In retail environments, consumers commonly evaluate products while standing on some type of flooring and concurrently being exposed to music; however, no study has examined the interaction of these two atmospheric cues. To bridge this gap, this research examines whether retailers can benefit from creating multisensory atmospheric congruent rather than incongruent retail environments of flooring and music. The results of an experiment in a real retail store reveal positive effects of multisensory congruent retail environments (e.g., soft music combined with soft flooring) on product evaluations. This study provides a new process explanation with consumers’ purchase‐related self‐confidence mediating these effects. Specifically, consumers in congruent rather than incongruent retail environments experience more purchase‐related self‐confidence, which in turn leads to more favorable product evaluations. Furthermore, this study shows that consumers with a low rather than a high preference for haptic information are influenced more by multisensory atmospheric congruence when evaluating a product haptically.
“Over-the-air” software upgrades are a recent trend in the automotive industry to distribute firmware directly to customers via the Internet. These upgrades can endow the vehicle with completely new functions that enhance safety, convenience, and performance. The US manufacturer Tesla was the first to integrate such upgrades on a regular basis to let customers participate in continuous innovation, giving Tesla a competitive edge over rival brands. Since then, several premium manufacturers have followed suit. This research examines how consumers perceive and respond to software upgradeability in durable high-tech products vis-à-vis integral product alternatives and hardware upgradeability. Results of four studies with more than 3,000 participants suggest that consumers evaluate software upgrades less positive than hardware upgrades because they perceive software as less capable to enhance product quality. However, bundling software upgrades to larger packages and stressing the low effort required to integrate new functions are viable ways to remedy this perception. Importantly, the findings suggest that offering products fully equipped with all premium functions to be unlocked via software upgrades—as done by several premium brands—is a risky strategy. Consumers react negatively to the artificial restriction of functionalities, irrespective of whether these are offered as temporary leases or permanent purchases. The findings provide initial evidence for the game-changing potential of software upgradeability and offer managers concrete guidance for designing and marketing upgradeable hardware-software platforms.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.