Marcelo Vinhal Nepomuceno

How do involvement and product knowledge affect the relationship between intangibility and perceived risk for brands and product categories

Purpose – Intangibility has long been studied in marketing, especially its physical aspect. This paper seeks to verify whether a branding strategy is efficient in reducing the risk perceived by customers.Design/methodology/approach – A sample of university students answered the measurements considering both perspectives (brands and product categories). The paper uses a three‐dimensional approach of intangibility and explores its relationships with evaluation difficulty (ED) and perceived risk (PR). These relationships were tested in two different perspectives: brands and product categories.Findings – Two analyses were made to test the hypotheses which were generally supported. Several relationships between the variables were found, but three should be highlighted. First, it was shown that brands are more mentally intangible than product categories, which may lead to a difficulty to evaluate. Second, it was found that evaluation difficulty increases the perceived risk in the product category perspective. T...

Relationship between intangibility and perceived risk: moderating effect of privacy, system security and general security concerns

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the association between intangibility and perceived risk using a sample of North American households. This relationship is explored within two purchase environments, namely online and offline. The authors also investigated the moderating effects of privacy, system security and general security concerns when purchasing in an online environment.Design/methodology/approach – The survey was delivered to 156 households in a small town in the Midwest and collected upon completion.Findings – The perception of risk is increased when two negatively loaded pieces of information are processed simultaneously (i.e. product intangibility and privacy concern). Furthermore, system security was identified as the most relevant concern in e‐commerce.Research limitations/implications – The representativeness of the sample is limited. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.Originality/value – The results provide interesting insights about the generalizability of previous fin...

Congruency of humour and cultural values in print ads: Cross-cultural differences among the US, France and China

International advertisers routinely struggle to adapt humorous ads for the domestic markets of different countries. In order to provide them with better guidelines, we conduct a content analysis of humorous print ads from China, the United States and France. We found that the cultural values deemed important in a given country are rarely portrayed in humorous ads. This suggests that advertisers may be using humour to promote their products and services with cultural values not endorsed by the general population. Alternatively, advertisers may be ridiculing values that are less important, to attract attention while not offending audiences. Finally, we found that the type of humour used when a given human value is made salient is usually not the same in different countries.

Homo Virtualensis: Evolutionary Psychology as a Tool for Studying Video Games

Video games represent a growing new trend in entertainment. The majority of research conducted regarding video games suffers from problems endemic to the standard social sciences model (SSSM). Chiefly, these problems are the result of presuming that all observed variation in mental traits is due to social learning and not innate differences. This chapter examines this body of work critically and provides evolutionary explanations for three largely unexamined or incompletely explained phenomena in the research area: game content; sex differences in gaming; and the link between gaming and play behavior. It is concluded that the literature on gaming can benefit from an infusion of evolutionary-based theorizing.

Consumer Resistance: From Anti-Consumption to Revenge

This chapter offers a review of two facets of consumer resistance—a phenomenon we broadly define as consumers’ sense of opposition toward consumption, marketing and corporations. These two specific facets are consumer anti-consumption and revenge. First, it discusses four anti-consumption lifestyles (i.e., global impact consumers, market activists, anti-loyal consumers, and simplifiers) as well as their antecedents (i.e., materialism, self-control, long-term orientation, and environmental concern) and their consequences (i.e., macro-economic effects, sustainability, and consumer’s well-being). Second, it presents the psychological process leading to consumer revenge—i.e., the actions to hurt a firm. Specifically, it discusses the cognitive and emotional antecedents leading to a desire for revenge as well as the most common revenge behaviors (indirect and direct). In conclusion, this chapter explains that both consumers’ anti-consumption and revenge actions are grounded in consumers’ strong desire for regaining power over firms.