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Bicultural Brand Positioning in International Markets: Exploring Potential Challenges in the Context of Consumer Cultures Associated with Human Rights Controversies
In Christian Weisskopf, Axel Faix, and Sebastian Uhrich’s article the authors situate bicultural brand positioning within consumer ethnocentrism, animosity, and perceived brand opportunism and particularly consider a brand’s human rights violations (as perceived by customers) as a case. The authors propose relevant directions for future research in their conceptual manuscript. (to the whole article)
Young Customer Responses to Service Robots vs. Humans in Luxury Retail: A Multidisciplinary Approach
Luxury retailers are increasingly considering the introduction of service robots in their stores to enhance the value proposition and reshape the dynamics of both the service encounter and the customer experience. Although the literature recognizes the social presence of robots in service encounters, little empirical research compares humans and service robots related to luxury. In addition, further research is needed to investigate the emotional responses of young customers, like Generation Z, to a technology-infused servicescape and to explore the value of service robots as a social presence in luxury stores. A 2×2 mixed methods experimental design was developed to test the research hypotheses. The study was conducted in a laboratory with 116 participants randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: approaching vs. non-approaching behavior with a service robot or a human sales assistant. Self-reports and neurophysiological responses (skin conductance) were collected to measure their responses during the service encounter. The results show that a human or a service robot approaching the customer can lead to greater positive affective states and emotional responses than a human or a service robot not approaching. In addition, we found that young customers do not differentiate between human sales assistants and service robots. However, the customers’ level of immersion in the flow, understanding of the message, and happiness are higher with a human sales assistant. Finally, the absence of any interaction (non-approaching) during the service encounter leads to a negative reaction to a human sales assistant compared to a service robot, showing the importance of personalized and deep connections in luxury service. (to the whole article)
Drivers and Moderators of Direct Selling Business Outcomes: Why I Participate Affects How I Perform
From a database and research method point of view, Anne T. Coughlan, Michael Gerke, and Manfred Krafft apply seemingly unrelated regression analysis to single-item measures from a large sample of direct sellers that describe the antecedents and outcomes of their selling activities. (to the whole article)
Measuring Product Commoditization: Scale Development
Udo Wagner, Fernanda Sepúlveda Simon, and Margit Enke, in their article entitled “Measuring Product Commoditization: Scale Development” propose a state-of-the-art definition of product commoditization. They argue that the concept has four dimensions – brand importance, ease of switching, price sensitivity, and product homogeneity – and present a measurement scale for product commoditization. The scale has four dimensions and 13 items and performs well regarding the common validity and reliability criteria. Evidence is provided for the applicability in two different research settings. Thus, researchers and practitioners may use the scale in their future work to measure product commoditization. (to the whole article)
Effect of the Information about the Use and Non-Use of Photoshopping of Female Ad Models on Brand Attitudes of Young Female Consumers
Christina Pappenheim and Heribert Gierl discuss in the article with title “Effect of the Information about the Use and Non-Use of Photoshopping of Female Ad Models on Brand Attitudes of Young Female Consumers” the wide-spread use of photoshopping female bodies and faces in advertisements and the assumption that this idealization leads to body and face dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and the demand for plastic surgery with female consumers. They discuss two managerially relevant solutions: showing authentic bodies and faces (without photoshopping) or informing the consumers that bodies and faces are photoshopped. The authors investigate the impact on consumers’ attitude and find that consumers express a generally negative attitude to photoshopped bodies and faces but photoshopping nevertheless leads to increased brand attitude even when the consumers are informed about this. The results are derived from two studies with a large sample of young female consumers (n = 4,123) exposed to test and control stimuli in experiments. (to the whole article)
Trust in Digital Voice Assistants: A Fundamental Determinant for Companies’ and Customers’ Engagement in Voice Commerce
Carsten D. Schultz and Friederike Paetz discuss in the article with the title “Trust in Digital Voice Assistants: A Fundamental Determinant for Companies’ and Customers’ Engagement in Voice Commerce” the diffusion of digital voice assistants (e.g., Amazon’s Alexa or Google’s Assistant) as a means to shop online. At the beginning, many retailers feared that customers would embrace this new technology and that the traditional onlineshop would lose relevance for and control over customers. However, today, we know that digital voice assistants are rather seldomly applied for online shopping orother advanced purposes. The authors investigate the acceptance of digital voice assistants based on an extended technology acceptance model, surveying a sample of n=585 respondents. They find out that missing trust andperceived privacy risk are major reasons for the up to now rather infrequent use. They discuss various paths for companies to strengthen trust and so to increase engagement in voice commerce. (to the whole article)
