Consumer Product Choice Research Articles

Consumer tradeoff of advertising claim versus efficacy information in direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads.

Consumers' decision making about prescription drugs may be influenced by more than thoughts about drug efficacy and the potential for side effects. Choices may be based on tradeoffs among multiple factors, for example, medical condition, risk severity, risk likelihood, product efficacy, and resources. Some information used in tradeoff choices might be derived from marketing efforts by drug manufacturers. How market claims, such as "#1 Prescribed" may affect this tradeoff is an area that has yet to be explored fully. Using conjoint analysis techniques, this research examined the tradeoff of market claim and efficacy information in direct-to-consumer (DTC) print advertising for prescription drugs. Two hundred fifteen adult participants with a self-reported diagnosis of diabetes were recruited through an online consumer panel. Participants were presented a series of choices. Each choice pair represented a prescription diabetic nerve pain drug with a different efficacy level and one of the two had a market claim of "#1 Prescribed". Participants indicated which drug they would prefer if they had to choose one. Results showed an advantage of #1 Prescribed. A drug without this claim needed at least 1.23% greater efficacy to be chosen over a drug with this claim. Study findings align with previous research which found that extrinsic cues can influence consumer product choice, which has implications for optimal medication use.

More Than One Way to Float Your Boat: Product Use and Sustainability Impacts

Concern for sustainability crosses multiple areas of scholarly inquiry. At the macro level, sustainability research has focused primarily on institutional actors and systemic change efforts. At the consumer level, sustainability research has focused primarily on consumer product choice and post-use disposal. Employing a practice theory lens, this study examines how consumer practices during product use results in a wide variance in overall environmental sustainability impacts. Emerging practice configurations illustrate the ways rules as meaning, at both the macro level institutional regulations and micro level of cultural expectations shape consumer options. Practice configurations also illuminate the ways material marketplace resources, both stagnated products and innovations, provide opportunity for variance. Finally, the competence element of practice varies between a traditional consumer culture ethos and new practices vis-a-vis consumer resourcefulness. This study provides a contribution to the link between macromarketing and consumer culture theory in the centrality of enforcement of both governmental level regulations and consumer best practices for improved environmental sustainability.

Consumption of salt rich products: impact of the UK reduced salt campaign.

This paper uses a leading UK supermarket's loyalty card database to assess the effectiveness and impact of the 2004 UK reduced salt campaign. We present an econometric analysis of purchase data to assess the effectiveness of the Food Standard Agency's (FSA) 'reduced salt campaign'. We adopt a general approach to determining structural breaks in the time series of purchase data, using unit root tests whereby structural breaks are endogenously determined from the data. We find only limited evidence supporting the effectiveness of the FSA's reduced salt campaign. Our results support existing findings in the literature that have used alternative methodologies to examine the impact of information campaigns on consumer choice of products with high salt content.

Choosing Organic and Healthy Food in Times of Economic Uncertainty: Evidence from Panel Data Analysis in France

Abstract Organic and healthy products are becoming more prevalent in markets worldwide, but limited research investigates how consumers choose among these products. This article considers relationships among price, product quality, assortment, and staff service that might affect consumer product choices, as well as a moderating role of macroeconomic conditions. The most important drivers of a choice of organic over healthy products are assortment and service. This study also reveals a distinction between organic and healthy products resulting from the interaction of marketing variables with macroeconomic contexts, such that crisis periods can prompt the cannibalization of healthy products by organic products.

Development of packaging appearance element design of dadih with Kansei Engineering approach

The appearance of a product influences consumer product choice in several ways. The concern of appearance packaging is necessary to encourage consumers to be more interested to consume the Dadih . Hence, improved Dadih packaging is expected to expand its market, extend the shelf life, and ease in consumption. Kansei engineering (KE) is defined as a technology that translates consumer’s feeling into design specifications. By using KE, we focused on analyzing and designing product and packaging appearance element design of Dadih based on consumer preferences. This paper was conducted to determine the requirement typical Dadih product main features packaging appearance element design by using KE. In order to determine the requirement typical Dadih product main features, Principal component analysis (PCA) was used as the methods to determine the product and packaging appearance element design. The result showed design support to find out the optimal combination product form element in term of sets of given product strategies. Finally, it was expected that using this methods will obtain optimal formulation on design of Dadih product on each personality type, so as to product attractive, innovative, preferred Dadih by consumer as well as minimize the risk of failure of new product design on the market.

