nep-mkt New Economics Papers
on Marketing
Issue of 2016‒10‒02
ten papers chosen by
João Carlos Correia Leitão
Universidade da Beira Interior

  1. Assessing the Role of Shape and Label in the Misleading Packaging of Food Imitating Products: From Empirical Evidence to Policy Recommendation By Frédéric Basso; Julien Bouillé; Kevin Le Goff; Philippe Robert-Demontrond; Olivier Oullier
  2. Can combining web and mobile communication channels reveal concealed customer value? By Grégoire Bothorel; Régine Vanheems; Anne Guérin
  3. The Impact of Consumer Multi-homing on Advertising Markets and Media Competition By Athey, Susan; Calvano, Emilio; Gans, Joshua S.
  4. Content-Marketing-Strategien in der Unternehmenspraxis: Eine empirische Analyse By Riekhof, Hans-Christian; Jacobi, Teresa
  5. THE IMPACTS OF SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT AND INDIVIDUAL FACTORS OF YOUNG ADULT CONSUMERS ON BRAND LOYALTY By Yakup Durmaz; Bülent Yildiz
  6. Quality Predictability and the Welfare Benefits from New Products: Evidence from the Digitization of Recorded Music By Luis Aguiar; Joel Waldfogel
  7. Fuel tourism in Dutch border regions: are only salient price differentials relevant? By David-Jan Jansen; Nicole Jonker
  8. Can Alternative Food Networks contribute to a transition towards sustainability in Flanders: Assessing the marketing functions of Voedselteams By Zwart, Tjitske Anna; Mathijs, Erik; Avermaete, Tessa
  9. Nostalgia in online brand communities By Clara Koetz; John Daniel Tankersley
  10. FOOD WELL-BEING: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE By Ophélie Mugel

  1. By: Frédéric Basso (LSE - London School of Economics and Political Science); Julien Bouillé (UR2 UFRSS - Université Rennes 2 - UFR Sciences sociales - UEB - Université européenne de Bretagne - Université Rennes 2); Kevin Le Goff (LPC - Laboratoire de psychologie cognitive - Université de Provence - Aix-Marseille 1 - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Philippe Robert-Demontrond (CREM - Centre de Recherche en Economie et Management - UR1 - Université de Rennes 1 - Université de Caen Basse-Normandie - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique); Olivier Oullier (LPC - Laboratoire de psychologie cognitive - Université de Provence - Aix-Marseille 1 - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)
    Abstract: Food imitating products are chemical consumer items used frequently in the household for cleaning and personal hygiene (e.g., bleach, soap, and shampoo), which resemble food products. Their containers replicate elements of food package design such as possessing a shape close in style to drinking product containers or bearing labels that depict colorful fruits. In marketing, these incongruent forms are designed to increase the appeal of functional products, leading to chemical consumer product embellishment. However, due to the resulting visual ambiguity, food imitating products may expose consumers to the risk of being poisoned from ingestion. Thus, from a public health perspective, food imitating products are considered dangerous chemical products that should not be sold, and may merit being recalled for the safety of consumers. To help policymakers address the hazardous presence of food imitating products, the purpose of this article is to identify the specific design features that generate most ambiguity for the consumer, and therefore increase the likelihood of confusion with foodstuffs. Among the visual elements of food packaging, the two most important features (shape and label) are manipulated in a series of three lab studies combining six Implicit Association Tests (IATs) and two explicit measures on products' drinkability and safety. IATs were administered to assess consumers' implicit association of liquid products with tastiness in a within-subject design in which the participants (N = 122) were presented with two kinds of food imitating products with a drink shape or drink label compared with drinks (experiential products with congruent form) and classic chemical products (hygiene products) (functional products with congruent form). Results show that chemical consumer products with incongruent drink shapes (but not drink labels) as an element of food package design are both implicitly associated with tastiness and explicitly judged as safe and drinkable. These results require confirmation in other studies involving different shapes and labels. Notwithstanding, due to the misleading effect of this ambiguity,
    Keywords: policy recommendation,Food Imitating Products
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01306951&r=mkt
  2. By: Grégoire Bothorel (PRISM - Pôle de recherche interdisciplinaire en sciences du management - UP1 - Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, numberly (1000mercis Group) - numberly (1000mercis Group) - numberly (1000mercis Group)); Régine Vanheems (Centre de Recherche Magellan - Université Jean Moulin - Lyon III - Institut d'Administration des Entreprises (IAE) - Lyon); Anne Guérin (numberly (1000mercis Group) - numberly (1000mercis Group) - numberly (1000mercis Group))