Determinants of Consumer Attitudes Toward Prosocial Products
Heribert Gierl proposes in the article “Determinants of Consumer Attitudes toward Prosocial Products: A Focus on the Communication of Love (vs. Pride, Hope, and Compassion) within Advertisements" to motivate consumers by promising to experience positive emotions. (to the whole article)
Customer Cognitive Appraisals of Differential and Dynamic Pricing
In the research article, Silke Bambauer-Sachse and Ashley Young present insights into "Customer Cognitive Appraisals of Differential and Dynamic Pricing." The paper addresses the adverse effects of price discrimination, and the authors found that types of price discrimination associated with perceived customer exploitation and high perceptions of price complexity lead to a high tendency to engage in negative word-of-mouth activities. (to the whole article)
The Impact of Bodily Behaviors of SalesRepresentatives on Charisma Evaluations byConsumers: A Time-Series Perspective
Udo Wagner and Sandra Pauser examined "The Impact of Bodily Behaviors of Sales Representatives on Charisma Assessments by Consumers: A Time-Series Perspective." The authors used a series of 22 videotaped sales presentations, each lasting 60 seconds. A sample of 663 test persons were randomly assigned to the videos. To assess salesperson charisma, test participants were asked to use a program analyzer (a kind of joy-stick) that should permanently be moved between two scale anchors (0 = not at all charismatic, 10 = very charismatic). The authors report that short-term effects occurredin the first 15 seconds and different effects occurred later. They associated certain salesperson body movements with perceptions of the salesperson's charisma. (to the whole article)
Branded for Survival: Naming Effects on the LifeExpectancy of New Companies
Stefan Gürtler and Barbara Miller used a sample of new firms to investigate whether and how firm name characteristics influence firm survival on the market, i.e., the time between market entry and involuntary market exit (if there is a market exit).The authors show strong effects of the informativeness of the company name, the (low) complexity of the name, and high pronounceability of the name. The cross-sectional investigation indicates that "thoughtless" decisions of the management in the very early stage of a company limit a company's chance of survival in the long term. (to the whole article)
E-Commerce Firms' Geographic Scope: Roles of Intangible Resources and Country-Specific Moderators
In an increasingly digitalized economy, e-commerce firms are known to internationalize with a greater scope than offline firms. However, it is important to analyze how their geographic scope depends on intangible resources acquired over time and whether their exploitation is affected by country-specific boundaries. The authors propose a theory-based framework to analyze the relationship between e-commerce firms' intangible resources and geographic scope. Importantly, they apply multilevel modeling with cross-level interactions to provide insights into the role of country-specific moderators, i.e., rule of law, degree of country development, and logistics performance. The authors use data on 263 leading e-commerce firms in Europe and 2,632 market entries over 24 years. The results show that some e-commerce firms have a wider geographic scope than others due to specific intangible resources. However, these relationships change depending on the moderators, which explain country-specific variances differently. The findings have direct implications for managers interested in understanding how resources affect online geographic scope. (to the whole article ...)
We are proud to present the BEST PAPER of 2021:
The Interface Between Marketing and Sales: The State of the Art and a Research Agenda
Marketing and sales often have to work hand in hand. Therefore, several studies have investigated the drivers and consequences of the quality of cooperation between the two departments. Sören A. Radtke and Marian E. Paul review empirical research on the effect of the quality of cooperation on business performance and on the drivers of the quality of cooperation, to achieve two objectives. First, they summarise the most important findings on the marketing-sales interface in a compact and structured way to give guidance to managers on how to facilitate high-quality cooperation. Second, they identify the major gaps in the literature and outline a research agenda with suggestions for future research on how to address them. (to the whole article...)
Hierarchical Bayes Conjoint Choice Models - Model Framework, Bayesian Inference, Model Selection, and Interpretation of Estimation Results
The use of hierarchical Bayes (HB) multinomial logit (MNL) models for measuring consumer preferences is state-of-the-art in choice-based conjoint (CBC) analysis. Here, academic researchers and practitioners mostly utilize by default the normal prior for the first level of the hierarchical model. However, a mixture of normal distributions also appears promising, providing more flexibility to accommodate multimodal preference structures or skewed preference distributions. There are currently two prominent HB-CBC modelling approaches embedding the mixture-of-normals (MoN) approach: the more widespread MoN-HB-MNL model, and the Dirichlet process mixture (DPM)-HB-MNL model. In this article, we review the standard HB-MNL (with its normal prior), the MoN-HB-MNL, and the DPM-HB-MNL models, applying them to an empirical multi-country CBC data set. We discuss related Bayesian estimation processes, including model selection issues; compare the statistical performance of the three models in terms of fit and prediction in an empirical study; and show how estimation results can be interpreted. (to the whole article...)
