Tourism and Convention Administration

The regional In-N-Out burger chain is at a crossroads. With the passing of its matriarch, a new generation of owners is considering speeding up the company's growth, franchising the company, and expanding its product to a national audience. The question is, How will existing customers respond to the chain's expansion? In this context, the childhood memory elicitation method allows researchers to understand how consumers initially formed their relationships with a brand (or product). The age at which consumers formed a relationship with In-N-Out affects their view of the prospective expansion. Those who formed an early attachment were comfortable with expansion plans, but those who became attached as adolescents considered the expansion to be a violation of their view of the company as their trendy, exclusive club. The authors discuss the results specifically for the In-N-Out situation and more generally for other companies looking for methods or measurements to augment their...

This research explores whether post-experience advertising alters information learned in a consumer's direct experience. An advertising misinformation eect was obtained for colour memory of a previously seen candy bar wrapper upon both visual and verbal misinformation. However, the misleading visual information produced more`remember' judgements than misleading verbal information. This advertising misinformation eect did not dissipate when the source was discredited. We found that such memory changes can be directly linked to consumer subjective judgements and choices when the misleading information is particularly salient. Not only do these ®ndings constitute a novel generalizability of the misinformation eect, they also have implications for social policy research on deceptive advertising.

This study examines how temporal orientation impacts the individual’s perception of choice and how those constructs relate to consumer empowerment. Specifically, it examines how control over loyalty program features within a casino impacts the subjective experience of empowerment for customers who are distant-future oriented, present oriented with a fatalist approach to life (present fatalist), and present oriented with a more hedonistic approach (present hedonistic). The study investigates whether a future-oriented individual evaluate the more long-term and abstract levels associated with choice, while present-oriented individuals might look for concrete details and more immediate benefits of their consumption experience. A qualitative technique, namely the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET), is used in order to capture conscious as well as deeper and unconscious meanings associated to consumer’s choice.

Our overall objective is understanding how gambling, as a consumption practice, aids consumers in their ongoing construction of a coherent sense of self and identity. We asked ten regular slot machine gamblers, ten on-line gamblers, and ten table gamers to bring in pictures of what gambling meant to them. We completed thirty one-on-one interviews based on these pictures that, on average, lasted about 75 minutes. We discuss gamblers' interpretive strategies as they confront the marketplace culture of casino gambling. Our results are organized as juxtaposed themes, including: social vs. antisocial ; "brain-flushing" escape vs. active mental engagement; things that matter vs. things that don't; genuine vs. contrived environments; chasing highs vs. avoiding lows; tourists vs. "real" gamblers; winners vs. losers.

PurposeIn this paper, the authors argue that fine wines can be considered art and as such can be awarded luxury status. The authors discuss the processes of artification, through which such wines are recognized as art (Shapiro and Heinich, 2012), and heritagization, in which the cultural differentiation implicit in the concept of terroir (the various elements of a microclimate that contribute to a wine's specific attributes) connects a wine to its history and provenance. The investigation focuses specifically on fine wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy, which are renowned worldwide for their depth and flavors. What traits are intrinsic to the definition of art, and what social processes culminate in transforming an entity from nonart to art?Design/methodology/approachIt is a conceptual paper that requires blending several viewpoints to present the authors’ own viewpoints.FindingsThis study aims to address the above questions and argues that fine wines, as a source of aesthetic plea...

This research examines the role of the winery tourism experience in the formation of brand image and brand loyalty. A qualitative analysis of 2540 TripAdvisor reviews—a user-generated form of electronic word of mouth—of four wineries of the Okanagan Valley posted over six years (2014-2020) reveals not only Pine and Gilmore’s (1999) four categories of consumer experiences (i.e., esthetics, education, entertainment, and escape), but also an additional factor (i.e., social interactions with employees and other visitors). The TripAdvisor reviews also show that—based on their winery tourism experiences—consumers express differentiated brand image impressions associated with wineries and brand loyalty. The contribution of this research lies in the identification of social interactions as a complementary dimension of winery tourism experiences, and in linking winery tourism experiences with brand image and brand loyalty. From a theoretical perspective, the findings encourage a greater inte...

Developing a brand icon has been a way for marketers to humanize and forge relationships with consumers. Icon development takes time. During this time, marketers have to face how much they stay true and consistent with their icons and how much they allow their icons to adapt to cultural changes in the marketplace. Little is known about how consumers respond to changing icons, and even less is known about whether there may be certain consumer groups that are more or less receptive to such changes. Four experiments and qualitative interviews were undertaken to gain insights into these issues. People who have a low need to belong were most impacted by changes in the icon, with effects most evident among consumers with a fearful attachment style. Feelings of rejection were found to amplify these effects. These findings have implications both for theory and practice.

This article introduces advertisers to a new segmentation technique based on an individual's inherited taste sensitivity-that is, the "supertaster." Three studies demonstrate that this inherited supertaster difference can explain blind taste-test anomalies, such as the Pepsi Challenge; heightened brand loyalty; and a reduced sensitivity to peripheral product cues, such as visual variations. These findings underscore a new vein of segmentation that has great promise for explaining variance in lab, expert, and crowdsourced evaluations involving matters of taste.

