Marketing Letters最新文献

The article by Mittelman et al. (2014, Journal of Consumer Research, 41(4):953–964) introduced the offer framing effect, suggesting that consumers exhibit greater variety-seeking behavior when selecting products sequentially (single offering) compared to choosing from bundles (bundled offering). The opposite was found by O’Donnell et al. (2023, Journal of Consumer Research, 49(5):861–881), resulting in opposing management implications. To clarify the direction of effect, we conducted four studies in two product categories and found evidence of a stronger preference for variety in bundled offering conditions (compared to single offering conditions), replicating O’Donnell et al.’s (2023) findings. However, utilizing logistic regression analyses, we identify product liking discrepancies as the primary driver of variety seeking. We further reveal that the offer framing effect is more distinctive for choices between products with prosocial attributes compared to hedonic attributes. Our findings provide valuable insights for marketers aiming to optimize product bundling strategies.

The goal of this paper is to illustrate how customer text reviews can be used to identify (a) the factors underlying consumers’ preference for a product offering and (b) the magnitude of each of these factors on the consumers’ overall assessment of the product offering experience. The authors do this using approximately 317k Google patient reviews for U.S. acute care hospitals. They first analyze the texts using Natural Language Processing and find eleven valenced topics well-describe the types of healthcare experiences. Then, after describing the structure of these reviews, they use regression analysis to estimate the magnitude of each type of experience on the patient’s overall evaluation of the experience after adjusting for any halo effect associated with the dominantly discussed topic, which has the potential of influencing the impact of the other discussed experiences. The authors conclude by providing numerous managerially significant insights coming from these analyses.

Social media marketing is an established promotion strategy that offers firms extensive opportunities to nurture brand equity and to disseminate product information. Therefore, it is crucial for firms to create content with significant potential for virality. However, understanding the elements that make certain content more viral than others, especially regarding unstructured data such as images, is not straightforward to marketers. Using data collected from the Twitter API of 54 major fashion brands over 55 months, we investigated how image factors—particularly the size of brands’ logos in posted images—influence the virality of social media content. Our findings suggest that larger logos in posted images correspond to a greater number of retweets for midtier fashion brands. However, we find an opposite effect for top-tier brands—the smaller the logo, the greater the number of retweets. Bottom-tier brands also benefit from larger logos, but the impact is significantly less pronounced compared with midtier brands. These results present significant implications for viral marketing as well as the design of social media content.

Despite people’s universal interest in the pursuit of physical attractiveness, little is known about the behavioral consequences of individuals’ self-perceived physical attractiveness. Across four studies, we find that a boost in individuals’ self-perceived attractiveness increases public self-consciousness and thus heightens their motivation for impression management, which in turn increases prosocial behavior. Furthermore, we identify the salience of privateness as an important moderator. The effect of self-perceived attractiveness on prosocial behavior is disrupted when the privateness of prosocial behavior is made salient. This research thus provides evidence for the causal link between self-perceived physical attractiveness and prosocial behavior.

We explore how first-time adopters of complex new technology products are influenced by the volume of positive WOM that they receive prior to adoption. Such positive WOM can flow through to alter adopter’s goals during initial product use, with consequences for their usage experiences and strategies. Two longitudinal surveys and an experiment reveal a potential downside of positive WOM. Specifically, receiving a greater volume of positive WOM about a new technology product can establish normative standards for adopter’s performance during product use. This leads adopters to feel pressure to meet those standards, prompting avoidance-oriented performance goals for initial use of their new product. Together, these processes undermine adopter’s experiences with their new product, as well as their strategies for using it. Our findings offer insights for marketers and researchers by identifying and explaining an ironic post-adoption effect of PWOM.

Too much of a good thing? High volumes of positive WOM can undermine adopters of new technology products.

Building on Simonson et al.’s (2001) review of consumer research, we examine the current state of the field through the methods, topics, and author network of papers from Journal of Consumer Research (JCR), Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), and Journal of Consumer Psychology (JCP). Our investigation yields four main findings. First, most papers follow recent methodological trends (e.g., Hayes’ PROCESS Macro), regardless of journal or topic. However, JCR has more CCT papers and JCP has published more reviews. Second, there has been a substantial increase in the number of studies and participants per study over time. Third, JMR and JCR have more samples outside of students and Mechanical Turk relative to JCP. Fourth, JCP has a larger share of first-time authors relative to JCR and JMR, but junior authors appear more at JCR. Finally, we review how the field has changed relative to the predictions of Simonson et al. (2001).

Using construal level theory, this research investigates how brand longevity can be framed effectively in advertising. We theorize that brand longevity should be displayed concretely rather than abstractly, because a concrete frame enhances perceived brand adaptability, which in turn positively affects attitudes towards advertising (Aad) and the brand (Ab). Four experiments using textual and visual manipulations of the construal frame provide support for this rationale. Theoretically, our research shows that in the case of brand longevity, concrete rather than abstract frame offers better performances in terms of attitude toward the advertisement and the brand.

Mathematics anxiety, an emotional state resulting in negative responses to math problems and numerical information, has been extensively studied in educational psychology. Research on the impact of math anxiety on consumer purchase decisions, however, is still in its nascent stages. This paper examines the interaction between math anxiety and different promotion framing formats on consumers’ perceived savings, price acceptability, and purchase decisions. Across two studies, we demonstrate that consumers with varying levels of math anxiety respond differently to various promotion frames: a gain versus a reduced loss and a single discount versus multiple discounts. We further show that consumers with insufficient math ability may experience negative affect and heighten math anxiety, particularly when faced with numerical and arithmetic tasks commonly encountered while shopping.