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Across three laboratory studies, a biometric eye tracking and facial recognition experiment, and a secondary data analysis, we reveal the unique interaction of consumer numeracy and numerical processing fluency as a significant determinant of consumer response to 99-ending prices. We argue that less numerate individuals create mental analog representations around 99-ending prices' left digits, whereas highly numerate individuals encode 99-ending prices as their one-cent neighbor, with consumers responding more favorably to prices when they mentally encode them around a fluent number. Specifically, highly numerate individuals respond more favorably when 99-ending prices (e.g. 17.99) border a fluent number (i.e. 18). Conversely, less numerate individuals respond more favorably when 99-ending prices (e.g. 16.99) contain fluent left digits (i.e. 16). We provide empirical evidence for the effects of this processing difference on liking, purchase intentions, and actual sales. We also obtain evidence for the underlying process using eye tracking and facial recognition that reveals that highly (vs. less) numerate individuals exhibit less anxiety when processing multi-digit prices, and consequently fixate sooner, more frequently, and for longer durations on the right digits of a price. The findings contribute significantly to the price processing literature and yield substantial managerial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors address the challenges individuals face when managing their professional brands while working in "prestigious posts" (high-profile jobs in established organizations) and striving to maintain career mobility. Using a case study approach and drawing on sociological field theories, the authors identify two types of tensions (resource-based and identity-based) that are triggered by prestigious posts and four practices conducive to mitigating tensions and maintaining mobility. Beyond extending prior theory on person brands to include consideration of career mobility, this work has implications for better understanding the complexities of affiliations between professionals and the brands they work for. It suggests that individuals who are managing their professional brands while holding prestigious posts need to strike a balance between benefiting from the affiliation in the eyes of external stakeholders and at the same time maintaining their professional independence to maintain career mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertising creative is widely accepted as critical to advertising success. However, generalizations of what works in applied settings across different conditions are few. The present study replicates the seminal work of Stewart and Furse (1986), who investigated the effect of more than 150 creative devices on several copy-testing measures of advertising effectiveness. We replicate the analysis using the original codebook but examine the link to in-market, short-term sales effectiveness. We use a large sample of 312 television ads from several product categories aired in multiple countries. Our findings indicate that the codebook remains relevant for characterizing current advertising practices but many of the creative devices found most (or least) effective differ to those from the original study. Similar to Stewart and Furse (1986), no single creative device can do much alone to explain sales effectiveness. There is no one simple cookbook for making sales effective advertising, though such research offers some important guidelines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The three key ad elements (brand, pictorial, and text) each have unique superiority effects on attention to advertisements, which are on par with many commonly held ideas in marketing practice. This is the main conclusion of an analysis of 1363 print advertisements tested with infrared eye-tracking methodology on more than 3600 consumers. The pictorial is superior in capturing attention, independent of its size. The text element best captures attention in direct proportion to its surface size. The brand element most effectively transfers attention to the other elements. Only increments in the text element's surface size produce a net gain in attention to the advertisement as a whole. The authors discuss how their findings can be used to render more effective decisions in advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In traditional Chinese superstition, the numerical digit 8 is associated with prosperity and good luck and the digit 4 is associated with death. An examination of the price endings used in a sample of Chinese price advertisements indicates a distinct tendency to favor the digit 8 and to avoid the digit 4. These results constitute evidence of the role of superstition in the Chinese marketplace and provide guidance for setting prices in this increasingly important market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a controlled experiment, use of the 99 rather than the 00 price ending (e.g., using $49.99 rather than $50.00) affects the impression created by a price advertisement. The 99 ending increases the likelihood that viewers judge an advertised price as relatively low and as representing a discount. However, in addition to these price-image effects, the 99 ending has negative effects on quality image in the ads sponsored by higher quality retailers. These results suggest that the choice of rightmost digits is an important executional variable in price advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the appropriateness of residual income as a measure of sales management's performance. Strategy implementation is of critical importance in the projected slow-growth economy of the 1980s and into the 1990s. Appropriate sales force behavior is critical for effective implementation of marketing strategy. Sales managers and salespeople have traditionally been evaluated on sales volume or sales-based ratios, e.g., sales growth, sales to quota, or market share. Surveys of sales managers suggest these are still the most common measures of sales force performance. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the appropriateness of residual income as a measure of sales management's performance. By including in a single measure both sales growth and profit performance, residual income is shown to be conceptually superior to the most comprehensive sales force profit measure currently used, return on assets managed. Despite slower forecasted economic growth, organizations are unlikely to focus exclusively on profits. This can be seen by examining the successful business strategies of individual firms.

