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The study examines the potential moderating effects of repeating purchase cues and product knowledge on the relationship between the varying consistency of the review set and causal attribution. This study also investigates how causal attribution correlates with the perceived misleadingness of the review set.

A scenario-based experiment was conducted with 170 participants to explore the relationship between the consistency of the review set and causal attribution and how repeating purchase cues and product knowledge moderates this relationship.

Findings suggest that inconsistent review sets lead to more product (vs reviewer) attribution than consistent review sets. The repeating purchase cues mitigate the negative relationship between the consistency of the review set and product attribution, whereas product knowledge mitigates the positive relationship between the consistency of the review set and reviewer attribution. Furthermore, the results indicate that high product attribution and low reviewer attribution are associated with low perceived misleadingness.

This study is novel because it examines the moderating effects of repeating purchase cues and product knowledge on the relationship between the consistency of the review set and causal attribution. It adds to the literature by shedding light on the causal attribution process underlying the formation of perceived misleadingness of online reviews. The findings of this study provide valuable insights for managers on how to enhance the positive effects of consistent review sets and mitigate the negative effects of inconsistent review sets.

Country of Origin (COO) labeling has been shown in several studies to be an important extrinsic cue for consumers in their quality evaluation of food products such as olive oil, wine or tea. COO has not been discussed in the context of pepper; however pepper's quality highly depends on the heritage. This paper aims to explore this aspect.

The study was conducted in an organic grocery store in Bonn, Germany. The first part of the face to face interviews at the point‐of‐sale were carried out for understanding consumers' attitudes towards different extrinsic quality cues. The second part covered the product‐country‐image of pepper as well as consumers' knowledge regarding COO and pepper quality. Third, the contingent valuation method is used to analyze organic consumers' willingness to pay (WTP). Fourth a blind‐tasting of black pepper from different origins and production methods was conducted.

The study reveals that organic consumers are able to experience taste differences due to COO though only a minority expects those taste differences. Thus, also concerned and involved consumers are not sufficiently informed on COO information to rely on their purchase decision of pepper. As a result consumers are not willing to pay a significant higher price for COO labeled pepper.

This study is the first which combines face‐to‐face interviews regarding attitudes, image and knowledge with a blind tasting of pepper and an investigation of consumers' WTP for pepper from different origins and processing characteristics.

Evaluating the consequences of brand equity management is one of the most important measurement issues for intangible assets in the new economy. Studies have validated the effect of brand equity on the value of the firm and addressed the capital market effects of intangible associations such as brand value. Yet, there is not sufficient evidence on which dimensions of brand equity should be measured and monitored to support financial performance. Using regression analysis on a sample of managers in Austrian organizations, this study investigates the effect of perceived brand equity on brand profitability, brand sales volume, and perceived customer value. Results indicate strong support for measures of perceived quality, brand loyalty, and brand awareness as antecedents of firm performance, customer value and willingness to buy.

The puprose of this study is to empirically test the suggestion that branding is more important for services than for physical goods and that there is a direct relationship between the level of intangibility and the importance of branding.

An exploratory study is employed using a scenario‐based repeated measures ANOVA design, wherein the degree of product intangibility is varied from high (mutual funds) to medium (hotels) to low (computers) through a survey distributed to 101 respondents.

The results support the position that intrinsic brand cues are more important for highly intangible service purchases (mutual funds) than for purchases that are more tangible (hotels and computers). The results also reveal that extrinsic brand cues are less important in purchase decisions of highly intangible services.

This study answers a call for additional empirical research into the dynamics of services branding and its effects on consumer decision making.

This study provides managers with information about how to prioritize brand‐building activities.

This study fills an important gap in the services marketing literature by offering a rare empirical study on services branding. Furthermore, this study makes an important extension to the research of Krishnan and Hartline in their article, “Brand equity: is it more important in services?”by testing the effects of specific brand cues on consumer's purchase decisions. The findings are more in line with prior conceptual research on the importance of services branding than the results presented by Krishnan and Hartline.

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.

This study aims to examine the relationship between consumer characteristics and the effectiveness of olfactory cues on purchase behavior.

The theories of the effects of consumer decision-making, olfaction and sensory marketing on purchase behavior are applied using loyalty card data collected through an experiment. These data are analyzed using quantitative methods.

The presence of an olfactory cue has a positive impact on purchase behavior, as measured by product-category sales. Results indicate that in sales promotion, olfactory cues are most efficient in men who have hedonistic or quality-oriented decision-making styles.

This paper is the first to study the effectiveness of olfactory cues on purchase behavior when the interactions between the individual characteristics of consumers are considered. The study broadens extant frameworks of sensory marketing by placing the consumer in the central position as the processor of sensory cues. The work pioneers the integration of consumer’s decision-making style (CDMS) as one of the moderating factors in the process.

