Responses to an advergaming campaign on a mobile social networking site: An initial research report

Advergames are a form of branded entertainment that feature advertising messages, logos, and trade characters in a game format. This paper reports a preliminary examination on the effects of an advergame on perceived brand value in a context of mobile social networking sites (SNSs). Drawn upon categorization theory, the study posits that, while mobile SNS engagement stimulates electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) intention among game players, perceived brand-game fit also drives eWOM intention, which in turn positively affects perceived brand value. Furthermore, perceived brand-game fit is contemplated to be a direct driver of perceived brand value. A research model is validated by a large-scale online survey. Using a real promotional campaign for a popular consumer good (Procter & Gamble’s Pringles), the authors create an advergame for one of the most popular mobile SNSs in Japan. The results from structural equation modeling corroborate all hypothesized relationships. This article closes with some theoretical and managerial implications, as well as recognition of important limitations.     

Testing an extended model of consumer behavior in the context of social media-based brand communities

Due to the benefits of brand community initiatives and the potential advantages of social media, many marketing managers made significant investments in building brand communities based on social media. A noticeable issue is how to measure the success of such investments in ways that are understandable and comparable to other marketing initiatives. To address this issue, it is essential to understand how social media-based brand communities influence customers' perceptions and behaviors. The purpose of this article is to develop and estimate an extended model of how different aspects of customers' relationships with such communities influence their perceptions and behaviors. The paper describes a way a customer's identification with a brand influences relationships with brand community elements, brand community markers, and ultimately brand relationship quality and brand loyalty. Then using a large sample of brand community members in social media and structural equation modeling, the authors estimate how social media-based brand communities influence brand relationship quality and brand loyalty. Managerial implications are discussed.     

A subjective framework for seat comfort based on a heuristic multi criteria decision making technique and anthropometry

Consumer expectations for automobile seat comfort continue to rise. With this said, it is evident that the current automobile seat comfort development process, which is only sporadically successful, needs to change. In this context, there has been growing recognition of the need for establishing theoretical and methodological automobile seat comfort. On the other hand, seat producer need to know the costumer’s required comfort to produce based on their interests. The current research methodologies apply qualitative approaches due to anthropometric specifications. The most significant weakness of these approaches is the inexact extracted inferences. Despite the qualitative nature of the consumer’s preferences there are some methods to transform the qualitative parameters into numerical value which could help seat producer to improve or enhance their products. Nonetheless this approach would help the automobile manufacturer to provide their seats from the best producer regarding to the consumers idea. In this paper, a heuristic multi criteria decision making technique is applied to make consumers preferences in the numeric value. This Technique is combination of Analytical Hierarchy Procedure (AHP), Entropy method, and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). A case study is conducted to illustrate the applicability and the effectiveness of the proposed heuristic approach.     

How oppositional loyalties resulting from producer–user collaborations reduce new product entry: Examples of online games

Instead of technological lock-in effects, oppositional loyalty to a product may emerge from users’ collaborations in the product, which grant consumers emotional experiences with the brand, encourage personal relationships, and provide emotional benefits. Therefore, consumers may limit their allocations of resources to competing new products because they devalue a new offering’s relative product performance and its user and complementary networks. Prior rate of use enhances this devaluating effect, and prior experience deepens the negative effects. In contrast, users with minimal prior experience and low usage rates more easily accept new products. This study tests these predictions in a path analysis with data pertaining to an online game, collected from consumers in cybercafés; the 296 respondents across 191 cybercafés support the hypotheses.     

Categorizing commercial products for customer oriented online retailing

Online retailing can offer several benefits. In order to realize these benefits, a commercial web site needs to ameliorate its deficiencies due to the absence of actual physical products. Although the use and popularity of the Internet continues to increase, it is still unclear how online retailers can establish effective online retailing strategies to capitalize on their benefits. For this clarification, this paper proposes a framework to categorize products according to consumers’ involvement and information quality fitness. Involvement refers to the degree of psychological identification or emotional ties consumers have with a particular product. Information quality fitness refers to the extent to which a product can fit with shopper’s requirements for online information. Thirty-six commercial products are empirically tested. It is found that products can be grouped into four categories such as ‘complex,’ ‘intelligent,’ ‘light,’ and ‘simple.’ This categorization can help understand product characteristics when they are sold via the Internet. Our finding implies that online retailers need to formulate their retailing strategies in view of these product categories.     

