Marion Garaus

The emergence of online grocery retailers challenges the pricing strategies of bricks-and-mortar supermarkets. Retailers can use electronic shelf labels (ESLs) to adopt dynamic pricing strategies, to reduce price adjustment costs, and to decrease the error potential associated with wrong prices. To date, no study has investigated consumer perspective on ESLs. The present research employs a field experiment to investigate consumers' acceptance and perceptions of ESLs. In line with the technology acceptance model, the findings reveal that shoppers perceive ESLs as easy to use; however, they are largely unaware of the benefits of ESLs. Furthermore, ESLs provide an easy way to identify a product's price. The results also indicate that ESLs positively influence product quality inferences and store image but do not affect price fairness perceptions.

The emergence of online grocery retailing challenges pricing strategies of brick-and-mortar stores. New developments for displaying prices at the point of sale, i.e. electronic shelf labels (ESL), allow retailers to employ dynamic pricing strategies. However, little is known about customers’ approval of ESL. While ESL endorsers point to the perfect matching between prices displayed on the shelves and stored in the retailers’ computerized data base for issuing checkout bills, opponents refer to negative consequences for consumers who might by confused by frequently varying prices. The current research reports results from a field experiment. Overall, the findings of this study reveal that consumers experience ESL positively. Compared to traditional price labels, ESL creates a more positive store image and favorable behavioral responses. Explanations and implications of the results for retailers and policy makers are discussed.

Emergent technologies offer retailers new opportunities for personalized promotional messages at the point-of-sale. Digital signage systems that employ face-reading software enable the identification of not only shoppers’ ages and genders, but also their mood states. Drawing on mood and digital signage literature, this research identifies and examines emotional targeting’s efficacy (i.e., matching digital signage content to shoppers’ current mood states) with consumer responses. Findings from a laboratory and online experiment reveal that emotional targeting increases purchase intentions, product-quality perceptions, and willingness to pay. Furthermore, matching content additionally to the product category strengthens these positive effects. However, disclosing targeting practices eliminates emotional targeting’s positive effects, as caused by feelings of manipulative intent.

An increase in obesity rates has caused policymakers and marketers to promote a healthy lifestyle by advertising healthy recipes. However, despite the general awareness of the importance of healthy eating, little is known about consumers’ responses to healthy recipes. This study tests a common heuristic in the field of healthy foods, namely, the unhealthy-tasty intuition, in the new context of online recipes. An online experiment (representative sample in Austria in terms of age and gender) and a real-world study advertising an online recipe with various labels (healthy, tasty and neutral) confirm the unhealthy-tasty intuition and reveal that healthy recipes have a negative influence on behavioral intentions. Both health and taste inferences serve as underlying mechanisms explaining the influence of healthy recipes on behavioral intentions. The negative effect of a health label can be eliminated when adding a taste label as well. From a practical perspective, marketers are advised to include taste cues that stimulate taste expectations in the healthy recipes that they advertise, thus boosting healthy eating habits among consumers.

The emergence and on-going development of digital signage (DS) systems result in a growing number of technological capabilities of such systems. While these technological capabilities have attracted considerable research attention in informatics, studies exploring their application and impact are scarce. Marketing, and especially retailing, represents an applied science that might benefit from DS. In support of this assumption, some studies demonstrate that the presence of DS showing emotional content creates favorable shopping experiences and positively influences consumer behavior. However, so far, little is known about what could be achieved with DS including its technological capabilities at the point of sale. Thus, this paper offers a short review of extant findings related to DS in retailing. Subsequently, we elaborate on two retailing-orientated functionalities for retailing and develop two specific research questions.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the new construct online shopper confusion and to identify online confusion causes and consequences. Design/methodology/approach Data obtained from a projective technique and a quantitative study were analyzed to identify online shopper confusion causes. Two experiments employing different stimulus materials tested the conceptualized consequences of online shopper confusion. Findings Confusing online store elements are classified into three online confusion causes. Data yielded from two experiments using fictitious and real shopping scenarios as stimulus material show that a confusing internet retail process leads to negative consumer reactions. Research limitations/implications The resulting taxonomy of confusing online store elements offers guidance on the creation of non-confusing online shopping trips, and highlights the relevance of a non-confusing internet retail process. Online shopper confusion is linked to negative behavioral reactions. Consequently, this research offers an explanation for undesirable consumer reactions in internet retailing. Practical implications The findings provide practitioners with concrete insights into how the internet retail process confuses shoppers which help to assess the confusion potential of their existing online stores and consider confusion issues in the development of new online stores. Originality/value This research is the first to explore confusion during the internet retail process. The multi-method approach offers highly valid insights into the causes and consequences of online shopper confusion.

