happinesssnu
Differentiation of homogeneous agricultural products through branding is a difficult and costly undertaking for a firm. How successful has this been, and what are the possibilities for additional brand promotion?
Makens, J. C. (1964). The pluses and minuses of branding agricultural products. Journal of Marketing, 28(4), 10-16.
https://doi.org/10.1177/002224296402800403
As a company tries to find the factors accounting for strong and weak markets, typical consumer explanations for both tend to be in terms of the physical attributes of the product. Carling Brewing Company used a relatively inexpensive experiment to help dichotomize contributing influences as being either product or marketing oriented and, also, to indicate the magnitude of the marketing influence for various brands. The experiment involved the use of groups of beer drinkers that tasted (drank) and rated beer from nude bottles and from labeled bottles.
Allison, R. I., &Uhl, K. P. (1964). Influence of beer brand identification on taste perception. Journal of Marketing Research, 1(3), 36-39.
https://doi.org/10.1177/002224376400100305
The authors demonstrate that marketing actions, such as pricing, can alter the actual efficacy of products to which they are applied. These placebo effects stem from activation of expectancies about the efficacy of the product, a process that appears not to be conscious. In three experiments, the authors show that consumers who pay a discounted price for a product (e.g., an energy drink thought to increase mental acuity) may derive less actual benefit from consuming this product (e.g., they are able to solve fewer puzzles) than consumers who purchase and consume the exact same product but pay its regular price. The studies consistently support the role of expectancies in mediating this placebo effect. The authors conclude with a discussion of theoretical, managerial, and public policy implications of the findings.
Shiv, B., Carmon, Z., &Ariely, D. (2005). Placebo effects of marketing actions: Consumers may get what they pay for. Journal of marketing Research, 42(4), 383-393.
The research presented in this article provides evidence that add-on features sold to enhance a product can be more than just discretionary benefits. We argue that consumers draw inferences from the mere availability of add-ons, which in turn lead to significant changes in the perceived utility of the base good itself. Specifically, we propose that the improvements supplied by add-ons can be classified as either alignable or nonalignable and that they have opposing effects on evaluation. A set of four experiments with different product categories confirms this prediction. In addition, we show that the amount of product information available to consumers and expectations about product composition play important moderating roles. From a practical standpoint, these results highlight the need for firms to be mindful of the behavioral implications of making add-ons readily available in the marketplace.
Bertini, M., Ofek, E., &Ariely, D. (2009). The impact of add-on features on consumer product evaluations. Journal of Consumer Research, 36(1), 17-28.
https://doi.org/10.1086/596717
Aubiquitous feature of even the fastest self-service technology transactions is the wait. Conventional wisdom and operations theory suggest that the longer people wait, the less satisfied they become; we demonstrate that because of what we term the labor illusion, when websites engage in operational transparency by signaling that they are exerting effort, people can actually prefer websites with longer waits to those that return instantaneous results—even when those results are identical. In five experiments that simulate service experiences in the domains of online travel and online dating, we demonstrate the impact of the labor illusion on service value perceptions, demonstrate that perceptions of service provider effort induce feelings of reciprocity that together mediate the link between operational transparency and increased valuation, and explore boundary conditions and alternative explanations.
Buell, R. W., &Norton, M. I. (2011). The labor illusion: How operational transparency increases perceived value. Management Science, 57(9), 1564-1579.
https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.1110.1376
Research suggests that individuals mentally track the costs and benefits of a consumer transaction for the purpose of reconciling those costs and benefits on completion of the transaction (Prelec and Loewenstein 1998; Thaler 1980, 1985). In transactions where costs precede benefits, this can lead to a systematic and economically irrational attention to sunk costs (Arkes and Blumer 1985; Thaler 1980). In this article, we consider economic exchanges in which costs significantly precede benefits, as with many prepayment types of consumer transactions. We predict a consumer will gradually adapt to a historic cost with the passage of time, thereby decreasing its sunk-cost impact on the consumption of a pending benefit. We label this process of gradual adaptation to costs “payment depreciation.” In a series of experiments, we find evidence of payment depreciation across a range of consumer transactions and offer insight into the behavioral implications of temporally separating costs from benefits.
