Marie-Cécile Cervellon

Should consumer attitudes be reduced to their affective and cognitive bases? Validation of a hierarchical model

Abstract The authors argue that reducing consumer attitudes to their underlying affective and cognitive bases entails a loss of valuable information. They propose that consumer attitudes be best represented by a hierarchical structure that preserves, at the first level, clusters of attributes formed on the basis of their immediate vs. deliberative nature, these clusters being nested at the second level within affective and cognitive bases. The superiority of this hierarchical structure over alternative models is supported for food attitudes, in a sample of two cultures (French and Chinese) known for different relations between affective and cognitive bases (Study 1). The hierarchical model also demonstrates superior ability to predict behaviors for two food items for which the affective and cognitive bases have a different influence on consumption (i.e., chocolate and raw milk; Study 2). Theoretical and managerial implications of the results are discussed.

Standardisation versus cultural adaptation in food advertising: insights from a two-culture market

This article unravels principles of standardisation and cultural adaptation from past literature and empirically tests the applicability of these guidelines to food advertising, in a context in which two cultures, both with strong cultural differences with regard to food, are geographically integrated and share a common industry and market structure, thereby controlling for market and industry structure confounding factors. The study was conducted in the Montreal (Canada) area, comparing food TV ads targeted to two cultural groups—the French and the English Canadians. A total of 123 standardised ads are compared to 182 culture-specific ads (92 French and 90 English). Elements of advertising that are found amenable to standardisation pertain to product information and appeals based on basic positive emotions. Conversely, social and symbolical appeals, as well as appeals based on social emotions, present cultural specificity. Cross-cultural differences are found in culture-specific advertisements in the higher-order benefits associated with food (i.e. health for the English and pleasure for the French). Both benefits reflect global consumer trends and they are as frequently found in standardised ads as they are in corresponding culture-specific advertisements.

Assessing the Cross-Cultural Applicability of Affective and Cognitive Components of Attitude:

This research tests the cross-cultural applicability of the affective and cognitive component model of attitude using within-group and multigroup confirmatory factor analysis in the context of food attitudes. French from France and Chinese from the People’s Republic of China were selected for their differences in cultural orientation toward food; the French display strong affective-cognitive ambivalence, whereas the Chinese have a balanced attitude toward food. The third group, English-Canadian Chinese, allows investigation into the consequences of acculturation on the attitude structure. Results strongly support the cross-cultural applicability of the affective-cognitive model. The affective-cognitive model was validated within groups, and invariance in model measurement was established across groups. In addition, cross-cultural differences and similarities in the latent means and in the pattern of correlations between affective and cognitive components were consistent with theoretically derived expectations.

Sustainable, hedonic and efficient: Interaction effects between product properties and consumer reviews on post-experience responses

Purpose – This paper aims to investigate the influence of consumer reviews on the evaluation, post-experience, of products with a combination of sustainable, hedonic and utilitarian properties. Design/methodology/approach – In the first instance, consumer reviews for organic and non-organic cosmetics posted on the French Web site beaute-test.com were analyzed. Second, a full-factorial two product types (organic and non-organic) × three reviews (positive, negative and no reviews) experiment was conducted. Sixty French women tested a beauty product and evaluated it on hedonic and utilitarian (ambiguous and non-ambiguous) properties. In a second experiment, 132 English-speaking students evaluated an herbal tea at home, along a full-factorial two product types (fair-trade and non-fair-trade) × three product properties (hedonic, utilitarian ambiguous and utilitarian non-ambiguous) × two reviews (negative review and no review) between-subject design. Findings – First, consumers are significantly less influenced...

Ethical fashion dimensions: pictorial and auditory depictions through three cultural perspectives

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide the results of an exploratory study comparing attitudes of young fashion conscious consumers towards ethical fashion in Canada, France and the UK. Design/methodology/approach – The methods used in this research were qualitative with a mix of interviews and focus groups and a new application of a visual method widely used within design and fashion environments, the mood board. The study is based within the contrast of a growing trend towards sustainability and the rise of fast fashion where consumers are increasingly demanding cheaper items. The research is also grounded in cross-cultural research where the comparison of data emanating from different cultures and languages presents specific dilemmas for researchers. Findings – Results indicated that there were notable differences in the perception of ethical fashion between the respondents from these three cultures. In the representation and appeal of this fashion segment, in terms of its perceived availabi...

