Lukman Aroean

Are innovative consumers emotional and prestigiously sensitive to price

Abstract Understanding the consumer’s tendency to adopt new products is an ever-present essential for successful marketing campaigns. This paper presents the findings from two empirical studies that investigate the relationship between consumer innovativeness, price-prestige sensitivity, and need for emotion. A questionnaire survey was used to collect data in both studies from a sample of 668 respondents in two cities in England. The findings show that consumer innovativeness is determined by an individual’s sensitivity to price and their need for emotion. While innovative consumers are sensitive in relating price to prestige, this dispositional relationship varies across products. Furthermore, the findings suggest that enjoyment, which facilitates emotional openness and receptivity, influences innovative consumers to take the emotional route, besides the price-prestige route, to the adoption of new products. These findings have a number of important implications for marketers, particularly for the success of marketing campaigns targeted at innovative consumers who find enjoyment in using new products and are prestigiously sensitive to price.

Will Cigarette Plain Pack Work? An Exploratory Study in the UK

Smoking has been a major public issue across the globe and considered as one of leading causes of death that kills approximately six million people a year (WHO 2012). Governments and health organizations have been constantly trying to reduce number of smokers through controlling the promotion and advertising of tobacco product (WHO 2008). In the UK, the control has begun since 1996 with the prohibition on television and radio, followed by the ban on direct marketing and sponsorship in 2005, the prohibition of the sale of tobacco product on vending machine in 2011, and the ban on the point of sale display of tobacco in large stores in 2012, which ban will take effect for small stores from 2015 (ASH 2012). As most forms of promotion and advertising are prohibited, cigarette packaging has become the remaining important promotion tool in reaching potential and current smokers (Gallopel-Morgan et al. 2012; Freeman et al. 2011). On 1 December 2012 Australia has become the first country in the world in implementing cigarette plain packaging (BBC 2012). Obviously opposing criticisms have emerged arguing that plain packaging might generate risk, such as business difficulty for retailers (Alliance of Australian Retailers 2011) and uncertainty that plain packaging would meet its aims (British American Tobacco 2012).

The Relationships of Cognition, Playfulness, Enjoyment and Identity Expression in Computer Gaming

Contributing to playfulness, enjoyment, cognitive and identity domains, the paper examines the role of need for cognition and playfulness towards the enjoyment and identity expressiveness. From a survey with 221 respondents, the result unveils that need for cognition (NFC) enhances the likelihood in experiencing playfulness in computer game. Experiencing playfulness then leads to encountering enjoyment, and subsequently enjoyment positively influences the likelihood of expressing both social identity and self-identity, especially for male. Hence, playfulness mediates NFC influencing enjoyment, and the path of playfulness and enjoyment mediates playfulness influencing expressing social identity and self-identity. The findings imply that the extent to which an individual gamer enjoy playing computer games will determine how likely they share their identity to their gaming peers.

What is Waste? Defining the Concept of Waste

The effort to eliminate “waste” from within the production process has long been recognized as critical in optimizing product and firm competitiveness (c.f. Clark & Fujimoto, 1991; Eisenhardt & Tabrizi, 1995). The emergence and the influence of these “War-on-Waste” principles have sparked a revolution in manufacturing processes in companies around the world that generate a series of prominent terms such as Scientific Management (Taylor 1911), Just-in-time manufacturing and Kaizen (Imai 1986), Total Quality Management (Flynn et al 1994) and Six Sigma (Linderman et al 2003). Unfortunately, while the production processes have been steadily optimized, the products produced via such processes have paradoxically evolved to include incrementally more instances of waste (Brombacher et al 2005; James 2010; WDS Global 2008). Brombacher et al (2005) found a startling increase over time in the percentage of returned products to a major manufacturer of high-technology, high volume consumer electronics firm that in fact were functioning perfectly and without error. The rate of such returns had grown from less than 5% in 1980 to 50% by the year 2000. In the UK, James (2010) showed that of all technology products purchased, no more than 50% of the inherent capabilities of these devices were used. WDS Global (2008) reported that 80% of the capabilities of modern mobile phones are not regularly used, and 25% of all capabilities are never even “discovered” by end users.

The Impact of Consumer Innovativeness, Prestige Price Sensitivity and Need for Emotion on Impulse Buying and Satisfaction

Impulse buying (IB) refers to unplanned purchases without much reflection (Bellenger et al. 1978; Youn and Faber 2000; Beatty and Ferrell, 1998) and it is defined by Rock (1987: 191) as a state of “sudden, often powerful and persistent urge to buying something immediately”. Commonly conceptualized and measured in the literature as a tendency to buy things on impulse (Rook and Fisher 1995; Peck and Childers 2006), IB is “inconsistent with rational choice models” (Silvera, et al. 2008: 23) and has been linked to affect and emotion, specifically excitement, pleasure and an urge to buy (Rook 1987). Silvera et al. (2008) argue that there is relatively little research on IB from a psychological perspective and hence a lack of understanding of the psychological constructs underpinning this behavioral tendency. Earlier research failed to provide personality-grounded explanations of IB (e.g. d’ Antoni and Shenson, 1973; Cobb and Hoyer 1986; Youn and Faber 2000) suggesting that this stream of research may have focused on relationships between IB and ‘irrelevant’ personality traits (Youn and Faber 2000). Later research has, however, linked IB to a number of personality traits, specifically, lack of control, stress reaction, absorption (Youn and Faber 2000) as well as the Big 5 (Verplanken and Herabadi 2001). Additionally, Silvera et al.’s (2008) research attempts to validate Verplanken et al.’s (2005) contribution on the psychological states underlying IB, highlighting the relationship between IB and subjective wellbeing, affect, self-esteem and social influence. Lately, research has examined IB in relation to variety seeking tendencies, optimal stimulation level and price consciousness/sensitivity (Sharma et al. 2010; Liang 2012), and to other factors, such as product involvement and product knowledge, (Sharma et al. 2010), store promotions and environmental cues (Kacen et al. 2012; Peck and Childers 2006). IB has also been linked to satisfaction in the sense that consumers do not necessarily view IB as normatively wrong; but use IB as a means of satisfying certain needs, in addition to the need for the product (e.g. Hausman 2000) such as hedonic desires, novelty, variety, social interaction and self-esteem needs (Piron 1991; Rook 1987; Hausman 2000). This study seeks to extend the current understanding of the underpinnings of IB and satisfaction by focusing on specific personality traits that seem more relevant for marketers, including consumer innovativeness, prestige price sensitivity and need for emotion.