Mercedes Martos-Partal

The Power of a Package: Product Claims Drive Purchase Decisions

ABSTRACT This research focuses on trends in new-product packaging claims and how such claims influence firm value. Empirical evidence revealed differential impacts of three types of packaging claims: nutritional, environmental, and production. The result of the current study also identified an increasingly popular trend toward introducing multiple claims simultaneously on the same package. Theoretical and empirical evidence confirm that these claims relate to firm value. The empirical analyses included more than 18,000 new products from 81 firms in the U.S. consumer packaged goods industry over a 10-year period.

Is product innovation as effective for private labels as it is for national brands

Abstract As an innovation strategy for competing with private labels, national brands traditionally launch new products. However, retailers are now also launching new products, to differentiate themselves from their competitors and to add value to their consumer franchise. This article aims to learn to what extent private labels influence consumer adoption of new products and to ascertain how consumers’ experiences with private labels affect their acceptance of new products. The results show that generally, private labels positively affect consumer adoption of new products, as measured by both the trial purchase level and the repurchase rate. However, a mixed effect is observed for households that have more experience with private labels. This research provides a more complete explanation of current market dynamics and clarifies the strength of the competitive advantage that national brands enjoy over private labels when launching new products.

Is advertising helpful for organic businesses?: Differential effects of packaging claims

What claims should companies use to improve consumer perceptions of their certified organic products and help consumers differentiate them from conventional products? This study focuses on advertising – specifically, on packaging claims that differ in their degree of explicitness and message topic. A laboratory experiment shows that a single claim positively influences perceptions of organic products, though additional claims can cancel out this positive effect. Different claims have distinct impacts on consumer perceptions. This study, thereby, reveals an effect of thematic scope: messages related to the environment have greater scope than those related to health, and they influence both environmental and health perceptions strongly.

Brand equity and store brand tiers: An analysis based on an experimental design

The creation of strong brands interests manufacturers and distributors, as well as researchers. However, previous investigations of brand equity have focused almost exclusively on manufacturers’ brands, without considering the brand equity of store brands. A few exceptions analyse store brands from an aggregate perspective, without differentiating their types. The present study instead considers the effect of store brand tiers (e.g. generics, standard, premium) on brand equity. An experimental design compares scores for different store and manufacturer brands across branded and unbranded tests. Store brands, including premium ones, suffer a brand equity disadvantage compared with manufacturers’ brands. Generic store brands are at a clear disadvantage; premium store brands do not differ from standard store brands in terms of brand equity.

Attitudes vs. Purchase Behaviors as Experienced Dissonance: The Roles of Knowledge and Consumer Orientations in Organic Market

This research focuses on the incongruity between positive attitudinal responses but a lack of purchase behavior in organic markets. According to cognitive dissonance theory, consumer orientations toward the benefits attributed to organic products (environmental protection, health, hedonic) relieve the dissonance that results from this attitude–behavior incongruity. Knowledge also functions as a transmitter, from positive attitudes to purchase behaviors, thereby reducing the incongruity. Using quota sampling in a survey study, this paper tests the hypotheses from linear regression models. The results show that orientations and knowledge improve the congruity between attitudes and purchase behaviors toward organic products. Moreover, interaction effects arise between the environmental protection orientation and knowledge and between the hedonic orientation and knowledge. Increasing knowledge mitigates the difference between attitudes and purchase behaviors, especially for consumers with environmental protection or hedonic orientations. These findings have several important implications for research and practice.

Improving Sales of Private Labels in Store

This paper analyzes the effectiveness of different merchandising techniques and in-store promotions in boosting sales of private label grocery products. Private labels differ substantially from (leading) national brands in product positioning and target customer group, and may therefore require a different in-store marketing mix to support their sales. By analyzing the relationship between brand type and the sales impact of different merchandising and promotion tools, we aim to obtain a better insight into which types of in-store stimuli are more appropriate to stimulate private label sales. Results confirm that (1) in-store stimuli have a differential effect on sales of private labels and national brands, and (2) merchandising and promotion tools that trigger a more cognitive and reasoned decision process are more effective in stimulating private label sales.

Are Different Merchandising Techniques and Promotions Equally Effective to Improve the Sales of Utilitarian and Hedonic Products? An Abstract

Grocery retailers face increasingly complex management problems. They not only have to manage multiple product categories and a huge number of different brands and SKUs but also have to cope with continuous changes in the competitive environment and an increased tendency of consumers to spread purchases over different chains and channels. To defend their competitive position, a differentiated, category-specific marketing mix approach is called for.

To what extent does need for touch affect online perceived quality

The purpose of this paper is to address the potential impact of need for touch (NFT) on perceived product quality and the possible roles of purchasers’ social (subjective norms), personal (buying impulsiveness) and epistemic (e-commerce orientation) factors, as well as the likely interaction effect of the shopping channel.,The empirical study is based on 540 observations, analysed in a partial least squares structural equation model.,The link between the NFT and perceived quality tends to be negative, especially for online purchases. E-commerce orientation reduces the need to touch products, but subjective norms and buying impulsiveness have no significant effects.,The NFT scale might be improved by adding more items. Some of the structural model coefficients indicate a low effect size. Finally, the results are limited to Spanish purchasers of the focal product.,Firms should appeal to purchasers’ e-commerce orientation to reduce the negative implications of a need to touch products among consumers shopping online.,The need to touch a product may be an obstacle to online purchases, yet few studies deal with its impact in online, relative to offline, contexts to evaluate product quality. This study also integrates personal, social and epistemic factors.