IT'S ALL IN THE MIX: HOW USER-DESIGNED PRODUCTS AND COMPANY-DESIGNED PRODUCTS CAN PEACEFULLY COEXIST

Across industries, companies operate open innovation platforms that encourage users to share ideas and become product designers. Likewise, companies explicitly promote products based on user ideas as user-designed (e.g., McDonald's MyBurger, LEGO Ideas). This paper introduces and empirically investigates two managerially relevant factors that can influence the effect of user-designed products on consumers' reactions. Specifically, Studies la and lb reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between the share of user-designed products in a company's product portfolio and consumers' purchase intentions, which is mediated by consumers' perceptions of the company's innovation ability. Study 2 examines the role of the market entry strategy for user-designed products. While the inverted U-shaped effect holds for followers, the relationship between the share of user-designed products and consumers' purchase intentions becomes U-shaped for first movers. These results suggest that user-designed products can have unexpected consequences that managers need to be aware of and consider in their actions

Effects of background music on evaluations of visual images

Consumers are increasingly exposed to simultaneous auditory and visual stimulation in retail environments. Consistently, there is rising practitioner interest in how to interact the visual appearance of products and packaging with music sounds. This study addresses the intriguing question whether music systematically changes how people like what they see. We propose a cross-modal homeostasis effect that explains how music changes the inverted-U relationship between the perceived complexity of visuals and how much people like them. We show that the presence of music (irrespective of its complexity) shifts the optimal level of visual complexity towards liking of relatively simple visuals. Thus, while the mere presence of music decreases consumers' liking of complex visuals, it increases their liking of simpler visuals. Given the omnipresence of background music across business environments, the results have important implications, as music can have unexpected cross-modal consequences for the evaluation of visuals

Temperature and emotions: Effects of physical temperature on responses to emotional advertising

In colloquial speech, people frequently link emotions to temperature (e.g., warm love or cold fear). Likewise, in the business world, the use of emotionally warm and cold appeals reflects an ongoing trend in advertising. However, the conditions in which emotionally warm versus cold appeals are more effective remain unclear. Drawing on homeostasis theory, the authors investigate whether and why feeling physically warm versus cold influences the effectiveness of emotional advertising appeals. Using both laboratory experiments and field data, they show that emotions play a homeostatic role. Specifically, they demonstrate that the effects of particular emotional stimuli depend not only on physical temperatures per se but on homeostasis/thermoregulation. Namely, when consumers are below their homeostatic optimum (i.e., physically cold), they perceive emotionally cold stimuli less favorably (than emotionally warm stimuli) as these stimuli bring them further away from the optimum. Likewise, when consumers are above their homeostatic optimum (i.e., physically hot), they perceive emotionally warm stimuli less favorably (than emotionally cold stimuli) as these stimuli bring them further away from the optimum. Finally, once consumers are at their homeostatic optimum, they perceive both emotionally warm and cold stimuli similarly favorably. These results have implications for a wide range of marketing activities (in particular advertising) across seasons and international markets. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Gamifying employer branding: An integrating framework and research propositions for a new HRM approach in the digitized economy

The digital age calls for digital HRM approaches, as the digitized workforce confronts companies with changing requirements regarding their human resource practices. Most importantly, companies need to build strong employer brands to attract, motivate, and retain employees. One promising approach to employer branding in the digital age is to gamify companies' employer branding activities by means of serious games (i.e., digital games with an educational purpose). Both serious games and employer branding share the key characteristic of facilitating learning to create knowledge. Despite existing research on employer branding and serious games in separate streams, virtually no research addresses their relationship, albeit its strong relevance for researchers and practitioners alike. The authors discuss both domains and their relation, propose a conceptual framework building on a novel learning-based extension of the affective events theory, and derive directions for future research to advance the understanding of gamifying employer branding in the digitized economy

All that glitters is not gold: An investigation into the undesired effects of gamification and how to mitigate them through gamification design