    Abstract: Many firms have implemented a customer-value based segmentation to improve the efficiency of MARCOM campaigns as part of their long term customer relationship strategies (Kumar 2010, Thomas et al. 2005). If distribution channel addition may increase the intrinsic customer value (Kumar 2005, Rangaswamy 2005) in a US context as well as in a French context (Vanheems 2009), few studies have been conducted about the impact of adding a new communication channel during the same buying journey. As the number of devices enabling to communicate with consumers increases, the goal of this research is to understand whether combining web and mobile communication channels for a same journey is more efficient than using a single web channel, monitoring the promotional pressure. Due to consumer reactance at higher levels of communication, Godfrey et al. (2011) have shown that channel interaction effects could lead to diminishing returns. The issue of this paper is to evaluate if the same result can be observed in case of omni-channel strategy involving a mobile channel (Verhoef et al. 2015). More precisely the major contribution of our paper is to extend current knowledge by measuring the impact of combining a web channel (email) with a mobile one (SMS). The measure will be made on a large population of 304,410 individuals from a French click & mortar retailer’s customer database and with an unprecedented richness of data thanks to individual variables regarding customer purchases, browsing behavior, customer historical reaction to brand communications and customer distance to closest store. Different questions can be raised: (1) Can combining web and mobile channels within a communication strategy result in an increase in customer count and spend both offline and online? (2) How can we explain this impact in terms of segment specificity such as: i) FRAT segmentation, ii) Browsing data: mobile versus desktop readers, iii) Customer historical reaction to brand emails, iv) Customer distance to closest store? The aim of this research is then: (1) to evaluate, at equal effective pressure, the impact of adding a mobile communication channel on customer buying behavior. (2) to find out whether given customer segments reveal higher value thanks to multichannel targeting. (3) to explore and advance factors explaining the differential impact of multichannel versus single channel communication on purchase behavior. To comply with our focus on customer value unlocking, we measure increments provided by multichannel targeting compared to single channel targeting. As recommended by Dinner, van Heerde, Neslin (2014), the four following outcomes of interest have been retained: i) Customer count offline, ii) Customer spend offline, iii) Customer count online and iv) Customer spend online A field experiment has been carried out to measure and understand the differential impact of push multichannel communication sequences. Five populations, split randomly, have been exposed to a specific channel strategy. The first one was assimilated to a control group as exposed to single channel targeting by email only. Four multichannel test groups have been implemented; three of them were targeted with three messages but with different sequences mixing email and SMS. The fourth group was intentionally slightly over-pressured with four messages. The analysis methodology consists in calculating, for each population these four dependent variables and measure a “multichannel lift”. This lift analysis will be done with the customer-level data exposed above. Very first results advance significant insights. No impact has been observed on brands’ heaviest customers, which is counterintuitive in a FRAT-based targeting framework. Combining mobile and web channels results in a 40% lift in customer count on non-reactive to email customers, highlighting that inactive customers on one channel can still be active on a second channel. Finally, desktop email readers are more likely to purchase when targeted via mobile than mobile readers are. This research enables a new understanding for academia in the field of consumer response to multimedia communications as well as guidelines for practitioners about differentiated segments sensitivity, to refine their multichannel targeting strategies. Due to space limitations, underlying explanations are not presented here but theoretical propositions will be discussed in a full paper.
    Keywords: omni-channel communication, synergy, uplift, incrementality, customer value, communication omni-canal, incrémentalité, synergie,valeur client
    Date: 2015–10–03
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01357088&r=mkt
  3. By: Athey, Susan (Stanford University); Calvano, Emilio (University of Bologna); Gans, Joshua S. (University of Toronto)
    Abstract: We develop a model of advertising markets in an environment where consumers may switch (or "multi-home") across publishers. Consumer switching generates inefficiency in the process of matching advertisers to consumers, because advertisers may not reach some consumers and may impress others too many times. We find that when advertisers are heterogeneous in their valuations for reaching consumers, the switching-induced inefficiency leads lower-value advertisers to advertise on a limited set of publishers, reducing the effective demand for advertising and thus depressing prices. As the share of switching consumers expands (e.g., when consumers adopt the internet for news or increase their use of aggregators), ad prices fall. We demonstrate that increased switching creates an incentive for publishers to invest in quality as well as extend the number of unique users, because larger publishers are favored by advertisers seeking broader "reach" (more unique users) while avoiding inefficient duplication.