Flip sides of the same coin? A simple efficiency score versus energy bill savings information to drive consumers to choose more energy-efficient products

Together with our utility clients, Enervee is experimenting with behavioural intervention strategies to see which are most effective in nudging purchasing decisions toward more efficient products. This paper presents results on decision-making, preferences and online shopping behaviour obtained from a series of observational (utility-branded marketplace platform analytics) and experimental studies (randomized controlled trials). Within the trials, we tested potential direct and interaction effects of two distinct but related energy product attributes that improve market transparency: an energy score (a relative product model energy efficiency index) and energy savings (estimated energy bill dollar savings compared to a base model benchmark). The trials all show that the use of an energy score has a significant effect on consumer product choices, encouraging them to select more energy-efficient products, consistent with the observational data. These robust results make a strong case for leveraging heuristics-based nudges to drive energy-efficient purchasing behaviour at scale. Responses to the energy bill savings information varied across the studies, offering insights about the influence of buying context and decision styles on consumer choice. The simple-to-process energy score appears to elicit a hot/impulsive decision style, whilst the cognitively more complex energy bill savings information prompts a reflective/cool decision style. Overall, the studies provide intriguing and robust insights to inform the continued development of cost-effective and scalable interventions to drive more energy-efficient consumer product choices.

The impact of regulatory change on EU energy utility returns: the three liberalization packages

ABSTRACTThe European Union’s (EU) energy sector is changing due to major policy reforms. In this article, we examine the impact of major legislative changes which were designed to induce competition in the energy sector: the three liberalization packages. Competition was expected to benefit the industry by phasing out inefficient firms. EU citizens were also expected to benefit as competition was likely to promote a more efficient energy sector and more consumer choice of energy products and services. However, this legislative change occurred during a period of extreme market turmoil. We examine the impact of all these changes on the risk profile of the sector. Our results show that the liberalization legislation significantly increased systematic risk exposure of the sector, reducing its role as a defensive investment asset. We also show that commodities had relatively little impact on sector returns, but this was expected as utilities can offset commodity risk in hedging markets. We compare our results to those obtained in neighbouring EU sectors and find the impacts are isolated to the energy sector. This article makes a major contribution to energy policy by empirically showing the change in risk as a result of sector liberalization.

An Integrated Model for Dynamic Brand Equity

This paper presents a unified statistical model designed to measure brand equity as it changes over time; and gauge the impact of increased brand equity on consumer's product choices. Our model extends traditional models of brand equity which posit that strong brands are simply "more preferred" after controlling for the marketing mix (i.e. an intercept) to a more general model that allows for (1) brand equity to evolve (modeled as a Bayesian DLM model); (2) perceived product attributes to vary with brand strength ― an "X-perception effect"; and (3) perceived coefficients for product attributes to be a function of equity ― a "beta effect". This extended model provides firms and researchers with a more comprehensive view of brand equity and how it manifests itself in consumers' product choices. We apply the proposed model to a panel dataset on purchases in the pretzel category, demonstrating that brand equity had a measurable effect on price sensitivity and product attribute perceptions. Using the model we optimize the timing of marketing and derive optimal weekly prices. Comparing those results to simpler benchmark models of brand equity, we find that managers can potentially lose profit by using the reduced-form model due to mispricing.

