Focal Product Research Articles

Which Receives More Attention, Online Review Sentiment or Online Review Rating? Spillover Effect Analysis from JD.com.

Studies have found that competitive products' online review ratings (ORRs) have a spillover effect on the focal product's sales. However, the spillover effect of online review sentiment (ORS) as an essential component of online review analysis has yet to be studied. In this study, we analyze online review content from JD.com using the latent Dirichlet allocation to identify the product attribute topics that consumers are most concerned about. We then construct a baseline regression model of ORS and ORRs to explore the effects of online competitive product reviews on focal product sales. Moreover, we examine how the interaction between ORS and critical factors of online reviews affect sales. Our results indicate that the ORS of competitive products has a negative effect on focal product sales, and the effect is greater than the ORS and ORRs of focal products, respectively. In addition, the ORS of competitive products inhibits the sale of focal products as evaluations of product attributes become more positive or online review usefulness increases. We also find that the effect of ORRs of competitive products is not significant, which may be because clothing, as an experiential product, requires consumers to gain more information about specific usage scenarios before making a decision. This study provides a more accurate basis for consumer decision-making and offers retailers a novel approach to developing marketing strategies.

Spillover effects of online comments on high-involvement product sales: evidence from the Chinese automobile industry

PurposeOnline comments significantly impact consumer choice and product sales. Existing research focuses on the direct effects of online comments on product sales, whereas studies on the spillover effects of online comments are relatively limited, especially for high-involvement products. This study explores the impact of online comments of competing products on focal product sales in high-involvement products.Design/methodology/approachData mining techniques are used to collect 72,367 online comments from the Autohome platform, and sentiment analysis algorithms are used to quantify the textual information for subsequent analysis. Specifically, two panel two-way fixed-effects models are constructed to explore the impact of the average valence and quantity of online comments of competing cars on focal car sales, and analyse this impact in terms of heterogeneity across car price levels, while the moderating effect of online comments of competing cars is explored.FindingsThe results show that the average quantity of online comments of competing cars has a significant effect on the sales of the focal car in the overall sample, while the average valence of online comments of competing cars does not have a significant spillover effect. Moreover, the spillover effect varies by car price level. For high-priced cars, the average quantity of online comments of competing cars significantly and negatively affects focal car sales, and the average valence of online comments of competing cars significantly and negatively moderates the effect of the valence of focal car online comments on its sales. For lower-priced cars, online comments of competing cars don’t significantly affect focal car sales.Originality/valueThis study not only enriches the theory of online comments and high-involvement product sales, but also provides reference and guidance for exploring spillover effects of online comments for other products.

Factual Analysis of Factors Influencing Consumer Cognitive Thinking and Automobile Designing using Fuzzy-AHP

Consumer cognitive and emotional responses significantly impact consumers’ affinity for both tangible and intangible products. Recent research underscores the heightened influence of consumer emotional and cognitive perceptions in product design, surpassing reliance on designers’ instincts or experiences. This case study delved into the analysis of automobiles, using cars as focal product. While visual elements like curve lines, grill design, and color predominantly shape consumer perspectives, non-visual factors such as reliability, quality, and ergonomics play a pivotal role in purchasing decisions. Our investigation, involving six industrial experts and over 130 participants, explored non-visual factors affecting consumers’ cognitive perceptions during car purchasing. Through a two-phase experimental approach, we developed a framework to understand the disparities in ranking assigned by consumers and designers to these non-visual factors, revealing perception gaps. Utilizing the rank value methodology, the Pareto principle, and Fuzzy-AHP analysis, we identified mileage/fuel efficiency, safety features, and reliability as dominant factors influencing consumer perceptions. Designers, on the other hand, prioritize safety features, reliability, and quality/warranty. Our findings emphasize the strategic significance for automobile companies to enhance their success rates by prioritizing these key factors, ultimately elevating brand value, profile, and overall financial prosperity.

A punishment shared is a punishment halved: Concurrent recalls reduce products’ market share loss

AbstractManufacturers often recall defective products. When this occurs, multiple recalls of defective products can be announced in the same statement or separate statements (i.e., concurrent vs. separate recalls). We draw upon the attribution theory to study whether and how concurrent (vs. separate) recalls of multiple products affect each recalled product's market share loss. In this study, a unique dataset of product recalls in the Chinese automobile industry and two experiments reveal that when products are concurrently (vs. separately) recalled, each product's defect is perceived as less distinctive, thus assuaging the market share loss for the focal product. In addition, the mitigating effect of concurrent recalls is stronger when the focal product is recalled with many (vs. few) other products but weaker for products with high price premiums and those with a recall history. These insights suggest that manufacturers can strategically use concurrent recalls to minimize market share loss resulting from product recalls, particularly when dealing with lower‐priced products or those with a limited recall history.

