Implicit memory and consumer choice: the mediating role of brand familiarity

Two experiments investigated the influence of implicit memory on consumer choice for brands with varying levels of familiarity. Priming was measured using a consideration‐choice task, developed by Coates, Butler and Berry ( 2004 ). Experiment 1 employed a coupon‐rating task at encoding that required participants to meaningfully process individual brand names, to assess whether priming could affect participants' final (preferred) choices for familiar brands. Experiment 2 used this same method to assess the impact of implicit memory on consideration and choice for unknown and leader brands, presented in conjunction with familiar competitors. Significant priming was obtained in both experiments, and was shown to directly influence final choice in the case of familiar and highly familiar leader brands. Moreover, it was shown that a single prior exposure could lead participants to consider buying an unknown, and indeed fictitious, brand. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intrapersonal variation in consumer susceptibility to normative influence: toward a better understanding of brand choice decisions

The authors examined intrapersonal variation in consumer susceptibility to normative influence as a key mediator of wine brand choice. On the basis of a consumer sample, the authors found that individual values and social identity complexity affect consumer susceptibility to normative influence with downstream effects on (a) which brand benefits consumers desire in wine and (b) choice. Individuals higher on internal values and with more complex social identities were less susceptible to normative influence and placed less emphasis on social brand benefits. Separate examinations of consumption scenarios with and without salient reference groups showed that reference group salience interacts with personal values and social identity complexity in affecting consumer susceptibility to normative influence, which in turn affects which brand benefits consumers desire and consequently choice.     

Consumer response journey following a product-harm crisis: The role of online brand communities

Online brand communities can serve as a crucial information source about a product-harm crisis and allow consumers to seek information from others and share their opinions in a social dynamic environment. The role of an online brand community in shaping consumer responses following such a crisis nevertheless remains under-researched. Drawing from attribution theory, this research explores the dynamic and holistic consumer journey in online brand communities following a product-harm crisis, specifically examining consumer attribution as the key mechanism and consumers' decision to forgive the brand as the outcome response. This research includes two studies. First, a netnographic pilot study is conducted to provide real-world evidence for the research phenomenon and to explore consumer responses within the natural setting of an online brand community. Second, the main study uses an interpretivist epistemological approach to track the unfolding process and capture the evolution of consumer attribution and forgiveness. The results show the social nature of attribution as members engage with others in online brand communities, seeking and verifying information, sensemaking and forming opinions. The findings make theoretical contributions to the literature on attribution and product-harm crisis. The findings from the research also help brands make informed decisions on crisis management strategies.     

Making trade-offs: a probabilistic and context-sensitive model of choice behavior

The stochastic difference model assumes that decision makers trade normalized attribute value differences when making choices. The model is stochastic, with choice probabilities depending on the normalized difference variable, d, and a decision threshold, delta. The decision threshold indexes a person's sensitivity to attribute value differences and is a free estimated parameter of the model. Depending on the choice context, a person may be more or less sensitive to attribute value differences, and hence delta may be used to measure context effects. With proportional difference used as the normalization, the proportional difference model (PD) was tested with 9 data sets, including published data (e.g., J. L. Myers, M. M. Suydam, & B. Gambino, 1965; A. Tversky, 1969). The model accounted for individual and group data well and described violations of stochastic dominance, independence, and weak and strong stochastic transitivity.     

The impact of online brand community type on consumer's community engagement behaviors: consumer-created vs. marketer-created online brand community in online social-networking web sites

The current study proposed and tested a theoretical model of consumers' online brand community engagement behaviors, with particular attention given to online brand community type (consumer vs. marketer-created). By integrating attribution and social identity theories, this study investigated the causal linkages between intrinsic motives of altruism, social identification motivations, and online brand community engagement behaviors. The results showed that consumers' online brand community engagement intentions were indirectly influenced by the different types of communities through different levels of consumers' attributions to intrinsic motives of altruism. This study also found that, in the attribution processes, consumers' intrinsic motives of altruism motivated them to identify themselves socially with the online communities they join. Finally, this study demonstrated that the intrinsic motives of altruism and social identification motivations provided strong social incentives to motivate consumers to engage in subsequent online brand community behaviors.     