(Hedonic) Shopping Will Find a Way: The COVID-19 Pandemic and its Impact on Consumer Behavior
Andrea Gröppel-Klein, Kenya-Maria Kirsch and Anja Spilski deal with the current topic of how the COVID-19 pandemic affects our lives. Although vaccines provide hope for a foreseeable end to the pandemic, the drastic crisis is already raising many questions about the potential long-term changes in consumers' lives. Will the online-shopping boom continue? Will personal contacts and hedonic shopping in stores disappear? The broader question is raised of whether COVID-19 will dissolve the habits we have practiced for years and will permanently trigger new mindsets and a readiness for change. In other words, will we return to our previous habits after the crisis, given that habits reassert themselves after some time, or not? This paper focuses on specific shopping behavior issues, with two surveys being conducted throughout different times of the pandemic.(to the whole article...)
Warm Ambient Scents Nudge Consumers to Favour Premium Brands and Right-Wing Parties
This article by Marcel Lichters, Susanne Adler, and Marko Sarstedt is concerned with the psychological mechanisms behind ambient scents affecting consumer behaviour. More specifically, the authors examine how ambient scents impact perceived temperature and how this in turn influences consumers' preferences. In their study, the authors first replicate previous research findings by showing that for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) consumers exposed to a warm (vs. cool) ambient scent (vanilla vs. peppermint) prefer premium over regular brands. Second, the authors broaden their perspective by providing initial findings that the effect of an ambient scent can be generalised beyond the consumer sphere to general elections. Specifically, they provide evidence that the diffusion of a warm (vs. cool) ambient scent nudges potential voters to opt for right-wing instead of moderate political parties. With regard to the psychological mechanism behind the effect of ambient scents, the authors suggest that the effect of perceived scent temperature on brand preferences and choice behaviour is a symbolic way of compensating for temperature perception. (to the whole article...)
The following article has been awarded as the BEST PAPER of 2020:
From Corporate Social Responsibility to Market Demand: The Role of Brand Management
Brand managers increasingly appeal to altruistic consumer motives by emphasizing corporate social responsibility (CSR) in marketing communication. However, little empirical evidence describes how CSR converts into market demand. This study investigates the dimensions of CSR that conspire with dimensions of brand equity to drive brand performance, by combining firm-level data on CSR, customer-based brand equity, market demand, and covariates covering 256 companies over a 15-year period. The findings show that internal CSR concerns relate negatively to brand associations as well as brand performance. Moreover, the demand effect of CSR can be fully explained by brand equity, underscoring the relevance of branding for CSR management. In particular, brand esteem and familiarity mediate the link between ethicality and market outcomes. Specifically, coping with CSR concerns appears to be important. In our data, perceived brand differentiation is unaffected by low responsibility, but ethical concerns undermine customers' quality expectations and brand identification, suggesting managing CSR crisis has better prospects when the associated brand equity dimensions are addressed. (to the whole article...)
The Relationship between Health- and Fitness-Related Social Media Use and Consumers' Disordered Eating
Vivienne Schünemeyer and Gianfranco Walsh explore why health-related services shared through social media are enjoying considerable growth. Additionally, the authors evaluate the potential detrimental outcomes for consumer well-being. This research undertakes an examination of literature pertaining to health-related social media use in an effort to explore the relationship with disordered eating in particular. The authors conducted two studies. The first study aligns with objectification theory and finds that viewing images and videos posted on health-related social media are positively associated with the level of an individuals disordered eating. Furthermore, in study 2 the authors clarify that this relationship is expectedly mediated by social physique anxiety, but the extent of general social media use unexpectedly acts as a moderator. That is, the relationship between viewing health-related images and videos and disordered eating is stronger among consumers who exhibit low and medium rather than high social media use. The implications of these findings are relevant for both health-related service research and public policy. (to the whole article...)
