Charles S. Areni

The influence of in-store lighting on consumers' examination of merchandise in a wine store

Abstract Several studies examining the impact of illumination on behavior are reviewed in this article. Hypotheses are derived regarding the impact of in-store lighting on various aspects of shopping behavior. As part of a field experiment in a large US city, the lighting (soft versus bright) in a centrally located retail establishment was varied over a two month period. The results of an anova indicated that brighter lighting influenced shoppers to examine and handle more merchandise, though sales were not influenced. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for creating a functional store environment as well as an appropriate store image .

Point-of-purchase displays, product organization, and brand purchase likelihoods

Can point-of-purchase (POP) displays cause a decrease in sales of the featured brand? In an actual test-market promotion, the use of special POP displays led to a decrease in sales of featured wines from a specific U.S. region. Moreover, sales of regularly shelved wines from competitive regions actually increased. The results of a laboratory experiment supported the explanation that the POP displays essentially reorganized the wines into region categories within the stores, making it easier for consumers to compare alternatives by region. As a result, sales of wines from preferred regions increased and sales of wines from disliked regions decreased relative to when the wines were displayed by variety categories on regular shelf space. Further evidence indicated that reorganizing products by levels of a given attribute influences purchase likelihoods mainly when the attribute is otherwise low rather than high in salience and when brands have normally high rather than low purchase likelihoods.

Exploring managers’ implicit theories of atmospheric music: comparing academic analysis to industry insight

A total of 90 hotel, restaurant, and pub managers completed unstructured telephone interviews exploring their implicit theories of how atmospheric music affects consumer behavior. Many of the implicit theories emerging in the interviews were grounded in previous research, but others had no obvious counterparts in the literature. The more novel theories suggested that atmospheric music: must follow circadian rhythms to be effective; encourages or discourages anti‐social behavior; and blocks out annoying and intrusive background noise. Each of the 14 industry‐based explanations of the effects of music is compared with results reported in the academic literature, and directions for future research on the effects of atmospheric music are identified.

The Proposition‐Probability Model of Argument Structure and Message Acceptance

Drawing on aspects of logic, classical rhetoric, psycholinguistics, social psychology, and probability theory, this article develops the proposition-probability model (PPM) of argument structure and message acceptance in which verbal arguments are decomposed into arrays of three types of propositions: (a) product claims, (b) data supporting those claims, and (c) conditional rules specifying the relationship between the data and the claims. The propositions making up a given argument can be stated, entailed, presupposed, conversationally implicated, and/or linguistically signaled. Message acceptance is based on the formation and/or modification of beliefs corresponding to the propositions in a given argument. For purposes of making precise predictions regarding the effectiveness of various argument structures, these beliefs are represented in terms of probabilities associated with each proposition. Several postulates are derived from the PPM, and directions for future research on communication and persuasion are discussed. Copyright 2002 by the University of Chicago.

Reexamining Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender Identity Scales

This research compares and contrasts three gender identity instruments, the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ), and the Sexual Identity Scale (SIS), that have been used in previous investigations of various aspects of consumer behavior. Specifically, it examines the dimensionality and internal reliability of each scale, inter-scale correlations, and the relationship of each scale to biological sex. Results indicate that the gender identity scales consist of several dimensions beyond those typically interpreted as masculinity and femininity. The femininity factors emerging in the three scales tended to be highly correlated, and females scored higher than males on the femininity factors. However, the three masculinity factors were not correlated with one another, and were not as strongly associated with biological sex—females identified with typically masculine traits just as much as males. The implications of these results for using gender identity in consumer research are discussed, and future research opportunities are explored.

Effects of Probability Markers on Advertising Claim Acceptance

The results of a laboratory experiment revealed that the participants had generally negative reactions to the use of hedges (e.g. ‘may’, ‘probably’, etc.) and pledges (e.g. ‘definitely,’ ‘undoubtedly’, etc.) in advertising claims. The use of either type of probability marker reduced claim acceptance and produced more negative cognitive responses relative to when no marker was used. This pattern of results emerged regardless of whether the claim was backed by an inductive argument presenting probabilistic evidence or a deductive argument presenting categorical evidence.

