Branding

It's just like a bad breakup: People get emotional when they end a relationship with a brand. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research examines what happens when people turn their backs on the brands they once loved. Online forums are overloaded with customer complaints from people who once loved or were loyal to particular brands but now strongly oppose them. "I used to love (name of store), let me tell you all why I plan to never go back there again; I hate them with a passion now,"...

Women are better than men at figuring out unusual products when they're among competing items. Women are better than men at figuring out an extremely unusual product, as long as the product is promoted among competing products. For example, female participants in a survey understood that a car without visible wheels was a car if the ad appeared in a magazine with other car ads, while men had trouble. The researchers examined consumer reactions to innovative products, like a car without visible...

When it comes to our own pleasure, we like having a choice, but when it comes to utilitarian goals, we're just as happy being told what to do. Researchers conducted four experiments in which they presented participants the same choice-set options but varied the process (how the item was chosen) and the choice goal. In all the studies, the participants could either personally choose one of the options or they were assigned one of the options by a third party. The participants were told either...

Marketers hope to connect between the consumer and the products they represent by creating a strong brand identity. Now a Tel Aviv University researcher is giving marketers a heavenly new angle to consider — religious faith — on which to build their advertising strategies. Prof Ron Shachar of Tel Aviv University's Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business Administration says that a consumer's religiosity has a large impact on his likelihood for choosing particular brands. Consumers who are...

People who feel powerful are more likely to believe they can beat cancer if it's described in human terms. At least, that's the conclusion of a study that looks at anthropomorphism, or the tendency to attribute humanlike characteristics, intentions, and behaviour to nonhuman objects. "The present research shows important downstream consequences of anthropomorphism that go beyond simple liking of products with humanlike physical features," write authors Sara Kim and Ann L. McGill (both University...

How do people decide how much to spend on purchases for themselves versus others? If researchers are to be believed, it all depends on how powerful we feel at the moment of choice. "We ask whether the powerful and powerless differentially value the self versus others, and whether this, in turn, translates into observable differences in their spending behavior," write authors Derek D. Rucker, David Dubois, and Adam D. Galinsky (Kellogg School at Northwestern University) in a recent issue of the...

What does it take for marketers to reach customers who are already loyal to a particular brand? A new study, that examines brand loyalty and the way it affects perceptions of advertising, has discovered that consumer brand loyalty heavily influences responses to marketing from competing brands. "Consumers who are more loyal to a brand seem to search and process competitor brand information very differently than consumers who are less loyal to a brand," the researchers say. "When loyalty is high...

The simple presence of the store brand can save you money at the grocery store, even if you don't buy it. People are especially interested in saving money at the grocery store now, due to the rough economy. Most know that buying the store brand or private label, also known as the “generic brand,” can save you cash. But a new study suggests that the simple presence of the store brand can save you money, even if you don’t buy it. “Consumers benefit because the whole idea is for retailers to...

Consumers value goals they've chosen on their own more than those that are imposed on them. When people believe they have autonomously chosen to pursue a goal themselves, they feel the goal is increasingly valuable as they put in more effort, because they experience their own effort as signaling how much they care about it. When people believe a goal they are pursuing is imposed on them, they experience their efforts as a loss of autonomy. In other words, they value the goal less as they put in...

Why would someone choose a credit card with a one percent interest rate over another with a zero percent rate? The answer, says a new study, lies in the fact that consumers are often flummoxed when it comes to zero. "A reasonable assumption is that a product will be more attractive when it offers more of a good thing, such as free pictures (with a digital camera purchase), or less of a bad thing, like interest rates on a credit card," says Mauricio Palmeira of Monash University, Australia...