Crossmodal Correspondences between Color, Smell, and Texture: Investigating the Sensory Attributes of a Body Lotion
This research explores the crossmodal correspondences within the field of sensory marketing. In particular, we investigate crossmodal effects between the visual, olfactory, and haptic senses. An extensive literature review reveals a lack of studies in this area but has allowed for a theory-driven approach. An empirical study was performed to explore how different combinations of sensory attributes of a body lotion affect (i) the perception of its color, scent, and texture; and (ii) the evaluation of success measures such as product quality and product liking. A preliminary study was done to determine the sensory attributes of the body lotion to be used in the main study. These attributes are designed to be perceived differently with respect to the manipulated modality but are otherwise similar. The main study employs a 2 × 2 × 2 full-factorial between-subjects design. The empirical findings demonstrate the existence of crossmodal effects. With regard to the assessment of the product, texture of the body lotion emerges as the most important sensory attribute. (to the whole article...)
Effectiveness of Animal Images in Advertising
The authors examine the research question of whether the use of animals in advertising leads to greater effectiveness than the use of human actors. To answer this question, the authors present five experimental studies in which different animals (e.g., cats, bears, penguins), products (e.g., soft drinks, cookies, air travel), brands (e.g., Coca Cola, Oreo, KLM airlines), advertising media (e.g., print ads, commercials) and measurement approaches (self-report questionnaires, EmFACS) are employed. Based on the authors' findings, there is convincing empirical evidence that animals are mostly more effective than human models, both in terms of attitudes toward the ads and brands. However, there are a few exceptions... (to the whole article...)
The following article has been awarded as the BEST PAPER of 2019:
Customer Participation in the Specification of Services: The Role of Psychological Ownership and Participation Enjoyment
The article investigates the role of psychological ownership and participation enjoyment for customer participation in the specification of services. The specification of services takes place at the pre-purchase stage, and thus this co-creation experience has important implications for service providers because it can influence customers' purchase intentions. One way to enhance the co-creation experience is through customer participation. Ample evidence indicates that participation positively influences post-service evaluation. While most research suggests economic reasons for this influence, the current work proposes that psychological reasons, such as participation enjoyment and psychological ownership, are more relevant. The findings reveal that customer participation leads to the development of psychological ownership even in early stages of the co-creation process. (to the whole article...)
Measures of Implicit Cognition for Marketing Research
The article focusses on implicit cognition measures, since consumer decision making and behaviour are largely driven by automatic, unconscious mental processes. While quantitative market research focuses on eliciting conscious responses (e.g., self-report measures), psychologists' indirect measures infer unconscious mental content from reaction-time tasks. Three implicit cognitions are of special relevance along consumers' journey: Implicit attention introduces the first perception of a stimulus, implicit associations can cause attitude and preference formation and approach tendencies can induce impulse buying. (to the whole article...)
The following article has been awarded as the BEST PAPER of 2018:
Construal-Level Perspective on Consumers' Donation Preferences in Relation to the Environment and Health
The goal of the study is to assess the interrelationship between psychological distance (and closeness) and environmental (and health) concepts as well as to assess the influence of primed distance (vs. closeness) on consumers' intentions to donate for environmental and health charities. The authors conducted two studies, considering four dimensions of psychological distance. (to the whole article...)
Avoiding Pitfalls in Experimental Research in Marketing
The article aims to make novice experimenters aware of important issues that arise when preparing experiments theoretically, conducting them, analyzing the experimental data and interpreting the results. The authors examine recent literature and provide guidance on how to avoid pitfalls during the experimental process. (to the whole article...)
Causal Inference Using Mediation Analysis or Instrumental Variables - Full Mediation in the Absence of Conditional Independence
Both instrumental variable (IV) estimation and mediation analysis are tools for causal inference. However, IV estimation has mostly developed in economics for causal inference from observational data. In contrast, mediation analysis has mostly developed in psychology, as a tool to empirically establish the process by which an experimental manipulation brings about its effect on the dependent variable of interest. As a consequence, many researchers well versed in IV estimation are not familiar with mediation analysis, and vice versa. (to the whole article...)
Forty Years of the Journal "Marketing Zeitschrift für Forschung und Praxis - Journal of Research and Management": Retrospection and Prospects
The publication of issue 4/40 (2018) marks 40 years of the journal Marketing ZFP-JRM. This paper deals with the development of this Journal during these 40 years. The authors distinguish between four phases - 1979-1988, 1989-2004, 2005-2010, and since 2011 - because of different prevailing academic contexts. These contexts not only influenced the progression of the journal, but had an impact on the whole field of academic marketing in German-speaking countries. (to the whole article...)
