Building brands through experiential events: when entertainment meets education

Experiential marketing is increasingly getting companies’ attention as a strategy to interact with consumers and engage them to better convey their brand image and positioning. However, its effects are still unclear both at the aggregate and at the individual levels. This paper addresses this topic and presents a field experiment investigating the effects of experiential marketing on brand image in retailing. Two similar consumer electronics stores with different strategies – traditional vs. experiential – constitutes the setting in which a field experiment has been run. Two similar samples of consumers took part in our study by visiting one of these two stores, and answering a questionnaire before and after the visit with the primary goal to investigate the brand image and its changes due to the shopping visit. Brand image was measured as the overall brand attitude – via four items – and five specific desired brand claims that the company wanted to convey to consumers. Findings show that engaged consumers through the multisensory and interactive event arranged in the experiential store register higher levels of both brand attitude and all brand claims than those visiting the traditional store, and that the increase in both the dependent variables after the visit of the experiential store is higher than the increase in the traditional store. Thus, experiential stores are not only able to entertain consumers, but they are also able to educate them, by conveying them a set of brand claims more effectively than the traditional stor

“Synchrony effect on customers' response and behavior", International Journal of Marketing Research, volume 26, issue 1, 2009

Past research demonstrates that most people have a certain time of day when they are most alert and able to perform at their best. The authors investigate the effect of consumers' morningness-eveningness orientation and time of day on their performance. Two experiments explore whether synchrony between peak circadian periods and time of testing influences consumers' performance. Results suggest robust synchrony and time-of-day effects on the dependent variables. Study 1 shows that circadian rhythm strongly influences customers' waiting time and service evaluations. The use of signal-detection methods in Study 2 reveals that participants were better able to recall and recognize ads when tests were performed during their peak circadian time. Overall, subjects showed better performance at their peak than at their off-peak time of day. The authors discuss the theoretical significance of their findings and the managerial implications for marketing research and practice

Does advertising communicate competence in B2B? A content analysis in the fashion industry

Si analizzano le modalità con le quali un'impresa attiva nel comparto BtoB possa comunicare le proprie competenze attraverso la pubblicità. Il metodo impiegato è la content analysis

Consumers’ Journey between Liquid and Solid Consumption

Sharing economy brought changes both at the macroeconomic and the individual level. New models of consumption, such as the liquid one, are becoming very frequent, shaping countries’ productive systems and consumers’ habits. This paper—combining both theoretical approaches—aims at measuring the individual characteristics that induce consumers to prefer liquid versus solid consumption. First, the article contextualizes the topic from a broader, macroeconomic perspective, and later on, it narrows its angle of view making it rather microeconomic and behavioral. In this specific regard, by means of a cluster analysis, four profiles of consumers are identified: (1) Rational and liquid; (2) Hybrid and question mark; (3) Solid in transition; (4) Hyper solid. Characteristics as well as theoretical and managerial implications are outlined for each cluster. This research focusing on emerging consumer behavior contributes to the current debate on solid and liquid consumption (i) exploring the continuum between these two extremes, (ii) defining a first behavioral profile of customer that are traveling between solid and liquid state and (iii) designing a possible way to target such a blurred and fast evolving customer that mostly qualifies a global and rapidly evolving economic environment

Investigating the Effect of Mobile In-store Promotions on Purchase Intention: Is WhatsApp More Effective? An Abstract

Mobile devices possess the ability to enable consumers to use and interact with in-store based technology (Grewal et al. 2016). Despite the increasing interest in this topic, relevant both for academics and practitioners, to date, only few studies have focused on mobile in-store advertising and its effects on consumers’ decisions (Bues et al. 2017; Hui et al. 2013). Yet, closer insights are needed in order to address the literature gap regarding the drivers affecting in-store mobile advertising effectiveness. By focusing closely on location based advertising (LBA), this study investigates the effect of the platform used in the mobile promotion (Facebook–WhatsApp) and the content of the promotion (shopping goal congruent–shopping goal non-congruent) on consumers’ purchase intention. Specifically, the study hypothesizes that, due to the level of social presence perceived, WhatsApp mobile promotions are more effective in driving purchase intentions, and such effect will be greater when the promotion is congruent with the consumers’ goal. Social presence (SP) is defined as the degree to which a medium allows users to experience others as psychologically present (Short et al. 1976) and is an important construct that affects consumer’s reactions to marketing communication stimuli (Robert and Dennis, 2005). The level of SP changes according to the communication media types. For instance, Karapanos et al. (2016) showed how WhatsApp triggers higher level of social presence (SP) compared to Facebook. The perceived congruity between the shopping goal and the promotion, too, may affect consumers’ responses in a shopping setting (van't Riet et al. 2016). Congruently, we expect to find WhatsApp in-store mobile promotion having more positive effect on promotion redemption than Facebook in-store mobile promotion, because of the higher level of social presence triggered by WhatsApp. Also, we propose that this effect will be stronger when mobile ads are goal congruent. A pre-test and two experiments were conducted. Findings demonstrate that WhatsApp in-store mobile promotion is more effective in driving purchase intentions, especially for goal congruent promotion. Moreover, the research shows that the level of social presence triggered by the platform mediates this relationship. Overall, the results demonstrate that goal congruent mobile promotion positively affects promotion redemption when delivered during a shopping expedition; also, they show that WhatsApp exerts a higher influence than Facebook, and such difference is particularly significant when the promotional message is goal congruent. From a theoretical perspective, the study sheds light on the role played by specific mobile platforms and applications, namely WhatsApp and Facebook. Moreover, by applying social presence theory in the context of real-time mobile communication, the study explains why WhatsApp is more effective in driving decisions, thus contributing to a better understanding of the differential advertising’s effects and implications of both platforms