Search results

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of food product types and affective states and on consumers’ variety seeking (VS) tendency.

Two experiments are conducted in this paper to examine the influence of different food product types and the VS-mood state relationship.

The results are consistent with the author's hypotheses and indicate that happy people incorporate more VS when healthful and unfamiliar food products are offered, while sad people incorporate more VS when hedonic and familiar food products are offered.

Marketers of leading brands selling hedonic food products could cultivate positive emotions in their target consumers in order to prevent them from switching brands. Conversely, marketers of follower brands may find it appropriate to induce negative moods in their consumers to encourage brand switching. For those marketers who sell less hedonic, healthier food products, marketing strategies should be contrary to those for hedonic food products. In addition, marketers may conduct strategies to prevent consumers from feeling sad in the case of products with a low market profile and which are unfamiliar to their consumers. They could cultivate happy moods in consumers to encourage them to make more varied food product choices.

Prior research has focussed mainly on hedonic and familiar products when explaining VS behavior, but the present research has demonstrated the need to discuss different product types, such as healthful and unfamiliar products, in order to obtain a broader understanding of affective states on VS.

The aims of this paper is to determine, via an empirical study of beer consumers in Croatia, the influence of tasting on the validity of conjoint analysis (CA) under presence of familiar or unfamiliar brands.

The research comprised a face‐to‐face survey with 403 beer consumers. The respondents were divided into four groups regarding CA experiment (familiar/unfamiliar beer brand in combination with presence or absence of beer tasting). CA validity was measured with five criteria: face validity, convergent validity, internal validity, predictive validity and subjective evaluation of conjoint task. In addition to the CA experiment, a structured questionnaire was used consisting of a few questions regarding respondents' socio‐economic characteristics, beer purchasing, and consuming behaviour.

The research results confirmed that tasting as an additional presentation method has significant influence on validity of CA. However, the results of the study indicate that tasting should be used as a stimulus presentation method for CA with food and beverage products/brands, which are unfamiliar to the consumers. When testing familiar brands and brands with established perceptions, simpler and less expensive verbal stimulus presentation can be used.

According to the research results, it could be concluded that when performing CA with strong familiar brands, it is not necessary to use CA with tasting since tasting increases research complexity and costs and it does not achieve better results. However, tasting as a stimuli presentation method gives better results than pure verbal CA in the case of unfamiliar brands.

The paper is one of the first to deal with tasting as a presentation method in conjoint analysis and its results have direct implications for the future use of CA with food and beverages.

This paper investigates the effects of advising strength of a recommendation agent on users' trust and distrust beliefs and how the effects are moderated by perceived brand familiarity.

A research model is evaluated using a laboratory experiment with 149 participants.

Results reveal that a strong advising tone leads to higher trust in terms of users' credibility and benevolence beliefs and lower distrust in terms of their discredibility beliefs (the trustor's concerns regarding the trustee's dishonesty and competence in engaging in harmful behavior) when perceived brand familiarity is high. By contrast, when brand familiarity is low, strong advising tone results in low trust in terms of users' credibility belief and high distrust in terms of their beliefs in discredibility and malevolence (concerns regarding the trustee's conduct in terms of a malicious intention that can hurt the trustor's welfare).

This paper contributes to the trust and distrust literature by studying how each of the dimensions of trust and distrust can be affected by an RA's design feature. It extends the attribution theory to the RA context by studying the moderating role of brand familiarity in determining the effects of the advising strength of an RA. It provides actionable guidelines for practitioners regarding the adoption of an RA's appropriate advising strength to promote different types of products.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of experiential augmentation on product evaluation by consumers. An important distinction is made between product-related experiential augmentation and experiential augmentation of the environment. Furthermore, the research examines how brand familiarity moderates the effect of experiential augmentation.

In two experiments (N = 210 and N = 70), both product-related and environmental experiential augmentation were varied. Participants tasted and evaluated a new coffee product from either a well-known or a fictitious brand.

The findings of the first experiment indicate that product-related experiential augmentation contributes positively to product evaluation for both an unfamiliar and a familiar brand. Experiential augmentation of the environment influences product evaluation negatively, but only in the absence of product-related experiential augmentation. The second experiment tests some possible explanations for this negative effect and shows that it occurs only in the case of a familiar brand.

The findings offer implications for marketing managers seeking to positively influence consumer product evaluations through experiential augmentation. First, marketing managers are advised to make a distinction between product-related experiential augmentation and experiential augmentation of the evaluation environment, and, second, they should take brand familiarity into account when employing experiential augmentation of the environment.

This research contributes to the literature by showing that product-related experiential augmentation and experiential augmentation of the environment differ in the impact they have on product evaluation and providing insight into the relationship between brand familiarity and experiential augmentation.

The purpose of this study is to utilise market-oriented methodologies to determine key attributes driving consumers' preferences for novel sustainably sourced seafood concepts, derived from a species of wild-caught fish unfamiliar to consumers and to explore new product concepts for various consumer clusters.