Examining managers’ theories of how atmospheric music affects perception, behaviour and financial performance

Abstract Scales were developed to measure hospitality managers’ beliefs about the effects of atmospheric music on perception, behaviour, and financial performance. Some of the scales corresponded to established theories in the marketing literature, whereas others captured emergent theories based on an earlier exploratory study of industry conventions regarding atmospheric music. These scales were included in a mail survey sent to 221 Australian hotel and pub managers. Results revealed that the more managers believed atmospheric music: (a) influences customers to interact with staff, (b) must vary according to the time of day, (c) can draw customer into an establishment or drive them away, (d) makes customers stay longer than they otherwise would, and (e) eliminates unacceptable silences, the more they agreed that it influences the revenues, gross margins, and operating profits of their establishments; but the belief that (f) music should vary according to the age of the target market was actually negatively correlated with its perceived effect on financial performance. Only one of the six emergent theories was correlated with beliefs regarding the effect of music on financial performance (i.e., varying music by the time of day). These results are discussed in terms of findings previously reported in the literature, and recommendations are made regarding how managers can better utilise music to achieve operational goals.

Background Music as a Quasi Clock in Retrospective Duration Judgments

The segmentation-change model of time perception proposes that individuals engaged in cognitive tasks during a given interval of time retrospectively estimate duration by recalling events that occurred during the interval and inferring each events duration. Previous research suggests that individuals can recall the number of songs heard during an interval and infer the length of each song, exactly the conditions that foster estimates of duration based on the segmentation-change model. The results of a laboratory experiment indicated that subjects who solved word-search puzzles for 20 min. estimated the duration of the interval to be longer when 8 short songs (< 3 min.) as opposed to 4 long songs (6+ min.) were played in the background, regardless of whether the musical format was Contemporary Dance or New Age. Assuming each song represented a distinct segment in memory, these results are consistent with the segmentation-change model. These results suggest that background music may not always reduce estimates of duration by drawing attention away from the passage of time. Instead, background music may actually expand the subjective length of an interval by creating accessible traces in memory, which are retrospectively used to infer duration.

Different Ways of 'Seeing': How Gender Differences in Information Processing Influence the Content Analysis of Narrative Texts

This manuscript examines the potential of bias in qualitative research due to coder gender. It reports a study of gender differences in coding by males and females based on a coding assignment involving written narratives completed by 18 males and 17 females. The study found gender differences in their coding the presence/absence of 10 themes related to gift exchanges and three gender role concepts, as well as differences in intercoder reliabilities based on gender composition of coder pairs. For several hypotheses, differences were opposite those predicted. The surprising findings suggest the complexity of qualitative data and emphasize the need for greater care in its analysis. Specific recommendations are made for researchers using qualitative data, and suggestions for future research are provided.

(Tell me why) I don't like Mondays: Does an overvaluation of future discretionary time underlie reported weekly mood cycles?

An Internet survey revealed that day-of-the-week (DOW) stereotypes (i.e., “Monday blues”, “Wednesday hump day”, “TGIF”, etc.) were pronounced when subjects predicted their moods for each day of the upcoming week, less obvious when they remembered their moods from each day of the preceding week, and least apparent in the momentary moods they actually experienced on each day. In a second study involving 2-hour, in-home interviews, subjects reporting looking forward to weekends because of the lack of structure and discipline and the freedom to choose activities, yet much of their weekend time was spent fulfilling a need to be productive, which often involved activities that, in many ways, simulated paid work. The content of these interviews suggested that people tend to overvalue future discretionary time on the weekend, assuming that two days of uninterrupted idle time will be more enjoyable than it actually is. In a more general sense, these results suggest that the predicted and remembered moods in the initial survey were driven by DOW stereotypes, which facilitated rapid judgements given the simple scaled response format. However, the depth interviews revealed that moods experienced throughout the week are more nuanced in terms of how they are remembered, described, and linked to recently passed, current, and immediately anticipated events, perhaps explaining why DOW stereotypes were less obvious in the reported momentary moods.