Marketing Letters最新文献

Blockchain technology (BT) represents a chance to bolster consumer responses toward retailers due to its ability to ensure transparency in each transaction within supply chain. Relying on signaling theory, we propose and test a theoretical model to examine BT effects. We test our theorizing in three experiments involving a total of 1995 participants. Our results suggest that retailer transparency elicited by BT fosters enhanced quality perceptions and retailer trust. As a result, consumers display higher future intentions toward the retailer. The findings illustrate that information quantity moderates the effects of transparency. Furthermore, the studies rule out interactivity and mental imagery as two possible alternative explanations of the effects of BT transparency. Our findings shed light on the importance of transparency in the supply chain in influencing consumer responses toward retailers and encourage retailers to consider in-store technologies such as BT that enable consumers to access such information.

The current research constructs a framework to understand how subjective socioeconomic status (SES) affects consumers’ AI aversion in the evaluation context. Three experiments show that subjective SES has a negative impact on consumers’ willingness to accept AI evaluation. Consumers with higher subjective SES are more likely to resist AI evaluation because they perceive that AI agents are not as capable as human agents of identifying their talents. This effect is moderated by the agent type–the impact of subjective SES on resistance to the AI agent is attenuated when the AI agent is non-evaluative. This research is of great significance in enriching research on improving AI services efficiency across various social classes.

This study investigates how CEO-related events covered in news media affect consumer evaluations. The conceptual model proposes six CEO-related news categories and details their impact on consumer evaluations as well as the degree to which these responses determine firms’ stock prices. The authors analyze a rich sample of 725 CEO-related events of 125 firms covered in leading US news outlets from 2009 to 2019. Using an econometric approach and an event study, they find that stories about CEO scandals detrimentally affect consumer evaluations, which translates to an immediate loss of more than US$500 million on stock markets, whereas stories about CEO altruism and CEO political ideologies have a positive impact on consumer evaluations. The authors provide insights into short and long-term effects and formulate actionable implications.

This paper examines a monopolist platform’s data strategy comprising of data collection and data protection under two different data ownership regimes: one, where users have no control over the amount of data shared with the platform, and the other, where users can set privacy controls. Moreover, we also consider the welfare implications of introducing a minimum data protection regulation under the two data ownership regimes. Our analysis yields novel insights: (i) empowering users leads to a sub-optimal level of data collection and protectionIndian Institute of Management Bangaloreith empowering users to control data can better achieve the regulator’s objective of enhancing consumer welfare.

Abstract

Do online research participants complete studies as continuous tasks, or do they switch back and forth between the study and other online activities? While researchers generally prefer for participants to complete online studies continuously, participants may choose to multitask and complete other activities simultaneous to the study, potentially impacting their responses. This research directly measures the prevalence of online participant multitasking across three studies, examines the impact of multitasking on participant responses, and explores solutions for reducing multitasking. Findings indicate that multitasking is common, is dramatically understated in participant self-reports, can be observed unobtrusively, significantly affects participant responses, and is difficult to reduce. I also find age and gender differences in the frequency of multitasking. The appendices include new code, making it easy for other researchers to measure multitasking on multiple platforms.

Consumers often face uncertainty in decision-making while assessing options presented as attribute-bundles as they are unable to assess their utility. This confusion is exacerbated by the presence of a “decoy,” or an inferior option, which leads to the phenomenon of attraction effect, while the presence of an equally attractive alternative leads to the compromise effect. In this study, we show that if functional attribute values are converted into ratings on a common scale, consumers do not depend on attribute-based processing but choose an option by considering appropriate attribute-bundles based on the attribute ratings. This shift in decision-making process attenuates both attraction and compromise effects.

Maximum Difference Scaling (MaxDiff) is an essential method in marketing concerning forecasting consumer purchase decisions and general product demand. However, the usefulness of traditional MaxDiff studies suffers from two limitations. First, it measures relative preferences, which prevents predicting how many consumers would actually buy a product and impedes comparing results across respondents. Second, market researchers apply MaxDiff in hypothetical settings that might not reveal valid preferences due to hypothetical bias. The first limitation has been addressed by implementing anchored MaxDiff variants. In contrast, the latter limitation has only been targeted in other preference measurement procedures such as conjoint analysis by applying incentive alignment. By integrating anchored MaxDiff (i.e., direct vs. indirect anchoring) with incentive alignment (present vs. absent) in a 2 × 2 between-subjects preregistered online experiment (n = 448), the current study is the first to address both threats. The results show that incentive-aligning MaxDiff increases the predictive validity regarding consequential product choices—importantly—independently of the anchoring method. In contrast, hypothetical MaxDiff variants overestimate general product demand. The article concludes by showcasing how the managerial implications drawn from anchored MaxDiff differ depending on the four tested variants. In addition, we provide the first incentive-aligned MaxDiff benchmark dataset in the field.

In this paper, we define and conceptualize two commonly assumed roles that have not yet been studied in the marketing literature—that of a host and a guest. We examine consumers’ preference for, and consequences of, assuming each role across three studies. We find that consumers generally prefer being guests (vs. hosts) due to a greater focus on the costs (vs. benefits) associated with the host role. This aversion to hosting is attenuated for extroverts and when consumers are encouraged to recouple the benefits and costs associated with hosting. Importantly, we also find that being a host involves meaningful reflective benefits, as consumers report greater retrospective enjoyment of events they hosted, compared with those they attended as guests), suggesting that consumers’ a priori preference for the less demanding guest role may be misguided.

Do true cost campaigns (TCCs)—which display prices at the point of purchase that include social and environmental negative externalities—nudge consumers toward more expensive sustainable products? From a theoretical point of view, the answer is promising: Communicating true costs means introducing external reference prices that provide a benchmark for consumers to assess price acceptability. Showing true costs triggers a general reference to the price of sustainability, and the higher price of sustainable products becomes at least partially explained by their lower “hidden costs” (i.e., costs to compensate for all environmental and social impacts). In two empirical studies, we demonstrate that for TCCs to be effective, the hidden costs for the sustainable products must be lower than those for the conventional alternatives. Interestingly, under this condition, TCCs have an effect in markets characterized by a larger (study 1) and a smaller (study 2) green gap. In both studies, we find that increased perceived price fairness explains the effect of TCCs, as measured by the relative preference for the sustainable compared to the conventional product. In addition, we see that the price difference between the two products plays a significant role in forming this preference judgment, independent of other factors included in the model and especially independent of TCC.

Psychological state alterations induced by substance-related physiological mechanisms affect consumer decision-making. We examine the influence of caffeine—the world’s most popular psychostimulant—on the attraction effect. In three double-blinded experiments, we show that caffeine intake via coffee influences consumers’ preference for product options that asymmetrically dominate a decoy option in choice sets (i.e., the attraction effect). Using real products in consequential choice tasks, we show that high caffeine intake (200 mg) is associated with a larger attraction effect both on between-subjects and within-subjects levels and in free-choice as well as forced-choice decision tasks. On the contrary, we do not find support for caffeine’s influence on the attraction effect when considering intermediate levels of caffeine intake (125 mg) and hypothetical decisions. We discuss theoretical implications for context effect research and practical implications for marketers.