Existing crowdsourcing research largely agrees that intrinsic motivation is essential for users' intention to submit ideas to company-hosted crowdsourcing initiatives. However, enhancing intrinsic motivation is particularly difficult in crowdsourcing settings, given the limited potential for personal exchange with others. Therefore, identifying effective interventions to stimulate intrinsic motivation is an important gap. We draw on research in analogous contexts characterized by the absence of significant others (e.g., creative artwork, sports, and self-directed learning). Using the self-determination theory as a theoretical foundation, we theorize that organizers can use monetary incentives (offering small rewards) and non-monetary rewards (increasing task complexity and using autonomy-supportive linguistic cues) to stimulate intrinsic motivation. In three lab-in-the-field experiments, we test our predictions. Quite counterintuitively, we find that small rewards (rather than no or large rewards) are an effective mechanism to intrinsically motivate users and increase their intention to submit their ideas to company-hosted idea crowdsourcing contests. Also, our findings reveal that increasing rather than lowering task complexity and using non-controlling rather than controlling linguistic cues can stimulate intrinsic motivation and submission intention. Our paper sheds first light on interventions stimulating intrinsic motivation in idea crowdsourcing. More generally, it also adds to the discussion of the small rewards effect.

Despite the knowledge that women engage more frequently in multitasking than men when using media devices, no study has explored how multitasking impacts the brand attitude of this target audience. The investigation of gender effects in the context of media multitasking would not only provide a better understanding of the individual elements which influence brand attitude in media multitasking situations but would also guide marketers in their targeting strategies. Likewise, the investigation of the role of advertising appeals follows the current call to concentrate on the role of advertising in media multitasking situations. To address these research gaps, the current research conducted two experimental studies to offer a new perspective on the impact of gender differences in processing styles (heuristic vs systematic processing) and their interaction with different advertising appeals (rational vs emotional appeals) on brand attitude in media single and multitasking. Study 1 employs an online experiment (gender x viewing situation x advertising appeal). Results demonstrate that media multitasking negatively affects brand attitude, and that women have a lower brand attitude in a media multitasking situation compared to a single tasking situation, while emotional advertisements neither strengthen nor attenuate the negative impact of media multitasking on brand attitude. Study 2 employs a more controlled online experiment (gender x viewing situation x advertising appeal) with a different product category. The results reveal a moderating effect on the influence of media multitasking on brand attitude, as mediated through attention toward the ad. Hence, attention toward the ad has been identified as underlying mechanism.

Despite the growing interest in waiting perception management, no study has yet explored how environmental distracters in retailing waiting areas influence overall store satisfaction. This field experiment revealed that digital signage mounted at the checkout area of a grocery store positively influenced overall store satisfaction by distracting shoppers from monitoring queuing time. The presence of a digital signage system reduced the perceived waiting time while also creating favorable waiting experiences. However, only the latter influenced store satisfaction. This research highlights the importance of creating favorable waiting experiences.

Recent research has identified digital signage (DS) as a promising element for creating atmospheric value. However, extant studies have explored shoppers' reactions to DS showing advertising content in hedonic shopping environments. Considering the potential of utilitarian shopping situations to evoke negative emotions, the current research investigates whether DS positively affects consumers' responses in task-oriented shopping situations. In doing so, it incorporates assumptions from the limited capacity model and resource matching theory into a theoretical framework to explain how task-relevant DS content influences impulse purchases and store loyalty. This relationship is mediated by emotional and cognitive processes. By drawing on findings from prior studies, this research further differentiates the effects of cognitive, affective, and mixed DS content on consumer responses. A field experiment tests the theoretically derived responses. The findings suggest that affective DS content creates positive emotions and increases impulsive purchases and store loyalty.