    JEL: L11 L82
    Date: 2016–04
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:stabus:3407&r=mkt
  4. By: Riekhof, Hans-Christian; Jacobi, Teresa
    Abstract: Although there is currently limited empirical research available on content marketing this topic is discussed quite intensively among marketing experts. Some of these even see a new paradigm on the rise because marketing strategies based on content are fundamentally different from traditional approaches where selling products and directly influencing customers and prospects are the dominating focus of marketing activities. In this paper, content marketing is used as the more generic term whereas native advertising, branded content, branded media or corporate journalism emphasize more particular aspects. [...]
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:pfhrps:201601&r=mkt
  5. By: Yakup Durmaz (Hasan Kalyoncu University); Bülent Yildiz (Gaziantep University)
    Abstract: This study has investigated how social and individual factors of young consumers affect their brand loyalty to the garment they most commonly use. Data of the study has been collected through face-to-face meetings with 353 students from Gaziantep University. In this study, factor, correlation, reliability, and structural equation modelling analyses have been used. As a result of the structural modelling analysis, it has been found out that individual factors positively and significantly affects the brand loyalty.
    Keywords: Individual Factors,Brand Loyalty,Social Environment Factors
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01360486&r=mkt
  6. By: Luis Aguiar; Joel Waldfogel
    Abstract: We explore the consequence of quality unpredictability for the welfare benefit of new products, using recent developments in recorded music as our context. Digitization has expanded consumption opportunities by giving consumers access to the “long tail” of existing products, rather than simply the popular products that a retailer might stock with limited shelf space. While this is clearly beneficial to consumers, the benefits are somewhat limited: given the substitutability among differentiated products, the incremental benefit of obscure products - even lots of them - can be small. But digitization has also reduced the cost of bringing new products to market, giving rise to a different sort of long tail, in production. If the appeal of new products is unpredictable at the time of investment, as is the case for cultural products as well as many others, then creating new products can have substantial welfare benefits. Technological change in the recorded music industry tripled the number of new products between 2000 and 2008. We quantify the effects of new music on welfare using a simple illustrative, but explicitly structural, model of demand and entry with potentially unpredictable product quality. Based on a range of plausible forecasting models of expected appeal, a tripling of the choice set according to expected quality adds substantially more to consumer surplus and overall welfare than the usual long-tail benefits from a tripling of the choice set according to realized quality, perhaps by more than an order of magnitude.
    JEL: L15 L81
    Date: 2016–09
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22675&r=mkt
  7. By: David-Jan Jansen; Nicole Jonker
    Abstract: Using detailed data on consumer payments, we find only limited evidence that fluctuations in cross-border fuel price differentials are relevant for Dutch consumers. Consumers living close to the German border did react to a salient increase in Dutch excise fuel duties in January 2014. However, the increase of fuel tourism was only temporary. Secondly, there are no robust indications that fuel tourism is relevant for Dutch consumers living further than 10 kilometres from either the border with Belgium or Germany. The apparent absence of fuel tourism may either be explained by the widespread use of loyalty cards or by the low level of international commuting by Dutch workers.
