A Cognitive Model of Customer‐Based Brand Equity for Frequently Purchased Products: Conceptual Framework and Empirical Results

The main purpose of this research is to identify the underlying cognitive structure of brand equity. Existing research on brand equity is used to identify 4 cognitive “components” of customer‐based brand equity. These are labeled as global brand attitude, strength of preference, brand knowledge, and brand heuristic. A conceptual framework of how these components (or subconstructs) are interrelated is proposed and empirically tested using data from 2 frequently purchased product categories. Covariance structure modeling is used as the analysis methodology. The results indicate that all the identified cognitive components are important determinants of customer‐based brand equity. Specifically, the brand heuristic component serves as an important mediator in 2 “cognitive chains” that link global brand attitude to brand knowledge and global brand attitude to strength of preference, respectively. The study findings have important implications for designing equity maintenance strategies for frequently purchased products.     

Body Image Concerns and Contingent Self-Esteem in Male and Female College Students

Body dissatisfaction in females, and to a lesser extent males, is associated with low self-esteem, depression, and eating disorders. This research examined gender as a moderator of the association between contingent self-esteem and body image concerns, including weight and muscularity. Participants included 359 (59.1% female) heavy drinking first-year U.S. undergraduate students who completed a survey assessing health-related risk behaviors. Hierarchical multiple regression was used to examine relations among gender, contingent self-esteem, and body image. Females reported higher levels of contingent self-esteem and greater concerns about their weight, although males reported a greater drive for muscularity. The relationship between contingent self-esteem and weight concerns was stronger among females, and for males, greater contingent self-esteem was associated with a greater drive for muscularity.     

Subjective decision making in medical school admissions: Potentials for discrimination

Medical schools place considerable emphasis on admissions interviews in the selection of students. Interviews, with unwritten performance criteria and subjective evaluation, contain the potential for unconscious discrimination against certain groups of applicants. This study investigates the contribution of interview scores to the total evaluation of male and female applicants for admission to one medical school in the United States. Findings reveal that interveiw scores are counted more heavily for females than males in arriving at a final ranking for admission. Further, females were rated lower in general than males on interview evaluations. While the magnitude of the associations is small, the combined effect points to a potential for discrimination, however unintended, against women applicants in the present case study.The authors appreciate the valuable criticisms of and comments on an earlier draft from Drs. Sidney Fleming, Dorothy Brinsfiled, Glenn Clark, Maurice Jurkiewicz, and Michael Kutner, some of whom may still take exception to parts of this article.     

The perception of distances and spatial relationships in natural outdoor environments

The ability of observers to perceive distances and spatial relationships in outdoor environments was investigated in two experiments. In experiment 1, the observers adjusted triangular configurations to appear equilateral, while in experiment 2, they adjusted the depth of triangles to match their base width. The results of both experiments revealed that there are large individual differences in how observers perceive distances in outdoor settings. The observers' judgments were greatly affected by the particular task they were asked to perform. The observers who had shown no evidence of perceptual distortions in experiment 1 (with binocular vision) demonstrated large perceptual distortions in experiment 2 when the task was changed to match distances in depth to frontal distances perpendicular to the observers' line of sight. Considered as a whole, the results indicate that there is no single relationship between physical and perceived space that is consistent with observers' judgments of distances in ordinary outdoor contexts.     

A conditioned reinforcer maintained by temporal association with the termination of shock

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether a stimulus can be established as a positive conditioned reinforcer by associating it with the termination of shock, but without training the animal to make any response in its presence. In the first, six rats were conditioned to press a bar to terminate shock on a variable ratio schedule; white noise was then substituted as the immediate consequence, with the shock terminating 30 sec after the last press in its presence. It was found that the rate of pressing in the absence of noise depended on the contingency between the pressing and the noise. The second experiment sought to determine whether the difference in rates before and after the onset of the noise was due to the reinforcement of prior responding by the onset of the noise or to the suppression of subsequent responding by differential reinforcement of competing behavior. Six more rats were trained in the same manner, but with shock terminating 30 sec after the onset of the noise, regardless of what the animal did in its presence. Again the rate was higher before the onset of the noise, indicating that pressing was indeed maintained by the noise as a conditioned reinforcer.     

Halving and doubling isometric force: Evidence for a decelerating psychophysical function consistent with an equilibrium-point model of motor control

Several previous investigations have measured accelerating psychophysical functions for perceived force with exponents of about 1.7. Two halving and doubling experiments presented here imply a psychophysical function for perceived force with an exponent between 0.6 and 0.8. That is, more than a doubling of force was needed to double the sensation, and similarly for halving. In the first experiment, subjects squeezed rigid instrumented cylinders between the thumb and first two fingers of each hand. They generated and released a reference force with one hand, and then squeezed the opposite hand to produce a sensation magnitude equal to, twice that, or half that of the reference. An analysis using a model that accounted for compression bias yielded average psychophysical functions with exponents of 0.58 and 0.59 (nondominant and dominant hands, respectively). The second experiment was an attempt to replicate earlier results and to reconcile them with the first experiment by using a paradigm duplicated from a previous study. Subjects in the second experiment made unilateral halving and doubling judgments of handgrip while squeezing a hand dynamometer. Again, the halving and doubling judgments yielded decelerating functions with exponents of 0.75 and 0.80 (nondominant and dominant hands, respectively). Even though the results of the first two experiments contradict earlier investigations, they can be explained by an equilibrium model of motor control assuming that subjects halve and double the central motor command rather than the sensation of force. The force is simply the result of the mechanical equilibrium established between the load and the compliant effector (the hand). The predicted relationship between the motor command judgments, the compliance of the hand, and the resultant forces was confirmed in a third experiment in which the mechanical compliance of the three-finger pinch was measured by using a pneumatic manipulandum to apply force perturbations in a “do-notintervene” paradigm. The measured compliance characteristic was accelerating, just as predicted by the model, in order to produce a decelerating psychophysical function for “perceived force.” In this experiment, then, judgments of perceived force appear to be judgments of the central motor command.     

Chaining and secondary reinforcement based on escape from shock

Three white rats were trained to press a bar while being shocked. This produced a white noise. After 30 sec they were allowed to terminate both the shock and the noise by nosing a pigeon key. Comparison of the rates of pressing before and after the onset of the noise indicated that the noise itself was the immediate reinforcing agent for pressing. Furthermore, control tests showed that pressing was maintained only if it produced the noise: either omission of the noise or elimination of the dependency of the noise on the occurrence of the response led to a gradual abolition of pressing. When automatic termination of the shock was substituted for the key nosing requirement, however, only the key nosing extinguished. This indicated that the effectiveness of the noise as a reinforcer did not depend on its status as a discriminative stimulus for some other form of operant behavior.     

Myopic loss aversion: Demystifying the key factors influencing decision problem framing

Advancement of myopic loss aversion theory has been hamstrung by conflicting results, methodological inconsistencies, and a piecemeal approach toward understanding the key factors influencing decision problem framing. A series of controlled experiments provides a more holistic view of the variables promoting myopia. Extending the information horizon promotes broad framing, which propels risk. Evaluation frequency and decision frequency interact regardless of information horizon, supporting the notion that restricting either mechanism alleviates myopia. When conducting evaluations infrequently, neither segregating nor aggregating retrospective returns significantly alters risk preferences. Moreover, students and real retirement plan participants exhibit comparable appetites for risk, implying that both groups frame decision problems similarly. Explanations for these findings and avenues for future research are discussed.