Marc Vanhuele

Mindset Metrics in Market Response Models: An Integrative Approach

Demonstrations of marketing effectiveness currently proceed along two parallel tracks: Quantitative researchers model the direct sales effects of the marketing mix, and advertising and branding experts trace customer mind-set metrics (e.g., awareness, affect). The authors merge the two tracks and analyze the added explanatory value of including customer mind-set metrics in a sales response model that already accounts for short- and long-term effects of advertising, price, distribution, and promotion. Vector autoregressive modeling of the metrics for more than 60 brands of four consumer goods shows that advertising awareness, brand consideration, and brand liking account for almost one-third of explained sales variance. Competitive and own mind-set metrics make a similar contribution. Wear-in times reveal that mind-set metrics can be used as advance warning signals that allow enough time for managerial action before market performance itself is affected. Specific marketing actions affect specific mind-set metrics, with the strongest overall impact for distribution. The findings suggest that modelers should include mind-set metrics in sales response models and branding experts should include competition in their tracking research.

Know the name, forget the exposure: Brand familiarity versus memory of exposure context

This research shows that a single auditory exposure to fictitious brand names may create the impression, one day later, that these brand names actually exist. It appears that the judgment that the brands are known is based on brand familiarity coupled with a failure to remember the exposure context. This demonstration, inspired by the false fame effect, is interpreted as the product of an implicit memory process. The result implies that measurement of explicit memory of an ad or other marketing communication may misrepresent (in this case, understate) the influence of that communication. However, the effect was obtained only when attention to the fictitious brand names was deliberate (as opposed to incidental). This suggests that there are lower attentional limits to the influence of one exposure to a brand name on creating familiarity without memory of the exposure context.

Consumers' Immediate Memory for Prices

We examine the cognitive mechanics involved in keeping prices in short-term memory for subsequent recall. Consumers code and store prices verbally, visually, and in terms of their magnitude. The encoding used influences immediate recall performance. The memorability of prices depends on their verbal length, usualness, and overall magnitude. We find that the performance of consumers is affected by their pronunciation speed and price abbreviation habits. Overall, consumers recall prices better than what previous digit span studies with simple numbers have suggested.

Consumer Attitude Metrics for Guiding Marketing Mix Decisions

Marketing managers often use consumer attitude metrics such as awareness, consideration, and preference as performance indicators because they represent their brands health and are readily connected to marketing activity. However, this does not mean that financially focused executives know how such metrics translate into sales performance, which would allow them to make beneficial marketing mix decisions. We propose four criteria---potential, responsiveness, stickiness, and sales conversion---that determine the connection between marketing actions, attitudinal metrics, and sales outcomes. We test our approach with a rich data set of four-weekly marketing actions, attitude metrics, and sales for several consumer brands in four categories over a seven-year period. The results quantify how marketing actions affect sales performance through their differential impact on attitudinal metrics, as captured by our proposed criteria. We find that marketing--attitude and attitude--sales relationships are predominantly stable over time but differ substantially across brands and product categories. We also establish that combining marketing and attitudinal metrics criteria improves the prediction of brand sales performance, often substantially so. Based on these insights, we provide specific recommendations on improving the marketing mix for different brands, and we validate them in a holdout sample. For managers and researchers alike, our criteria offer a verifiable explanation for differences in marketing elasticities and an actionable connection between marketing and financial performance metrics.

Specification and empirical evaluation of a cluster-asymmetry market share model

Asymmetric models of market share response allow for specific cross-competitive effects between competitors. Various approaches have been suggested for building asymmetric market share models preserving the properties of logical consistency (i.e., respecting the sum and range constraints on market share) of the popular attraction formulation, including the recent “fully extended” attraction specification by Carpenter et al. (1988). It is argued that these approaches suffer from a number of theoretical or practical difficulties. Using the Nested Logit model as a source of inspiration, this paper introduces a simple and tractable cluster-asymmetric attraction specification for market share response and discusses its properties. The model is also shown to be related to the Cooper et al. approach. The specification is applied and evaluated in the context of a consumer appliance example.

