Search results

This paper aims to examine how olfactory imagery, triggered by scent brand names prior to smelling, influences scented-product purchase intention.

Five studies were conducted. Logistic regression analysis was used to predict likelihood of olfactory imagery formation. ANOVA and t-test analyses were used for scent brand name group comparisons, and serial mediation analysis was used to test how scent brand names impact purchase intention through olfactory imagery vividness and the (dis)confirmation between imagined (i.e. expected) and experienced scents.

Scent name familiarity stimulates olfactory imagery formation. Scent brand name specificity (e.g. “Lavender Bouquet” vs. “Floral Bouquet”) influences purchase intention, with specific names leading to lower purchase intention, because they generate vivid olfactory imagery and induce a disconfirmation between imagined and experienced scents.

Branding scents on products should be a strategic product design decision. Surprisingly, although specific scent brand names trigger vivid olfactory imagery and precise scent expectations, they mitigate purchase intention and thus are riskier. General scent brand names are safer.

This research contributes by extending the literature on the effect of verbal cues on scent perception by considering the role of scent brand name specificity on purchase intent. It also adds to work on how olfactory imagery influences purchase intention by incorporating olfactory imagery vividness. Finally, it proposes and tests an underlying cognitive mechanism to explain the relationship between scent brand names and purchase intention.

This study aims to investigate age and gender differences in young consumers’ attribute preferences that underlie their choice decisions. This research proposes and finds that attribute preferences are moderated by age but not gender. Understanding how children at different ages evaluate a product’s attributes is essential to new children’s product development.

Hierarchical Bayesian choice-based conjoint analysis was used to assess attribute importance via a series of choice tasks among children and adults. Adults completed the study by survey, whereas children were interviewed and led through the choice tasks.

This research finds that the preference structure for a product’s attributes differs systematically based on the age of children. Younger children chose based on perceptually salient attributes of a product, whereas older children chose based on cognitively salient attributes. When children’s attribute preferences are compared to adults, older children value attributes more similarly to adults than younger children. While gender differences were proposed and found, further analysis indicated that these differences were driven by adults in the sample and that no gender differences existed in the children’s age categories.

This study is the first to study children’s preference structure in complex choices with different ages preferring different attributes. By using conjoint analysis, this research is able to understand children’s underlying decision process, as utility scores are obtained providing a level of precision for understanding the underlying process of children’s choices that other studies have not used.

This paper aims to examine how conflicting brand preferences between a social group and an individual may lead the individual to hide their consumption. Specifically, the authors examine the conditions under which hiding behaviour is most likely to occur and the impact of susceptibility to interpersonal influence on the decision to hide.

Two experiments were conducted using a combination of student and adult samples. Analysis of variance and regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

Findings suggest that individuals are most likely to hide their consumption behaviour when group sanctions for non-conformity are severe, but the likelihood of being caught is low. Further, individual differences in susceptibility to interpersonal influence are found to affect individuals’ decisions to hide their consumption behaviour.

By identifying hidden consumption behaviour as a possible response to preference conflict, this research contributes to the literature on social influence and extends our understanding of how consumers behave when influenced by social group pressure.

The present work establishes hiding behaviour (a concept which has yet to be thoroughly explored in the literature) as an alternative yet viable response to preference conflict.

Increasing trade concentration in retail fields, particularly in consumer products, poses several problems for manufacturers. Among the greatest are (1) increasing retailer control of the marketplace, (2) more intense competition among sellers, (3) lack of brand availability in some markets, (4) increasingly larger promotion budgets required of manufacturers, and (5) changes in sales force personnel and activities. Some of the suggested changes in the marketing mix are (1) market investigation, (2) new distribution systems, (3) revised promotional efforts, and (4) production differentiation.

Guided by the theoretical framework of human capital theory and using data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study, this chapter investigated labor market outcomes for graduates of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) compared to their non-HBCU counterparts. The results from this current study largely indicate that there are no significant disadvantages for Black graduate of HBCUs in terms of labor market outcomes. Moreover, under the premise of human capital theory, this study found that HBCUs serve as equivalent mechanisms for human capital attainment for Black students. This chapter concludes with limitations of the study as well as implications for future research.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Companies regularly need to communicate information about their employees’ performance to a variety of people who need to know; internally to co‐workers involved in audits or evaluations, and externally to customers and clients, the media, and prospective employers seeking references. Where the information is negative, companies fear the backlash of defamation lawsuits from employees. If the employees are themselves managers or professionals, the quantity and quality of information, the need for its disclosure, and the magnitude of the legal threat all rise. Highly publicized defamation cases have prompted a wave of no or limited comment policies. By reading brief case synopses illustrating the various communications settings, managers can gain a more accurate sense of the practical dynamics and law of employee disclosure. They can then better evaluate the view that the risk reduction offered by no‐comment policies does not justify the adverse effect on their own companies, their productive employees, and other stakeholders in accurate information. Managers can create policies and procedures that make both business and legal sense.

Given the experiences of Union Carbide in the past few years, I'm close to becoming a planning agnostic. I've decided the future is unknown and unknowable. I'm somewhere between bemused and regretful that all of the efforts of U.S. industry expended on the pursuit and logic of planning have not been able to preclude so many individual and collective failures of management judgment. The relative soundness of numerous businesses still, as always, depends upon the whims of exogenous fortune.