Research has shown that our thoughts and emotions can be subconsciously activated or ‘primed’ by an external stimulus. In three experiments, two researchers reveal that a simple supraliminal prime — specifically, a happy face sticker on a receipt — can impact how customers evaluate the service they are receiving or have received. (The sticker is […]
Read More… from How a Happy Face Sticker Improves Perception of the Customer Service Experience
Acquiring customer data at the point of purchase, including from first-time customers, is not new. However, much of that data for first-time customers often focuses on where the customers came from (e.g., how did you hear about us?). New research by Nicolas Padilla and Eva Ascarza of Columbia Business School reveal that customer behaviour related […]
Read More… from What ‘First Impression’ Data Reveals About Customers
Any consumer who has entered a high-end luxury shop and been treated with disdain by the sales clerks will understand the meaning of ‘retail rejection’. Many luxury companies are trying to change the attitudes of their salespeople, encouraging them to be friendly and welcoming. Previous research on social rejection, however, indicates that retail rejection may […]
Read More… from Why Customers Put Up With Rude Luxury Shop Assistants
Products and services fit into certain categories. For example, circuses, theatres and sporting events are all sources of live entertainment, yet they each fit their own category. Categories are defined by the attributes that customers expect from those categories. The circus category involves a traveling show with animals and clowns; the attributes of the theatre […]
Read More… from The Competitive Implications of Customer Expectation
Customers make a decision about which product to buy in two ways. The first method is to search for information about the product. For example, a customer might read online reviews of restaurants or hotels. The second method is to infer information they don’t have from information they do have. Litter in a parking lot […]
One of the fastest growing facets of social media marketing is the use of paid endorsers — a fashion blogger, for example, paid by a fashion designer to post a picture of herself wearing one of the designer’s pairs of earrings. Two researchers from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania conducted a field […]
Read More… from Varied Effectiveness of Paid Endorsements on Social Media
The business literature almost unanimously presents a simple, positive picture of the beneficent effects of corporate social responsibility on customer attitudes toward the corporation. Through a series of four quantitative studies involving more than 4,000 customers and participants, a team of researchers revealed the much more ambiguous reality of how customers view companies that engage […]
Read More… from When Customers Can See More Cost than Benefit in CSR
If you’re a national or international company with marketing authority and practices spread across various locations, or if you have a diversified group of products or businesses that call for different marketing approaches, how can you maintain a consistent marketing strategy that is aligned with the company’s overall priorities while still giving local functions the […]
Read More… from How a Marketing Doctrine Overcomes the Flexibility Vs Consistency Conundrum
Does a Chief Marketing Officer help a company, or is this position a ‘C’ that doesn’t earn its place in the C-suite? In 2008, an influential research study by Pravin Nath of the Drexel University (now at Oklahoma) and Vijay Mahajan of the University of Texas came to the conclusion that a CMO neither adds […]
As reported in a 2013 Advertising Age article, Geico Insurance’s ubiquitous talking Gecko was launched as a trial balloon. There had been no prior marketing research, and certainly no intention of creating a long-running marketing character who now has a book and appears in life-size form at sporting events. However, As Geico CMO Ted Ward […]
