Abstract

Purpose This research investigates when and how brands influence attribute importance weights. Most past studies modelling consumer decision processes treated the brand of a product as an attribute parallel to the price, color or size of a product, and as a result, those studies assigned an equal (i.e. non-contingent) importance weight across brands for each attribute. In contrast, this study introduces a brand-contingent attribute-weighting process, in which brand is a higher-order construct that influences attribute importance. Design/methodology/approach This study presents a multi-level choice model in which the importance weight of an attribute can vary across brands. This study then estimates the model using real purchase data and survey data from an airline industry. Findings This study finds that attribute importance weights are contingent upon two aspects of a brand - the perceived relative position of the brand and consumers' brand usage experiences. Specifically, when consumers perceive a brand to be inferior to its competitors in a given attribute, they generally place greater weight on that attribute for that brand. In contrast, when consumers perceive a brand to be superior to its competitors in a given attribute, only consumers with extensive brand usage experiences place greater weight on that attribute for that brand. Practical implications The findings provide managerial insights on brand positioning and segmentation strategies using consumers' brand usage experiences. Originality/Value This study advances the literature on consumer decision processes by modeling an attribute-weighting process that is contingent upon brands. The present study models this process based on consumer behavior theories and estimates the model using real market data.

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Brand experience ;  Brands ;  Importance weight ;  Modeling consumer behavior ;  Negativity effect ;  Positioning

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Purpose: Anger has become one of the dominantly experienced emotions in recent years, particularly under the COVID-19 pandemic. Considering the critical role that anger plays in consumers' lives, the present research examines how feeling angry about money influences consumers' spending and money distribution decisions. Research design and methodology. Three experiments were conducted using different emotion induction methods (i.e., dictator game, autobiographical recall, and scenario). Results. Feeling angry about money decreased pro-social spending (i.e., less money distribution to the others), but it did not affect virtuous or utilitarian spending for the self-unlike past finding on negative feelings that increased utilitarian spending. Furthermore, whereas anger-tainted money decreased pro-social spending of that money, guilt-tainted money increased pro-social spending. However, the effects of guilt versus anger were not completely symmetrical. The antagonistic effect of anger was diffusive across spending on distant and close others, whereas the pro-social effect of guilt was limited to distant others. Conclusions: These findings help policy makers and financial institutions forecast how money will be distributed or circulated when it is likely to be dampened by anger under the pandemic. They also highlight the importance of examining the effects of discrete emotions (e.g., anger vs. guilt) beyond valence.

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Anger ;  Consumer Spending ;  Guilt ;  Mental Accounting ;  Money Distribution

Abstract

This research investigates when and how brands influence attribute importance weights. Most past studies modelling consumer decision processes treated the brand of a product as an attribute parallel to the price, color, or size of a product; and as a result, those studies assigned an equal (i.e., non-contingent) importance weight across brands for each attribute. In contrast, we introduce a brand-contingent attribute-weighting process, in which brand is a higher-order construct that influences attribute importance. We present a multi-level choice model in which the importance weight of an attribute can vary across brands. We then estimate the model using real purchase data and survey data from airline industry. We find that attribute importance weights are contingent upon two aspects of a brand—the perceived relative position of the brand and consumers’ brand usage experiences. Specifically, when consumers perceive a brand to be inferior to its competitors in a given attribute, they generally place greater weight on that attribute for that brand. In contrast, when consumers perceive a brand to be superior to its competitors in a given attribute, only consumers with extensive brand usage experiences place greater weight on that attribute for that brand.Our findings provide managerial insights on brand positioning and segmentation strategies using consumers’ brand usage experiences. We advance the literature on consumer decision processes by modeling an attribute-weighting process that is contingent upon brands. We model this process based on consumer behavior theories and estimate the model using real market data.