The role of carbon emissions in consumer purchase decisions

The central research question that this paper addresses is how the presence and content of a carbon emission label could influence consumer product choice. The authors develop and test a framework based on accountability. The first group of studies establishes that carbon emissions and a carbon emissions label play a role in consumer product decisions. The second group of studies shows that the lowest levels of carbon emissions are preferred at the usage stage followed by the transportation and disposal stages, with the manufacturing stage last. However, these results can be modified by carbon emissions dispersion across life-cycle stages. For instance, a product with the same level of emissions at each life-cycle stage is preferred to a product with widely varying emissions at each stage even if the lowest amount occurs in the usage stage. The third group of studies shows that consumers value recycling compared to other forms of carbon emission offsets. Finally, consumers prefer that companies run their own offset programmes, rather than outsource them, despite acknowledging that firms are less likely to have equivalent carbon offset expertise.

The impact of front-of-pack nutrition labels on consumer product evaluation and choice: an experimental study.

The present research was an experimental test that aimed to quantify the impact of two dominant front-of-pack (FOP) nutritional label formats on consumer evaluations of food products that carried them. The two FOP label types tested were the traffic light label and the Percentage Daily Intake. A 4×5 partially replicated Latin square design was used that allowed the impact of the FOP labels to be isolated from the effects of the product and the consumers who were performing the evaluations. The experiment was conducted on campus at the University of Otago, New Zealand. The participants were 250 university students selected at random who met qualifying criteria of independent living and regular purchase of the products used in the research. They were not aware of the purpose of the research. The presence of FOP labels led to significant and positive changes in consumer purchase intentions towards the products that carried them. These changes were not affected by the nature of FOP labels used, their size or the product nutritional status (good/bad) that they were reporting. The result is consistent with the participants paying attention to the FOP label and then using it as an adimensional cue indicating product desirability. As such, it represents a complete functional failure of both of these FOP label types in this specific instance. This result supports calls for further research on the performance of these FOP labels before any move to compulsory deployment is made.

Is an Unskilled Really Unaware of it?

Two psychologists, Justin KRUGER from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and David DUNNING from Cornell University, published their study named “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments” in 1999 (Kruger & Dunning). The summary of their work concludes that “…incompetent individuals have more difficulty recognizing their true level of ability than do more competent individuals and that a lack of metacognitive skills may underlie this deficiency” (Kruger & Dunning, 1999.pg. 31). Many studies which have followed Kruger and Dunning, including their own follow-up studies, have looked at students'self-assessment toward their own tests or learning abilities. A few studies have adopted this study to different fields such as consumer product choice (Burson, 2004) and economic agents and decision errors (Ferraro, 2010). Although the educational perspective was exploredin the original study, the leadership in an educational setting was not investigated. The current study focuses on a review of relevant literature regarding Kruger and Dunning's work, in addition to applying their theory via a case study of a specific leadership position in an institution of higher education.

Dietary phthalate exposure in pregnant women and the impact of consumer practices.

Phthalates are ubiquitous endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are contaminants in food and contribute to significant dietary exposures. We examined associations between reported consumption of specific foods and beverages and first trimester urinary phthalate metabolite concentrations in 656 pregnant women within a multicenter cohort study, The Infant Development and Environment Study (TIDES), using multivariate regression analysis. We also examined whether reported use of ecofriendly and chemical-free products was associated with lower phthalate biomarker levels in comparison to not following such practices. Consumption of one additional serving of dairy per week was associated with decreases of 1% in the sum of di-2-ethylhexyl phthalate (DEHP) metabolite levels (95% CI: −2.0, −0.2). Further, participants who reported sometimes eating homegrown food had monoisobutyl phthalate (MiBP) levels that were 16.6% lower (95% CI: −29.5, −1.3) in comparison to participants in the rarely/never category. In contrast to rarely/never eating frozen fruits and vegetables, participants who reported sometimes following this practice had monobenzyl phthalate (MBzP) levels that were 21% higher (95% CI: 3.3, 41.7) than rarely/ever respondents. Future study on prenatal dietary phthalate exposure and the role of consumer product choices in reducing such exposure is needed.

Search Costs in Consumer Product Choice: Does Delaying the Provision of Information Increase Choice Efficiency?

