Social norms shape consumer behavior. However, it is not clear under what circumstances social norms are more versus less effective in doing so. This gap is addressed through an interdisciplinary ...meta-analysis examining the impact of social norms on consumer behavior across a wide array of contexts involving the purchase, consumption, use, and disposal of products and services, including socially approved (e.g., fruit consumption, donations) and disapproved (e.g., smoking, gambling) behaviors. Drawing from reactance theory and based on a cross-disciplinary data set of 250 effect sizes from research spanning 1978–2019 representing 112,478 respondents from 22 countries, the authors examine the effects of five categories of moderators of the effectiveness of social norms on consumer behavior: (1) target behavior characteristics, (2) communication factors, (3) consumer costs, (4) environmental factors, and (5) methodological characteristics. The findings suggest that while the effect of social norms on approved behavior is stable across time and cultures, their effect on disapproved behavior has grown over time and is stronger in survival and traditional cultures. Communications identifying specific organizations or close group members enhance compliance with social norms, as does the presence of monetary costs. The authors leverage their findings to offer managerial implications and a future research agenda for the field.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate whether, how and why gender cues influence brand perception and subsequent purchasing behaviour.
Design/methodology/approach
Across four ...experimental studies conducted online with either a convenience sample (Studies 1a and 1b) or a representative sample of consumers (Studies 2 and 3), the authors empirically investigate whether gender cues impact brand perception along dimensions of warmth and competence and how other warmth and competence cues in a consumer environment moderate the effect of gender cues on consumer brand perceptions.
Findings
Gender cues (e.g. gender-typed colours and shapes) activate gender-stereotypical knowledge of warmth and competence, which spills over to the brand. This effect depends on the presence of other competence cues in a consumer’s environment. In contrast to conventional practice, in the presence of a high competence cue (e.g. reputable brands), feminine gender cues enhance purchase likelihood (via activation of warmth perceptions), whereas masculine cues actually decrease purchase likelihood. In contrast, in the presence of a low competence cue (e.g. new companies), masculine gender cues enhance purchase likelihood (via activation of competence perceptions), whereas feminine cues lower purchase likelihood.
Research limitations/implications
The authors used an experimental approach to explicitly test for causality and isolate the effect of gender cues in a controlled setting. Future research should further address the implication of gender cues using actual sales data.
Practical implications
Reputable companies often explicitly use cues to highlight their competence. The results of this research suggest that managers may want to reconsider this approach. That is, marketers of brands with established high competence should consider integrating more feminine cues to highlight their warmth, such as feminine shapes (e.g. circles and ovals) or feminine colours (e.g. a shade of pink) in their packaging and marketing communication. In contrast, companies that have not established their competence or not-for-profit organisations would be better off integrating masculine cues.
Originality/value
This is the first research to empirically investigate the effect of gender cues on brand perception and subsequent purchase behaviour. Not only does this research show that gender cues can alter brand perception along the warmth and competence perception but also the authors address the call to identify conditions under which warmth versus competence cues enhance brand perception and purchase likelihood (Aaker et al., 2010). In particular, this research demonstrates how multiple warmth and competence cues interact with each other.
This research introduces behavioral labeling as the use of names or tags that reflect an associated activity, and it proposes that this can induce corresponding behavior. Contrary to the common ...intuition that descriptions of behaviors emerge as markings for popular actions (i.e., the label is a consequence of the behavior), the authors propose that a description itself might also induce the corresponding action (i.e., the label is an antecedent of the behavior). Building on linguistic relativity theory and based on five studies conducted in the lab and field, the authors show that merely attaching a fictitious name to a behavior can induce that very behavior. The authors also explore a potential explanation for this finding by showing that a behavioral label can evoke mental imagery regarding the associated behavior, which enhances the implementation of the behavior. The results contribute to marketing theory by introducing behavioral labeling and highlighting how language can shape behaviors. Marketers can use behavioral labels to promote their offerings based on the associated behaviors, while public policy makers can use behavioral labels to encourage prosocial and proenvironmental behaviors.
Despite firms’ extensive usage of loyalty programs (LPs) and decades-long academic research on their effectiveness, LPs’ effects on customer loyalty are still heavily debated. We perform a ...comprehensive meta-analysis of loyalty programs across various LP designs and industries and spanning different performance metrics to identify moderators of LP effectiveness. Based on a data set with 429 effect sizes, published or available between 1990 and 2020, we find strong evidence that LPs enhance customer loyalty. However, while LPs particularly enhance behavioral loyalty, shifting consumers’ attitudinal loyalty is more challenging. Further, LP effectiveness differs systematically depending on LP design characteristics (LP structure, reward content and delivery) and industry characteristics. These effects are enabled by both cognitive and affective drivers, acting sequentially, as underlying mechanisms. Despite a wide range of methodologies investigating LPs’ effectiveness, methodological choices have little impact on the substantive results. We develop a comprehensive research agenda and managerial implications.
