45) at a weight loss/fitness center located in south India. Subjects were selected from among the new clients who signed up for an eight‐week long weight loss and fitness program which seeks to help clients lose modest amounts of excess weight (averaging approximately ten pounds). On signing up, respondents completed a survey that included several scales of regulatory focus, and a question eliciting reasons for wanting to lose weight.

This study exams the role of self‐regulatory focus (SRF) in long‐term customer compliance behavior in weight loss. A specific measure of SRF led to better outcomes than the generalized measures of SRF.

Though this research project examines consumer behavior in the context of weight loss activities, it has far‐ranging implications for various services requiring consumers to engage in prescribed behaviors over the long run. For example, the success of debt counseling services and retirement savings programs require clients to engage in certain behaviors over the long run. Marketers of CDS programs will be able to use the findings of this research project to find new ways to increase long‐term customer compliance behavior.

Based on the examination of the roles of message framing and evidence type, this study made an analysis of the promotion methods of intention and information need towards HPV vaccination.

The study conducted a 2 (gain-framed messages vs loss-framed messages) × 2 (statistical evidence vs narrative evidence) quasi-experimental design built upon theories of message framing and evidence type. This experiment recruited college students who were not vaccinated against HPV as participants. The analysis of variance (ANOVA), the analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), and the independent sample T-test were used to test the hypotheses.

The results (N = 300) indicate that (1) Loss-framed messages will lead to a more favorable intention towards HPV vaccination than gain-framed messages. (2) Statistical evidence will lead to a more explicit information need than narrative evidence. (3) Message framing and evidence type will interact and (a) for statistical evidence, loss-framed messages will lead to a more favorable intention towards HPV vaccination than gain-framed messages and (b) for narrative evidence, gain-framed messages will lead to a more favorable intention towards HPV vaccination than loss-framed messages. (4) Message framing and evidence type will interact and (a) for loss-framed messages, statistical evidence will stimulate more explicit information need of HPV vaccination than narrative evidence and (b) for gain-framed messages, narrative evidence will stimulate more explicit information need of HPV vaccination than statistical evidence.

This paper can help to further understand the important roles of message framing and evidence type in health behavior promotion. The study contributes to the literature on how health information can be well organized to serve the public health communication and further enhance the health information service.