The effects of pseudo‐relevant 100% claims

AbstractThe term “100%” represents perfection. Thus, it is not surprising that marketers believe that claims that contain this term (e.g., “100% organic”) can make products more appealing. This intuition is reflected in the extensive use of 100% claims to describe products' qualities. We discuss how the term 100% can be used to create a claim about perfection that seems to, but does not, provide meaningful information about a product's benefits (e.g., “100% juice”). By appearing to be, but actually not being, relevant to the judgment at hand, these so‐called pseudo‐relevant 100% claims may mislead consumers into making baseless positive assumptions regarding the focal product. Three studies examine how consumers respond to pseudo‐relevant 100% claims. Our results suggest that pseudo‐relevant 100% claims lead to lower product evaluations and consumption intentions than similar claims that include adjacent percentages or no numerical terms. Interestingly, they also suggest spillover effects onto evaluations of the products' customers. Our findings show that consumers pick up on the meaninglessness of the promise of perfection implied by the term “100%” in pseudo‐relevant 100% claims, which causes them to perceive the product as less appealing.

The effects of size referents in user‐generated photos on online review helpfulness

AbstractProduct size misperceptions are a common problem for consumers when shopping online. To help their peers estimate a product's size, customers often include a size referent next to the focal product when adding photos to their online reviews. The purpose of this article is to investigate the effects of user‐provided review photos (with and without a size referent) on online review helpfulness. From two online experiments and one eye‐tracking lab experiment, this article finds that photo‐enhanced reviews that include a size referent object can improve review helpfulness. In study 1, eye‐tracking data shows that consumers pay greater attention to the photo and less to the text when the size referent is included. Study 2 shows that size referents are more helpful when consumers have limited experience with the product and the size referent is familiar. The role of perceived reviewer effort is investigated as a mediator to explain this result. Study 3 shows that the effects of a familiar size referent are robust when the seller provides detailed size information but vary depending on review valence.

The Effects of Comparative Reviews on Product Sales

Consumers increasingly rely on online reviews to make their purchase decisions. Drawing from linguistics and sociology research, the authors posit that comparative reviews, which highlight the similarities and differences between a focal product and its alternatives, may influence consumers’ regulation systems and perceived credibility, thereby affecting product sales. The authors examined 61,480 reviews on e-commerce platforms to explore the effects of comparative reviews and their valence on product sales. By using a supervised learning approach, they identified positive and negative comparative reviews, as well as positive and negative regular reviews, and then applied a two-way fixed-effects model. The results show that comparative reviews positively impacted product sales. Specifically, positive comparative reviews had a greater effect than positive regular reviews, whereas negative comparative reviews had a lesser absolute effect than negative regular reviews on product sales. Moreover, positive comparative reviews exerted a greater absolute effect than negative ones. A follow-up controlled lab study further substantiated the authors’ results and insights. The findings offer new insights and practical guidance for marketers and practitioners in promoting more comparative review posts and optimizing online review presentations.

University Knowledge Inside: How and When University–Industry Collaborations Make New Products More Attractive to Consumers

In this research, the authors examine how consumers perceive the fruits of university–industry collaborations (i.e., new products codeveloped with universities). Eight studies document a positive university effect and highlight its practical significance and boundary conditions. An Instagram A/B test utilizing a video that refers (vs. does not refer) to the underlying university–industry collaboration results in higher click-through rates and ad engagement levels. Another field study demonstrates that university-codeveloped products are more attractive to consumers, even after an actual product trial. Further, several consequential studies reveal that consumers are willing to pay up to 65% more for products marketed as codeveloped with a university. The authors argue and show that collaborating with a university infuses the underlying firm with a stronger sense of scientific legitimacy, thereby making the resulting product more attractive to consumers. Congruously, the authors find that the effect is more pronounced when the scientific legitimacy engendered by universities is more important to the focal product (i.e., high tech vs. low tech), underlying company (i.e., new vs. established), or target customer (i.e., high vs. low belief in science).

