The primary focus of brand equity research has been on how brand knowledge creates value for firms through customer behavior in product markets. Using archival data and five experiments, this article ...tests a framework that outlines the unique role brands play in the labor market. The framework distinguishes between vertical and horizontal differentiation and shows that vertical brand differentiation is associated with lower pay, whereas horizontal brand differentiation is associated with higher pay. Employees are also vertically and horizontally differentiated, and firms high in horizontal brand differentiation pay more for employees who match their brands’ differentiating characteristics (i.e., brand-relevant complementarities). Results show that these brand–pay relationships have important downstream effects on employee behavior and, consequently, on firm profits. Specifically, leveraging vertical brand differentiation to lower pay represents a false economy because profits are attenuated by negative effects on employee productivity and retention. In contrast, when managers at firms high on horizontal brand differentiation pay more, profits increase via the same mediating employee behaviors. Six firm strategies and investments that influence firm bargaining power in the employee–brand matching process are found to moderate the brand–pay relationship and downstream effects on profits.
This article examines the concept of employee-based brand equity—the value that a brand provides to a firm through its effects on the attitudes and behaviors of its employees—and empirically ...demonstrates its significance on executive pay. Executives value being associated with strong brands and, therefore, accept substantially lower pay at firms that own strong brands. Consistent with identity theory, this effect is stronger for chief executive officers and younger executives than for other executives. Data from a large, cross-industry sample of executives suggest that academics and practitioners should take a broader view of the contributions of brand-related investments to firm value and make use of strong brands in pay negotiations that are typically viewed as being outside the realm of marketing.
Four studies demonstrate that people are more likely to buy (but not to buy more) when directly asked how much to buy in response to a set of purchase quantities (0, 1, 2 …
n
) than when first asked ...whether to buy in response to a seemingly innocuous yes/no purchase-interest question. This finding is explained in terms of response-scale partitioning. A purchase-quantity scale has a single negative (0) and multiple (
n
) positive response options. In contrast, a dichotomous yes/no purchase-interest question has an equal proportion of negative (“no”) and positive (“yes”) response options, the latter of which subsumes all positive quantity options into one partition. Ascertaining purchase interest using a single negative and multiple positive response options (“no,” “mildly,” “somewhat,” “likely,” “very,” and “definitely”) eliminated the effect.
A fundamental assumption of choice models is that products are valued for the benefits they provide. The only non-benefit-based source of preference is the processing fluency (e.g., ease of ...perceiving, encoding, comprehending, or retrieving information) that results from prior exposure to the product. This research documents an additional source of non-benefit-based “preference formation.” Repeatedly allocating attention to a product (selective attention) and away from other products (inattention) subsequently influences choices between these products and competing products. Five experiments show that prior selective attention (inattention) to a product increases the likelihood the product will be selected (rejected) in a subsequent choice. Demonstrating that prior acts of attention can influence subsequent choices has implications for any visually complex environment in which marketers communicate about a brand (e.g., banner advertising, packaging). The results also speak to how stimulus-based choices can have enduring consequences.
Breast cancer communications that make women's gender identity salient can trigger defense mechanisms and thereby interfere with key objectives of breast cancer campaigns. In a series of experiments, ...the authors demonstrate that increased gender identity salience lowered women's perceived vulnerability to breast cancer (Experiments 1a, 3a, and 3b), reduced their donations to ovarian cancer research (Experiment 1b), made breast cancer advertisements more difficult to process (Experiment 2a), and decreased ad memory (Experiment 2b). These results are contrary to the predictions of several prominent theoretical perspectives and a convenience sample of practitioners. The reduction in perceived vulnerability to breast cancer following gender identity primes can be eliminated by self-affirmation (Experiment 3a) and fear voicing (Experiment 3b), corroborating the hypothesis that these effects are driven by unconscious defense mechanisms.
Social Context and Advertising Memory Puntoni, Stefano; Tavassoli, Nader T.