The relationships between 24 print ad characteristics and recall, readership, and inquiry-generation measures of effectiveness are examined for 1160 industrial ads. Both recall and readership are strongly related to format and content characteristics of industrial ads. The relationship between inquiry-generation and ad characteristics is significant but weaker. Some characteristics, such as ad size and position in the magazine, are consistently related to effectiveness across product categories and effectiveness measures. The effects of other characteristics, such as the use of four colors and attention-getting techniques, are specific to the product category and effectiveness measure. In addition to these, substantive findings, methodological issues in model development and testing are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An understanding of ethical issues involved in marketing research may contribute to the quality of research data. This article discusses subjects' rights in marketing research and how their violation may affect the quality of data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A currently popular position among consumer advocates and many public policy makers is that more product information is better. A 3 (number of brands) X 3 (number of items of information per brand) factorial experiment which tested this contention revealed that, while consumers do feel more satisfied and less confused, they actually make poorer purchase decisions with more information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analysis of the rightmost digits of selling prices in a sample of retail price advertisements confirmed past findings indicating the overrepresentation of the digits 0, 5, and 9. The high cognitive accessibility of round numbers can account for the overrepresentation of 0- and 5-ending prices and suggests the existence of two effects that could account for the overrepresentation of 9-ending prices: (1) a tendency of consumers to perceive a 9-ending price as a round-number price with a small amount given back and (2) a tendency of consumers to underestimate a 9-ending price by encoding it as the first round number evoked during incomplete left-to-right processing. Analysis of the patterns of rightmost digits observed in the sample provides supportive evidence particularly for the second of these two 9-ending effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model is presented that is similar to Lancaster's model of consumer demand, but that does not use the most criticized assumptions of this model. Some empirical results are presented. Practical applications of the model are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hypothesis that finite limits exist to the amount of information consumers can effectively use was tested by operationalizing information load in terms of number of brands and amount of information per brand provided. The results of an experiment involving 192 housewives tend to confirm this hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The competitive market is eroding. To an increasing degree, transactions are occurring in internal markets within the framework of long-term relationships. The emerging domesticated markets call for more attention to the management of interorganizational systems and to the political aspects of economic decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports a replication of the Stewart and Furse (1986) study of the influence of executional factors on advertising performance. Using a new set of 1,017 commercials, coded for content, the replication finds the original results reported by Stewart and Furse are highly robust. The use of a brand-differentiating message and a strong product focus continue to manifest a positive impact on measures of recall, comprehension, and persuasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to recent concern about the motivation malaise, a relatively simple scale--The Rokeach Value Survey-is recommended for measuring values at the employee-manager point of interface. Hopefully it will improve the working relationship of employees and managers and thereby the personal work satisfaction of each. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not all product attributes are equally important in determining consumer preferences. This article distinguishes determinant attributes from nondeterminant ones and presents a cross-validation method for testing alternative approaches to identifying these key attributes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the heavy-half proportions studied by Twedt and others. The models that are developed illustrate the importance of explicitly including a stochastic component when analyzing individual consumer behavior. The need for appropriate chance models with which to compare empirical findings is also demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information is presented about several papers discussed at the American Marketing Association Conference held in December 1949 in New York City. Topics include consumer research, marketing research, and sales management. The event featured presentations by Darrell B. Lewis from New York University and Philip Salisbury, editor of "Sales Management" magazine.