Unraveling the Effect of Competing Product Reviews on Consumer Choice and the Moderating Role of Consumer–Reviewer Peer Types

Prior studies have paid little attention to the roles of online reviews of competing products on individuals’ purchase behaviors. This article contributes to the literature by unraveling the effect of competing product reviews on consumer purchase decisions. Conceptualizing competition among rival products along two dimensions of geographical space and characteristic space, we use a panel-level binary logit choice model to examine how online reviews of restaurants are related to consumers’ conversion from browsing to purchasing in the context of restaurant patronage. Our results show that a one-unit increase in average valence (volume) of spatially adjacent and feature similar alternatives reduces the odds of choosing a focal product by 77.7% (53.4%) and by 59.6%, respectively. Furthermore, we conceptualize reviewers as local peers and global peers of consumers and explore how the impact of competing product reviews can be moderated by the consumer–reviewer peer types. We find that the effect of competing product reviews along geographical and characteristic spaces is strengthened by the proportion of local peers’ reviews relative to global peers’ reviews on these competing products. These new findings on the impact of competing product reviews and the moderating role of consumer–reviewer peer types provide implications for academic research and practice.

The Impact of Negative Reviews on Online Search and Purchase Decisions

Despite evidence indicating the significant influence of online reviews on purchase decisions, even after considering a product's average rating ( Vana and Lambrecht 2021 ), the underlying factors behind this effect and the broader impact of reviews on consumer decision making remain uncertain. This study uses clickstream data from a major online retailer to explore how negative reviews affect consumer search and purchase decisions. Leveraging exogenous variation created by the display of online reviews sorted by recency, the authors find that negative reviews significantly reduce a product's purchase probability because they (1) contrast with the often-high average product rating, (2) decrease the probability that consumers continue browsing for information about the focal product, (3) increase the probability of visiting the page of substitute products, and (4) increase the probability of viewing reviews about substitute products. Importantly, these effects apply to utilitarian products but not hedonic products and when reviews pertain to product functionality or customer service but not to taste-related factors. The authors estimate a product's vulnerability to negative reviews along two dimensions—purchase and search probability for substitutes—and display these effects on a two-dimensional map.

Consumers’ willingness-to-buy pasta with microalgae proteins – Which label can promote sales?

As the world population grows, the demand for protein-rich foods increases. Food manufacturers are looking for new sources of protein, such as microalgae, to meet this increasing demand. Since this type of protein is still relatively unknown among consumers, it is relevant to determine consumers' willingness to pay for foods with microalgae proteins. Moreover, there is more interest in front-of-pack labels nowadays and the potential impact of front-of-pack sustainability labels on willingness to pay for foods containing microalgae proteins is largely unknown. Data were collected through a quantitative online survey (n = 3027) including a discrete choice experiment in the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary, Spain, and Italy. Willingness to pay for front-of-pack labels on pasta with microalgae proteins – the focal product concept of this study – was investigated using a discrete choice experiment followed by estimation with a random parameter logit model. Respondents were removed from the total sample because of their opting out reason, leaving a sample of 2880 respondents whose data were used in the DCE-analysis. Respondents who opted out of the DCE for various reasons were not included in the DCE-analysis, leaving a sample of 2880 respondents. Respondents were willing to pay the most for an organic label, followed by the Nutri-Score label, and the vegan label on pasta with microalgae proteins. The resulting policy implications show how labelling with the Nutri-Score, organic label or vegan label can contribute to a more nutritious and sustainable diet.

Should We Feed the Trolls? Using Marketer-Generated Content to Explain Average Toxicity and Product Usage

Marketers and researchers recognize the importance and impact on consumer behavior of marketer-generated content (MGC) in social media channels. In this study, the authors present a method to classify MGC using a combination of unsupervised and supervised machine learning. They gather a large data set of posts from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter and use a time-series model (panel-data vector autoregression) to demonstrate how MGC can be used to explain average toxicity on the part of users. They contribute to the field by examining what types of MGC lead to toxic comments and how these toxic comments impact product usage. The authors find that MGC that demonstrates the quality of products and MGC that is aimed at creating a sense of belonging to a group are more likely to increase average toxicity. Furthermore, the authors find that higher average toxicity in social media communities leads to an increase in usage of the focal product. Finally, the results contribute to the literature by providing insights on the impact of MGC on product usage.

