Effect of brand name on consumers' risk perceptions of online shopping

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between brand names and consumers' perceived risk. Hypotheses dealt with whether the presence of a product's brand name affects consumers' perceived risk towards shopping online; whether the familiarity with a brand name influences consumers' perceived risk; and whether online shoppers and non‐shoppers perceive risk towards shopping online differently. Results indicate that the presence or absence of a product's brand name affects online shoppers' perceived risk, but in the opposite direction to that expected. There was no significant difference between online shoppers' perceived risk vis‐à‐vis brand familiarity; however, online shoppers possessed lower perceived risk than non‐shoppers. Implications and limitations are discussed and recommendations for future research are provided. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications Ltd.     

Consumer Masculinity Behavior Among College Students and Its Relationship to Self Esteem and Media Significance

The purpose of the study was to investigate male college students in the southeastern United States to identify factors associated with consumer masculinity behavior. The variables of self-esteem and media significance were tested as possible predictors of consumer masculinity behavior. A total of 219 surveys were used as the sample for this study. Pearson correlation analysis tested relationships among the variables, and linear regression was used to further test the nature of the relationships identified. Results indicated that media significance and appearance-related self-esteem were significant predictors of consumer masculinity behavior. Limitations and implications are discussed.     

The automated cockpit: A comparison of attitudes towards human and automated pilots

Automation is being used extensively in aviation, particularly in the aircrafts themselves. The airline industry benefits from automation because it often increases efficiency and performance. To date, automation research has focused largely on operator trust and reliance, while largely ignoring the role of affect and trust in shaping the attitudes of the novice consumer. In two studies, we found that participants rated a human pilot more favorably than an auto-pilot. However, attitudes toward the automated pilot were more favorable in a high priced compared to a low priced ticket condition, indicating that participants used price to infer quality. In Study 2, inducing positive affect increased ratings of an automated pilot. Path analyses provided additional evidence that perceptions of automation are largely influenced by feelings.     

Salesperson characteristics affecting consumer complaint responses

The important relationship between consumer complaint behaviour and brand and store loyalty is well established. The range of factors that favourably influence the outcomes of complaining have received relatively less research attention. Therefore, this study tests the effects of two salesperson source characteristics: willingness to listen and product/store knowledge, on consumer complaint‐related perceptions and intentions in a retail setting. Mall shoppers participated in a consumer complaint experiment to test the hypothesised effects. The results indicate that both characteristics affect customer complaint responses, as well as consumer perceptions of the salesperson and the retail store. The findings of the study demonstrate that salesperson characteristics are important influences on positive or negative consumer complaint responses. Copyright © 2001 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Can Lonely People Behave Morally? The Joint Influence of Loneliness and Empathy on Moral Identity

We examine how loneliness moderates the effect of empathy on moral identity: the extent to which being a moral person is important to an individual's identity. Results of four studies show that only lonely people have increased moral identity when they have high (vs. low) empathy; empathy does not reliably increase moral identity for nonlonely people. We demonstrate these effects with psychological measures of moral identity as well as with downstream moral behaviors in various consumer settings. Our findings are consistent with the motivation theory of loneliness and empathy: Lonely people are capable, but are not motivated to empathize.     

Revealing obstacles to the consumer imagination

The research proposes that the consumer imagination combines information about a current sensory stimulus (product) with triggered episodic memories to use as inputs in making product evaluations. Two studies reveal that the consumer imagination can be suppressed when preferred haptic sensory information is missing and when a situation is unambiguous, reducing the need for relying on episodic memory. The research findings support the general notion that the consumer imagination enhances purchase intentions compared to considering product attributes because the imagination enables consumers to integrate the information in a more efficient way. In both studies, perceived ownership mediates the effect. Contributions to theory and practical implications are provided.     

Decision Difficulty in the Age of Consumer Empowerment

In this review, we examine the impact of two key factors of consumer empowerment–choice freedom and expansion of information--on the choice difficulty consumers experience in today’s decision environment. We posit that though these two consumer empowerment factors offer numerous potential benefits, they also can magnify such sources of decision difficulty as task complexity, tradeoff difficulty, and preference uncertainty. Next we review several key moderators, including consumer knowledge, mental representation, and maximization tendencies as well as information type and organization, that can exacerbate or mitigate the effect of these consumer empowerment factors on decision difficultly outcomes. Lastly, we examine the effectiveness of decision aids in assisting consumers navigate the complexity of today’s decision environment, and we identify areas for future investigation.     

A stochastic model of consideration set sizes

This paper proposes a new model of consideration set sizes, which relies on a stochastic modelling approach to better understand data patterns. The paper combines the Poisson distribution with the lognormal distribution proposed by Hauser and Wernerfelt (1990) to create the Poisson lognormal (PLN) model of consideration set sizes. An advantage of PLN is that it allows variance within a given individual consumer. This is a crucial factor for brand managers who wish to choose a particular market to promote their brand, as a higher within‐individual variance suggests that there is more chance for a consumer to change their consideration set size, whereas a lower within‐individual variance indicates that a consumer tends to stick to his/her consideration set size. The paper then uses 10 datasets including service, durable and fast‐moving consumer goods across four countries to validate the new model and compare it with the lognormal model. The results show that PLN gives a good fit to these data. It outperforms the lognormal model. The average mean absolute percentage error of the PLN model is 12 per cent, whereas that of the lognormal model is 26 per cent. For managerial implications, the paper proposes a better tool to help brand managers analyse the nature and intensity of competition that is facing their brands. Also, relying on its stochastic element, the proposed model can help brand managers predict future brand consideration by their consumers, as well as evaluate any change in brand consideration, caused by marketing activity such as sales promotion and advertising. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The psychological nature of subjective memory complaint in non-demented older adults: The respective predictive values of psycho-affective,lifestyle, and cognitive inhibition variables

Introduction/ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate, using path analysis (Lisrel 8.52), the relationships between subjective memory complaint and cognitive inhibition, lifestyle, and psycho-affective variables on a sample of non-demented older adults.MethodOur sample was composed of 109 older adults, who were required to undertake two cognitive inhibition tasks (stroop and verbal fluency) and to respond to scales designed to measure individuals’ psycho-affective status (depression/subjective health) and subjective memory complaint level (Mac Nair). Lifestyle predictors (education and activity levels) were also assessed.Results/ConclusionThis study highlights the importance of adopting a multifactorial approach to the study of subjective memory complaint. In addition to executive variables (verbal fluency task), predictors such as subjective health and activity levels seem to be crucial in our understanding of the psychological nature of subjective memory complaint.