Journal of Marketing Research

Empirical evidence is provided to support the general theory that culture is a determinant of certain aspects of consumer behavior. Value dimensions developed to study the cultural orientations within American society were found to correlate with the ownership of generic automobile categories.

Recent debate on comparative advertising has focused on its ethical rather than its effectiveness dimension. A laboratory experiment was performed to assess the communications-effectiveness of a comparative advertisement in relation to its “brand X” counterpart. Results indicate that though a comparative advertising format can enhance message recall to some extent, it also can result in some loss of effectiveness from consumer perceptions of low credibility of its claims.

A general procedure is outlined for estimating the sampling error in sales forecasts of new nondurable consumer products. The technique is illustrated for the Parfitt and Collins model with actual data from four new product introductions.

The study reported tests the hypotheses that the consumer's use of a specific judgmental model in evaluating a product is a function of prior familiarity and/or product complexity. The results indicate that the two factors influence the respondent's selection of judgmental models.

The experiment shows how effects of marketing action on the consumer can be investigated by use of small ad hoc consumer panels and door-to-door selling. The effects of price differentials, a promotion, advertising, an out-of-stock condition, the introduction of a new product, and certain weak forms of brand differentiation are examined. The experiment also confirms earlier findings that buyer behavior under semi-artificial conditions resembles that in real life.

A content analysis on the portrayal of women in print advertisements is reported. A comparison with 1970 and 1972 studies suggests that advertisements have not kept up with the times in portraying women in the wide variety of roles they play in today's world.

Marketing theorists have assumed that changes in market structure variables could affect consumer loyalty behavior. This report presents supportive evidence from an ex post facto experiment showing that a change in a business’ ownership was related to significantly altered brand and store loyalty patterns.

An experimental examination was undertaken of a corrective advertising message which had been ordered by an FTC administrative law judge. Results indicate that the corrective advertisement had a substantial influence on the brand belief it was intended to affect and on a related belief which was not the target of the communication. The effect of including the FTC as the source of the corrective message was studied also.

Perceived risk is conceptualized in terms of expected negative utility associated with automobile brand preferences. Empirical evidence supports the notion that importance of loss is more useful as a segmentation variable than as a component in a multiplicative model. The findings also Indicate that probability of loss may operate at the handled risk level and importance of loss at the inherent risk level.

An experiment varying question form in an interview gathering data by telephone produced significant differences in the income estimates. Two of the four forms tested proved to yield better estimates of household income.

A recent JMR article summarized attribution theory and presented data from an experiment predicated on this theoretical framework. Several conceptual and methodological issues in this original article are discussed and the conclusions drawn from the data are questioned.

An empirical study of the relationship between brand choice behavior and the distances between ideal points and brands displayed in joint-space configurations revealed five operative models of choice behavior. Seventy-three of 77 individual models were significant and 57 produced significant predictions of future brand choice behavior.