(to the German version of the article...)
Control Variables in Marketing Research
In empirical marketing research that does not rely on fully randomized experiments, control variables are an important tool to rule out rival alternative explanations for the observed relationships. Despite their importance for causal inference, control variables often receive little attention, both from applied researchers and methodologists. At the same time, overviews of control variable practices in neighboring disciplines demonstrate that researchers struggle with selecting, analyzing, and interpreting control variable results. (to the whole article...)
A User`s Guide to the Galaxy of Conjoint Analysis and Compositional Preference Measurement
The aim of this paper is to provide guidance to the 'galaxy' of conjoint analytic and alternative compositional preference measurement approaches. Thus, the first objective is to guide potential users in the selection of appropriate preference measurement approaches. Second, the authors discuss important craft factors, i. e. design elements that substantially impact the validity of preference measurement results, such as the definition of attributes and levels and their introduction to respondents. Third, the authors provide users with practical guidance how to interpret conjoint results, evaluate the quality of empirical conjoint data, set up market simulations and discuss factors that influence the studies' external validity (to the whole article...).
The following article has been awarded as the BEST PAPER of 2017:
Using Multidimensional Item Response Theory Models
to Explain Multi-Category Purchases
Multidimensional item response theory models (MIRT) are applied to analyse multi-category purchase decisions. The author further compares their performance to benchmark models by means of topic models. Estimation is based on two types of data sets. One contains only binary the other polytomous purchase decisions. The author shows that MIRT are superior w. r. t. our chosen benchmark models (to the whole article...).
Multinomial Logit Models in Marketing - From Fundamentals to State-of-the-Art
Analysing choice behaviour has a long tradition in marketing research. Such an analysis provides valuable insights for researchers interested in understanding consumer behaviour and practitioners who aim to optimise their marketing-mix efforts. From this background, this paper gives an overview of the most important aspects when it comes to analysing brand choice using multinomial logit models (to the whole article...).
Conducting Mediation Analysis in Marketing Research
Mediation analysis is frequently conducted in order to enrich our understanding of a focal causal relationship by examining its underlying mechanism. The main purpose of the authors is to provide an overview of what mediation analysis means, which approaches exist to establish mediation, and how to conduct mediation analysis with the state-of-the-art methodology (to the whole article...).
Functional Flexibility, Latent Heterogeneity and Endogeneity in Aggregate Market Response Models
Harald Hruschka addresses "Functional Flexibility, Latent Heterogeneity and Endogeneity in Aggregate Market Response Models" which previous reviews have considered either incompletely or not at all. Ignoring these issues could lead to biased estimates of the effects of marketing variables and finally erroneous implications for marketing decision making. The author recalls the main characteristics of several more frequently applied parametric market response functions (to the whole article...).
Multilevel Structural Equation Modelling in Marketing and Management Research
Multilevel (or mixed linear) modelling either simultaneously test hypotheses at several levels of analysis. Advances in MSEM enable the specification of latent variables, which are more common in marketing than the manifest variables used in hierarchical linear modelling (HLM), and open new conceptual possibilities. However, MSEM involves several challenges and is not frequently used. The authors therefore outline key methodological requirements, options, and challenges regarding MSEM and provide a systematic approach for its use (to the whole article...).
On Comparing Results from CB-SEM and PLS-SEM: Five Perspectives and Five Recommendations
The authors address main approaches: Covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) and partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Concerns about the limitations of the different approaches might lead researchers to seek reassurance by comparing results across approaches. But should researchers expect the results from CB-SEM and PLS-SEM to agree, if the structure of the two models is otherwise the same? Differences in philosophy of science and different expectations about the research situation underlie five perspectives on this question. The authors argue that the comparison of results from CB-SEM and PLS-SEM is misleading and misguided, capable of generating both false confidence and false concern. Instead of seeking confidence in the comparison of results across methods researchers should focus on more fundamental aspects of research design. Based on the discussion, the authors derive recommendations for applied research using SEM (to the whole article...).
The following article has been awarded as the BEST PAPER of 2016:
Do Multi-Currency Price Tags Bias Price Perceptions?
Retailers frequently use price labels that contain a product's price in different currencies and affix these labels to the product. By doing so, retailers can standardize their price labels across countries. The article investigates consumer responses to multi-currency price tags and shows that consumers integrate irrelevant information about the price in foreign currencies into their price perceptions (to the whole article...).