Anthropomorphizing brands: The role of attributed brand traits in interactive CSR communication and consumer online endorsements

Consumers tend to relate to brands in similar ways as they relate to individuals and groups. However, relatively little is known about the attribution of human traits to brands in online contexts. The current research focused on the role of attributed brand traits in interactive corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication and positive electronic word‐of‐mouth intentions. Results of an online survey (N = 174) revealed that higher levels of perceived interactivity were associated with stronger attributions of morality, sociability, and competence traits to brands. Yet only attributed brand morality was associated with consumers' willingness to endorse the brand and its CSR message on social networking sites. These findings underline the importance of brands' openness to dialogue regarding the promotion of CSR activities. Furthermore, these findings suggest that consumers are most likely to feel that brands can represent their identity when brand morality is considered to be high.     

Emotion regulation choice in an evaluative context: the moderating role of self-esteem

Evaluative contexts can be stressful, but relatively little is known about how different individuals who vary in responses to self-evaluation make emotion regulatory choices to cope in these situations. To address this gap, participants who vary in self-esteem gave an impromptu speech, rated how they perceived they had performed on multiple evaluative dimensions, and subsequently chose between disengaging attention from emotional processing (distraction) and engaging with emotional processing via changing its meaning (reappraisal), while waiting to receive feedback regarding these evaluative dimensions. According to our framework, distraction can offer stronger short-term relief than reappraisal, but, distraction is costly in the long run relative to reappraisal because it does not allow learning from evaluative feedback. We predicted and found that participants with lower (but not higher) self-esteem react defensively to threat of failure by seeking short-term relief via distraction over the long-term benefit of reappraisal, as perceived failure increases. Implications for the understanding of emotion regulation and self-esteem are discussed.     

Consumer brand choice: individual and group analyses of demand elasticity

Following the behavior-analytic tradition of analyzing individual behavior, the present research investigated demand elasticity of individual consumers purchasing supermarket products, and compared individual and group analyses of elasticity. Panel data from 80 UK consumers purchasing 9 product categories (i.e., baked beans, biscuits, breakfast cereals, butter, cheese, fruit juice, instant coffee, margarine and tea) during a 16-week period were used. Elasticity coefficients were calculated for individual consumers with data from all or only 1 product category (intra-consumer elasticities), and for each product category using all data points from all consumers (overall product elasticity) or 1 average data point per consumer (interconsumer elasticity). In addition to this, split-sample elasticity coefficients were obtained for each individual with data from all product categories purchased during weeks 1 to 8 and 9 to 16. The results suggest that: 1) demand elasticity coefficients calculated for individual consumers purchasing supermarket food products are compatible with predictions from economic theory and behavioral economics; 2) overall product elasticities, typically employed in marketing and econometric research, include effects of interconsumer and intraconsumer elasticities; 3) when comparing demand elasticities of different product categories, group and individual analyses yield similar trends; and 4) individual differences in demand elasticity are relatively consistent across time, but do not seem to be consistent across products. These results demonstrate the theoretical, methodological, and managerial relevance of investigating the behavior of individual consumers.     

Using advertising alignment to improve product placement effects on product choice: The power of facilitating analogies

Two studies investigate the utility of analogical reasoning for improving the likelihood of consumer choice after a product placement. Data suggest that analogical transfer to real‐life situations of a product solution featured in a placement can be facilitated by judicious use of accompanying advertising. Ads that are distinct from placement content are associated with higher choice frequencies for the focal item than are ads that play as extensions of a show episode in which a product was placed. This presumably occurs because distinct ads promote generalization of the solution viewed in the product placement, and this, in turn, facilitates later analogical mapping of the solution.     

Using the Internet to investigate consumer choice spaces

Traditional investigations of consumer choice processes include a matrix of alternatives described by attributes. The researcher-createdmatrix presents a product option space for the participant. In this article, we propose an alternative methodological approach to consumer choice processes. Specifically, we investigate choice processes when a participant creates his/her own product space. We describe a Web-based program and methodology used to collect data for three customizable products. Empirical results indicate that consumers are willing and able to make choices from their own product space. This research provides a new avenue for exploring choice processes.     

Determinants of brand switching: the role of consumer inferences,brand commitment,and perceived risk

Previous research in the area of price discounts has generated a rich, but diverse and mixed body of literature. This research examines the role of consumer's brand commitment and product category risk in influencing the nature as well as valence of the inferences generated by consumers in response to price discounts. Our results provide insights regarding how consumers' responses to competitor inducements vary depending upon their brand commitment for the incumbent brand and perceived risk. Furthermore, we show that higher commitment consumers could resist an inducement from a competitor when they are able to generate negative, marketer‐related inferences. Our research suggests that consumers' inferences are critical than pure economic benefits in determining the effectiveness of discounts.     