The results encourage retailers and practitioners to consider CDMS – and not only gender or age – when using olfactory cues in sales promotions. Hopefully, this paper will inspire retailers to think of the more psychological aspects of consumer behavior and decision-making when planning their loyalty card systems.

This paper is the first to study the effectiveness of olfactory cues on purchase behavior when the interactions between the individual characteristics of consumers are considered. Addressing the decision-making style in addition to demographics is a novel approach, contrasting with earlier studies that merely focused on olfactory acuity.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what factors and assortment of factors on wine back labels, representative of those found in the US market, appealed to consumers. Moreover, what changes to wine bottle characteristics and standard wine composition appealed and could affect their purchasing decision.

Data were collected through an online survey of 910 wine consumers who resided in Metropolitan Philadelphia and New York City.

Based on conjoint analysis, averaged importance for food-wine-pairing information on wine bottle back labels was greater than both how to contact and connect with the winery and winery background information. Within the pairing information factor, description of food-wine-pairings and symbols of food-wine-pairings received positive utility values, indicating consumers preferred these options more than having no pairing information present. Consumers who purchased wine at least once a week were more positively impacted by the alternatives presented, with influence decreasing as purchasing frequency declined. Wine purchasing frequency is related to the number of wine drinkers living in a household and wine consumption within a household is most often a shared consumption activity. More females drink wine but the consumption frequency of males is higher.

Producers considering changing either the wine composition or a bottle characteristic should note that, based on frequency of wine purchasing, changes that may invoke a positive response are: decreased calorie content, wine made from “sustainably farmed” or “naturally farmed” grapes, and producing USDA Certified Organic wine.

This study is the first to investigate what changes to extrinsic cues in the form of wine bottle and back label characteristics and to the wine composition (taste) intrinsic cue appeal to consumers in the US market and might influence their purchase decisions.

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.

The current study investigates the impact on perceived review helpfulness of the simultaneous processing of information from multiple cues with various central and peripheral cue combinations based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM). Thus, the current study develops and tests hypotheses by analyzing real-world review data with a text mining approach in e-commerce to investigate how information consistency (rating inconsistency, review consistency and text similarity) influences perceived helpfulness. Moreover, the role of product type is examined in online consumer reviews of perceived helpfulness.

The current study collected 61,900 online reviews, including 600 products in six categories, from Amazon.com. Additionally, 51,927 reviews were filtered that received helpfulness votes, and then text mining and negative binomial regression were applied.

The current study found that rating inconsistency and text similarity negatively affect perceived helpfulness and that review consistency positively affects perceived helpfulness. Moreover, peripheral cues (rating inconsistency) positively affect perceived helpfulness in reviews of experience goods rather than search goods. However, there is a lack of evidence to demonstrate the hypothesis that product types moderate the effectiveness of central cues (review consistency and text similarity) on perceived helpfulness.

Previous studies have mainly focused on numerical and textual factors to investigate the effect on perceived helpfulness. Additionally, previous studies have independently confirmed the factors that affect perceived helpfulness. The current study investigated how information consistency affects perceived helpfulness and found that various combinations of cues significantly affect perceived helpfulness. This result contributes to the review helpfulness and ELM literature by identifying the impact on perceived helpfulness from a comprehensive perspective of consumer review and information consistency.

The intent of this article is to explore the automobile purchase patterns of Chinese Americans by examining factors driving an intriguing phenomenon – most Chinese Americans prefer Japanese or European brands of automobiles over US brands.

This article uses data from a sample of 150 respondents using a mall‐intercept survey method. Regression, analysis of variance and Chi‐square analysis were employed. The factors examined include country image, informational influence, collectivism/individualism, and brand loyalty.

This study has four findings. In their automobile purchase decision making, Chinese Americans perceive the country image of Japan most favorably, that of US least favorably, and that of Europe in‐between. Country image is important, but it is less so than other extrinsic cues such as price, brand name and service, with reliability and safety being the most important intrinsic cues. Opinions of family and friends are important, second to prior knowledge and information from consumer reports. Chinese Americans' collectivism is positively related to their susceptibility to interpersonal informational influence, yet their individualism is not. Chinese Americans are not brand loyal.

The article helps automobile marketers refine their marketing mix to attract Chinese American buyers. A reliable and safe automobile is the most important factor that affects their purchase decisions. Media advertising and salespeople have only marginal influence. Therefore the advice is to strengthen or improve interpersonal influence.

No prior research has examined the automobile purchase patterns of Chinese Americans, who, in 2006, constituted 1.2 percent of the US population, with appealing demographics to marketers.