Through rose‐tinted glasses: How inducing and resolving curiosity makes consumers less skeptical and improves their product evaluations

AbstractResearch indicates that in general, curiosity leads to more intense processing of an advertisement, which might result in a more skeptical response toward a persuasive message. However, we propose the opposite and argue that a process of evoking curiosity toward a stimulus in the first step (with the creation of an information gap) and resolving it in the second step creates a positive affective experience. Upon receiving curiosity‐resolving information after becoming curious, consumers are less skeptical toward the advertised product, which leads to a more favorable attitude and a higher purchase intention. Based on four studies, we demonstrate curiosity's skepticism‐reducing effect, its downstream consequences, and the underlying mechanism of positive affect. We show that this curiosity‐stimulating way of information disclosure caused the effect instead of the information itself, which remained constant. The effects occur for integral curiosity, directed at the focal product, and for incidental curiosity, elicited by an unrelated stimulus. These results contribute to understanding consumer responses to curiosity‐evoking advertisements, which are widespread, and provide implications for consumer psychologists, practitioners, and policy makers.

Father Cícero’s water: is it really for drinking?

PurposeThis teaching case aims to provide in-class discussions on the commercialization and consumption of goods in spiritual markets. This teaching case is a narrative based on facts with a fictitious plot reporting the journeys of the launch, commercialization and consumption of mineral water in bottles in the shape of Father Cícero – a religious leader in Northeast Brazil – produced by Blue Spring Mineral Water in Juazeiro do Norte’s pilgrimage spiritual market.Design/methodology/approachPrimary and secondary data sources were gathered. Two focus groups with pilgrims and semi-structured interviews with Blue Spring leaders and a local Church representative were conducted as primary data. As secondary data, a dossier was created holding content from newspapers and blogs online on the focal product and data from the company’s official website and social networks.FindingsThroughout the case, the strategies and challenges of the production and commercialization of this religiously appealing product and the consumer practices adopted by different consumer profiles are unfolded.Originality/valueThis case intends to be a useful pedagogical tool to discuss the creation, production, commercialization and consumption of goods in spiritual markets. The case allows students to experience Blue Spring’s managers’ point of view regarding the decisions of production and commercialization of the focal product. In a broad sense, this case intends to inform future marketers of the importance of balancing commercialization in religious contexts.

Catching-up during technological windows of opportunity: An industry product categories perspective

There is empirical evidence of how challengers in an industry can take advantage of technological discontinuities that open “technological windows” of opportunity, which allow them to reduce their market share gap with market leaders, a phenomenon known as “catching-up.” However, this literature has examined leader–challenger catching-up processes within a particular industry as a whole, without considering the different product categories that can usually be identified within that industry. In fact, firms may have different market shares depending on the category under consideration, and technological discontinuities can be product category related. We extend the literature on windows of opportunity and changes in market leadership by showing that the chance a challenger has to reduce the market share gap with the market leader in a product category during a technological window depends on (a) whether the market leader in the focal product category is also the market leader in other product categories, (b) the share of a challenger's business in the focal product category relative to its overall business in the industry, and (c) the relative size of the product category with respect to the other product categories in the industry. We contend that such across-category factors influence the leaders and challengers' propensity to exploit opportunities resulting from technological discontinuities in a product category. We test a set of hypotheses using data on 31 mobile phone makers competing in India from 2003 to 2020 in the feature phone and smartphone product categories.

Novelty and scope of process innovation: The role of related and unrelated manufacturing experience

The accumulation of experience that occurs with production is likely to impact an organization's ability to develop manufacturing process innovations. However, how different types of manufacturing experience relate to the characteristics of an organization's process innovation output is an open question. In this study, we investigate how a firm's accumulated related and unrelated manufacturing experiences are associated with this firm's ability to innovate its production methods. To characterize firms' process innovation output, we observe their portfolios of patented manufacturing inventions, which we qualitatively evaluate over time, through a unique collaboration with expert patent attorneys, along two critical dimensions: novelty and scope. We argue that related manufacturing experience leads to a better understanding of parts of the focal product's technological landscape that will allow the development of inventions of broader scope. However, it may also contribute to inertia in that it might restrict the firm's innovative activity to more familiar regions of the landscape, thereby limiting inventions' novelty. Conversely, manufacturing experience with products that are unrelated to the focal product is expected to stimulate and support a broader search that includes more distant regions of the focal product's technological landscape, which would lead to more novel manufacturing inventions. Yet, the application of this unrelated experience to the production of the focal product is likely to require additional exploratory effort in a not‐well‐understood region of the focal product's landscape, likely resulting in inventions of limited scope. In line with our hypotheses, we find that related (unrelated) manufacturing experience is positively (negatively) associated with inventions' scope, and negatively (positively) associated with inventions' novelty. In addition to supporting the relevance of a multidimensional evaluation of innovations, our findings provide practical guidance regarding the strategic implications of a firm's knowledge management.