Seeing faces: The role of brand visual processing and social connection in brand liking

This paper investigates how brands—through visuals—can fill a void for consumers experiencing a lack of social connection. Using psychometric measures and mock advertisements with visuals of human faces and non‐faces, Study 1 shows that seeing faces relates to greater brand liking with processing fluency mediating, and individual loneliness and tendency to anthropomorphize moderating the effect. Study 2 replicates findings with other‐race faces corroborating that fluency but not ethnic self‐referencing underlies the effect. Study 3 complements the psychometric measures of Studies 1 and 2 with eye tracking data to demonstrate that fluency correlates with distinct patterns of attention. Study 4 uses actual brand stimuli to show that effects are robust and extend beyond advertisements. Taken together, the findings show that communicating brand names in conjunction with visuals seen by consumers as human faces can increase brand liking.     

Emotion regulation choice: the role of environmental affordances

Which emotion regulation strategy one uses in a given context can have profound affective, cognitive, and social consequences. It is therefore important to understand the determinants of emotion regulation choice. Many prior studies have examined person-specific, internal determinants of emotion regulation choice. Recently, it has become clear that external variables that are properties of the stimulus can also influence emotion regulation choice. In the present research, we consider whether reappraisal affordances, defined as the opportunities for re-interpretation of a stimulus that are inherent in that stimulus, can shape individuals’ emotion regulation choices. We show that reappraisal affordances have stability across people and across time (Study 1), and are confounded with emotional intensity for a standardised set of picture stimuli (Study 2). Since emotional intensity has been shown to drive emotion regulation choice, we construct a context in which emotional intensity is separable from reappraisal affordances (Study 3) and use this context to show that reappraisal affordances powerfully influence emotion regulation choice even when emotional intensity and discrete emotions are taken into account (Study 4).     

Mate choice decisions: the role of facial beauty

For most people, facial beauty appears to play a prominent role in choosing a mate. Evidence from research on facial attractiveness indicates that physical beauty is a sexually selected trait mediated, in part, by pubertal facial hormone markers that signal important biological information about the displayer. Such signals would be ineffective if they did not elicit appropriate cognitive and/or emotional responses in members of the opposite sex. In this article, I argue that the effectiveness of these hormonal displays varies with perceivers' brains, which have been organized by the degree of steroid hormone exposure in the uterus, and activated by varying levels of circulating steroids following puberty. I further propose that the methodology used for examining mate choice decisions has general applicability for determining how cognitive and emotional evaluations enter into decision processes.     

Using eye movements during reading as an implicit measure of the acceptability of brand extensions

We apply eye movement monitoring techniques to examine how acceptable consumers find different brand extensions. Participants were presented with sentences (e.g. I wanted to record a song on Polaroid, but it cost too much.) which could only be fully understood if they made an inference that was based on extending the meaning associated with the brand name. By building on work on the processing of metonymic expressions (Frisson & Pickering, 1999) we predict that plausible brand extensions will cause little difficulty during initial reading, but that implausible extensions will cause immediate disruption. Analyses of the eye‐tracking data confirmed these predictions. Plausible extensions led to minor reading difficulty during late processing of the sentence, which we interpret in terms of the construction of a new interpretation associated with the brand. Implausible extensions, in contrast, caused immediate disruption, which we interpret in terms of the difficulty of providing a coherent interpretation for the term. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The mediating role of advertising literacy and the moderating influence of parental mediation on how children of different ages react to brand placements

This study investigates the role of advertising literacy in how children of different ages respond to brand placement and how parental advertising mediation strategies can attenuate advertising effects. The results of a cross‐sectional study among 180 children under 12 and their parents show that older children (10 to 11 years) are better able to detect the commercial intent and the source of brand placement compared to the younger children (7 to 8 years). However, parental advertising mediation appears to increase (instead of decrease) brand attitudes for the younger children, whereas it has no significant effect on brand attitudes of the older children. Practical implications of the study are discussed.     

Beyond Vicary’s fantasies: The impact of subliminal priming and brand choice

With his claim to have increased sales of Coca Cola and popcorn in a movie theatre through subliminal messages flashed on the screen, James Vicary raised the possibility of subliminal advertising. Nobody has ever replicated Vicary’s findings and his study was a hoax. This article reports two experiments, which assessed whether subliminal priming of a brand name of a drink can affect people’s choices for the primed brand, and whether this effect is moderated by individuals’ feelings of thirst. Both studies demonstrated that subliminal priming of a brand name of drink (i.e., Lipton Ice) positively affected participants’ choice for, and their intention to, drink the primed brand, but only for participants who were thirsty. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.