Facebook Pages Content, Does it Really Matter? Consumers’ Responses to Luxury Hotel Posts with Emotional and Informational Content

ABSTRACT This paper examines clients’ responses to luxury hotel posts with either an informational or an emotional appeal. The luxury hotel industry is selected for its hedonic characteristics and its use of Facebook as a branding tool. An experiment with repeated measurement was conducted involving 45 young adults, clients of luxury hotels, and users of Facebook. An informational appeal is more effective in improving the attitude toward the hotel signature (“Sheraton”, in the context of this study) and in improving the perception of quality than an emotional appeal. Yet, the content of the posts has no influence on the intention to stay at the hotel and the intention to follow the hotel on Facebook. Managerial implications are drawn on the choice of content of Facebook pages.

Narrative and Emotional Accounts of Secondhand Luxury Purchases Along the Customer Journey

Secondhand luxury is a growing business around the world. Recent research estimates that in the USA, brands such as Prada are transacted more on secondhand channels than through luxury retail. Academic research has focused so far on profiling consumers and understanding the meaning they attach to pre-loved fashion purchases. Yet, little is known about emotions yielded through purchasing secondhand luxury on different distribution channels (secondhand boutiques and online Web sites such as Vestiaire Collective and Vide Dressing). The purpose of this research is to explore the feelings that develop along the customer journey when purchasing secondhand luxury items. This chapter follows ten consumers who are tracking a secondhand luxury fashion item both in secondhand boutiques and online boutiques. It explores the emotions that develop along the journey, before the purchase when searching the item (anxiety, impatience, and nostalgia), during purchase choice (particularly the issue of trust), and after the purchase (disappointment, excitement, etc.). This is complemented by a text analysis of forum discussions and customer reviews on secondhand fashion purchases online. This chapter provides managerial implications to secondhand retailers (particularly the growing business of online secondhand platforms) in order to provide a better customer service and monitor customer relationship management programs.

Vintage Fashion: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Fashion is often a personal representation and interpretation of a trend or movement; therefore, achieving a definition for a particular style is arduous and open to interpretation. However, vintage fashion has a time-bound delineation, which confines its representative fashion garments and objects to a specific era (defined as from the 1920s to 1980s, but also described as anything designed and produced at least 20 years before the current fashion trends). The additional impediment of the diverse terminology attached to fashion from the past, which is also categorised as ‘antique’, ‘retro’ even ‘secondhand’, adds to the complexity surrounding this context. Vintage fashion and its extended notions described above have primarily been investigated within the confines of a cultural and national context. This research uses visual and traditional interpretative methods to explore transcultural attitudes of students of fashion from France and the UK towards fashion garments, which are not produced or representative of current trends and offering. Graphical and DAP (Draw a Picture) inspired methods are used to elicit visual representation of the understanding of this style, and more traditional interviews explore the dimensions of the concept through the lense of divergent cultural backgrounds. The results inform the debate surrounding the boundaries of vintage fashion, in terms of its cultural heritage and place within different cultural contexts. The originality of this research is twofold: firstly, the cultural dimension of vintage fashion has been largely overlooked in past research, and the elicitation of this facet of the concept is valuable for academics, students and practitioners alike. Secondly, the use of visual methodologies within cross-cultural research adds to methodological advances for contexts, which are traditionally complex environments from which to extract meaningful data from.

Reconsumption reconsidered: Redressing nostalgia with neo-burlesque

Reconsumption refers to the act of rereading books, rewatching movies, revisiting places and re-experiencing hedonic experiences more generally. In a retrospective consumer culture, replete with prequels, sequels, reboots and rereleases, there is considerable scope for expansion. This article reconsiders the reconsumption concept. Based on an in-depth, 3-year study of neo-burlesquers in France, it reveals that reconsumption is evident in a communal context; that the concept is applicable to sequels not just re-experienced originals; that it holds good when ‘post-phenomenological’ research methods are employed; and that nostalgia is its driving force.