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In recent years, consumers are increasingly attracted to nutraceuticals, an important part of food considered propitious for human health. Therefore, consumers are willingly switching to nutraceuticals and are ready to pay the premium price. This review aims to identify various factors that govern consumer purchasing of nutraceutical products. The outcomes presented in the review provide a closer understanding of consumer attitudes toward buying behavior and their impact on the growth of the global nutraceutical market. The nutraceutical market has been identified depending on the type of nutraceuticals, forms, and regions governing the nutraceutical market. Factors such as health consciousness, knowledge about a product, product availability, price, marketing strategies, and social factors influence consumers' actual buying behavior toward nutraceutical products. A mini survey in Mumbai city of India was conducted to add practical data to the review, and factors affecting consumers' willingness to buy nutraceutical products were identified. It was observed that the decision‐making toward buying nutraceutical products was affected by gender, age, education level, and acculturation. It was also identified that the legislation governing nutraceuticals needs to be harmonized throughout many parts of the world, which restricts the growth of this sector to some extent. The findings elucidate that nutraceutical industries should overcome the regulatory barriers and focus on developing innovative products, which will keep current consumers intact and help increase the consumer base and thus expand the nutraceutical market globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study compares the influence of sales promotions on brand attitude across promotion types over time. An experiment is conducted with 154 subjects, who are exposed to test materials for 12 weeks. Evidence shows that the long-term effects of sales promotions on brand attitude vary across deal types. Non-monetary promotions seem to work better in eliciting consumers' favorable brand attitude than monetary promotions over time. However, such effects are moderated by consumers' deal proneness. Although monetary promotions may induce more negative effects than non-monetary promotions, these effects are weaker for high deal-prone consumers than for low deal-prone consumers. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the relationship between materialism and name-brand consumption has been documented in literature, its relational mechanism is not well addressed. It can hardly explain why people buy brand products without really knowing about the brands. In this case, people may consume brand products not for material possessions but for social needs, such as a desire to have favorable social self-worth and to be respected in relation to others and social activities, which is defined as face (Ting-Toomey & Kurogi, 1998). The present study explored how the relationship between materialism and brand consciousness is influenced by face. The role of face was tested both as a moderator and as a mediator. The results showed that face consciousness, material values, and brand consciousness were significantly correlated but did not exhibit significant interaction. Multiple regression analyses support face not as a moderator, but as a partial mediator. The results provide new insights into the mechanisms of how materialism and face influence brand consciousness differently. The theoretical meaning and implications for marketing management are discussed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer behavioural scientists such as economists and marketing researchers are interested in the degree to which global convergence is occurring with respect to various consumer behaviour dimensions, particularly the extent that consumption patterns in products appear to evolve and become more similar across different parts of the world. With increasing internationalization and cultural cross-fertilization, the traditional societies of the world are converging in many ways. The strategic marketing of flavoured alcoholic beverages is a particularly interesting example of this evolutionary process to convergence. Consumers in countries of different cultural originations are developing preferences for the same products and show increasing sign of converging around global product identity. This article presents the results of a study analysing the evolutionary process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of consumer response to stockouts typically capture intended behavior. After a stockout experience, consumers are asked what they intend to do. In contrast, this research measured both intended and actual behavior. Consumers were interviewed twice; once immediately following the stockout experience to gauge intended behavior and a second time 30 days later to ask what they had actually done in response to the stockout. Accordingly, the goals of this research are to (1) compare consumer actual and intended behavior in response to stockouts and (2) examine product characteristics, consumer characteristics and situational variables that may explain the consumer's response. Key results suggest that indicated behavior is a good indicator of actual behavior in situations where the consumer intends to quit the search and a rather poor indicator when the consumer intends to delay the search. Finally, of the several product characteristics, consumer characteristics and situational variables examined, store loyalty, pre-visit agenda and product uniqueness