Rajiv Vaidyanathan

Strategic brand alliances: implications of ingredient branding for national and private label brands

Current research on brand alliances has focused primarily on alliances between two known, national brands. However, there is significant benefit to both parties in an alliance between a national brand and a private brand. Such alliances are gaining importance in the industry but have not been studied by marketers. The basic question explored in this study is whether using a national brand ingredient can benefit a private brand without hurting the national brand. First, a theoretical framework to explain how consumers may react to such an alliance is presented. Next, an experiment was conducted which showed that a private brand with a name brand ingredient was evaluated more positively. However, the evaluation of the national brand was not diminished by this association. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

The Wretched Refuse of a Teeming Shore? A Critical Examination of the Quality of Undergraduate Marketing Students

What is the quality of students attracted to the marketing major relative to other business majors? Although some anecdotal evidence suggests that undergraduate marketing students are less quantitatively oriented, there has been no comprehensive assessment of the overall quality of marketing students relative to other business students. Using a variety of secondary data analyses from nationwide samples, the authors assess the quality of students choosing marketing as a major. The results paint a grim picture for the marketing discipline. Marketing majors are among the poorest performing students relative to other business majors both coming in to and leaving college. Results from a broad-based sample suggest that marketing educators need to start a dialogue on exactly what set of knowledge and skills core to the discipline are being o fered students and their employers. The authors o fer some solutions and point to areas for additional research.

Using Commitments to Drive Consistency: Enhancing the Effectiveness of Cause‐related Marketing Communications

Research has consistently found that, despite a high degree of expressed concern about the environment, few individuals are willing to follow‐up this concern with behavioural actions in support of the environment, particularly when these actions require the individuals to absorb some costs. Using the theoretical framework of commitment–consistency theory, two studies were conducted in order to examine the effect of a small, active commitment to an environmental cause on consumer preference for an advertised product that supported that cause. The empirical results show strong support for the fact that persuading consumers to make an active commitment to a cause can serve as an important prerequisite for behavioural consistency (in terms of the willingness to buy a product). Further, the paper adds to the evidence on self‐perception theory as an underlying mechanism for the effectiveness of the technique. It is also found that, although commitment increases willingness to buy a product related to the cause, the effect works only when the cost associated with supporting the cause is minimal. The implications for marketing communications theory and practice are discussed.

Type IV error in marketing research: The investigation of ANOVA interactions

Considerable attention is typically given to Type I and Type II errors when conducting empirical research. This article presents an error, often ignored in marketing and consumer behavior research, termed Type IV error. This error results from the improper investigation of interactions in an analysis of variance. A review of research published inJournal of Marketing Research andJournal of Consumer Research found widespread occurrence of Type IV errors. Illustrative improper interpretations of interactions are discussed and approaches for properly investigating interactions are presented. Situations where interactions need to be tested and interpreted are noted. These situations are contrasted with those where it is more appropriate to examine cell mean differences. The correct use of graphs of cell means is also discussed. Guidelines are presented for avoiding Type IV errors.

An Exploratory Investigation of Computer Simulations, Student Preferences, and Performance

Abstract Previous studies have found no correlation between general student performance (GPA, exam performance) and performance on computer-based simulations. Additionally, there have been only limited examinations of how student learning preferences affect their performance. This exploratory study found a correlation between exam performance and simulation performance. In other words, students who performed well by traditional standards (exams) also performed well on the simulation. In addition, better performing students had a higher preference for learning by reading. A negative correlation between student preference for working with others and both exam and simulation performance was found. Possible implications of these findings are that simulations may not provide an opportunity to demonstrate better performance for traditionally poorer performing students. In addition, better students performed better on simulations and exams and had a low preference for working with others.

Eliciting Online Customers’ Preferences: Conjoint vs Self-Explicated Attribute-Level Measurements

The growth of the Internet for shopping has led to an increasing interest in tools for assisting consumers with decision-making, efficienfly using the vast quantity of widely dispersed information. Online product recommendation agents gather information from consumers and then match these consumer preferences with their database of products to recommend the best product. Two approaches can be taken for gathering information from consumers on their preferences – conjoint-type full-profile ratings or self-explicated ratings. That is, organizations may infer consumers’ preferences for attributes and levels on the basis of their ratings of several alternative products or may simply directly ask them their evaluations of various attributes and levels. We compare these two approaches and find that, in general, they do not result in the same conclusions. In this paper we examine the differences in the approaches to making recommendations and discuss the implications of these differences. Our results show that there is a closer match between the methods for products closer to the extremes of consumer preference. Also, our study shows that a recommendation agent should offer more than one recommendation in order to match the needs of the system user.

Deal evaluation and purchase intention: the impact of aspirational and market‐based internal reference prices

While there has been much debate in the reference pricing literature on the most appropriate conceptualization of internal reference price used by consumers in evaluating deals, the question of whether consumers may use different internal reference prices at different stages of the purchase process has not been addressed. In this article, we hypothesize that consumers may use one type of internal reference price to form their deal attitude and another to determine their purchase intentions. We also show that different dimensions of internal reference price are used to determine deal attitude and purchase intention and that price uncertainty moderates the relationship between these internal reference prices and deal evaluation.

The Role of Brand Familiarity in Internal Reference Price Formation: An Accessibility-Diagnosticity Perspective

Very little research focused on the process by which internal reference prices are formed and used by consumers making price judgments. The accessibility-diagnosticity model is proposed as a parsimonious theoretical framework that resolves some conflicts in prior research and provides a foundation for future research on internal reference prices. This model is used to evaluate the role of brand familiarity and involvement on the formation and use of internal reference price standards. Empirical results show that (1) involvement is a better predictor of confidence in internal reference prices than brand familiarity, and (2) in forming internal reference price estimates, the offering price is discounted more for unfamiliar brands than familiar brands, but only when involvement is low. When involvement is high, the effect of brand familiarity on reference price estimates disappears. Implications for future research on internal reference price effects and for promotion practice are discussed.

Interdependent self-construal in collectivist cultures: Effects on compliance in a cause-related marketing context

This study is a replication and extension of prior work on the effectiveness of cause-related marketing efforts. We show that compliance behavior across cultures can be different depending on the dominant self-construal paradigm prevalent in a given society. The original study had shown that people in independent self-construal societies (individualist countries such as the USA) are unwilling to follow up on their original commitment (to support rainforest protection) if compliance involves bearing the cost of such action (paying a higher price for a product where part of the price is donated to rainforest protection). This study, drawing on a sample of students at a mid-sized university in northern Poland, shows that commitment–consistency works in collectivist, interdependent self-construal societies in a different way: if the cause being supported is of a pro-social nature, people in such societies are willing to pay the higher product price to support it.

Perceived effectiveness of recommendation agent routines: search vs. experience goods

The vast amount of information available in online shopping environments has led to the development of shopping agents that seek to assist customers in their purchase decisions. Such recommendation agents use one of two common approaches to build a recommendation: rule-based filtering agents typically ask buyers their product preferences and make a recommendation by comparing these preferences to product features; collaborative filtering agents match users with other buyers who have similar profiles and preferences, and make recommendations based on shared likes and dislikes. We examine how consumers react to these different processes to develop recommendations for both search and experience goods. Our results show that consumers evaluated recommendation agents more favourably for search goods than experience goods. Further, rule-based recommendations were preferred for search goods but not for experience goods. Implications of these results are discussed.