http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/5186/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20878/ 2010-11-01T00:00:00Z n this article, the authors introduce attitude toward global products (AGP) and attitude toward local products (ALP) as generalized attitudinal constructs and address the four issues these constructs raise: (1) How are AGP and ALP related to each other? (2) What is the motivational structure underlying AGP and ALP? (3) Is the proposed theory culturally circumscribed, or does it generalize across countries? and (4) What are the managerially relevant implications of these consumer attitudes? To answer these questions, the authors propose and empirically test an integrated structure for AGP and ALP and their antecedents, organized around the powerful motivational concept of values. They test their theory using a unique data set involving 13,000 respondents from 28 countries in the Americas, Asia, and Europe, thus allowing for a global investigation of a global issue. The study findings provide managers with strategic direction on how to market their products in a globalized world. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/19516/ 2010-04-01T00:00:00Z Socially desirable responding (SDR) has been of long-standing interest to the field of marketing. Unfortunately, the construct has not always been well understood by marketing researchers. The authors provide a review of the SDR literature organized around three key issues—the conceptualization and measurement of SDR; the nomological constellation of personality traits, values, sociodemographics, and cultural factors associated with SDR; and the vexing issue of substance versus style in SDR measures. The authors review the current “state of the literature,” identify unresolved issues, and provide new empirical evidence to assess the generalizability of existing knowledge, which is disproportionately based on U.S. student samples, to a global context. The new evidence is derived from a large international data set involving 12,424 respondents in 26 countries on four continents. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/16847/ 2009-07-01T00:00:00Z In the last few decades, the measurement of marketing constructs has improved tremendously. Our discipline has also started to systematically catalogue our measurement knowledge in influential handbooks of marketing scales. However, at least two important issues remain. First, existing scales are often too long for administration in nonstudent samples or in applied studies. Second, existing (U.S.-developed) scales may contain items that are not informative about the underlying construct in particular countries, whereas relevant items tapping into local cultural expressions of the construct in question may be missing. To address these issues, we propose a new model that yields country-specific yet fully cross-nationally comparable short forms of unidimensional marketing scales. The procedure is based on hierarchical item response theory and optimal test design. The procedure is flexible in the sense that the researcher can specify various constraints on item content, scale length, and measurement precision. Because our procedure allows inclusion of country-specific (or "emic") items in standardized (or "etic") scales, it presents an important step toward resolving the emic-etic dilemma that has plagued international marketing research for decades. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/16806/ 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z We present a class of finite mixture multilevel multidimensional ordinal IRT models for large scale cross-cultural research. Our model is proposed for confirmatory research settings. Our prior for item parameters is a mixture distribution to accommodate situations where different groups of countries have different measurement operations, while countries within these groups are still allowed to be heterogeneous. A simulation study is conducted that shows that all parameters can be recovered. We also apply the model to real data on the two components of affective subjective well-being: positive affect and negative affect. The psychometric behavior of these two scales is studied in 28 countries across four continents. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/13593/ 2008-02-01T00:00:00Z Extreme response style (ERS) is an important threat to the validity of survey-based marketing research. In this article, the authors present a new item response theorybased model for measuring ERS. This model contributes to the ERS literature in two ways. First, the method improves on existing procedures by allowing different items to be differentially useful for measuring ERS and by accommodating the possibility that an item's usefulness differs across groups (e.g., countries). Second, the model integrates an advanced item response theory measurement model with a structural hierarchical model for studying antecedents of ERS. The authors simultaneously estimate a person's ERS score and individual- and group-level (country) drivers of ERS. Through simulations, they show that the new method improves on traditional procedures. They further apply the model to a large data set consisting of 12,506 consumers from 26 countries on four continents. The findings show that the model extensions are necessary to model the data adequately. Finally, they report substantive results about the effects of sociodemographic and national-cultural variables on ERS. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/10890/ 2007-12-19T00:00:00Z Cutting advertising budgets has traditionally been a popular reaction by companies around the globe when faced with a slacking economy. Still, anecdotal evidence suggests the presence of considerable cross-country variability in the cyclical sensitivity of advertising expenditures. We conduct a systematic investigation into the cyclical sensitivity of advertising expenditures in 37 countries across all continents, covering up to 25 years and four key media: magazines, newspapers, radio and television. While our findings confirm that advertising moves in the same direction as the general economic activity, we also show that advertising is considerably more sensitive to business-cycle fluctuations than the economy as a whole, with an average co-movement elasticity of 1.4. Interestingly, advertising’s cyclical dependence is systematically related to the cultural context in which companies operate. Advertising behaves less cyclically in countries high on long-term orientation and power distance, while advertising is more cyclical in countries high on uncertainty avoidance. Further, advertising is more sensitive to the business cycle in countries characterized by significant stock-market pressure and few foreign-owned multinationals. These results have important strategic implications for both global advertisers and their ad agencies. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/6997/ 2005-10-18T00:00:00Z This study investigates the cyclical dependence of private-label success in four countries. The results show that private-label share behaves countercyclically. Moreover, asymmetries are present in both the extent and speed of up- and down-ward movements in private-label share over the business cycle. Finally, part of private-labels’ share gain during contractions is found to be permanent. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/6924/ 2005-09-14T00:00:00Z An important development that contributes to store brands’ growing success in the grocery market is the increasing number of discount stores that sell predominantly own, private-label, brands. To fight private labels, manufacturers of national brands feel increasingly compelled to develop better trade relations with discounters. Some discounters, from their part, are looking for opportunities to differentiate themselves, and to move beyond a pure price-based competition, by extending their assortment with attractive national brands. In this study, we determine what factors drive national-brand success at discount stores, and lead to positive outcomes for both the manufacturer and the discounter. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/1062/ 2003-11-27T00:00:00Z The use of price promotions to stimulate brand and firm performance is increasing. We discuss how (i) the availability of longer scanner data time series, and (ii) persistence modeling, have lead to greater insights into the dynamic effects of price promotions, as one can now quantify their immediate, short-run, and long-run effectiveness. We review recent methodological developments, and illustrate how the analysis of numerous brands and product categories has resulted in various empirical generalizations. Finally, we argue that persistence modeling should not only be applied to traditional performance metrics such as sales, but also to metrics such as firm value and customer equity. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/175/ 2002-03-06T00:00:00Z How do competitors react to each other's price-promotion and advertising actions? How do these reactions influence the net sales impact we observe? We answer these questions by performing a large-scale empirical study of the short-run and long-run reactions to promotion and advertising shocks in over 400 consumer product categories, over a four-year time span. Competitive reaction can be passive, accommodating or retaliatory. We first develop a series of expectations on the type and intensity of reaction behavior, and on the moderators of this behavior. These expectations are assessed in two ways. First, vector-autoregressive models quantify the short-run and long-run effect of a promotion or advertising action on competitive sales and on competitive reactions. By cataloging the numerical results, we are able to formulate empirical generalizations of reaction behavior ("how do they react?"). Second, we estimate structural models of reaction intensity, in function of various market and competitive characteristics ("what are the drivers of reaction?"). Finally, by comparing our findings on reaction behavior with those on promotion and advertising effectiveness, we are able to evaluate competitive reaction behavior ("are they reacting as they should?"). A major finding is that competitive reaction is predominantly passive. When it is present, it is usually retaliatory in the same instrument, but accommodating or retaliatory in a different instrument. There are very few long-run consequences of any type of reaction behavior. We also report on several moderating effects that are in line with expectations, and that support the presence of a certain amount of rationality in competitive reaction behavior. The net impact of the over-time effects of advertising and price-promotion attacks, competitive reactions and the sales effectiveness of each, is that competitors' sales are generally not affected, and especially not in the long run. We weigh the evidence that this sales neutrality is "natural" (i.e., due to the nature of consumer response) versus "managed" (i.e., due to the vigilance and effectiveness of competitors), and conclude in favor of the former. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12575/ 1997-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12582/ 1986-01-01T00:00:00Z Door SWOKA is in 1981 het project 'Kwaliteitsperceptie van voeding' in het programma opgenomen, waarvoor met name van de kant van het Ministerie van Landbouw en Visserij belangstelling bestond. De centrale vraagstel1ing van dit project was: 'Op basis van welke elementen beoordelen consumenten de kwaliteit van voedingsmiddelen en welke betekenis heeft de factor kwali tei t in het beslissingsproces ten aanzien van de keuze van een bepaald voedingsmiddel'. Naar aanleiding hiervan is door de Werkgroep Consumentengedrag van de Landbouwhogeschool een globaal projectvoorstel geformuleerd. De uiteindelijke onderzoeksopzet is op basis van Iiter atuurstudie en een kwali tatief vooronderzoek tot stand gekomen. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/18387/ 1985-01-01T00:00:00Z Door SWOKA is in 1981 het project 'Kwaliteitsperceptie van voeding' in het programma opgenomen, waarvoor met name van de kant van het Ministerie van Landbouw en Visserij belangstelling bestond. De centrale vraagstelling van dit project was: 'Op basis van welke elementen beoordelen consumenten de kwaliteit van voedingsmiddelen en welke betekenis heeft de factor kwaliteit in het beslissingsproces ten aanzien van de keuze van een bepaald voedingsmiddel'. Naar aanleiding hiervan is door de Werkgroep Consumentengedrag van de Landbouwhogeschool een globaal projectvoorstel geformuleerd. De uiteindelijke onderzoeksopzet is op basis van literatuurstudie en een kwalitatief vooronderzoek tot stand gekomen.