Yuliya Komarova Loureiro

Suspicious Minds: Exploring Neural Processes During Exposure to Deceptive Advertising

When viewing advertisements, consumers must decide what to believe and what is meant to deceive. Accordingly, much behavioral research has explored strategies and outcomes of how consumers process persuasive messages that vary in perceived sincerity. New neuroimaging methods enable researchers to augment this knowledge by exploring the cognitive mechanisms underlying such processing. The current study collects neuroimaging data while participants are exposed to advertisements with differing levels of perceived message deceptiveness (believable, moderately deceptive, and highly deceptive). The functional magnetic resonance imaging data, combined with an additional behavioral study, offer evidence of two noteworthy results. First, confirming multistage frameworks of persuasion, the authors observe two distinct stages of brain activity: (1) precuneus activation at earlier stages and (2) superior temporal sulcus and temporal-parietal junction activation at later stages. Second, the authors observe disproportionately greater brain activity associated with claims that are moderately deceptive than those that are either believable or highly deceptive. These results provoke new thinking about what types of claims garner consumer attention and which consumers may be particularly vulnerable to deceptive advertising.

Competition Against Common Sense: Insights on Peer-to-Peer Lending as a Tool to Allay Financial Exclusion

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to provide insights into peer-to-peer (P2P) lending which has served as one important tool to mitigate financial exclusion. The main proposition of this research is that P2P platforms, which in many ways resemble auctions, naturally instill competitive mindset among lenders; furthermore, given only limited objective decision criteria, certain borrower personal characteristics fuel interpersonal competition enough to impact lending decisions in suboptimal ways. Our two experiments support this proposition. As the result, while P2P lending offers unprecedented financial opportunities to some consumer groups, it may unintentionally exclude others, and even pose threat to the financial wellbeing of lenders.Design/methodology/approach – Two experiments were used to collect data and are reported here. Rigorous pretesting of manipulation stimuli preceded a pilot (exploratory) and the main experiment.Findings – We generally find a significant age bias, where ceteris paribus, younger borrowers are offered lower loan amounts as lenders most likely infer greater risk and lower likelihood to repay loans on time. However, and perhaps more interestingly, when age is not a strong indicator of experience (as in the case with thirtysomethings), we repeatedly find evidence of lending decisions driven by interpersonal competition: more attractive and financially successful loan applicants of the same gender as lenders are most likely perceived as a personal threat, decreasing lenders’ confidence, which subsequently results in lower amounts being invested into loans that are possibly the most promising.Originality/value – To our best knowledge, this research is first to demonstrate the impact of interpersonal competition on decision making in the context of P2P lending. Furthermore, this article contributes to better understanding of P2P lending as a tool to allay financial exclusion, while raising concerns of possible unintended exclusion of certain consumer segments due to the competitive nature of P2P platforms.

The Case for Moral Consumption: Examining and Expanding the Domain of Moral Behavior to Promote Individual and Collective Well-Being

This research delineates and critically examines extant empirical research on marketplace morality within the context of transformative consumer research. The authors identify how public policy can be leveraged to promote moral consumption in the marketplace in line with the transformative consumer research objectives of personal and collective well-being. They conduct a systematic review of the last decade of marketing literature and find that the definition of what is considered “marketplace morality” has been rather narrow. Subsequently, the authors propose a broader definition and develop a typology of moral consumption behaviors based on the valence of moral judgment/behavior (moral or immoral) and moral content (harm, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity). The authors find that most research has focused on understanding one-time (im)moral behaviors in narrow domains, which have local implications and short-term impact. This research proposes that there is untapped potential in investigating repeated (im)moral behaviors associated with lifestyle choices and habits and that these have wider, long-term moral implications (e.g., wastefulness, overindulgence, pollution, authenticity, discrimination). Finally, the authors consider the underlying motivations for (im)moral behaviors and offer recommendations for policy development and research.

Customer Value Creation in Multichannel Systems: The Interactive Effect of Integration Quality and Multichannel Complexity:

Abstract This research examines factors that influence consumer perceptions of value created by a multichannel system of service delivery. The literature suggests that multichannel integration quality allows firms to benefit from the effect of synergy and complementarity between channels. We investigate the perceived value of multichannel service delivery in the context of retail banking services, where such multichannel systems are omnipresent. We propose and test a model in which multichannel integration quality is an important value driver, such that higher multichannel integration quality leads to greater value perceptions of not only the multichannel system, but also the overall value of the bank as perceived by the customer. Importantly, the complexity of the multichannel system of service delivery, as perceived by customers, moderates the direct effect of channel integration quality on perceived value of the multichannel system, so that in highly complex multichannel systems, channel integration quality will have a stronger effect on the perceived value to customer. Our findings also shed light on the specific factors that contribute to consumer value perceptions of multichannel retail banking services, which has important implications to managers and researchers.

Businesses Beware: Consumer Immoral Retaliation in Response to Perceived Moral Violations by Companies

Consumers feeling wronged in the marketplace can respond in a variety of ways both morally appropriate and morally inappropriate. We focus on specific circumstances under which company wrongdoing increases the likelihood for consumers to respond with immoral retaliatory behavior. Importantly, we demonstrate that such immoral retaliation is not directed solely toward the guilty party but may also spill over to guiltless marketplace entities. This research highlights the underlying processes for immoral retaliation against a guilty versus a guiltless company, demonstrating the varying roles of anger and justification as well as assessing the overall effectiveness of such vengeance in offsetting further retaliation. Our findings inform important aspects of effective service recovery by shedding light on the destructive potential of consumer perceptions of immorality of any one company’s actions and by providing recommendations for managing the associated risk factors.

Is share of wallet exclusively about making customers happy or having more customers? Exploring the relationship between satisfaction and double jeopardy

Purpose – The satisfaction and loyalty research argues that customer satisfaction is an antecedent to share of wallet (SOW). The double jeopardy view, however, argues that satisfaction and SOW levels are driven exclusively by penetration levels. Customer satisfaction and penetration, however, are not always positively related. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relevance and validity of these two divergent perspectives to creating growth in customer share of spending. Design/methodology/approach – The authors examine a series of models evaluating the impact of both the relative penetration of a brand, and the satisfaction ratings of its customers on SOW using data covering 11 industry sectors, 188 brands, and 4,263 customers. Findings – The authors find that part of the problem in reconciling these two views has been in how satisfaction is measured and analyzed. When using absolute satisfaction ratings of the firm/brand, the explanatory power of satisfaction on SOW is very weak at both the indivi...

Customer Value Creation for Risky Products: The Role of Brand Trust and Trusting Beliefs

Abstract Consumers often perceive products and services as risky. As a result, they might perceive the same products as less valuable. While past research has investigated numerous ways of reducing the negative effect of perceived product risk on customers’ perceived value, surprisingly, the role of brand trust has not been taken into account. This article aims to fill this gap by investigating how consumers’ trust in a brand, as well as their trusting beliefs about the brand’s competence, benevolence and integrity, may moderate the relationship between consumers’ perceived product risk and consumers’ perceived value. By means of two empirical studies based on a panel of smartphone users, the authors propose and demonstrate that the trust customers have for a brand can mitigate the negative effect of perceived product risk on perceived value of products with the same brand name. Importantly, findings also show that the various beliefs underlying trust have differential downstream effects. More specifically, while benevolence and integrity beliefs about a brand mitigate the negative effect of perceived product risk on customers’ perceived value, competence beliefs were found irrelevant to the effect of risk on value. These findings inform and guide marketing practitioners’ efforts to cultivate specific, rather than generic, trusting beliefs to ultimately create and maximize value for their customers who otherwise view these products as risky.