Linda L Price

• PhD Marketing
• Chaired Professor at University of Wyoming

What do consumers do with their used clothing, books, and children’s toys? In this research, we introduce metaphoric “fresh start” messaging as an effective tactic to encourage consumers to engage in environmentally sustainable actions of donating used products for remanufacture or reuse. Drawing on conceptual metaphor theory and construal theory,...

The purpose of our conceptual introduction is to theorize how brands will continue to be relevant in the future marketplace. We identify three themes that emerge in this special issue that offer intriguing directions for future exploration and managerial action. The first theme is that because of brands’ pervasiveness, consumers have developed a me...

This research situates the fresh start mindset, the consumer belief that people can make a new start, get a new beginning, and chart a new course in life, within the neoliberal global milieu, and examines the fresh start mindset cross-nationally and as a predictor of interest in environmentally-friendly global brands. Theoretically, the authors arg...

The COVID-19 pandemic and the accompanying economic downturn have dramatically impacted the lives of consumers around the world. From a conceptual perspective, such health and economic threats can severely disrupt consumers’ sense of ontological security and elicit adaptive responses by both consumers and marketers. Given the opportune timing, this...

Consumer journeys offers a powerful metaphor that has inspired diverse strategic frameworks to aid retailers in managing and designing customer experiences. Absent from existing frameworks, however, is a clear understanding of the journeys consumers perform as a collective that is bound by a shared identity and communal goals. Yet, whether taking v...

This article introduces the fresh start mindset, defined as a belief that people can make a new start, get a new beginning, and chart a new course in life, regardless of their past or present circumstances. With historical roots in American culture and neoliberalism, and with contemporary links to liquid modernity and global consumer culture, this...

Purpose Macro-social disruptions and evolutions open up new possibilities for feeding the family. This paper aims to review prior constraints imposed by the gendered history of care work as part of the moral economy, with particular focus on how food traditions and routines reproduce family relations. Design/methodology/approach An assemblage pe...

Many multinational corporations that associate their brands with social causes in developed countries do not emphasize or disclose their socially responsible actions in emerging markets. However, increasing globalization and global media are likely to make consumers aware of corporate actions regardless of whether companies engage in them in one’s...

PurposeThe purpose of this chapter is fivefold. First, it highlights that, despite apparent progress, business in general, and marketing in particular, has made little impact upon environmental sustainability. Second, it offers four explanations for the persistent challenges that contribute to this lack of meaningful progress. Third, it presents tw...

Identity appeals—marketing communications that invoke one of the target market's identities—are typically well liked by consumers. In contrast with this notion, this research examines a situation when consumers respond negatively to identity appeals in advertising. Through three studies, we find that identity appeals fail when consumers judge an id...

ACR Presidential Address from October 2014

Increasingly, circumstances such as divorce, employment commuting, and military service have resulted in the geographic dispersion of family networks, and this reality holds both risks and opportunities for brands, products, and services embedded in family life. The authors leverage a longitudinal design including group interviews (initial/follow-u...

Our research in the developing market economy of Romania employs in-depth interviews and an advertising-trial experiment to examine the effects of attractiveness in advertisements on product evaluations and self-judgments. Our qualitative data indicate that attractive (versus average-looking) models yield favorable ad and product evaluations, but g...

Although heterogeneity in consumption communities is pervasive, there is little understanding of its impact on communities. This study shows how heterogeneous communities operate and interact with the marketplace. Specifically, the authors draw on actor-network theory, conceptualizing community as a network of heterogeneous actors (i.e., individual...

Multinational firms perceive the young adult cohort in emerging markets as a relatively homogeneous segment that welcomes global brands and facilitates the entrance of these brands into emerging markets. Research suggests, however, that young adults are a more heterogeneous cohort in which individuals develop a glocal cultural identity that reflect...

Research documents that consumers with a stronger belief in global citizenship through global brands (GCGB) view branded products as more important and prefer global over local brands. We test the mediating effects of consumer use of quality and self-identity brand signals on the relationships between GCGB and the importance attributed to branded p...

When companies fail to account for collective and relational goals in customer solutions, a mismatch can occur between firms' solutions and those that customers envision. Understanding the integration processes of customer networks is essential to improving solution design. This investigation draws on depth interviews with 21 families, the focal cu...

When companies fail to account for collective and relational goals in customer solutions, a mismatch can occur between firms’ solutions and those that customers envision. Understanding the integration processes of customer networks is essential to improving solution design. This investigation draws on depth interviews with 21 families, the focal cu...

Our study contributes to understanding the role of material culture in families. Findings from a longitudinal case study extend Kopytoff's theory of singularization by explaining what occurs between the singularization of a focal object and its recommodification. We uncover processes that move an already singularized object in and out of a network...

“Tell you what, I go to estate sales all the time. And when I go, every time I go, I realize that I have to do something. I must get rid of what I have. It is so sad [stresses the word sad] and there are these beautiful items that are being sold. And I think of these people; and of how they must have felt. They had all of this, and it meant so much...