Product‐to‐Service Extension: The Impact of Brand Equity on Upscaled Service

A recent trend in the luxury industry shows many companies using brand extension strategies to leverage their assets among competitors. Despite the popularity of brand extensions, limited research has been conducted to determine its effectiveness when using parent product brands in order to introduce new service brands. Thus, the primary purpose of this study is to propose the framework to increase the understanding of luxury brand extensions by focusing on the horizontal category brand extension from product to service. The impact of perceived quality, brand association and brand loyalty of the luxury car brand on consumers’ perception and attitude toward the rental car service brand was observed to differentiate from other research that focuses on brand extension within product categories. A total of 324 samples were collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling with AMOS. The brand association of the parent brand showed a significant impact on the evaluation of the extended service brand. In addition, a high level of the brand association was also found to influence the final purchase decision of the extended service brand. However, this study could not find any significant effect of perceived quality and brand loyalty for the parent product brand on the extended service brand. The framework proposed in this study has merit to increase the understanding of service brand extensions by exploring luxury car brands and luxury rental car brands. In the service brand extension, there was a gap in consumer perception between the product brand and the extended service brand. In order to maximize the positive impact of the parent brand, marketers and retailers should investigate the different roles of the brand equity items.     

Consumer attitudes toward blogger’s sponsored recommendations and purchase intention: The effect of sponsorship type,product type,and brand awareness

Sponsored recommendation blog posts, a form of online consumer review, are blog articles written by bloggers who receive benefits from sponsoring marketers to review and promote products on their personal blog. Because national regulations require that marketer sponsorship must be revealed in the blog post, sponsored recommendation posts can no longer conceal their marketing intent. Consumer’s attitudes toward sponsored recommendation posts are thus a vital issue in assessing the effectiveness of the advertisement. This study uses a 2(sponsorship type) × 2(product type) × 2(brand awareness) experimental design and a total of 613 valid samples to examine consumer attitudes toward sponsored recommendation posts and purchase intention. The results show that when products recommended in blog posts are search goods or have high brand awareness, consumers have highly positive attitudes toward sponsored recommendation posts, which improves purchase intention. The directly-monetary/indirect-monetary benefits received by the bloggers have no significant effect on readership attitudes. Using these features in blog writings appears to improve online readers’ trust toward and the credibility of sponsored recommendation posts and thus can be a vital online marketing tool for marketers.     

考虑心理期望与感知的多属性匹配决策方法

针对考虑匹配主体心理期望与感知的双边匹配决策问题,提出多属性匹配决策方法.首先,描述匹配主体对另一方匹配主体进行满意度评价时存在心理期望的情形;然后,在此基础上,以匹配主体对各属性的期望作为参考点,获得一方匹配主体对另一方相对于参考点的损益决策矩阵,依据前景理论分别计算出匹配主体之间满意度的综合前景值,并进一步构建双目标优化模型;最后,通过实例分析表明了所提出方法的可行性和有效性.     

Advergames and the effects of game-product congruity

Electronic games transcend demographic boundaries and are a prevalent cultural phenomenon. Marketers see potential of this immersive venue as a way to reach a highly receptive audience with brand messages. Designing games around a brand – advergames – has become a common marketing practice. However, few empirical studies have tested the effectiveness of this communication strategy in delivering the brand message. This paper serves to fill some research gaps and explores the influence of game-product congruity on brand memory and attitudes toward the game. A product-congruent advergame is compared to a product-incongruent advergame using a stimulus brand for a low-involvement product category. The findings indicate that highly congruent games lead to superior memory for the sponsoring brand. However, benefits of these positive memory effects may be negated by the negative attitudes players have toward the highly thematic game for a low-involvement product. Implications are discussed.     

Key values driving continued interaction on brand pages in social media: An examination across genders

Brand pages in social media provide companies with a competitive marketing tool to create added value for their firms and customers. Past studies suggest that understanding what customers really value in brand pages is the most vital step in promoting their continued interaction, and that the relative impacts of customer values on continued interaction are contingent on individual demographic factors such as gender. However, little research has examined the relationships between customer values and their intention to engage in continued interaction, and how these relationships are moderated by gender, in the context of brand pages. This study identified eight value factors to measure customer values on brand pages, then examined their impacts on customers' continued interaction intention, and studied gender effects on the latter relationship. Our proposed hypotheses are mostly supported by data collected from users of Sina Microblog brand pages and analyzed by partial least squares.     