Although gamification has received considerable attention from both researchers and practitioners, its influence on consumers remains ambiguous. This paper proposes that a negative process through decreased attention and a positive process through increased enjoyment explain the effects of gamification on different outcome variables. Study 1 examines these two processes and gamification's downstream consequences on purchase intention and product information recognition. For purchase intention, the two processes operate in parallel and produce a null effect of gamification. For product information recognition, only the negative process emerges, resulting in a negative effect of gamification. Studies 2 and 3 focus on the negative effect of gamification on product information recognition and show that the negative effect disappears in gamification designs that link the game elements with meaningful information about the product (Study 2) or make consumers aware of the distraction potential of game elements (Study 3). The studies' findings provide managerial insights into why not all gamification endeavors yield the desired results; they also specify two boundary conditions (i.e., meaningfulness and disclosure) that may help managers avoid potentially detrimental effects of gamification. (c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Empirical generalizations on the impact of stars on the economic success of movies

Movie industry experts continuously debate whether the industry's enormous investments in stars pay off. Although a rich body of research has addressed the question of whether stars are critical to the success of movies, previous research does not provide a consistent picture of the impact of stars on the economic success of the respective product. To derive empirical generalizations, the authors (1) provide a meta-analysis of the relationship between star power and movie success based on 61 primary studies reporting 172 effects of star power on movie success and (2) analyze a comprehensive dataset from that industry with n = 1545 movies using two different types of star power measures (commercial and artistic success), while controlling for selection effects of stars: Based on these two studies, four empirical generalizations emerge. First, when ignoring selection effects of stars, the impact of star power on box office revenues is strongly upwards biased. Second, artistic star power is associated with significantly lower box office revenues than commercial star power. Third, on average, movies with a commercially successful star generate 12.46 million US$ additional box office revenues. In contrast, artistic star power does not result in a statistically significant revenue premium. Fourth, commercially (artistically) successful stars have a statistically significant multiplier effect of 1.127 (1.083) on other characteristics that influence a movie's box office revenues. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

How collinearity affects mixture regression results

Mixture regression models are an important method for uncovering unobserved heterogeneity. A fundamental challenge in their application relates to the identification of the appropriate number of segments to retain from the data. Prior research has provided several simulation studies that compare the performance of different segment retention criteria. Although collinearity between the predictor variables is a common phenomenon in regression models, its effect on the performance of these criteria has not been analyzed thus far. We address this gap in research by examining the performance of segment retention criteria in mixture regression models characterized by systematically increased collinearity levels. The results have fundamental implications and provide guidance for using mixture regression models in empirical (marketing) studies

What is not beautiful should match: how attractiveness similarity affects consumer responses to advertising

This study introduces the concept of attractiveness similarity, empirically examines its main effect and whether it moderates the effect of endorser attractiveness on consumer responses to advertising. The results show a positive main effect of attractiveness similarity over and above the mere effect of endorser attractiveness. In addition, a consistent moderating effect of attractiveness similarity on the effect of endorser attractiveness emerges: attractiveness similarity buffers against the less positive effects of lower levels of endorser attractiveness (i.e., it compensates for lower levels of endorser attractiveness). Overall, these findings reveal attractiveness similarity as a new variable in endorser advertising, which has important managerial implications. Advertising campaigns employing averagely attractive endorsers should pay special attention to attractiveness similarity

Brand Positioning Based on Brand Image-Country Image Fit

This article proposes that managers may use local consumer culture (LCC), or the culture of one's home country, in their brand-building activities by adapting the brand's positioning to the country image the brand targets. It introduces the concept of brand image-country image (BICI) fit, which measures the extent to which consumers in a specific country perceive a brand image as being congruent with their home country's image. Using more than 350,000 brand-respondent observations across three countries, we develop and empirically illustrate a multiattribute methodology for operationalizing BICI fit and provide robust evidence that BICI fit is positively associated with consumers' brand evaluations. A large number of validity and robustness tests support the proposed BICI fit metric and the findings derived from it. For example, we find that age, education, being female, and need for structure enhance the BICI fit effect, whereas materialism diminishes it. Furthermore, BICI fit matters more in categories that are closely tied to a local cultural context or that are characterized by high purchase risk. Given its multiattribute nature, the proposed BICI fit metric identifies concrete image attributes and thereby provides managers with an effective way to develop or revise LCC positioning plans for their brands