Customer word-of-mouth is a hot topic in marketing today. Positive customer-to-customer reviews, whether verbal or written, are powerful marketing tools because they have more credibility with customers than company-generated marketing. In addition, once customers help spread the word about a company’s products, they are more engaged and committed to that company. Customer participation, on the […]
Subject: Marketing
How Advert-Evoked Feelings Sway Attitudes to Brands
Previous academic studies have connected how people feel about an ad to how they feel about the brand, but the validity of these results in the real world marketplace was of some concern. These studies only involved small groups of participants, often students, answering questions about a small sample of ads. A new study that […]
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Ambiguous Ads: Hidden Messages, Hidden Risks?
Social change has made advertising that appeals to a broader range of consumers more important and desirable. A company’s ‘diversity and inclusion’ agenda does not, however, always transfer easily to the domain of marketing. Mass-media campaigns aimed at every social group that might buy a product or service can be complicated and costly to produce. […]
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Online Customers Reviews: Loyalty and Deception
Many Internet retailers give customers the opportunity to review their products on their site, and some Internet companies even specialize in reviews only (e.g. Yelp and TripAdvisor). Given, as research shows, the impact that online customer reviews can have on the success of a product or service, it is no wonder that special attention is […]
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Great Innovation! But What’s it for? Marketers Beware
In a classic episode from the old American TV show The Odd Couple, the main character Felix replaces all of the traditional furniture in his apartment with new furniture featuring radical designs (e.g. the chairs are in the shape of huge hands). While his roommate Oscar figures out how to use the ‘hands’, he’s astonished […]
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The Overlooked Longevity of Experiential Goods
More and more people are feeling financially constrained. In the U.S., half of American families recently surveyed considered themselves ‘financially fragile’. Financial constraint does not refer to income level, but to the feeling that the income is insufficient to pay for desired discretionary purchases. Awareness of financial constraints pushes people to reflect on the longevity […]
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Brand Placement on TV: The Positive Impact of Fast-forwarding
In the real world, brands are rarely seen alone. Whether on television, radio, or in print, brands are usually surrounded by other brands — numerous advertisements fill the pages of a magazine, or a seemingly endless block of commercials interrupts our favourite TV program. In academic terms, these other brands are called ‘context’ brands, and […]
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Do CSR Initiatives Enhance Customer Loyalty?
While research shows that people generally view CSR activities favourably, the question remains whether that positive attitude changes consumer behaviour. To answer this question, a team of professors from Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business focused on one specific industry — grocery retailing — and also divided the types of corporate social responsibility in their study […]
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Customer Loyalty: Easy Does It
Customer effort research has been around since the 1940s but the debate gained momentum following a 2010 article, ‘Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers’, in the Harvard Business Review (HBR). In particular, the HBR paper raised interest in how CE and, in particular, customer effort scores (CES) could be used as an indicator of customer loyalty. […]
How Price, Time and Functionality Affect Customers’ Choices
Consumers often have a choice between products that are convenient or easy- to-use and products that offer greater functionality but are less convenient. When making a purchase that involves a longer time frame, consumers are likely to choose functionality. They are willing, for example, to take the time to learn the sophisticated software that will let them digitize the […]
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