Die Gestaltung des Verkaufsraums stellt sowohl im Handel als auch in Dienstleistungsbetrieben einen wesentlichen Erfolgsfaktor dar. In diesem Buch lüften die Autoren viele der Geheimnisse, wie Sie in Ihrem Geschäft durch Maßnahmen der Ladengestaltung und des Visual Merchandising sowohl den Umsatz als auch die Kundenzufriedenheit steigern können. Unter anderem erfahren Sie: 1. Wie Sie bewirken, dass Kunden genau die Produkte finden, die Sie Ihnen verkaufen möchten. 2. Was Sie machen können, um die Orientierungsfreundlichkeit des Ladens zu erhöhen. 3. Wie Sie das Kaufverhalten durch Designfaktoren wie den Bodenbelag, die Decke und Spiegel beeinflussen können. 4. Wie Sie Produkte auf die aufmerksamkeitserregendste und profitabelste Weise präsentieren. 5. Wie Sie durch Farben, Düfte, Licht und Musik die Emotionen Ihrer Kunden ansprechen. 6. Wie Sie einprägsame Erlebnisse schaffen, die Ihre Kunden begeistern und in Kauflaune versetzen. 7. Wie Sie es schaffen, Ihr Geschäft unverwechselbar zu machen und von der Konkurrenz abzuheben. Das Buch enthält viele praktische, direkt umsetzbare Tipps, die alle auf soliden Forschungsergebnissen der Marketingwissenschaft und Konsumentenpsychologie sowie der Forschungs- und Beratungstätigkeit der Autoren beruhen.

In an age of self-service stores, saturated markets and ever more demanding customers, the careful and science-driven design of the point of sale has become a crucial success factor for both retailers and service businesses. In this book, the interested reader will find a variety of hands-on suggestions on how to optimize the design of retail stores and service environments to increase customer satisfaction and sales. While the focus is on the practical applicability of the concepts discussed, the book is nevertheless firmly grounded in consumer and psychological research. In this respect it is uniquely positioned vis-a-vis books written by artists, architects and interior designers which lack a solid research foundation and academic journals articles, which are often inaccessible to the educated yet non-specialized reader. In writing this book, the author draws on both the recent research literature and his own experience as a marketing consultant and consumer researcher. The intended audiences are marketing managers, small business owners and MBA students. Topics covered in the book include: goals and relevance of store design; design tips derived from environmental psychology; cognitive and affective approaches to store design and visual merchandising; use of ambient factors such as music, colors and scents; creation of emotional experiences and theming.

To trigger positive consumer responses, retailers spend large sums of money on arousing and entertaining store environment designs that do not always produce the desired positive consumer reactions. The current research provides a theoretical framework that offers an alternate explanation for shopper preferences regarding retail environments. Drawing on consumers' need for an environment that promotes understanding, this study indicates the importance of communicating a coherent store environment to effect store satisfaction and re-patronage intention. Harmonious store environments facilitate understanding and comprehension; they enhance information processing and pleasure judgment. One laboratory experiment and one field experiment tested the proposed research framework. Insights from evolutionary and aesthetic psychology, consumer behavior research, and the Asian practice of Feng Shui all guided the manipulation of music and aesthetic design variables to create atmospheric harmony. The findings of both studies suggest that harmonious store environments increase pleasure and positively impact shopping satisfaction and re-patronage intent, as mediated by shopping value. These findings offer a new perspective for creating pleasant store environments. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This study investigates residents’ emotional and behavioral responses to environmental changes caused by tourism development. Statistical analysis conducted on a comprehensive sample of 1,001 residents from Amsterdam, the Netherlands, explores emotional responses as an underlying mechanism used to explain residents’ behavioral responses as well as their tourism concern as boundary conditions for this mediating effect. In contributing to the extant debate on the role of place attachment (i.e., the bond between people and their environment) in predicting residents’ supportive behavior for tourism development, the findings reveal that high levels of place attachment generally result in oppositional behavior. Moreover, results confirm that emotions, as evoked by tourism-induced place change, explain residents’ supportive and oppositional responses. Positive emotional responses to tourism decrease the likelihood of residents’ oppositional behavior. High levels of tourism concern diminish the positive influence of place attachment on positive emotions.

