Customer Engagement in Multi-Sensory Virtual Reality Advertising: The Effect of Sound and Scent Congruence.

Despite the power of VR in immersing viewers in an experience, it generally only targets viewers via visual and auditory cues. Human beings use more senses to gather information, so expectedly, the full potential of this medium is currently not yet tapped. This study contributes in answering two research questions: (1) How can conventional VR ads be enriched by also addressing the forgotten sense of smell?; and (2) Does doing so indeed instill more engaging experiences? A 2 × 3 between-subjects study (n = 235) is conducted, whereby an existing branded VR commercial (Boursin Sensorium Experience) is augmented with "sound" (on/off) and (congruent/incongruent/no) "scents." The power of these sensory augmentations is evaluated by inspecting emotional, cognitive and conative dimensions of customer engagement. The results identify product-scent congruence (with sound) as a deal-maker, albeit product-scent incongruence is not necessarily a deal-breaker. The article concludes with further research avenues and a translation into managerial implications.

Assessing levels of traditionality and naturalness depicted on labels of fermented meat products in the retail: Exploring relations with price, quality and branding strategy.

Food labelling is a tool to inform consumers about the specifications and characteristics of a product. Additionally, labels display information about traditionality and naturalness, of which the meaning is highly subjective. There is a paucity of research examining attributes both of tradition and naturalness. In this study, traditionality was assessed by a model that included temporal, geographical, know-how, and cultural components. Naturalness was evaluated based on bio/organic elements, 'free-from' claims, and natural ingredients. Therefore, a content analysis tool was developed to analyze and score labels of fermented meat products, which generated insights in the key label characteristics of tradition and naturalness. The degree of tradition and naturalness was the average of their subdimensions which were scored based on the displayed elements. A higher degree of tradition and naturalness was linked to higher prices. Fermented meat labels were found to be strongly embedded in 'authenticity', and less in naturalness, an element more attractive for private labels than for branded products.

Meat in the post-truth era: Mass media discourses on health and disease in the attention economy.

The debate on meat's role in health and disease is a rowdy and dissonant one. This study uses the health section of the online version of The Daily Mail as a case study to carry out a quantitative and qualitative reflection on the related discourses in mass media during the first fifteen years of the 21st century. This period ranged from the fall-out of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis and its associated food safety anxieties, over the Atkins diet-craze in 2003 and the avian flu episode in 2007, to the highly influential publication of the report on colon cancer by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2015. A variety of conflicting news items was discernible, whereby moments of crisis, depicting the potential hazards of meat eating, seemed to generate reassuring counter-reactions stressing the benefits of meat as a rich source of nutrients. In contrast, when the popularity of meat-rich diets was on the rise due to diets stressing the role of protein in weight control, several warnings were issued. Meat's long-standing and semiotic connotations of vitality, strength, and fertility were either confirmed, rejected or inverted. Often this was achieved through scientification or medicalisation, with references to nutritional studies. The holistic role of meat within human diets and health was thus mostly reduced to a focus on specific food components and isolated biological mechanisms. The narratives were often histrionic and displayed serious contradictions. Since several interests were at play, involving a variety of input from dieticians, (health) authorities, the food industry, vegan or vegetarian movements, and celebrities, the overall discourse was highly heterogeneous.

The influence of advertising on compulsive buying - The role of persuasion knowledge.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: The growing concern over compulsive buying (CB) among consumers has led to vast amount of research examining the antecedents of this maladaptive behaviour. The focus of previous research was, however, mainly on examining the internal, psychological factors contributing to CB. The current research, on the other hand, sheds light on one of the external triggers which can possibly stimulate CB, namely advertising. METHODS: An online survey has been conducted to identify the attitudes and scepticism towards advertising as well as ad avoidance and persuasion knowledge among a sample of 582 Belgian consumers. Furthermore, all participants were screened with regard to compulsive buying tendencies. RESULTS: This research provides evidence that positive attitudes towards advertising can lead to CB. An important factor in this relation is persuasion knowledge. CONCLUSIONS: The study results lead to the conclusion that people higher in persuasion knowledge dispose less positive attitudes towards advertising which can subsequently prevent them from engaging in CB. Moreover high scores on scepticism towards advertising and ad avoidance among Belgian consumers in our sample point to a need for advertisers to modify their practices in order to gain more trust from consumers. This study also shows that advertising in particular attracts and seems to affect an already disadvantaged group of people - namely compulsive buyers.

Functional effectiveness of threat appeals in exercise promotion messages

As more than 70% of individuals in Western societies can be categorized as sedentary and inactivity has been recognized to lead to a series of serious physical and psychological disorders, the importance of physical activity promotion is ever more emphasized. Many social marketing campaigns use threat (or fear) appeals to promote healthy behaviors. Theoretical models, such as the Extended Parallel Process Model integrate concepts as ‘perceived threat’ and ‘perceived efficacy’ to explain how such messages operate and can cause diverse behavioral reactions. It is however still not entirely clear how these different aspects are valuated and combined to determine desired versus undesired response behaviors in individuals. In a functional integration task, threat-appeal based exercise promotion messages varying in psychological threat and efficacy content were shown to sedentary employees in order to assess how they affect their intention to engage in physical exercise. Our results show that individuals can be categorized in 4 different clusters depending on the way they valuate threat and efficacy appeals: i.e. individuals sensitive to both types of cues, those sensitive to either the threat or the efficacy component in the message and those insensitive to either one of them. As different segments of receivers of the message react differently to threat and efficacy combinations, it is concluded that different approaches to designing effective mass media campaigns may be required for effective exercise promotion(AU)