Examining Medical Decision Making from a Marketing Perspective

This paper explores how consideration of the medical context can add newelements to marketing thought. Differences between the medical context andother consumer contexts are reviewed. The effects that the medical contexthas on the way traditional constructs such as involvement, affect andstress, uncertainty and satisfaction affect choice are discussed. Finally,emerging research in medical contexts where future discoveries could enhanceconsumer choice theory are presented.

How Web Banner Designers Work: The Role of Internal Dialogues, Self-Evaluations, and Implicit Communication Theories

ABSTRACT In-depth interviews with web banner designers, combined with retrospective protocols, reveal implicit theories of the communication process that they apply during their creation process. These theories take the form of reactions of imaginary audiences with whom web banner designers engage in imaginary dialogues. The dialogues reveal the evaluation standards held by internet users, advertisers, and different colleagues.

Les effets persuasifs de l’e-publicité perçue « sans conscience » en vision périphérique. Implications pour les recherches sur la réception des medias

A l’aide d’une experimentation, nous montrons que des messages publicitaires sur l’internet apparaissant dans le champ visuel peripherique provoquent des effets favorables sur les jugements et les intentions d’achat des marques publicisees, alors que les recepteurs n’ont pas « conscience » qu’elles sont entrees dans leur champ visuel. Nous etudions egalement l’evolution des effets cognitifs et attitudinaux huit jours apres l’exposition. Pour demontrer ces influences de maniere rigoureuse, nous avons concu une methode de presentation contingente couplant une camera filmant les mouvements oculaires et un systeme informatique faisant automatiquement disparaitre les bannieres publicitaires des que le regard de l’internaute se deplace dans leur direction. Apres avoir propose une explication quant aux processus socio-cognitifs impliques dans l’influence, nous ouvrons de nouvelles perspectives pour la recherche sur la reception de la communication mediatique.

Where do customer loyalties really lie, and why? Gender differences in store loyalty

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine gender differences in store loyalty and how those differences evolve with age. Design/methodology/approach Data for the study were collected in a survey of 32,054 shoppers in more than 50 grocery stores belonging to the same chain. In total, 20 satisfaction items were factor-analysed, resulting in four satisfaction factors. A logistic regression with store exclusivity as the dependent variable was then run to test the research hypotheses. Findings This study finds that men are more loyal than women to the store chain, while women are more loyal than men to individual stores. Women’s loyalty is more influenced by their satisfaction with interaction with store employees, while for men loyalty is more influenced by satisfaction with impersonal dimensions. Store loyalty increases with age, an effect that cannot be explained solely by declining mobility and cognitive impairment. Research limitations/implications This research examines declared behavioural practices rather than actual behaviour. However, in view of the high frequency of purchases in the retail category examined, and also because of the large sample of over 50 different stores, declared practices should be highly correlated with actual behaviour. Practical implications Results from satisfaction surveys should be interpreted differently for men and women. Loyalty programmes may want to adapt their approach, to incorporate gender differences into their loyalty reinforcing measures. Social implications This paper should also help to a better understanding of loyalty programs for both men and women, younger and older people. Originality/value This is the first demonstration from an in store customer survey that the shopping experience drives store loyalty differently for men and women.

Creativity and e-advertising: A Qualitative Study of Art Directors' Creative Processes

An interpretive analysis of qualitative interviews with 33 creators of advertising banners for the Internet, combined with retrospective protocols on the creation process, reveals that they hold implicit theories about the potential impact of their work on different audiences. These audiences intervene in the form of intraindividual imaginary dialogue partners who, throughout the creative process, give their reactions to the message being created. Creation and evaluation are therefore intertwined and not, as the literature on creativity has suggested, two sequential steps of the creative process.