Gary J. Gaeth

Consumer perceptions of hybrid (bi‐national products)

Examines strategic alliances recently cultivated by many multinational enterprises (MNEs) with foreign competitors, in particular the global automobile market. Discusses the marketing of hybrid automobiles with a focus on the role that brand name, country of origin, and the interaction between them play in strategic product positioning/marketing. Argues that marketers would do well to consider their target customers′ likely reaction to offshore production of a domestic brand or foreign branding of domestic goods.

The Cognitive Processing of Misleading Advertising in Young and Old Adults: Assessment and Training

Three experiments evaluated the impact of misleading advertising on old and young adult consumers in terms of: (a) susceptibility to misleading advertising techniques, (b) ability to discriminate between nonmisleading and potentially misleading advertising claims, and (c) responsiveness to training. Although there were no differences when subjects responded from memory (Experiment 1), young adults were less susceptible to misleading techniques when advertisements were available during assessment (Experiment 2). Finally, training reduced susceptibility in both groups, although it also reduced discrimination in the young adults (Experiment 3). These findings were discussed in terms of potential age-related cognitive and cohort differences.

A Tale of Two Pizzas: Building Up from a Basic Product Versus Scaling Down from a Fully-Loaded Product

Consumers in the U.S. and Italy were asked to either build up from a consumable base product (pizza) by adding components or scale down from a fully-loaded product by subtracting components. In each country consumers ended up with significantly more ingredients, and a pizza for a higher cost, in the Scale Down Condition than in the Build Up Condition. Results are discussed in terms of the principle of “loss aversion” underlying phenomena such as “the endowment effect,” marketing implications of this effect, and future research needs.

Asymmetric Competition in Choice and the Leveraging of Competitive Disadvantages

Studies of grocery sales show that consumers of store brands switch to (price) discounted national brands more than consumers of national brands switch to discounted store brands. Such asymmetric price competition can be explained with numerous mechanisms proposed here and elsewhere. We report a choice experiment that replicates asymmetric price competition favoring higher‐quality competitors and demonstrates asymmetric quality competition favoring lower‐quality competitors. Also demonstrated are multiple mechanisms contributing to competitive asymmetries, where dominance involving the otherwise preferred brand is particularly potent (e.g., when a higher‐quality competitor matches the price of an otherwise preferred lower‐quality brand). The findings implicate modifications to (1) theories of decision making when extended to repeat choice, (2) empirical models of secondary purchase data, and (3) strategies for positioning and attacking brands. Whereas improving competitive disadvantages often attracts consumers from competitors more than does improving competitive advantages, this benefit must be weighed against the differentiation sacrificed by improving competitive disadvantages (improving competitive advantages, in contrast, increases differentiation).

Perspectives on Multiple Category Choice

Multiple category choice is a decision process in which an individualselects a number of goods, all of which are nonsubstitutable with respect toconsumption. Choices can be made either simultaneously or sequentially. Thekey feature of multiple category choice is the treatment of the choices asinterrelated because each item in the final collection of goods contributesto the achievement of a common behavioral goal. We discuss current andpotential applications of psychology, economics and consumer choice theoryin developing models of multiple category choice.

The Evaluation Stage in Marketing Decision Making

Prior to making important decisions, marketing managers go through an evaluation process in which available alternatives are compared. Yet, no systematic discussion of the evaluation process exists in the marketing literature. This article reviews the marketing and behavioral decision theory literature in order to identify factors that may cause errors in the two fundamental elements of the evaluation process—the estimation of probabilities and the determination of the value of outcomes. Propositions are developed that specify circumstances in which marketing management decisions may be influenced by judgmental biases, and procedures are identified for debiasing such judgments.

How positive and negative frames influences the decision of persons in the United States and Australia

Cites the existence of information framing effects as an interesting phenomenon in the area of human judgements and decision‐making. Uses three distinct types of framing effect and the hypothesis identified by Leven et al (1998). Studies the reliability of these effects across samples of subjects in the USA and Australia. Shows that, for two of the three types, attribute framing and risky choice framing, the effects were strong and almost identical in the two samples. Highlights a significant effect for the US sample, but not the Australian sample, for the third type, goal framing. Discusses results in terms of the reliability of the effects and their potential for revealing cross‐cultural differences in values.

Screening for interactions between design factors and demographics in choice-based conjoint

Abstract We propose an iterative stepwise forward selection procedure to screen a subset of important variables from a large pool of candidate variables in choice-based conjoint analysis. The method involves computing weighted correlations between candidate variables and residuals from the prior best fitting multinomial logit (MNL) model. Candidate variables that pass the screening step are then introduced and the MNL model is refitted using standard MNL software. A series of diagnostic tests is carried out before each iteration cycle. The procedure can be implemented easily using commonly available statistical software. We illustrate the application of the proposed method on a large data set.

Extending decision making competence to special populations: a pilot study of persons on the autism spectrum

[This corrects the article on p. 539 in vol. 6, PMID: 25972831.].

Analysis of monday night football viewership

We conduct a three-pronged analysis of one of the most watched television series in history: Monday Night Football MNF. First, we identify factors that affect the viewership of MNF from 1993 to 2014. This descriptive model explains over 90% of the variability in viewership, but includes factors known only ex post facto and the week of the game. As the Monday Night Football schedule must be set prior to the beginning of the season, we construct an alternative regression model to predict the full seasons viewership of potential games. This predictive model relies only on factors that are known before the release of the National Football League schedule in April preceding the season. Using the predictive regression model to estimate the objective function coefficients for potential games, we then recommend MNF schedules that maximize the total season viewership using an integer programming formulation. We conduct simulations to determine the impact of forecast error on the structure of our optimal MNF schedule.