Journal of marketing research,
05/2007, Volume:
44, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This article examines the influence of the presence of others on advertising memory. The authors take an intrapsychic perspective on social desirability and propose that the presence of others-in the ...absence of direct interaction-leads to the automatic activation of a concern with the impression others are forming. They find that words applicable to social desirability are accessed faster when respondents are in the presence of another person than when they are alone. Across three experiments, semantic (but not perceptual) memory for words and advertisements applicable to social desirability is greater than that for neutral cues after respondents are exposed to these in the actual or imagined presence of others than when they are alone. Respondents' chronic impression management tendencies (self-monitoring) moderate the effects, suggesting that the effects are, at least in part, determined by motivational factors. This novel theoretical framework provides direct implications for advertisers and marketing researchers who rely on recall memory as one of the most common measures of advertising effectiveness.
Distinct complex brain systems support selective attention and emotion, but connections between them suggest that human behavior should reflect reciprocal interactions of these systems. Although ...there is ample evidence that emotional stimuli modulate attentional processes, it is not known whether attention influences emotional behavior. Here we show that evaluation of the emotional tone (cheery/dreary) of complex but meaningless visual patterns can be modulated by the prior attentional state (attending vs. ignoring) used to process each pattern in a visual selection task. Previously ignored patterns were evaluated more negatively than either previously attended or novel patterns. Furthermore, this emotional devaluation of distracting stimuli was robust across different emotional contexts and response scales. Finding that negative affective responses are specifically generated for ignored stimuli points to a new functional role for attention and elaborates the link between attention and emotion. This finding also casts doubt on the conventional marketing wisdom that any exposure is good exposure.
Multimedia advertisements often contain nonverbal auditory elements, such as music and sound effects, and nonverbal visual elements, such as images and logos. On the one hand, these elements can have ...the unintended negative effect of interfering with the processing of the verbal ad copy. Two experiments demonstrate that auditory elements interfere more with the learning of and cognitive responding to English ad copy than with Chinese ad copy, and vice versa for visual elements. On the other hand, auditory and visual elements have the intended positive effect of facilitating ad copy recall when they are reinstated as part of an integrated marketing campaign or as a recall cue in an advertising tracking study. A third experiment demonstrates that auditory elements are better retrieval cues for English than for Chinese ad copy, and vice versa for visual elements. The authors discuss implications of these crosslinguistic differences for the effective design of multimedia communications, integrated marketing campaigns, advertising tracking studies, and cross-cultural research.
Categorization by groups and individuals Hamilton, Rebecca W.; Puntoni, Stefano; Tavassoli, Nader T.
Organizational behavior and human decision processes,
05/2010, Volume:
112, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Categorization is a core psychological process that is central to decision making. While a substantial amount of research has been conducted to examine individual categorization behavior, little is ...known about how the outputs of individual and group categorization may differ. Four experiments demonstrate that group categorization differs systematically from individual categorization in the structural dimension of category breadth: categorizing the same set of items, groups tend to create a larger number of smaller categories than individuals. This effect of social context is a function of both taskwork and teamwork. In terms of taskwork, groups’ greater available knowledge mediates differences in category breadth between individuals and groups by increasing utilized knowledge (study 2). In terms of teamwork, task conflict moderates the effect of social context on category breadth (study 3). Moreover, the experience of categorizing individually or in a group influences individuals’ subsequent judgments (study 4).
This article presents a theoretical model that suggests that linguistic differences between Chinese and English have a qualitative effect on the processing of verbal information. A higher degree of ...phonological processing of English words was hypothesized to result in a superior encoding of temporal information. In contrast, a higher degree of contextual and visual‐semantic processing of Chinese words was hypothesized to result in a superior encoding of interitem associative information. These effects were hypothesized to be absent for pictorial information. Two experiments found support for the hypotheses. In a sorting task, native English speakers demonstrated superior temporal memory for English words compared with native Chinese speakers for Chinese words. In a free recall task, native English speakers demonstrated a greater reliance on temporal order in the retrieval of English words, whereas native Chinese speakers demonstrated a greater reliance on semantic associations in the retrieval of Chinese words. In both experiments, cross‐cultural differences were absent for semantically equivalent pictorial information. The implications of these memory findings are discussed with respect to the formation of memory‐based judgments and the encoding of thematic information in marketing communications.
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