Optimizing sunk investments in e-commerce: a quality assurance challenge for small businesses

In a traditional retail environment, the reputation value of a brand name leads profitable firms with established brands to work hard to maintain quality. A store may rely on its reputation to signal that its goods are of high quality. A retailer that expects repeated purchases by a consumer – if it provides high-quality products – has a strong incentive not to provide defective products or poor service. Translating this type of quality assurance into digital sales media poses unique challenges, particularly for small businesses. Retailers that have only a local geographic reputation require innovative strategies to convince a potential global market that the products or services they provide are of appropriate quality when they make the move into electronic commerce retailing. This paper provides a model that identifies a number of unique factors that should be considered when estimating the optimal level of investment into an e-commerce initiative. Decisions of this type are particularly difficult for small businesses because they may lack expertise in digital marketing and sales and they may have insufficient resources required for ideal levels of investment. These constraints have led to some creative cost and risk minimizing solutions that have been adopted by certain small businesses in their effort to make the transition into the digital marketplace. Published online: 22 August 2001     

Opinion Evolution Model for Online Reviews from the Perspective of Value Co-creation

Opinions from online reviews reflect consumers’ value perception toward products and services. However, the evolution mechanism of online opinions in the process of value co-creation resulting from an interaction between heterogeneous consumers and merchants remains unclear. In this context, we propose an opinion evolution model based on the advanced Hegselmann–Krause model from the value co-creation perspective to explore the online opinions in a merchant–consumer interaction process. Simulation results show that the heterogeneity of consumers, merchants’ review display methods, and investment behaviors have an impact on online opinions and merchants’ profits. Radical and active consumers are less likely satisfied with merchants’ products or services; whereas balanced, robust, and conservative consumers are more likely satisfied. In addition, the review volume displayed per page has an impact on online opinions and merchants’ profits but becomes invalid when a certain threshold is exceeded. The brand effect can significantly increase online opinions and merchants’ profits only when such an effect exceeds a certain threshold. Furthermore, findings indicate that merchants should not only be concerned about short-term investment in initial products/services quality but also on the long-term investment in the brand effect. They should also avoid the idea of getting once-and-for-all or free-riding.     

Consumer informedness and diverse consumer purchasing behaviors: Traditional mass-market,trading down,and trading out into the long tail

As truly informed consumers are increasingly able to find exactly what they want and willing to pay premium prices to obtain products with perfect fit for them, companies have responded with new product portfolio strategies and new pricing strategies, based on the concepts of resonance marketing and hyperdifferentiation. This is not just consumers’ pursuit of products that are better, but rather better for them. It is not trading up, but rather trading out. In this paper we offer a more complete explanation of changes in consumer behavior, based on consumers’ new-found informedness, and an understanding of consumers’ pursuit of products that truly meet their individual wants and needs, cravings and longings.This paper also contributes to a deeper understanding of how online reviews are linked to sales. Recent empirical studies suggest that consumers use information in different ways in different shopping experiences, and that consumers’ purchasing behavior varies across different online shopping experiences; consequently, the best predictors of the success of different online products will therefore vary depending on what consumers are buying and why and how they are buying it.     

The effect of the nonhuman external regulator’s answer-until-correct (AUC) versus knowledge-of-result (KR) task feedback on children’s behavioral regulation during learning tasks

The present study was conducted to shed a new light on the nonhuman’s external regulation effect on children’s behavioral regulation through investigating the effect of the computer’s task feedback answer-until-correct (AUC) versus knowledge-of-result (KR) with 40 preschool children (boys/girls) divided into AUC-Condition versus KR-Condition. The Aginian’s methodology (Agina, Kommers, & Steehouder, 2010) with the latest updates (Agina, Kommers, & Steehouder, 2011) was used, which involves an isolated, computer-based learning system with three different computer’s agents for measuring self-regulation as a function of the task level selection, self-regulation as a function of task precision, and special agent for evaluating children’s satisfaction. It was hypothesized that AUC-Condition will outperform KR-Condition in verbalization intensity, manifested self-regulation, and the degree of satisfaction. Despite the results were not confirmed the hypothesis, the results generated by the game were consistent with the statistical results in which this consistency increases, to a great extent, the reliability of the Aginian’s measurements. However, both results were not confirmed Vygotsky’s view or Piaget’s view of self-regulation development as both concluded that thinking aloud and self-regulation have a reverse relationship and, therefore, thinking aloud, per se, can be used to explore the problems the children may not agree to talk about.     

