Psychology and Marketing

It is a marketplace reality that marketing managers sometimes inflict switching costs on their customers, to inhibit them from defecting to new suppliers. In a competitive setting, such as the Internet market, where competition may be only one click away, has the potential of switching costs as an exit barrier and a binding ingredient of customer loyalty become altered? To address that issue, this article examines the moderating effects of switching costs on customer loyalty through both satisfaction and perceived‐value measures. The results, evoked from a Web‐based survey of online service users, indicate that companies that strive for customer loyalty should focus primarily on satisfaction and perceived value. The moderating effects of switching costs on the association of customer loyalty and customer satisfaction and perceived value are significant only when the level of customer satisfaction or perceived value is above average. In light of the major findings, the article sets forth strategic implications for customer loyalty in the setting of electronic commerce. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Mobile payments (MPs) are predicted to be one of the future's most successful mobile services but have achieved limited acceptance in developed countries to date. PCs are still the preferred technology for online shopping in the United Kingdom but the continued growth of mobile commerce (MC) is highly correlated with the success of remote MPs (RMPs). Currently MP research has largely ignored the variations between different MP solutions, and existing MP adoption studies have predominantly utilized Davis’ (1989) Technology Acceptance Model, which has been criticized for having a deterministic approach without much consideration for users’ individual characteristics. Therefore, this study applied the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), extended with more consumer‐related constructs, to explore the factors affecting nonusers’ intentions to adopt RMP in the United Kingdom. Quantitative data were collected (n = 268) and structural equation modeling was undertaken. The findings revealed that performance expectancy, social influence, innovativeness, and perceived risk significantly influenced nonusers’ intentions to adopt RMP, whereas effort expectancy did not. Inclusion of MP knowledge as a moderating variable revealed that there was a significant difference in the effect of trust on behavioral intention for those who knew about MP than for those who did not. These findings have important theoretical and practical implications, particularly for the development and marketing of RMP, which will support the long‐term success of MC.

This study examines how loyalty influences the relationship between customer satisfaction (CS) and repurchase intention (RPI). Considering the effect of time, the study introduces adjusted expectations, which are expectations updated after consumption experience. The present study investigates the role of adjusted expectations in the CS–RPI link. With structural‐equation analysis, the proposed model was tested in the family‐restaurant setting. The results show that adjusted expectations can mediate the effect of CS on RPI. The results also indicate that processes underlying the CS–RPI link are different between low‐loyalty and high‐loyalty customers. Specifically, the transient route, which reflects the indirect path from CS to RPI via adjusted expectations, has a greater impact for nonloyals than for loyals. On the other hand, the chronic route, which represents the direct path from CS to RPI, has a greater impact for loyals than for nonloyals. CS is found to have no direct influence on RPI for low‐loyalty customers. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Storytelling is pervasive through life. Much information is stored, indexed, and retrieved in the form of stories. Although lectures tend to put people to sleep, stories move them to action. People relate to each other in terms of stories—and products and brands often play both central and peripheral roles in their stories. To aid storytelling research in consumer psychology, this article develops a narrative theory that describes how consumers use brands as props or anthropomorphic actors in stories they report about themselves and others. Such drama enactments enable these storytellers to experience powerful myths that reflect psychological archetypes. The article includes findings from case study research that probes propositions of the theory. Implications for consumer psychology and marketing practice follow the discussion of the findings. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Purchase‐decision involvement is distinguished from product‐class involvement. Literature on consumer involvement is shown to be lacking a measure of purchase involvement. Therefore, a scale of purchase‐decision involvement is developed. Two empirical studies are described and are shown to furnish tests of convergent and discriminant validities. The individual items of the proposed scale are explicitly embedded in the purchase‐decision context, and the scale is simple and parsimonious, making it especially useful to practitioners.