In the current inquiry we add to the emerging research (Ford and Merchant, 2010; Merchant, Ford and Rose, 2011; Zhou, Wildschut, Sedikides, Shi and Feng, 2011) on the influence of nostalgia on charitable donations, by examining the role of childhood icons. We contend that marketers can bank on the value of consumer memories but there are aspects, like icons, that they shouldn't messed with when trying to appeal to the past, such as PBS' move to promoting Cookie Monster as Veggie Monster.

In this Speaker's Box, Kathryn LaTour investigates how better to engage consumers in learning synesthetically (causing multiple senses to interact) through managerial communications. She begins by defining the "ideal" mind-set for creating consumer learning and examines the use of cross-modal learning for memory retention. With results of a survey comparing synesthetic tendencies between experts and regular consumers, she demonstrates that learning can change the manner and way that consumers approach products. LaTour then uses an experiment to explain how communications can help consumers learn to appreciate hedonic products. Managers, she writes, can benefit from synesthetic approaches to directing consumer learning by setting the stage for the experience (how it should begin) as well as how it should be experienced.

This research examines the role of the winery tourism experience in the formation of brand image and brand loyalty. A qualitative analysis of 2540 TripAdvisor reviews-a user-generated form of electronic word of mouth-of four wineries of the Okanagan Valley posted over six years (2014-2020) reveals not only Pine and Gilmore's (1999) four categories of consumer experiences (i.e., esthetics, education, entertainment, and escape), but also an additional factor (i.e., social interactions with employees and other visitors). The TripAdvisor reviews also show that-based on their winery tourism experiences-consumers express differentiated brand image impressions associated with wineries and brand loyalty. The contribution of this research lies in the identification of social interactions as a complementary dimension of winery tourism experiences, and in linking winery tourism experiences with brand image and brand loyalty. From a theoretical perspective, the findings encourage a greater integration of the consumer experience and the brand image and loyalty literature, as well as quantitative research examining their relation. The findings also have managerial implications for brand experience management in the wine tourism sector.

[Excerpt] Cigar smoking is once again in vogue. While no longer at "fad" levels (Freccia, Jacobsen, and Kilby 2003), imports of quality handmade cigars rose at almost double-digit rates during 2002 (Savona 2003) following several years of basically flat sales. The continuing strong demand for high-quality cigars appears to fly in the face of an anti-smoking, health-conscious society. Cigar consumption has persistently occupied the attention of high-profile individuals ranging from members of the entertainment industry to the political arena to the corner bar. Cigar smoking is again in fashion. Why has this happened? What does this mean? What do cigars symbolize in the lives of the consumer (both men and women)? This paper seeks to provide some preliminary insights and first steps into the understanding of this continuing phenomenon. Through the use of existing literature and supplemental qualitative probing techniques, proposed theory is provided concerning the cigar smoking experience. The focus of the work is to build an initial "plat-form" for reflective thought on the direction of needed future research. The paper proceeds as follows. First, a review of the current cigar phenomenon is put into perspective given the vast historical context and the meaning of the cigar as a cultural icon. Second, literature and preliminary qualitative data supporting the interactionalist viewpoint of product symbolism is integrated to under gird theoretical models. The first theoretical model will represent the "internal/external symbolism" of cigar consumption. The second theoretical model will provide an overview of the internal hedonistic experiential elements of the cigar consumption experience.

This paper examines the impact of mood on consumers' implicit and explicit responses to false advertising. In our first experiment, we find that those consumers in a positive (versus a negative or neutral) mood state are more likely to notice the false information in the advertising, but paradoxically, are also likely to develop positive feelings toward the brand. In that experiment, we used both a hedonic brand (Disney) and a hedonic/emotional ad (autobiographical). In our second experiment, we extend the ad stimulus context beyond Disney to Wendy's to more readily facilitate autobiographical versus informational manipulations. We find that, indeed, the hedonic advertising execution (autobiographical vis-àvis informational) is associated with more elaborate processing (but only for those in a positive mood). The observed positive affect transfer continued, however, despite the greater detection of the false information in the positive mood condition. We propose that the negative feelings toward the ad associated with detecting the false information are momentary and are replaced by positive feelings toward the brand that are engendered by positive mood and the advertising, as suggested by the synapse model of memory. Our third experiment varies the timing of our measures to investigate this proposition and finds that timing does matter. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of the findings for research on mood, deceptive advertising, and implicit versus explicit effects of advertising response. Few researchers would argue against the impact that positive mood has on consumer behavior. In fact, the pervasiveness of this impact over the last several decades of research led Petty et al. (1993) to quote social psychologist McGuire as to the state of this issue: Persuasive impact is greater if the person is in a happy, benevolent mood when the message comes, noshing on peanuts and soda, watching a good program, and with pleasant musical background, an appropriately scented other, a smile on one's face, nodding one's dead, or relaxed in posture. (1985, p. 285