Monitoring and improving Greek banking services using Bayesian Networks: An analysis of mystery shopping data

Mystery shopping is a well known marketing technique used by companies and marketing analysts to measure quality of service, and gather information about products and services. In this article, we analyse data from mystery shopping surveys via Bayesian Networks in order to examine and evaluate the quality of service offered by the loan departments of Greek Banks. We use mystery shopping visits to collect information about loan products and services and, by this way, evaluate the customer satisfaction and plan improvement strategies that will assist banks to reach their internal standards. Bayesian Networks not only provide a pictorial representation of the dependence structure between the characteristics of interest but also allow to evaluate, interpret and understand the effects of possible improvement strategies.     

The Effects of Social Networking Sites on Consumer–Brand Relationships

In the era of a vastly changing marketing communications environment, social media and social networking sites (SNS) have become an attractive outlet for brand promotions and advertising. As traditional media such as television, radio, and newspapers prove ineffective in establishing a valuable rapport with consumers, it is social networks which are expected to build bonds and engage online users into an amusing dialog, play, and intercourse with brands. This study applies an experimental design to assess the effects of SNS on the relationship between brands and consumers. Customer-based brand equity is adopted in this study as a reflective measure of consumer–brand connection. In order to evaluate hypothesized interactions, the linear mixed effects models are used. The results show very little (if any) impact of SNS on brand equity. Relevant explanations are discussed and further research directions are indicated.     

Applying domain knowledge and social information to product analysis and recommendations: an agent-based decision support system

Abstract: The advance of Internet and Web technologies has boosted the development of electronic commerce. More and more people have changed their traditional trading behaviors and started to conduct Internet shopping. However, the exponentially increasing product information provided by Internet enterprises causes the problem of information overload, and this inevitably reduces the customer's satisfaction and loyalty. To overcome this problem, in this paper we propose a multi‐agent system that is capable of eliciting expert knowledge and of recommending optimal products for individual consumers. The recommendations are based on both product knowledge from domain experts and the customer's preferences from system–consumer interactions. In addition, the system also uses behavior patterns collected from previous consumers to predict what the current consumer may expect. Experiments have been conducted and the results show that our system can give sensible recommendations, and it is able to adapt to the most up‐to‐date preferences for the customers.     

Evaluating the influence of YouTube advertising for attraction of young customers

Nowadays, we have been faced with an increasing number of people who are spending tremendous amounts of time all around the world on YouTube. To date, the factors that persuade customers to accept YouTube advertising as an advertising medium are not yet fully understood. The present paper identified four dimensions towards YouTube advertising (i.e., entertainment, Informativeness, Customization and irritation) which may be affected on advertising value as well as brand awareness, and accordingly on purchase intention of consumers. The conceptual model hypothesizes that ad value strategies are positively associated with brand awareness, which in turn influence perceived usefulness of You Tube and continued purchase behavior. For this study, data were collected from students studying at the Sapienza University of Rome. In total, 315 usable questionnaires were chosen in order to analysis of data for the variables. The results show that entertainment, informativeness and customization are the strongest positive drivers, while irritation is negatively related to YouTube advertising. On the other hand, advertising value through YouTube affects both brand awareness and purchase intention of consumers accordingly.     

Can consumers be persuaded on brand microblogs? An empirical study

Building upon the persuasion theory in the social psychology literature, this study investigates how companies can use microblogging services to influence consumers’ participation and brand loyalty. We develop and empirically test our research model using an online survey in China. Our findings show that persuasion factors, including information quality, perceived similarity, and source credibility, increase community commitment. Perceived similarity and source credibility exhibit bias effects on information quality. Community commitment affects participation and brand loyalty, which is also influenced by participation. We expect that this research can contribute to the existing literature and provide marketers with important practical suggestions.