This study applied a mixed-method approach including five focus groups with 40 consumers and a single conjoint-based questionnaire administered to 300 seafood consumers in Ireland. The focus groups explored in-depth consumers' expectations, requirements and preferences and identified the key attributes that would influence acceptance of new seafood products. Full-profile conjoint analysis was used to model consumers' preferences for novel seafood product concepts that utilised a sustainably sourced species unfamiliar to the consumer.

Focus groups revealed that the most important attributes were brand, price, format, packaging, supplementary information and accompaniment. The conjoint simulation identified three consumer clusters. Product concepts containing a sustainably sourced fish species were identified according to the preferences of each consumer cluster.

This research highlighted a sustainability angle in new product development and identified a competitive advantage and market potential for boarfish (Capros aper), which is an underutilised Irish fish species. It used a market-oriented approach to explore the development of novel sustainably sourced value-added seafood product concepts. The study results provide small and medium seafood companies with original and unique insights for developing novel sustainably sourced fish products that increase consumer acceptance.

This paper aims to identify how cute packaging design elements can influence young adult purchases of unfamiliar products, especially the perceived old-fashioned ones.

Two studies were conducted systematically with 240 young adults. The first study manipulated product characters, fonts, colors and storytelling styles to determine the cutest packaging elements. Packaging samples containing the cutest elements from Study 1 were tested for their effect on purchase intention in Study 2, moderated by product familiarity.

Anthropomorphized product characters, curvy, handwritten-like fonts, a mixture of colors and superhero story-like product information were considered the whimsically cutest packaging elements by young adults. Whimsically cute packaging design can bridge consumer product unfamiliarity and generate higher purchase intention.

Whimsically cute packaging design could be a promising alternative for marketers promoting unfamiliar products to young adult consumers.

This study's findings complement existing literature on cute packaging design, whimsical cuteness and extrinsic cue utilization theory.

The main purpose of the study is to extend Schaefer's paper by investigating how different dimensions of consumer knowledge may affect country of origin cues with an Australian sample.

A self‐administered mail survey was used in this study. The main sample consisted of Australian residents who are aged 18 and above and may or may not be alcoholic drinkers. The mailing list was purchased from a local council consisting of a suburb of metropolitan Perth, Western Australia. The total usable response rate was 38.7 per cent.

The results indicated that country of origin cues affect Australian consumers in beer evaluations despite its weak influences. It suggested that brand familiarity and objective product knowledge mediate the extent to which consumers relied on country of origin in product evaluation. However, the study found inconsistent results between different levels of objective knowledge and its effects on country of origin of manufacture.

The paper replicates Schaefer's with extensions. Despite the inconclusive results, objective product‐country knowledge, to some extent, may distort country of origin influences on consumers. This finding yields some insight for the efficiency in market segmentation. By segmenting consumers on different levels of knowledge, the marketers will subsequently make a better decision of how brand and country of origin should be managed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of unsubstantiated claims that a product is “ecological.”

A between-subjects experimental design was used in which the absence versus the presence of an (unsubstantiated) ecological claim regarding a product was a manipulated factor. The design comprised four products, representing non-ingestible/ingestible products and familiar/unfamiliar brands. These two aspects were seen as potentially moderating factors with respect to the impact of ecological claims.

The results show that ecological product claims boosted beliefs that a product is indeed ecological. This influence was not moderated by non-ingestible/ingestible and familiar/unfamiliar product characteristics. Moreover, ecological product claims enhanced conceptually related product beliefs, namely, beliefs that the product is natural, environmentally friendly and healthy. Ecological claims also had a positive impact on the attitude toward the product.

The results imply that influencers who want a receiver to believe that a product is ecological can expect to be successful by merely claiming that a product is ecological.

From a societal point of view, however, and in an era in which “alternative facts” and “post-truths” are becoming the subject of increasing concern, the results are problematic, because they underline that customers can be made to believe in claims even though no supporting evidence is provided.

The results imply that influencers who want a receiver to believe that a product is ecological can expect to be successful by merely claiming that a product is ecological. From a societal point of view, however, and in an era in which “alternative facts” and “post-truths” are becoming the subject of increasing concern, the results are problematic, because they underline that customers can be made to believe in claims even though no supporting evidence is provided.

Describes a real‐life market assessment study where the market and product were quite unfamiliar to the researcher. It shows the task to be an iterative, circuitous procedure under such circumstances. Describes several methods used to successfully overcome problems in obtaining information. It makes some contrasts between textbook recommendations and what was found in practice. A model of the process is created, based on observations made in the paper. Summarises by making four major points which may assist others undertaking such projects. These relate to (1) identifying secondary data sources, (2) tracking down industry experts for interview, (3) some methods that were used to overcome prospective respondents’ reluctance to be interviewed, and (4) how the research should seek to confirm information provided by other sources but also look for inconsistencies which can be a basis for further inquiry.

Investigates the influence of physical attractiveness of endorsers in print advertisements to consumer purchase intention. Studies two products and suggests that an openly stated desire by an attractive endorser to influence the views of the audience is more effective for high involvement products than low involvement, especially if the endorser is from a credible source. States that an endorser’s effect is stronger with less established products with less observable benefits.