Using online price comparison and shopping platforms makes experiencing slow connections, lags and waiting times for information an unfortunate reality. However, little attention has been paid to analyzing the effects of delayed provision of information on product choice behavior. In this article, I introduce an information processing model to derive search pattern predictions and test them in a multi-attribute choice laboratory experiment. Information requested during a search process was not provided immediately but after short time delays. Increasing these waiting times reduced the amount of looked-up information but did not affect choice quality. It seems that high time delays nudged decision-makers to think twice about how much and what kind of information should be looked-up, whereas low time delays induced inefficient over-searching. As technological advances are expected to further reduce Internet delay times, the observed change in search behavior could affect the profitability of manufacturers' production and retailers' advertising strategies.

Consumer animosity and product choice: might price make a difference?

PurposeThis study aims to examine animosity's role in determining consumers' product choices. Considerable research attention has been devoted to studying the relationship between animosity and consumers' willingness to buy foreign products. Few studies, however, have considered that individual consumers may harbor varying degrees of animosity toward different countries, thus, differentially affecting their willingness to buy products from these countries. The within‐subject comparison of the present study seeks to provide a clearer and cleaner approach to examining the impact of animosity on consumers' preferences for foreign products. Extending this line of inquiry, it also aims to explore the link between consumers' choice of products from high versus low animosity countries at different price levels.Design/methodology/approachTwo studies were conducted to examine the impact of consumer animosity on product choice. Study 1 contains a survey study, and Study 2 is a full factorial conjoint analysis.FindingsIt is discovered that animosity plays a stronger role in determining consumers' willingness to buy foreign products from high‐level animosity countries than from low‐level animosity countries. Through conjoint analysis, the paper demonstrates that consumers are willing to make trade‐offs between price and animosity.Originality/valueThis study fills a void in the literature by exploring what role animosity plays in determining a consumer's choice of products, particularly when different degrees of animosity are held toward different countries. The within‐subject design of this research provides considerable insight on this front. In addition, this study represents an initial attempt to explore the dynamics between animosity and price via a conjoint analysis.

Investigating Effects of Out-of-Stock on Consumer Stockkeeping Unit Choice

Out-of-stock (OOS) is commonly observed in the retail environment with consumer packaged goods, but there have been few empirical studies of the effects of OOS on consumer product choice, because there is a lack of OOS information during households' purchase occasions. The authors study the effects of OOS on consumer stockkeeping unit (SKU) preference and price sensitivity, using a unique data set from multiple consumer packaged goods categories with information on recurring OOS incidents. They obtain several substantive findings: (1) Consumers' price sensitivity tends to be underestimated when OOS is not accounted for in a discrete choice model; (2) for consumers who have shorter interpurchase time, their preference for a SKU is attenuated when it is frequently OOS; and (3) for consumers who purchase from a small number of SKUs, their preference for a SKU is reinforced when facing OOS of other similar SKUs, whereas it is attenuated when facing OOS of other similar and also frequently purchased SKUs. The authors also illustrate that their findings can help retailers evaluate the effect of OOS on category revenue and predict time-varying market shares of SKUs in periods following OOS incidents.

How the Temporal Framing of Energy Savings Influences Consumer Product Evaluations and Choice

ABSTRACTConsumer interest in behavior that is good for the environment is increasing, but actual behavior consistent with this objective has not risen accordingly. This may in part be due to consumers not realizing that their environmentally protective behaviors may have tangible future benefits for them. These studies examine the influence of message frames and a consumer's propensity to think about the future for products that have future benefits. More specifically, these studies examine how consumers respond to temporal frames of savings on product packaging for energy efficient products. Two studies suggest that the temporal framing of savings can influence product choice, purchase intentions, attitudes, and perceptions of savings. The results indicate that future‐oriented consumers are likely to have more positive evaluations when savings are framed in the distant future compared to the near future. In addition, there is a mediating effect of perception of savings. These experiments provide information of interest to marketers and researchers regarding the influence of temporal frames and a consumer's temporal orientation on products that have future benefits.