In the last few decades, scholars and practitioners have increasingly tried to understand the factors that influence technology acceptance. Theories and models developed by scholars have tended to focus on the role of cognition and have rarely included affect. The few studies that have incorporated affect have tended to measure a single emotion rather than modeling it comprehensively. This research addresses that inadequacy in our understanding of technology adoption by merging two previously unrelated models: TAM (the Technology Acceptance Model) and PAD (the Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance paradigm of affect). This study also examines an enhanced view of cognition. The product of this unified theoretical framework is referred to as the Consumer Acceptance of Technology (CAT) model. The results of a test using structural equation modeling provide empirical support for the model. Overall, the CAT model explains over 50% of the variance in consumer adoption intentions, a considerable increase compared to TAM. These findings suggest that substantial improvement in the prediction of technology adoption decisions is possible by use of this model with its integration of affect and cognition. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The initial hype and fanfare from the Meta Platforms view of how the metaverse could be brought to life has evolved into an ongoing discussion of not only the metaverse's impact on users and organizations but also the societal and cultural implications of widespread usage. The potential of consumer interaction with brands within the metaverse has engendered significant debate within the marketing‐focused discourse on the key challenges and transformative opportunities for marketers. Drawing on insights from expert contributors, this study examines the marketing implications of the hypothetical widespread adoption of the metaverse. We identify new research directions and propose a new framework offering valuable contributions for academia, practice, and policy makers. Our future research agenda culminates in a checklist for researchers which clarifies how the metaverse can be beneficial to digital marketing and advertising, branding, services, value creation, and consumer wellbeing.

Touch plays an important, if often underacknowledged, role in our evaluation/appreciation of many different products. It is unsurprising, therefore, that there has been such a recent growth of interest in “tactile branding” and tactile marketing. This article reviews the evidence from the fields of marketing, psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, demonstrating just how important the feel of a product, not to mention the feel of its packaging, can be in determining people's overall product evaluation. Problems for tactile design associated with the growth of the aging population, and the growth of Internet‐based shopping, are highlighted. The critical role that touch can play in multisensory product design, appreciation, and marketing is also discussed, as is the increasingly frequent use by marketers of synesthetic correspondences to evoke tactile sensations via the visual and auditory modalities. We put forward the argument that tactile stimulation may influence multisensory product evaluation by means of affective ventriloquism: Our suggestion is that the hedonic attributes of a product perceived via one modality (such as touch) can “pull” (or bias) a person's estimates of the quality and pleasantness of the product derived from other sensory modalities into alignment, and by so doing, modulate a person's overall (multisensory) product experience. What is more, powerful mathematical modeling approaches now exist to predict the magnitude of this kind of intersensory (or crossmodal) interaction effect, hence offering the promise of a more scientific approach to tactile design/marketing in the coming years. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Lý thuyết chuỗi phương tiện-kết quả và phương pháp laddering đã được sử dụng để xác định các mục tiêu liên quan đến người tiêu dùng trong việc tái chế, cũng như các mối quan hệ giữa các mục tiêu đó. Tầm quan trọng của các mục tiêu và cấu trúc phân cấp của chúng cũng đã được kiểm tra, và ảnh hưởng của chúng đối với thái độ, chuẩn mực chủ quan và hành vi trong quá khứ cũng được xác định. Dữ liệu đã được thu thập từ 133 người tiêu dùng trong một cộng đồng đô thị cỡ vừa bằng cách sử dụng quy trình quay số ngẫu nhiên. Khung phân tích tổng thể được hình thành là nơi các mục tiêu cụ thể dẫn đến các mục tiêu trừu tượng hơn, và thái độ cùng hành vi trong quá khứ can thiệp giữa các mục tiêu và ý định trong quá trình ra quyết định. Tổng cộng có mười chín mục tiêu đã được phát hiện, trong đó 15 mục tiêu cuối cùng được xác định là nổi bật. Các mục tiêu cao nhất trong phân cấp là “thúc đẩy sức khỏe/tránh bệnh tật,” “đạt được mục tiêu duy trì sự sống,” và “đảm bảo cho các thế hệ tương lai.” Các mục tiêu bậc thấp chính—“tránh làm đầy bãi rác,” “giảm chất thải,” “tái sử dụng vật liệu,” và “bảo vệ môi trường”—hoạt động thông qua các mục tiêu trung gian như “giảm rác thải lộn xộn,” “hạn chế ô nhiễm,” “tiết kiệm tài nguyên,” và “bảo vệ hành tinh.” Hai mục tiêu cuối cùng quan trọng cũng nằm ở các cấp độ trung gian trong phân cấp là “tiết kiệm/kiếm tiền” và “đó là điều đúng đắn để làm.” © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.