Gourville, J. T., &Soman, D. (1998). Payment depreciation: The behavioral effects of temporally separating payments from consumption. Journal of Consumer Research, 25(2), 160-174.
https://doi.org/10.1086/209533
All income increases a person’s absolute wealth, but consumption decisions may be based more heavily on perceived changes in wealth. Change is computed by comparing a current state with a former state, and we predicted that people would be more likely to spend income framed as a gain from a current wealth state than income framed as a return to a prior state. Four experiments confirmed this prediction on people’s memory for spending of a government tax rebate (Experiment 1), on unobtrusive self‐report measures of spending an unexpected windfall (Experiments 2 and 3), and on actual spending on items for sale in a laboratory experiment (Experiment 4). These results can be explained, at least in part, by the reference points implied in the framing of income (follow‐ups to Experiments 1 and 4). Discussion focuses on implications for the consumption of other commodities, assessments of risk, and government tax policies.
Epley, N., Mak, D., &Idson, L. C. (2006). Bonus of rebate?: The impact of income framing on spending and saving. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 19(3), 213-227.
https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.519
Four experiments tested the novel hypothesis that ritualistic behavior potentiates and enhances ensuing consumption—an effect found for chocolates, lemonade, and even carrots. Experiment 1 showed that participants who engaged in ritualized behavior, compared with those who did not, evaluated chocolate as more flavorful, valuable, and deserving of behavioral savoring. Experiment 2 demonstrated that random gestures do not boost consumption as much as ritualistic gestures do. It further showed that a delay between a ritual and the opportunity to consume heightens enjoyment, which attests to the idea that ritual behavior stimulates goal-directed action (to consume). Experiment 3 found that performing a ritual oneself enhances consumption more than watching someone else perform the same ritual, suggesting that personal involvement is crucial for the benefits of rituals to emerge. Finally, Experiment 4 provided direct evidence of the underlying process: Rituals enhance the enjoyment of consumption because of the greater involvement in the experience that they prompt.
Vohs, K. D., Wang, Y., Gino, F., &Norton, M. I. (2013). Rituals enhance consumption. Psychological Science, 24(9), 1714-1721.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613478949
Recent studies have documented that performance in a domain is hindered when individuals feel that a sociocultural group to which they belong is negatively stereotyped in that domain. We report that implicit activation of a social identity can facilitate as well as impede performance on a quantitative task. When a particular social identity was made salient at an implicit level, performance was altered in the direction predicted by the stereotype associated with the identity. Common cultural stereotypes hold that Asians have superior quantitative skills compared with other ethnic groups and that women have inferior quantitative skills compared with men. We found that Asian-American women performed better on a mathematics test when their ethnic identity was activated, but worse when their gender identity was activated, compared with a control group who had neither identity activated. Cross-cultural investigation indicated that it was the stereotype, and not the identity per se, that influenced performance.
Shih, M., Pittinsky, T. L., &Ambady, N. (1999). Stereotype susceptibility: Identity salience and shifts in quantitative performance. Psychological science, 10(1), 80-83.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00111
This paper examines the importance of the context in which medical alternatives are presented to individuals. In a series of experiments, subjects were given information and asked to make choices in hypothetical medical situations. In each experiment, probability information was presented in either a positive or a negative frame. One study demonstrated that the probability that a subject would elect surgery for a terminal liver disease was a function of both the probability of survival and the framing of the probability information. That is, at each probability level the chances of accepting surgery were greater if the information was presented in a positive frame. In a second study the recommendation that a haemophilia carrier would abort a child was more likely if there was a 50 per cent chance of having an ‘affected’ son than if there was a 50 per cent chance of having a ‘normal” son. The third study considered competition for a bed in an intensive care unit. Subjects were more willing to endorse the return of a patient described as their ‘father’ to the regular floor if his ‘ chances of surviving were presented as 90 per cent in comparison to a group that was told his chances of dying were 10per cent. These findings suggest that individuals are more willing to select risky medical options when probabilistic information is worded positively rather than negatively. Furthermore, when the choice of a medical option involved another individual’s health outcome, subjects_were still more likely to endorse riskier treatments when outcomes were presented in a positive rather than negative context. However, when the medical decision involved a stranger’s health outcome, the context effect did not occur. Implications for health care professionals are discussed.
Wilson, D. K., Kaplan, R. M., &Schneiderman, L. J. (1987). Framing of decisions and selections of alternatives in health care. Social Behaviour, 2(1), 51-59.