    Keywords: fuel tourism; consumer data; payment diaries; excise duties
    JEL: D12 H23 Q41
    Date: 2016–08
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dnb:dnbwpp:519&r=mkt
  8. By: Zwart, Tjitske Anna; Mathijs, Erik; Avermaete, Tessa
    Abstract: Current sustainability challenges in the dominant agro-food regime highlight the need for a systemic transition towards sustainability. It has been argued that, as a reaction to these sustainability challenges, niches have arisen that reorganise their practices in order to contribute to a more sustainable food system. These niches may in turn be seeds for a systemic transition. One specific type of such niches are Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). AFNs have already been researched in-depth from the perspective of two theories: the Multi-Level Perspective and Social Practice Theory, as well as through their combined use. Nevertheless, these studies have mainly focused on sustainability transitions in production and consumption. In this article we argue that this omits an important element of the food supply chain, namely all the activities between production and consumption. We take a holistic approach by looking at food supply chains as consisting of nine marketing functions. We do this by researching a particular type of AFN – Voedselteams - in Flanders. We find that, whereas in the dominant regime these functions are performed in a highly specialized way, within AFNs, they become more intertwined as more responsibility is taken up by consumers and producers. Yet, as initiatives grow, they might start taking up ‘regime-elements’ again in order to cope with the size. In this way, these initiatives may become hybrids between niche and regime.
    Keywords: Alternative Food Networks, Voedselteams, Marketing functions, Multi-Level Perspective, Social Practice theory, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:kucawp:245069&r=mkt
  9. By: Clara Koetz (ESC Rennes School of Business - ESC Rennes School of Business); John Daniel Tankersley (University of Santa Cruz do Sul)
    Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of a subculture of consumption organized toward a nostalgic brand on a social media platform. More specifically, the authors examine the role of these nostalgic feelings in the development of a community identity and the benefits they promote in the creation and perpetuation of this group.Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a netnographic study to examine the case of Caloi 10 on Facebook. The data collection was carried out by following interactions among members of this community for seven months. Besides this, field observations and interviews were also considered in the analysis.Findings Four categories emerged from the analysis: Identity and nostalgia, the subculture’s ethos, consumption habits and hierarchical social structure. Nostalgia was shown to have a collective dimension, connecting the group around the brand, and positively affecting the ties between members and members and the brand.Practical implications On-line brand communities can be promoted to strengthen connections between consumers and a brand, and between consumers with each other. For that, it is important to understand the characteristics and specificities of these groups.Originality/value Few studies have dealt with the characteristics of brand communities in social media, as well as the role of nostalgia in these groups. This research fills these gaps, exploring aspects related to consumption as a way of transmitting symbolic meanings and expressing nostalgic feelings in on-line brand communities.
    Keywords: Nostalgia, Social media, Brand community, Netnography, On-line consumer community, Subculture of consumption
    Date: 2016
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01343206&r=mkt
  10. By: Ophélie Mugel (IRG - Institut de Recherche en Gestion - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - UPEC UP12 - Université Paris-Est Créteil Val-de-Marne - Paris 12)
    Abstract: Well-being has become a major social issue in light of the WHO (World Health Organization) forecasts, stating that in 2030 problems associated with emotional difficulties (such as anxiety and depression) will become the first global cause of disability. This finding raises concern to the whole society and its institutions and questions the role of marketing in understanding consumer well-being. This research aims to identify the definitions of well-being from a literature review that includes three parts. The first presents the universal and subjective dimensions of the concept; the second defines its application to the marketing field and more precisely to food consumption.
    Abstract: Le bien-être est devenu un enjeu sociétal au vu des prévisions de l'OMS (Organisation Mondiale de la Santé) qui constate qu'en 2030, les problèmes liés aux difficultés émotionnelles (comme l'anxiété et la dépression) vont devenir la première cause mondiale d'invalidité. Ce constat doit interpeler toute la société et ses institutions et pose la question du rôle du marketing et de la compréhension du bien-être du consommateur. L'objectif de cette recherche est d'identifier les définitions du bien-être à partir d'une revue de la littérature qui comprend plusieurs axes. Le premier présente les dimensions universelles et subjectives du concept ; le deuxième permet de définir son application au champ du marketing et plus particulièrement à la consommation alimentaire.
    Keywords: bien-être alimentaire,comportement du consommateur,littérature
    Date: 2015–11–27
    URL: http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01346021&r=mkt

This nep-mkt issue is ©2016 by João Carlos Correia Leitão. It is provided as is without any express or implied warranty. It may be freely redistributed in whole or in part for any purpose. If distributed in part, please include this notice.
General information on the NEP project can be found at http://nep.repec.org. For comments please write to the director of NEP, Marco Novarese at <director@nep.repec.org>. Put “NEP” in the subject, otherwise your mail may be rejected.
NEP’s infrastructure is sponsored by the School of Economics and Finance of Massey University in New Zealand.