Understanding damage to and reparation of brand trust: a closer look at image congruity in the context of negative publicity

PurposeStudies have shown that negative publicity adversely affects brand trust, but exactly how brand trust can be damaged remains poorly understood. This study aims to explore how negative publicity influences image congruity and, subsequently, brand trust. In addition, the study also examined the effectiveness of two corporate strategies to repair both congruity and trust.Design/methodology/approachBased on a valid sample of 522 Chinese consumers between the ages 20 and 50, this study adopted a quasi-experimental design involving two types of negative publicity (performance- and value-related) and two initial corporate repair strategies (compensation and public apology) intended to repair brand trust.FindingsNegative publicity shaped brand trust through both functional congruity and self-congruity. Moreover, the type of negative publicity affected the role of image congruity in brand trust. The effectiveness of repair strategies further depended on the type of negative publicity.Research limitations/implicationsMobile phones were an appropriate focal product for this research, but examining only one product category may limit findings’ generalizability. Negative emotions such as frustration or anger and their relationships with congruity can also be addressed in future work. Subsequent research can additionally consider more conditions to explore alternative routes of processing related to brand trust.Practical implicationsBrand trust is a vulnerable brand asset on which negative publicity can have seriously negative consequences. Marketers and brand managers should assess the extent to which negative publicity can damage image congruity and brand trust and come up with different repair strategies subsequently.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the limited and fragmented literature on consumers’ evaluations of negative information. Findings offer fresh insight into the impacts of negative publicity on image congruity and brand trust. The implications extend beyond negative publicity to other forms of negative information, such as rumors, fake news and negative word of mouth. Results also highlight the importance of adopting appropriate repair strategies to restore consumers’ trust in the event of negative publicity.

Effectiveness of product recommendation framing on online retail platforms

Online retailers often display product recommendations using recommendation framing or signage. Recommendation framing—such as customers who viewed this also viewed or compared similar items—reflects user- or product-related inputs used by the algorithmic product recommender system to identify products for a target customer. The current study examined the effectiveness of norm-based recommendation framing and comparison-based recommendation framing on customers’ click-through intention of the products recommended by online retailers. Four studies were conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. Findings revealed that norm-based recommendation framing is more effective than comparison-based recommendation framing and that the perceived value of the recommendations is the underlying mechanism engendering this result. Furthermore, we observed that the effectiveness of norm-based recommendation framing was only apparent when fewer products were recommended and when the recommended products were highly substitutable for the focal product. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed regarding online retailers’ efforts to manage improved recommendation-framing strategies.

Paying for the Greater Good?-What Information Matters for Beijing Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Plant-Based Meat?

Promoting the transition from animal meat to plant-based food consumption has significant benefits for public health and environmental sustainability. This study, involving 526 consumers from Beijing, China, explores how food attributes and information may affect consumers’ food choices concerning plant-based meat products. A discrete choice experiment was conducted using burgers with five attributes (meat patties, flavor, sodium content, energy, and price) as the focal product. Separate messages on nutrition, food safety, and the environmental issues related to plant-based meat consumption were also randomly provided to consumers to help examine the role of information. Our findings suggest that Beijing consumers’ awareness of plant-based meat is relatively low at present, and they show a negative preference toward plant-based meat consumption relative to that of conventional meat. However, consumers’ willingness to pay for plant-based meat significantly increased after nutrition information was provided, but it was not responsive to the provision of food safety or environmental information. These findings suggest that to promote plant-based meat consumption, information closely related to consumers’ personal interests rather the “greater good” should be provided, at least in the context of Beijing, China.

How Consumer Expertise Influences Preference for Customized Food.

The strategy of food customization has increasingly aroused widespread interest among marketing managers and scholars, but most of them focus on the direct effect of customization on purchase intention. According to the research on self-image-consistent product perceptions, customization may also have an indirect amplification effect. Current research finds food customization will prompt individuals to incorporate their expertise in their perceptions of focal product attributes (taste perception). The findings of two studies demonstrate that food customization and consumer expertise have an interaction effect on consumers’ purchase intention. Specifically, consumers with higher (lower) expertise prefer customized food (standard food). Consumers’ taste perception mediates the interaction effect between food customization and consumer expertise on purchase intention. Finally, these findings provide guidance for marketing managers to adopt customized strategies.