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This research aims to demonstrate that the abundant marketing data that companies are using to explore new business opportunities can be an equally fertile source for uncovering an undesirable social attitude or behavior that may be relevant to firms’ business. Companies may benefit from this knowledge when developing innovative new programs that aim to benefit society, such as corporate social responsibility initiatives. In this study, we examine boy-girl gender discrimination in China as manifested in parents’ purchase decisions on behalf of their children across different markets. Our study in itself is significant, because it is the first large-scale empirical work to clearly verify the phenomenon of boy-girl discrimination, taking advantage of e-commerce marketing data. Specifically, we compare the clothing expenditures on boys versus girls using a rich, household-specific data set obtained from two online retailers. We find that the patterns of gender inequality vary systematically across different geographic markets, as the relative expenditure difference on boys versus on girls is bigger in less developed areas as compared with metropolitan areas, and this relative expenditure difference is closely tied with socioeconomic conditions, education levels, and birth rates of a district. Managerial and social implications are discussed.

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boy-girl discrimination ;  cause-related marketing ;  corporate social responsibility ;  gender inequality

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Past research offers conflicting findings on whether sadness-evoking charity appeals help solicit a donation. To reconcile these findings, we introduce prospective donors' regulatory focus as a moderator for understanding when and why sadness appeals motivate or demotivate giving. Specifically, we propose that the sense of helplessness or loss of control associated with sadness appeals increases donors' sensitivity to advertiser's manipulative persuasion tactics, as those tactics can threaten donors' control over their donation decision. As a result, sadness appeals are more likely to activate persuasion knowledge among prevention- (vs. promotion-) oriented donors who tend to be vigilant against manipulative persuasion attempts. Across six main studies and two supplementary studies, we find that a prevention (vs. promotion) focus discourages charitable giving when it is solicited using a sadness appeal, whereas regulatory focus does not affect the giving when other emotion appeals (e.g., happiness appeal or guilt appeal) are used. We find that a prevention (vs. promotion) focus demotivates donation solicited by a sadness appeal because it activates persuasion knowledge that evaluates solicitor's motive behind the sadness appeal, resulting in increased skepticism, dampened feelings of sympathy, and consequently, reduced charitable giving. However, when persuasion knowledge is deactivated (e.g., when donors' cognitive capacity is constrained or the soliciting charity has a reliable reputation), regulatory focus no longer affects donor skepticism, sympathy, and charitable giving, even when a sadness appeal is used to call for donation.

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Charitable giving ;  Persuasion knowledge ;  Regulatory focus ;  Sadness ;  Skepticism ;  Sympathy

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本项研究得到了中欧国际工商学院众多校友和在读学员的积极参与，学院校友关系事务部、信息 技术部、市场传播部、各课程部门（EMBA, FMBA, GEMBA, HEMBA, MBA和高层经理培训）的 大力支持，以及学院研究经费的资助 (项目号：17BICS)，研究团队对此深表感谢。研究团队负全 部文责。 中欧国际工商学院（以下简称“中欧”）研究团队在2020年4月2日至9日期间就新冠肺炎疫情对 在华商业运营的影响做了线上问卷调查。本次调查共收到1,182份答卷，问卷填 写者中有892位（75.5%）任职于中资公司或中资占50%及以上的合资公司（以下简称“中资企 业”），有290位（24.5%）任职于外资（含港澳台）公司或外资占50%以上的合资公司（以下 简称“外资企业”）。

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2020 ;  Business Operations ;  China ;  China Business Survey ;  COVID-19 ;  中国 ;  中国商业报告 ;  中资企业 ;  商业运营 ;  外资企业 ;  新冠肺炎疫情

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CEIBS Research Team with three professors and two research assistants conducted an online survey from April 2nd to April 9th 2020, receiving 1,182 responses in total. 892 (75.5%) survey participants work for Chinese-owned firms or firms with 50% or more Chinese ownership, and 290 (24.5%) work for foreign-owned firms in China or firms with more than 50% foreign ownership.

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2020 ;  Business Operations ;  China ;  China Business Survey ;  COVID-19 ;  中国 ;  中国商业报告 ;  中资企业 ;  商业运营 ;  外资企业 ;  新冠肺炎疫情

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特邀编委 李铭俊 丁远 执行编委 陈杰平 编委会成员 许斌 芮萌 陈世敏 白诗莉 陈少晦　

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Corporate Social Responsibility ;  CSR ;  企业社会责任

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