The steadily increasing amount of waste requires new strategies for package waste reduction. One strategy is to switch from single-use plastic packaging to glass packaging; however, this strategy is only beneficial from an environmental perspective when complemented with a multi-use deposit refund system with standardized glass containers. This implies the loss of package shape as a differentiation criterion, which has been considered a highly relevant marketing instrument in the fast-moving consumer goods markets. Against this background, the current research investigates in an online experiment the suitability of anthropomorphized label designs on prompting purchase intentions in the context of reusable glass jars. The study further investigates the mediating roles of brand attitude and brand interest. Contrary to the postulated hypotheses, anthropomorphized labels negatively impact brand attitude, and the sequential mediation of anthropomorphism on brand interest and brand attitude on purchase intention was significant. Our findings reveal that anthropomorphized labels stimulate brand interest, which in turn positively affects purchase intention. The results emphasize the relevance of brand interest in package design and guides manufacturers, brand managers, and policymakers to effective differentiation strategies for standardized multi-use packages.

Advertising efficiency is a key metric in marketing and over the years several
studies reported a significant waste of advertising budget, a finding which calls for
strategies to increase advertising efficiency. While some factors, such as brand ex-
tensions or an optimal marketing mix, have already been identified as relevant de-
terminants of advertising efficiency, changes in consumer psychographics have so far
been neglected. The current study fills this gap by investigating how the emerg-
ing awareness and demand for corporate sustainability serves as a contextual factor
leveraging or hindering advertising efficiency. Furthermore, we investigate how ad-
vertising efficiency changed across various sectors from 2010 to 2019. A two-step
procedure was applied to analyze the secondary data of 1,950 observations from 195
US firms in five sectors over a period of 10 years. The resulting time series of firm-
specic multi-directional efficiency scores confirms that advertising efficiency varies
over time, justifying the relevance of a dynamic perspective for analyzing advertising
efficiency. Furthermore, in support of our main claim, the investigation of the rela-
tionship between advertising efficiency and the environmental, social and governance
performance of firms over time using a time-fixed effects panel regression confirms the
significant impact of corporate sustainability performance on advertising efficiency.
The results not only emphasize the relevance of corporate sustainability performance
in increasing advertising efficiency, but also guide marketers on strategic marketing
decisions related to the allocation of advertising budget.

The present paper focuses on an application of cue utilization theory in a service selection process using the example of sensory descriptive food names in restaurant menus. The authors develop a conceptual framework in order to explain the formation of service expectations and restaurant visit intentions based on anticipated emotions evoked by extrinsic cues. We employ an experimental between-subjects design with the type of provided sensory information serving as the manipulated factor. The empirical results indicate that sensory descriptive food names evoke anticipated emotions, which lead to enhanced service experience expectations and therewith positively affect restaurant visit intentions.

Shopper confusion represents a mental state often occurring in shopping situations. While extant research focuses on product-related consumer confusion, the current investigation examines store environmental retail shopper confusion. Combining research streams on store environment, environmental psychology, and categorization theory, the authors build a conceptual retail shopper confusion framework. An analysis of expert interviews and open-ended questionnaires distributed to grocery shoppers reveals a classification of retail shopper confusion causes into ambient, design, and social factors, as characterized by the environmental properties variety, novelty, complexity, and conflict. A mediation analysis by means of structural equation modeling confirms the mediating role of retail shopper confusion between cognitive fit with an environment and shopping value. Retail shopper confusion thus explains why shoppers experience low hedonic and utilitarian shopping values in certain shopping situations.