Tradícionális termékek emocionális megközelítésben

Traditional Hungarian foods get successfully to consumers if these products are sold on a special market. In our research we set a hypothesis that the decisions, what traditional food consumers make, are based on imperfect information. Place of purchase is an influential factor. Based on this assumption we examined the followings in a questionnaire survey: Where do customers like to buy these products?, Is there an appropriate market for these products?, What are the attributes of this market?The basic aim of our research was to know how special quality single and differentiated products can stay safely on the market. Consumer segmentation seemed to be a good way to know this, but even some members of the same segment can have different purchase decisions. Personal life style determines this deviation. The subject of our research was to see how effective segmentation influences the dynamics of consumer product choice.

Consumer World-Mindedness and Attitudes toward Product Positioning in Advertising: An Examination of Global versus Foreign versus Local Positioning

In recent years, increasing interest has emerged in examining global consumer culture and its impact on consumer product preferences and choices, lifestyles, and exposure to mass media from other countries. In turn, this has sparked interest in concepts such as consumer world-mindedness and its impact on attitudes and behavior. The current research examines differences in consumer response to advertisements reflecting a global consumer culture positioning (GCCP) versus a foreign consumer culture positioning (FCCP) or a local consumer culture positioning (LCCP) and the relationship with consumer world-mindedness. In Studies 1 and 2, the authors examine the impact of world-mindedness, while controlling for ethnocentric attitudes. In Study 3, they examine the interactions of world-mindedness, international travel, and preference for authenticity. The authors develop several hypotheses and examine them using two surveys of 90 (Study 1) and 100 consumers (Studies 2 and 3) in the Netherlands. The results demonstrate, for example, that advertisements for brands with FCCP and GCCP are nomologically different and evaluated differently.

Born Unequal: A Study of the Helpfulness of User-Generated Product Reviews

Online user-generated product reviews have become an indispensible tool for consumers and thus for retailers who want to attract and retain consumers. Yet, relatively little is known about what causes consumers to find an online peer review helpful to their shopping tasks. Prior research examines mostly the effects of product reviews on consumer product attitude, product choice, and product sales. This paper, however, provides an analysis of the determinants of review helpfulness. In two studies, we examine the effects of review characteristics, product type, and reviewer characteristics on perceived review helpfulness. With data collected from a real online retailer, we provide empirical evidence to support our conceptual predictions. Specifically, both review valence and length have positive effects on review helpfulness, but the product type (i.e., experiential vs. utilitarian product) moderates these effects. Using content analysis of reviews, we develop a measure of expressed reviewer innovativeness (i.e., the predisposition toward new products as revealed in review content). A curvilinear relationship exists between expressed reviewer innovativeness and review helpfulness. These findings lead to pertinent managerial implications.

The skinny on tuna fat: health implications

Dietary n-3 (omega-3) and n-6 (omega-6) PUFA have significant implications in health and disease prevention. Marine life is rich in long-chain n-3 PUFA. Children and adults in North America are reluctant fish eaters; canned tuna is a common fish in children's diets. Although a multitude of tuna products are available, their respective PUFA contents have not been well described. The aim of the present study was to compare the fatty acid (FA) profiles of different commercially available US tuna products. Fat and FA composition of eight products randomly selected from two US suppliers were analysed with capillary GC after lipid extraction. Large north-eastern US grocery store chain. Canned tuna. Energy from fat varied from 3 to 33 % and the essential FA (EFA) linoleic acid (18 : 2n-6) and α-linolenic acid (18 : 3n-3) varied tenfold. DHA varied between 90 and 770 mg/serving. The n-6:n-3 ratio was 3:1-4:1 in oil-packaged products, 2:1-7:1 in packaged tuna salads and 1:3-1:7 in water-packaged products. A similar magnitude of differences was seen in the ratio between arachidonic acid (20 : 4n-6) and DHA. Light tuna canned in water may be a better choice of providing n-3 PUFA to individuals in a healthy population, whereas oil-packaged products may be preferable for those individuals with a need for increased EFA, such as for patients with cystic fibrosis. Awareness regarding PUFA content may aid in consumer product choices and health-care provider advice.