Kalpesh Kaushik Desai

The Effects of Ingredient Branding Strategies on Host Brand Extendibility

A decision of increasing importance is how ingredient attributes that make up a product should be labeled or branded, if at all. The authors conduct a laboratory experiment to consider how ingredient branding affects consumer acceptance of a novel line extension (or one that has not been introduced before) as well as the ability of the brand to leverage that ingredient to introduce future category extensions. The authors study two particular types of novel line extensions or brand expansions: (1) slot-filler expansions, in which the level of one existing product attribute changes (e.g., a scent in Tide detergent that is new to the laundry detergent category) and (2) new attribute expansions, in which an entirely new attribute or characteristic is added to the product (e.g., cough relief liquid added to Life Savers candy). The authors examine two types of ingredient branding strategies by branding the target attribute ingredient for the brand expansion with either a new name as a self-branded ingredient (e.g., Tide with its own EverFresh scented bath soap) or an established, well-respected name as a cobranded ingredient (e.g., Tide with Irish Spring scented bath soap). The results indicate that with slot-filler expansions, a cobranded ingredient facilitates initial expansion acceptance, but a self-branded ingredient leads to more favorable subsequent category extension evaluations. With more dissimilar new attribute expansions, however, a cobranded ingredient leads to more favorable evaluations of both the initial expansion and the subsequent category extension. The authors offer interpretation, implications, and limitations of the findings, as well as directions for further research.

Descriptive Characteristics of Memory-Based Consideration Sets: Influence of Usage Occasion Frequency and Usage Location Familiarity

Prior research has examined the composition of memory-based consideration sets in usage situations in terms of the specific products included in them. To shed more light on how much effort it would take consumers to choose from a memory-set and how difficult it would be for a product to enter or remain in that set, this research examines the composition of memory-sets in terms of their descriptive characteristics: stability, or how consistent the set is across similar situations; size, or how large the set is; variety, or how distinct the products within the set are; and preference dispersion, or how equal the preferences are toward the set products. To pinpoint the specific elements of usage situations that influence these properties and to address the limitation of inconsistent operationalizations of usage situations both within and across prior studies, this research operationalized usage situations in terms of two key elements: usage occasion and usage location. Results of two studies using 32 situations that varied on occasion and location familiarities in two replicate product classes revealed that memory-sets of more familiar occasions had lower stability, larger size, and marginally greater variety. Similarly, sets of more familiar locations portrayed lower stability than those of less familiar locations, as well as set variety equal to those of less familiar locations. Finally, the underlying explanation of the above results, the process of forming memory-sets—direct retrieval of items from memory in more familiar situations and use of situation goals in less familiar situations—was also confirmed.

How Credit Card Payments Increase Unhealthy Food Purchases: Visceral Regulation of Vices

Some food items that are commonly considered unhealthy also tend to elicit impulsive responses. The pain of paying in cash can curb impulsive urges to purchase such unhealthy food products. Credit card payments, in contrast, are relatively painless and weaken impulse control. Consequently, consumers are more likely to buy unhealthy food products when they pay by credit card than when they pay in cash. Results from four studies support these hypotheses. Analysis of actual shopping behavior of 1,000 households over a period of 6 months revealed that shopping baskets have a larger proportion of food items rated as impulsive and unhealthy when shoppers use credit or debit cards to pay for the purchases (study 1). Follow-up experiments (studies 2–4) show that the vice-regulation effect of cash payments is mediated by pain of payment and moderated by chronic sensitivity to pain of payment. Implications for consumer welfare and theories of impulsive consumption are discussed.

Strategic Role of Affect-Based Attitudes in the Acquisition, Development, and Retention of Customers

Abstract Marketing practitioners seem to have become more intrigued with and informed about complex emotional motives for consumption than academicians. Using affective persuasion strategy to help brands achieve their strategic objectives of acquiring, developing, and retaining customers is one area in which the above statement is likely to be true and is the focus of this article. Review of the extant literature and examples from the real world are discussed to support this argument. Next, drawing on the literature on affect- vs. cognition-based attitudes, a set of propositions are presented that not only examine the conditions under which affect- compared to cognition-based persuasion strategy helps brands achieve the above three strategic objectives but also delineate the influence of using affect- compared to cognition-based persuasion strategy on various outcome measures related to each of the three strategic objectives.

Consumer Perceptions of Product Variants Positioned on Atypical Attributes

How do consumers perceive new product variants that are positioned on atypical attributes? The authors investigate the joint effects of three factors? brand familiarity, retail shelf display, and consumer goal orientation. The study focuses on snack foods positioned on the atypical attribute of low fat. There are three main findings. First, although high (vs. low) brand familiarity causes relatively unfavorable perceptions on the positioning attribute, it also creates sufficiently favorable perceptions on another determinant attribute, product taste, resulting in a net positive effect for brand equity on purchase likelihood. Second, goal-based versus taxonomic shelf display (i.e., placement with health foods vs. regular snack foods) results in relatively negative perceptions on the positioning attribute, yet more favorable buying intentions. Finally, more (vs. less) health-oriented consumers rate such product variants less favorably on fat content but more favorably on product taste; the former segment is also more likely to buy such product variants.

The Influence of Chronic and Situational Self-Construal on Categorization

Four studies, using chronic and situational self-construal, supported the proposition that individualists (collectivists) focus on within-category richness (between-category differentiation). Collectivists judged paired products as less similar than individualists did, but only at the higher level of a category hierarchy (studies 1 and 2). Further, collectivists were more context driven in product ratings in a categorization task (study 3). Study 4 focused on high-level pairs and found that under high involvement, chronic self-construal dominated judgments. Under low involvement, chronic and situational construals interacted: individualists (collectivists) were less (more) amenable to the situational construal. Implications for self-construal and categorization research are discussed. (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Consumer's value for informational role of agent in service industry

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to study the informational role played by an intermediary in the service industry.Design/methodology/approach – The paper used survey and choice data collected from agents and customers, respectively, in the hotel industry.Findings – The paper shows that informational role of agents in choice varies from mere facilitation of the transaction (e.g. making reservation) to a more active role involving accurate predictions about attributes that consumers will perceive important, more realistic performance evaluation of choice options and providing information about experience attributes. The results also show how an agents role depends on customers prior knowledge about the choice options, the goal underlying service consumption (e.g. business vs vacation travel), benefits sought by the consumer and the agents perception about a long term relationship with the consumer. Finally, the results also reveal a unique pattern of differences between agents and consumers in the...

Accentuate the positive: how identity affects customer satisfaction

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to address an important gap in identity research – how does consumer identity affect satisfaction following an unambiguous product experience. Design/methodology/approach – Two experiments were conducted involving a product experience scenario and a service recovery encounter. Findings – Study results demonstrate that experience valence moderates the impact of identity on customer satisfaction. Specifically, we find that identity improves satisfaction with a positive (but does not increase dissatisfaction with a negative) experience, and this effect arises via enhanced performance perceptions under positive experience rather than expectations. Research limitations/implications – Our research investigates whether the prior research argument that identity is a powerful and “sticky” source of brand evaluation is robust to product experience. Specifically, we extend the disconfirmation paradigm of satisfaction by identifying identity as a driver of satisfaction and by...