have shown most promise to help managers understand consumer actual and intended response to stockouts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile advertising is gearing up for success, but researchers and practitioners need to understand how to measure the effectiveness of this advertising form—particularly the factors that drive mobile messages home in different cultures. This study identifies key measures of effectiveness as well as antecedent variables in the context of 629 Korean and American consumers. Entertainment and credibility were key factors predicting positive attitude and purchase intention among both Koreans and Americans. However, this study found multiple cross-cultural differences—particularly in informativeness, perceived interactivity, and the value of mobile advertising. Theoretical explanations and practical implications are suggested. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What factors cause a mature industry to re-enter a period of technological turbulence? This paper addresses this question by developing a model of technological evolution that incorporates both technological trajectories and a new concept: preference trajectories, which are cycles of incremental and discontinuous change in preferences. Preference discontinuities turn out to play an important role in triggering technological transitions in an industry. I illustrate the model with an historical study of the typesetter industry, which underwent three major technological transitions, each of which was driven by preference discontinuities. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims To assess the extent to which point-of purchase (POP) cigarette displays stimulate impulse purchases. Design Telephone-administered population survey. Setting Victoria, Australia. Participants A total of 2996 adults, among whom 526 smoked factory-made cigarettes and 67 were recent quitters (quit in the past 12 months). Measurements Reported cigarette purchase behaviour; perceived effect on smoking of removing cigarettes from view in retail outlets; reported urges to buy cigarettes as a result of seeing the cigarette display. Findings When shopping for items other than cigarettes, 25.2% of smokers purchased cigarettes at least sometimes on impulse as a result of seeing the cigarette display. Thirty-eight per cent of smokers who had tried to quit in the past 12 months and 33.9% of recent quitters experienced an urge to buy cigarettes as a result of seeing the retail cigarette display. One in five smokers trying to quit and one in eight recent quitters avoided stores where they usually bought cigarettes in case they might be tempted to purchase them. Many smokers (31.4%) thought the removal of cigarette displays from stores would make it easier for them to quit. Conclusions POP cigarette displays act as cues to smoke, even among those not explicitly intending to buy cigarettes, and those trying to avoid smoking. Effective POP marketing restrictions should encompass cigarette displays. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer ethics is a growing area of research that focused almost exclusively on consumers in the United States and, to a lesser degree, Europe and Asia. In this paper, we introduce an African element to the consumer ethics discourse by drawing on survey responses from over 300 Ghanaian consumers to explore their ethical beliefs and judgements. We analysed these data using regression techniques. Our findings show that Ghanaian consumers exhibit lower levels of ethics compared with their America counterparts, especially when the unethical actions facilitate the achievement of their goals. While Ghanaian consumers recognize the value of moral rules, they are prone to suspending their ethical positions as they deem necessary in a particular context. Implications for marketing strategy and future research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current models of market structure are descriptive in nature and lack theoretical grounding in consumer behavior. Such grounding is especially needed in the specification of marketing strategies. A self-regulatory model of consumer consideration-set formation will be employed as a basis of market structure in this article. The authors propose and show that consumers regulate their behavior according to goals at different levels of their goal hierarchies, which in turn determine brand consideration. Differences in the salience of goals at different hierarchical levels lead to differences in the composition of consideration sets. It is precisely these individual differences in brand consideration that determine the structure of a market. The analysis of consumers' goal hierarchies therefore answers, in part, the question of why a market has a certain structure. Hypotheses on brand consideration and the role of system- and principle-level goals are tested on a sample of 1,018 consumers of automobiles. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the last 50 years market segmentation has been considered to be a key concept in marketing strategy. As a means of tackling market heterogeneity, the underlying logic and managerial rationale for market segmentation is well established in the marketing literature. However, there is evidence to suggest that attempts by organizations to classify customers into distinct segments for whom product or services can be specifically tailored are proving to be difficult to implement in practice. As the business environment in which many organizations operate becomes increasingly uncertain and highly competitive, greater importance is now being attached to marketing knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to highlight market segmentation problems as a relevant area for a greater level of engagement of intelligent systems academic researchers and practitioners with their counterparts within the marketing discipline, in order to explore how data mining approaches can assist marketers in gaining valuable insights into patterns of consumer behaviour, which can then be used to inform market segmentation decision-making. Since the application of data mining within the marketing domain is only in its infancy, a research agenda is proposed to encourage greater interdisciplinary collaboration between information systems and marketing so that data mining can more noticeably enter the repertoire of analytical techniques being employed for segmentation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of green consumer behaviour, in particular purchasing and disposal, have largely focused on demographics and/or socio-demographics, with mixed and frequently contradictory results. To move the debate forward, we investigated a wide range of 40 sustainability activities with 78 consumers, who placed each activity on a matrix according to perceived effort and perceived difference to the environment. Patterns both across respondents and between certain pairs of activities were identified, and we suggest that this model increases our understanding of how consumers view sustainable activities. Marketers can use this information to consider marketing strategies that positively influence consumers' perceptions of such activities. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines brand alliances, a specific marketing strategy designed to transfer the positive brand equity of two or more partner brands to the newly created joint brand. The study explores how customer-based brand equity (that is, brand equity as seen from the customer's perspective) of partner brands affects consumer evaluations of an alliance brand; how the brand equity of one partner brand affects the other; how customer-based brand equity of the partner brands affects consumers' evaluations of the search, experience, and credence attribute performance of the alliance brand; and how product trial influences such evaluations. Results suggest that merely the act of pairing with another brand elevates consumers' evaluations of the partner brands' customer-based brand equity, and high-equity partners enhance pretrial evaluation of experience and credence attributes that are relevant to the high-equity partner. As hypothesized, product trial moderates the equity value of the alliance partner for experience attributes, and brand equity of the partner brands influences consumer perceptions of the alliance brand's equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author reviews three works by the geodemographer Michael J. Weiss, concluding that his trilogy provides material of considerable value to marketing or consumer researchers concerned with understanding patterns of consumption or with the formulation of marketing strategy. A partial reservation involves the difficulty of comprehending the overall structure of consumption patterns without a type of mapping that goes beyond the merely geographic to represent taste clusters by means of preference spaces derived by techniques like multidimensional scaling (MDS). The author illustrates such an extension by conducting an MDS analysis of data provided by Weiss in ways that appear to shed light on the power and profundity of the insights he offers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically reviews the report by Green, DeSarbo, and Kedia on the insensitivity of brand-choice simulations to attribute importance weights. The review suggests that results from two of their tout weight distortion conditions should be viewed with suspicion and that their procedure for selecting brand scores biased the sensitivity analysis and inflated individual-level hit rates. The most unfortunate problem is that their simulation-experimental design precludes a global test of the main research issue. Results are presented from an alternative simulation approach that has the power to detect the sensitivity of brand shares to a wide range of conditions that affect the shape of attribute weight distributions. The results suggest that conclusions of Greem, DeSarbo, and Kedia apply only to a limited domain and would not obtain in many likely market situations. Extentions to nonadditive decision structures are suggested and several unresolved issues are outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that a change from production to market orientation in Russia would mean that the Ministries of Trade must exert a greater influence than in the past in a multitude of ways: in product planning, in exchange of merchandise between stores, and so forth. Many procedures have been initiated which may prove helpful in getting wider participation by consumers in product planning. Consumers' conferences are held in which store managers and factory representatives participate to secure indications of consumers attitudes toward various products. Apparently decentralization is continuing, and through this more authority and responsibility for planning and allocation are transferred to the republic level. Retail and wholesale establishments have the right to return poor quality merchandise. The supplier has to pay transportation charges both ways. Factories warrant the quality of their products for one year and many large factories have their own repair shops in Moscow where durables are repaired free of charge.