Unal O. Boya

THE MEDIATING EFFECTS OF THE APPEARANCE OF NONDURABLE CONSUMER GOODS AND THEIR PACKAGING ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Publisher Summary Vision has primacy in our sensory world such that information to our brains mediated by the visual sense comes to have a particularly powerful impact on, for example, consumers’ experience of nondurables. In a retail frame, this means that visual information and processes play a key role in the impact of nondurable products and packages on the consumer at the point of purchase. Moreover, the nature of typical food and convenience store layouts, and how consumers are caused to move through and shop them, elevates the impact of visuals by dictating to consumers the physical spaces they must cross, the paths they must follow, and the spaces they must occupy to browse product categories and consider brands for purchase. This chapter reviews the literature on product and package appearance, looking specifically at the effects of the main visual elements that comprise appearance—color, shape, and size. Research into these effects has received spotty attention at best, though it is generally understood that appearance is a strong mediator of attention, consideration, and choice. A primary reason for this lack of attention may be because these visual elements and appearance in general are both hard to conceptualize in concrete terms and to test in empirical terms. A primary reason for both these inabilities is that these visual elements are strongly interacting, both with each other and their environment, making them hard to think about, because they are so hard to isolate, and their effects hard to test, because there are so many confounds to account for experimentally. This chapter discusses those many important aspects of the effects of product and package appearance, which forms a rich field for future visual researchers. Given that much research interest was being retarded by the fact that many marketing researchers simply do not know how to approach experimental visual problems, it proposes a visual research methodology that may have general application to many visual problems.

Managing the Multinational Sales Force

Managing sales forces in multinational contexts is a topic about which little empirical work has been done. This article reports the results of a 14‐MNC, 135 subsidiary, survey of multinational sales management practices, focusing in particular on the extent to which head offices influence sales functions in subsidiaries. An industry‐by‐industry analysis shows that electronic data processing affiliates get considerable head office attention while general consumer goods subsidiaries do not.

The Effect of Package Shape on Apparent Volume: An Exploratory Study with Implications for Package Design

We examine a range of standard package shape types and test their effects on volume perception. Results show that consumers group most existing standard packages into four distinct shape categories, including cylinders, kegs, bottles, and spatulates. Each shape type has characteristic effects on volume appearance. Geometrically complex forms appear smaller than simple forms, suggesting that containers displaying different levels of geometric complexity evoke different consumer estimation strategies. For compound complex forms, composed of the conspicuous joining of two or more simple parts, including necks, shoulders, bodies, and feet, consumers key on the body as a sole indicator of volume.

The Allocation of Effort by Marketing Faculty Members: Teaching, Research, Service, and Consulting

Much evidence suggests that academicians consider research to be more important than teaching or service. The authors investigate (1) how marketing faculty members allocate their effort among teaching, research, service, and consulting, (2) differences in effort allocation patterns among marketing faculty members in various groups defined by individual and work environment variables, and (3) the relationship between marketing faculty members’ teaching effectiveness and job satisfaction and their effort allocation patterns. They offer specific administrative recommendations to enhance marketing education effectiveness.

Assessment of marketing educators: Institutional evaluation versus idealized work-styles

Abstract Marketing educators teach about and research “markets” and market-related phenomena. Seldom do we focus scholarly attention on ourselves as a population worthy of study. However, the nature of the professoriate has changed dramatically over the last two to three decades, and it is apparent that changes have taken place in expected and idealized work-styles of marketing professors. This article is about the marketing professoriate. It details some interesting aspects about ourselves that are based upon a study of marketing professors.

Teaching, Research, Service, and External Compensation Activities: Expected versus Actual Workstyles among Marketing Professors

A comprehensive national survey of college and university marketing professors revealed considerable disparity between the workstyle they believe is expected for promotion, tenure, and salary adjustment decisions and their actual workstyle. A majority of professors believe that their institutions expect them to allocate a much larger proportion of their professional effort to research activities than they actually allocate (45% expected versus 31% actual). Differences between perceived expected and actual workstyles occur more frequently in institutions with balanced teaching and research missions than in those which are either primarily teaching or primarily research oriented. A workstyle classification procedure is offered that seems superior to approaches used by previous researchers.

The Association between Learning and Learning Style in Instructional Marketing Games.

To understand how learners of respective types respond to marketing games, a joint space generated by canonical correlation analysis is used to recreate Kolbs learning style-type plot and locate business students as points within it according to their learning style types. Two hundred twenty-three undergraduate students played The Marketing Game! and completed exit surveys soliciting their attitude toward the game experience and Kolbs learning styles inventory. Results indicate that marketing games offer all learners a positive experience. Such inclusiveness is achieved because students can frame the game experience to match their preferred learning styles. Pedagogical implications are discussed.

HYPOTHESES OF EQUIVALENCE AND THEIR TESTING

Hypothesis of no difference are null hypotheses for studies to show that populations differ. To show that populations are essentially the same, the appropriate null is that substantial differences do exist. We propose that there is a pent-up conceptual need for equivalence hypothesizing in all of marketing— e.g, for the testing of core marketing concepts including the marketing concept, optimization of the marketing mix, product differentiation, market segmentation, the building of brand loyalty, product positioning, test marketing, as well as marketing pedagogy. We present two statistical tests appropriate for Equivalence Hypothesis Testing (EHT). Usefulness of the method to marketing is discussed.

Perceptions of Foreign Field Sales Forces: An Exploratory Factor Analysis of their Characteristics, Behaviors and Sales

The environments in which foreign sellers work is an undersearched topic in international marketing. This 14 MNC-135 subsidiary examination of managerial perceptions of foreign sales environments and behaviors was factor-analyzed. Data from 45 countries was reduced to five factors, three environmental and two salesperson stereotypes. Results suggest that there are cross-cultural commonalities among salespersons and their environments which contribute to managerial and academic understanding of international sales environments.