S. Ratneshwar

Toward Understanding the Attraction Effect: The Implications of Product Stimulus Meaningfulness and Familiarity

The attraction effect refers to an inferior products ability to increase the attractiveness of another alternative when the inferior product is added to a choice set. This article examines potential explanations for the attraction effect and its boundary conditions. The article reports several empirical investigations and suggests that the attraction effect may be moderated by such variables as stimulus meaningfulness and familiarity with the product category. The implications are relevant to research on context effects in consumer choice.

Goal-Derived Categories and the Antecedents of Across-Category Consideration

We employ the concept of goal-derived categories and examine when and why consideration sets might include alternatives from different nominal product categories. An experiment in stimulus-based choice was conducted wherein subjects were given a large, heterogeneous set of alternatives and asked to form consideration sets. A key finding was that across-category consideration was high when there was either goal conflict (i.e., a single product category could not deliver on all salient goals) or goal ambiguity (i.e., a lack of salient goals). However, goal-conflict and goal-ambiguity subjects engaged in across-category consideration for different reasons. Goal-conflict subjects potentially could have prioritized goals and eliminated entire categories prior to forming consideration sets. Instead, they formed mixed consideration sets in the service of salient goals and postponed conflict resolution to the final choice stage. Goal-ambiguity subjects, on the other hand, considered alternatives from different categories because they were influenced by extrinsic cues (e.g., leading brand names). Implications are discussed for consideration set formation and product-market structure.

The Impact of Ambient Scent on Evaluation, Attention, and Memory for Familiar and Unfamiliar Brands

Abstract Subjects were exposed to familiar and unfamiliar brand names in either a pleasantly scented or unscented environment. A computer recorded how much time they took to evaluate each brand. After a distracter task, their memory for the brand names was tested with recall and recognition measures. The results indicate that the presence of a pleasant ambient scent improved brand evaluations, especially for unfamiliar brands. Neither mood nor arousal appeared to mediate this process. The pleasant ambient scent also improved recall for unfamiliar, but not familiar, brand names. Analysis indicated that this process was mediated by attention, that is, the amount of time spent evaluating brand names. Recognition was not affected significantly by scent. Implications, limitations, and areas for future research are discussed.

Multiple-Category Decision-Making: Review and Synthesis

In many purchase environments, consumers use information from a number of product categories prior to making a decision. These purchase situations create dependencies in choice outcomes across categories. As such, these decision problems cannot be easily modeled using the single-category, single-choice paradigm commonly used by researchers in marketing. We outline a conceptual framework for categorization, and then discuss three types of cross-category dependence: cross-category consideration cross-category learning, and product bundling. We argue that the key to modeling choice dependence across categories is knowledge of the goals driving consumer behavior.

Benefit salience and consumers' selective attention to product features

Abstract Although attention is a key construct in models of marketing communication and consumer choice, its selective nature has rarely been examined in common time-pressured conditions. We focus on the role of benefit salience, that is, the readiness with which particular benefits are brought to mind by consumers in relation to a given product category. Study 1 demonstrated that when product feature information was presented rapidly, individuals for whom the benefit of personalised customer service had high habitual salience displayed selective attention as evidenced by elevated recall and recognition of a target feature (a banks “friendly employees”). Also, as expected, individual differences in habitual benefit salience affected judgements of the target product. Study 2 showed that when subjects were additionally informed about a specific product usage situation, selective attention was primarily influenced by the relevance of the target feature to benefits made salient by the usage situation; individual differences played a less important role. Discussion emphasises theoretical aspects of the findings as well as managerial implications with respect to person-situation approaches to benefit segmentation.

Juggling and Hopping: What Does it Mean to Work Polychronically?

Presents a conceptual framework for understanding the meanings of polychronic behavior for individuals. A “created” meaning perspective, arguing that cultural, social, and personality differences influence how the meaning of polychronic behavior is interpreted at the individual level is presented. These meanings through a phenomenological study of polychronic behavior in the workplace for both traditional, “mainstream” Americans and recent Latin American immigrants are explored. Implications for managers and workgroups are also explored.

Innovations in Product Functionality: When and Why Are Explicit Comparisons Effective?

The authors investigate the effects of explicit comparisons in differentiating innovations that offer new functionalities to the consumer. Although marketing communications commonly employ explicit comparisons in launching new product functionalities, the authors suggest that such comparisons are not always helpful. The authors show that an explicit comparison of a new functionality with an existing functionality is effective only when the new functionality is offered in a device or physical product that is atypical of the existing functionality. However, when the new functionality is offered in a product that is typical of the existing functionality, explicit comparisons tend to backfire because they merely facilitate the assimilation of the new functionality to the prior functionality. The results of three studies provide significant support for the predictions, and a fourth study demonstrates how the backfire effect might be avoided. The authors discuss implications for communication tactics, new product marketing, and consumer behavior theory.

Consumer Perceptions of Product Variants Positioned on Atypical Attributes

How do consumers perceive new product variants that are positioned on atypical attributes? The authors investigate the joint effects of three factors? brand familiarity, retail shelf display, and consumer goal orientation. The study focuses on snack foods positioned on the atypical attribute of low fat. There are three main findings. First, although high (vs. low) brand familiarity causes relatively unfavorable perceptions on the positioning attribute, it also creates sufficiently favorable perceptions on another determinant attribute, product taste, resulting in a net positive effect for brand equity on purchase likelihood. Second, goal-based versus taxonomic shelf display (i.e., placement with health foods vs. regular snack foods) results in relatively negative perceptions on the positioning attribute, yet more favorable buying intentions. Finally, more (vs. less) health-oriented consumers rate such product variants less favorably on fat content but more favorably on product taste; the former segment is also more likely to buy such product variants.

Product, person, and purpose: putting the consumer back into theories of dynamic market behaviour

We propose here a conceptual framework that incorporates a model of individual consumer behaviour into a theory of dynamic market behaviour. We first formalize a set of propositions about consumer behaviour wherein the key concept of an affordance is introduced and conceptual links between product, person and purpose are explicated. These behavioural foundations are then employed in a conceptual framework in which we examine dynamic market behaviour from the point of view of strategic marketing decisions. The framework stresses that exchange relationships between consumers and producers are built out of actions that are adaptive and purposive and that reciprocal influences are created when both buyers and suppliers are guided by their respective considerations of feasibility and desirability. We indicate how many current marketing ideas fit into our framework and we discuss key managerial implications.

Choosing Leisure Services: The Effects of Consumer Timestyle

As the leisure industry matures, it is important for marketers to have a clear understanding of why people choose to consume specific leisure services. The paper proposes that “timestyle”, or how a person customarily perceives and uses time, influences the choice of leisure goals and resultant leisure services. Individuals’ timestyles can be characterized in terms of social, temporal, planning, and polychronic orientations. Data from qualitative research suggest that all four dimensions of timestyle can have systematic effects on leisure choices. Knowledge of the timestyle concept and its antecedent influences should allow leisure marketers to better understand and target the motivations that underlie consumer decisions on leisure services.