Too Nice to be Dominant: How Brand Warmth Impacts Perceptions of Market Dominance

Consumers are unaware of brands’ market dominance. This is important given that even misperception as a market leader has been shown to lead to positive evaluations from consumers. We hypothesize that when consumers are lacking direct knowledge about a brand’s market dominance, brand image is used as a cue for inference making: specifically, a brand with a warm, kind, and generous image will be in conflict with perceptions of market dominance, which are perceived as an embodiment of power. Thus high warmth brands will be perceived as less market dominant than low warmth brands. In study 1, we use real brands in two product categories in which participants had little knowledge about brands’ market dominance, cough syrup and fabric softener. We found that consistent with our hypothesis, the brands which had an image built around being kind, caring and generous and thus seen as high warmth were estimated to have a lower market share than a low warmth brand. Study 2 replicates the findings of Study 1 except that we presented participants with descriptions of fictitious brands that varied on warmth and were in two new product categories (pens and adhesive bandages). Using the same cough syrup brands as in Study 1, Study 3 builds on the findings of Studies 1 and 2 by demonstrating the effect of brand image warmth on perceptions of market dominance is driven by reduced perceptions of competitiveness in the market. High warmth brands were perceived as being less competitive in their product category which led to lower perceptions of market dominance. In Study 4, we investigate category knowledge as a boundary condition for this effect by using a product category, soup, for which our participant group, college students, have a high variance of knowledge. We hypothesize and find that category knowledge is a predictor of market dominance for a highly dominant, high warmth brand but not for a low warmth brand. Our final study demonstrates the potential impact of this effect on preference for brands by demonstrating consistent with prior literature demonstrating that more dominant brands are preferred in self-relevant conditions, the high warmth and thus perceived to be less dominant brands were less preferred when the choice situation was highly self-relevant

Cultural determinants of status: Implications for workplace evaluations and behaviors

Status is a valued workplace resource that facilitates career success, yet little is known regarding whether and how cultural orientation affects status attainment. We integrate status characteristics theory with the literature on individualism and collectivism and propose a cultural patterning in the determinants of status. Four studies (N = 379) demonstrate that cultural orientation influences the tendency to view high status individuals as competent versus warm (Study 1), uncover cultural differences in both individuals’ tendency to engage in competence and warmth behaviors to attain workplace status (Study 2) and evaluators’ tendency to ascribe status to individuals who demonstrate competence versus warmth (Study 3), and verify that cultural differences in the effects of competence and warmth on status perceptions, and in turn performance evaluations, generalize to real world interdependent groups (Study 4). Our findings advance theory on the cultural contingencies of status attainment and have implications for managing diversity at work

Advancing Our Understanding of Cross-Cultural Issues in Consumer Science and Consumer Psychology

Globalization has resulted in a more complex marketplace. Growing multi-culturalism of consumer markets and increased global competition are pushing marketing scholars to better understand cross-cultural issues in consumer science and consumer psychology. The chapters in this book cover the field to offer in a single volume the key frameworks and methods to conduct research in the area. Chapters in this book not only include general topics such as the different cultural frameworks used in various disciplines, the distinction between national and individual level of analysis, and main cross-cultural research methods, but also specific topics such as consumer sentiments towards foreign products, country-of-origin effects and branding in a cross-cultural contex

Cultural determinants of status: Implications for workplace evaluations and behaviors

Status is a valued workplace resource that facilitates career success, yet little is known regarding whether and how cultural orientation affects status attainment. We integrate status characteristics theory with the literature on individualism and collectivism and propose a cultural patterning in the determinants of status. Four studies (N = 379) demonstrate that cultural orientation influences the tendency to view high status individuals as competent versus warm (Study 1), uncover cultural differences in both individuals’ tendency to engage in competence and warmth behaviors to attain workplace status (Study 2) and evaluators’ tendency to ascribe status to individuals who demonstrate competence versus warmth (Study 3), and verify that cultural differences in the effects of competence and warmth on status perceptions, and in turn performance evaluations, generalize to real world interdependent groups (Study 4). Our findings advance theory on the cultural contingencies of status attainment and have implications for managing diversity at work

Multilevel Cultural Issues

Multi-level structures are omnipresent. Consumers live in geographical locations, shop in specific stores, or are members of clubs. Consumers who belong to the same group share characteristics and are expected to be more similar than consumers belonging to another group. In data analysis this sharedness needs to be taken into account to enable valid inferences. In this chapter, we describe what multilevel analysis is and introduce major methods when dealing with multiple levels of analysis (e.g., individual and country). We elaborate on the key issues in multilevel analysis being aggregation and isomorphism, and finalize with a discussion on the conventional top-down approach in which higher levels affect individuals and the recent bottom-up approach in which individuals via their attitudes and behaviours affect societal norms. Multilevel issues are expected to become more popular in the next years, also because of the available new tools for applied researcher