Why do consumers sometimes act against their own better judgment, engaging in behavior that is often regretted after the fact and that would have been rejected with adequate forethought? More generally, how do consumers attempt to maintain self-control in the face of time-inconsistent preferences? This article addresses consumer impatience by developing a decision-theoretic model based on reference points. The model explains how and why consumers experience sudden increases in desire for a product, increases that can result in the temporary overriding of long-term preferences. Tactics that consumers use to control their own behavior are also discussed. Consumer self-control is framed as a struggle between two psychological forces, desire and willpower. Finally, two general classes of self-control strategies are described: those that directly reduce desire, and those that overcome desire through will power.
The authors argue that what consumers learn from the experience of using products is not a simple matter of discovering objective truth. They frame the problem of learning from experience as a four-stage process (hypothesizing—exposure—encoding—integration) with three moderating factors (familiarity with the domain, motivation to learn, and the ambiguity of the information environment). The framework is used to identify where learning from product consumption experience is most open to managerial influence. The authors discuss strategic tools for managing experiential learning and consider applications to the simulation of learning in concept and pre-test-market product testing.
Our objective in this paper is to explain across-retailer variation in private label performance. Although retailers have lots to gain by better understanding the determinants of successful store brand programs, this knowledge also is very valuable to manufacturers. Lessons learned from competing with other national brands may not transfer one-to-one to the store brand case because, quite simply, a popular private label program changes the status of the retailer from being solely a customer to also a competitor. When customers are competitors, standard predatory tactics may not be appropriate; instead there is a premium on creating a successful basis for coexistence. Our findings from this study are therefore expected to have a broad based appeal both to practitioners and academics working in the evolving area of store brands. Store brands are the only brand for which the retailer must take on all responsibility—from development, sourcing, and warehousing to merchandising and marketing. Unlike decisions retailers take about national brands, which in large measure are driven by the manufacturer's actions, the retailer plays a more determinant role in the success or failure of its own label. Based on data from 34 food categories for 106 major supermarket chains operating in the largest 50 retail markets in the U.S., we use regression-based analyses to show that variation in store brand performance across retailers is systematically related to underlying consumer, retailer, and manufacturer factors. The key insights provided by our analysis are as follows: (1) Overall chain strategy in terms of commitment to quality, breadth of private label offerings, use of own name for private label, a premium brand offering, and number of stores consistently enhance the retailer's store brand performance in all categories. Also, the extent to which the retailer serves a customer base containing less wealthy and more elderly households and operates in less competitive markets improves the performance of the store brand. (2) The everyday low price (EDLP) positioning benefits the store brand but only in lower quality categories where the value positioning of the store may be better aligned with the price advantage of the store brand. (3) Supporting recent statements in the popular press, our analysis suggests that retailer promotional support can significantly enhance private label performance. (4) Retailers often use national brands to draw customers to their stores. Retailers who pursue this traffic building strategy usually carry more national brands, deeper assortments, and offer better everyday (lower price gap) and promotional prices on national brands. Each of these actions works against the retailer's own brands, highlighting the important balancing act the retailer must perform to profitably manage the sales revenue and margin mix in each of their categories. At the same time, adding a higher quality premium store brand program may mitigate this tradeoff. (5) Unlike cross-category studies, our within-category across-retail...
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.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.