Barbara Bickart

Green Eco-Seals and Advertising Persuasion

Although advertisers present assurance or certification cues to burnish their “green” credentials, the impact of such “eco-seals” on persuasion is not well understood. We examine consumer characteristics (environmental concern and brand familiarity) and advertiser-controlled characteristics (the seal and advertising appeal) to understand conditions under which eco-seals are more or less persuasive including effects on attitudes and intentions. Based on the Persuasion Knowledge Model, we hypothesize and present experimental results showing that consumers with high versus low environmental concern perceive eco-seals differently, depending on brand familiarity, eco-seal source, and ad appeal. Our findings have theoretical and practical implications for green marketing strategy and messaging.

Service Experiences and Satisfaction Judgments: The Use of Affect and Beliefs in Judgment Formation

Recalling a service experience may increase the accessibility of relevant beliefs and affect an individuals temporary mood. We examine the interplay of mood and accessible beliefs in the construction of satisfaction judgments. We find that episodically recounting the specific service encounter results in assimilation effects on the satisfaction ratings of both the service provider and a competitive company. Analytically recounting the service encounter, on the other hand, results in assimilation effects for judgments of the service provider and effects in the direction of contrast for judgments of the competitive company. In this case, beliefs about the service provider appear to provide a comparison standard against which the competitive company is judged. Implications of these findings for measuring and managing consumer satisfaction are discussed.

Leveraging Equity Across The Brand Portfolio

Industry informants suggest that the equity of well-known, established brands can be leveraged to create value for unfamiliar or less-established brands. To the extent that cues in the retail environment imply some commonality between the high-equity brand and the less-established brand, benefits to the less-established brand may be expected. We refer to this implied commonality as strategic equivalence. Sharing the retail brand portfolio with high-equity brands is one way of establishing strategic equivalence. Display structure—whether the brands are displayed separately or intermixed—can also affect perceptions of strategic equivalence. In two studies, we demonstrate the ability of high-equity brands to increase the value of lower-equity brands in the same retail department and the ability of display structure to moderate this effect.