Prevailing wisdom assumes that female consumers are more loyal than male consumers. The authors report conditions under which the reverse is found, depending on the object of customer loyalty. For ...example, whereas female consumers tend to be more loyal than male consumers to individuals, such as individual service providers, this difference is reversed when the object of loyalty is a group of people. The authors find a similar crossover interaction effect for loyalty to individual employees versus loyalty to companies. This effect is mediated by self-construal in terms of relational versus collective interdependence. The authors discuss the managerial and theoretical implications of these gender differences. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
The increase in the number of international students at medical universities in Ukraine has made great demands for the quality of instruction in the first three years of study when adaptation of ...these students takes place. The aim of the paper is to analyse international students' perceptions of teaching Microbiology, Virology and Immunology (MBVI) at Bogomolets National Medical University and outline the recommendations. A mixed research method was applied; the questionnaire with close-ended and open-ended questions grouped in nine sets was developed. Anonymous survey was conducted with the students (N=104) after completing the MBVI course with English as a medium of instruction. The survey has indicated general satisfaction of the respondents with the course. Insufficient proficiency in English often affects the quality of learning, and a low level of the Ukrainian or Russian language skills create difficulties in their communication and effective integration to the Ukrainian cultural environment. The survey results have shown the positive attitude of the respondents to the lectures with the requirement to have more interactive communication between the lecturer and students as well as have identified the difficulties concerning practical classes and self-study. The recommendations on how to improve academic performance of international medical students have been given. The focus is on increasing and maintaining language skills, consideration of ethnic and psychological features of students from different countries and implementing interactive teaching methods so that effective interaction in the learning environment could be achieved.
Message arguments influence beliefs about product benefits which influence overall product evaluations. Three studies show that matching hedonic versus utilitarian arguments and products enhance ...evaluations of utilitarian products, but not hedonic products. The results generalize across several argument manipulations and several product categories.
This research investigates the effect of wine labels that contain text-only versus text-and-image information on liking, taste and purchase intentions of the product. Further, the research addresses ...the underlying processes by investigating the role of affective fluency. Study 1 shows that wine labels combining text with matching images outperform text-only labels and labels where images and text do not match; this effect is mediated by affective fluency (while simultaneously controlling for cognitive fluency), which enhances liking, purchase intentions and taste expectation. Field Study 2 provides process evidence by directly manipulating the mediator in a real-life tasting situation. This field study demonstrates that affectively fluent labels enhance actual taste perception and purchase intentions. Managerial implications are discussed.
Introduction: The research of biological properties of enteroviruses associated with ischemic stroke (IS) allows us to identify their intratypic differences. The aim: to identify genetic markers of ...strains of enteroviruses associated with IS.
Materials and methods: 11 strains of enteroviruses isolated from the serum of patients with IS were identified in the virus neutralization test. Genetic markers of isolated strains (Abent, marker S, marker rct40) were determined.
Results: Eleven strains of enteroviruses were isolated from the serum of patients with IS. Eight viruses: Coxsackie B viruses (serotypes 2, 3, 4) and ECHO viruses (serotypes 6, 9, 27 (two strains), 29) were identified in these strains. Other three strains of enteroviruses were unidentified. Different combinations of genetic markers were found. Seven strains of enteroviruses (Coxsackie B2, B3, ECHO 6, ECHO 9, ECHO 27 (two strains) and one unidentified virus) had virulence markers: Abent-, rct40+ and S-. Three strains (Coxsackie B4, ECHO 29, one unidentified virus) had markers: Abent-, rct40+, S+. Another one unidentified virus had markers: Abent+, rct40+, S -.
Conclusions: All 11 isolates of enteroviruses associated with IS had rct40+ marker, 10 of the 11 isolates had marker Abent- and 8 of 11 isolates had marker S-. The research of genetic markers allows to perform typic and intratypic differentiation of strains of enteroviruses associated with the IS.
Foreign branding—or using brand names that evoke foreign associations through, for example, spelling a brand name in a foreign language—is a popular means in both developed and emerging countries of ...suggesting a specific country of origin (COO) in the hope that it will evoke certain product qualities. As a result, consumers increasingly encounter products with brand names that imply a COO that differs from the actual COO (where the product is manufactured). In four experiments, the authors find support for the hypothesis that incongruence between the actual COO and implied COO decreases purchase likelihood asymmetrically. Incongruence backfires in hedonic categories but has hardly any effect in utilitarian categories. Furthermore, incongruence decreases purchase likelihood more if the actual COO is an emerging rather than developed country. The authors address the psychological process underlying the asymmetric effect of incongruence by showing that consumers apply different information-processing strategies to hedonic versus utilitarian products. These results have important implications for (foreign) branding decisions.
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