Despite the relevance of product packaging for product success, literature on the influence of package color on consumer behavior is scarce. Studies in related research fields indicate that congruity perceptions determine to a large extent consumer responses. In line with this argumentation, the current research investigates the influence of small deviation from product category color norms on consumer response variables. Drawing on processing fluency and categorization theory, a conceptual framework is developed which is tested by an online experiment. Results from MANOVAs and path analysis reveal that even small deviations from product category color norms result in moderate incongruity perceptions, that decreases favorable attitude, perceived product quality and purchase intention. This relationship is mediated by skepticism and interest.

Despite the growing amount of research on different aspects of product package
design, there is lack of empirical evidence with regard to how package color perceptions may influence consumer preferences. Based on categorization theory, the present paper explores responses to package colors that conform or do not conform to product category color norms. Results of two experiments show that atypical package colors implicate negative consequences to the brand. Findings indicate that perceived package color atypicality increases consumers’ skepticism and, contrary to expectations, decreases interest. These affective reactions negatively influence consumers’ product attitude which subsequently translates into lower purchase intention. The results provide important insights for theory and practice.

Although considerable research discusses the phenomenon of consumer confusion, extant literature lacks a validated scale to assess confusion experienced in shopping situations. The present research conceptualizes the construct retail shopper confusion and develops a scale that assesses confusion as expressed through the affective, cognitive, and conative subsystems. Five studies analyzed with multiple methods confirm the reliability and validity of the retail shopper confusion construct. Furthermore, this research provides empirical evidence that retail shopper confusion leads to avoidance behavior. The results of this study provide a new measurement instrument that explains negative consumer in-store reactions and offer several theoretical and practical implications.

Recent years have seen an increasing trend among consumers toward using two or more media simultaneously, a phenomenon known as media multitasking. The majority of the extant literature agrees that media multitasking has detrimental effects on advertising effectiveness. However, opportunities exist for reducing these negative effects or even creating effects favorable to advertising outcomes. Nevertheless, the literature on media multitasking during advertising exposure is highly fragmented and findings are inconclusive. This literature review synthesizes the extant studies on message processing in media multitasking situations. It develops a comprehensive conceptual framework on the effects of media multitasking on advertising effectiveness, with particular attention to mediating processes and moderating variables. The conceptual model explains the circumstances under which individuals devote voluntary or involuntary attention to advertisements during media multitasking, advances knowledge on the role of different sensory modalities, and reveals how the two types of information processing complement each other during simultaneous media usage.

The rapid evolution of information and mobile technologies enables consumers to use media content whenever and wherever they want. These developments have resulted in a new form of target audience behavior called “media multitasking.” Media multitasking describes simultaneous exposure to two or more types of media content. Extant research on this subject concentrates on the influence of media multitasking on message comprehension and recall for editorial content (i.e., TV programs). To date, limited research has examined whether simultaneous exposure to two advertisements on two devices benefits or harms message effectiveness. The current research attempts to fill this research gap by investigating the effect of media multitasking with TV and mobile Internet advertisements on message effectiveness. In particular, an online experiment confirms the assumption that media multitasking harms message effectiveness. Contrary to the theoretically derived hypotheses, it does not matter whether consumers are exposed to the same or different advertising messages during media multitasking situations. The consideration of two moderating variables—gender and media multitasking frequency—offers further insights into the individual factors that affect message effectiveness during simultaneous versus sequential media exposure.

Der stationäre Handel reagiert auf den zunehmenden Druck des Onlinehandels unter anderem mit Erlebnisstrategien. Allerdings kann eine allzu erregende Laden­gestaltung Konsumenten verwirren. Der vorliegende Beitrag konzeptualisiert das Konstrukt Einkaufsverwirrung und untersucht die damit verbundenen Konse­quenzen. Das Ergebnis eines Experiments bestätigt die zuvor theoretisch abgeleitete Annahme, dass die Einkaufsverwirrung zu einem für den Handel nachteiligen Vermeidungsverhalten führt. Allerdings moderiert die Einkaufsmotivation (hedonisch vs. nutzenorientiert) diese Beziehung. Der Beitrag möchte neue Erkenntnisse für die Konsumentenverhaltensforschung sowie praktische Implikationen bieten.