This article focuses on belief in brands as a passport to global citizenship, defined as a person's perception that global brands create an imagined global identity. The authors assess the effects of this belief on the importance consumers assign to branded products and also examine the antecedent effects of cultural openness and consumer ethnocent...

This research develops a scale to assess branded product meanings, including quality, values, personal identity, and traditions. Using data gathered in the U.S. and three emerging markets (Romania, Ukraine, and Russia), we demonstrate a valid and reliable measure that exhibits cross-national measurement invariance. Our findings document quality is...

"Being a family" is a vitally important collective enterprise central to many consumption experiences and replete with new challenges in contemporary society. We advance a framework to learn how families draw on communication forms and use marketplace resources to manage interplays among individual, relational (e.g., couple, sibling, parent-child),...

This article discusses and illustrates the benefits of an approach to market-oriented ethnographic research that leads to insights somewhat different than those provided by two dominant approaches in applied ethnography. Our approach privileges relationships and participation in relatedness as the object of analysis. This contrasts with the macro-l...

The authors’ research in Hungary during the period of transition to a market economy provides an opportunity to examine the evolving relationships between consumer product knowledge and its antecedents, including advertising, personal search, interpersonal sources, and brand experience. Their findings, based on survey data collected in Budapest in...

This article examines a special category of objects, things that people should not give or sell, but keep from generation to generation within the close confines of a group—inalienable wealth. Previous findings about inalienable wealth are restricted to studies of indigenous cultures by anthropologists. We explore whether and how objects pass from...

The purpose of this article is to examine the role of homemade food in the construction of family identity. The article examines how homemade, its interface with markets’ competing food offerings, and intergenerational perspectives on homemade can cast light on competing understandings of the family, social relationships, and the market. Using two...

Drawing on our work in two postsocialist countries, Hungary and Romania, we contribute to understanding product involvement and brand commitment. We demonstrate that prominent political-cultural discourses, cultural intermediaries, social influences, and life themes and projects collectively prompt product involvement. We introduce the concept of i...

In order to survive in today's increasingly competitive marketplace, retail banks must focus on emphasising relationships and must personalise service interactions, differentiating their organisation. Trust departments have an opportunity to build credibility and gain a competitive advantage by expanding the scope of advice given, and in doing so c...

Research conducted in the early 1990s in Hungary indicated a lack of knowledgeable and influential personal sources in the cosmetics product category. The purpose of this article is to examine women cosmetics opinion leaders in Hungary approximately ten years into the country's transition to a market economy. Because of the evolution of the cosmeti...

This article explores precipitating events, emotions, and decisions associated with older consumers' disposition of special possessions. Findings are based on analyses of semistructured interviews with 80 older consumers, complemented by depth interviews with seven informants. Cherished possessions and their disposition play a significant role in o...

The authors describe commercial friendships that develop between service providers and clients as one important tvoe of marketing relationship. They report results of five studies that employ quantitative and qualitative data analysis They develop a measure of commercial friendship, identify important correlates, and illustrate how friendships form...

The authors describe commercial friendships that develop between service providers and clients as one important type of marketing relationship. They report results of five studies that employ quantitative and qualitative data analysis. They develop a measure of commercial friendship, identify important correlates, and illustrate how friendships for...

Recourse to magic is a universal strategy for trying to resolve intractable social problems. Within the context of white-water river rafting, the authors illustrate the conjunction of elements (condition of the performer, rite, and formula) that make magical experience possible in a constructed consumption setting. They show how “river magic,” like...

As Hungary makes the transition from a centrally-planned to a market-based economy, its consumer markets are changing rapidly, with a deluge of new brands and products, new stores, variation in prices and the demise of old, familiar brands and stores. Reports on Hungarian consumers' perceptions of their marketplace and their responses to changes in...

Research in marketing includes many examples of consumers helping other consumers. However, most research has studied helping behavior from the recipients’ perspective by examining the use of personal sources of information. Consequently, very little is known about the prevalence of market helping or why market helpers provide assistance. The autho...

Reports on a study looking at dimensions of service provider performance that influence immediate emotional responses to service encounters, based on 914 service encounters. Identifies five service-provider dimensions that are significant predictors of emotional response to services. Finds that different service-provider dimensions influence positi...

The authors advance a framework for analysis and comparison of service encounters using three neglected dimensions-duration, affective content, and spatial proximity. They focus on service encounters that fall at the extreme of these three dimensions, termed extended, affectively charged, intimate (EAI) encounters. Employing qualitative and quantit...

The authors advance a framework for analysis and comparison of service encounters using three neglected dimensions—duration, affective content, and spatial proximity. They focus on service encounters that fall at the extreme of these three dimensions, termed extended, affectively charged, intimate (EAI) encounters. Employing qualitative and quantit...

In this article a conceptual model of use innovativeness is proposed. Use innovativeness is positioned within the broader innate innovativeness construct. Use innovativeness is conceptualized as a consumer's receptivity/attraction to and creativity with using products in new ways. Thus, use innovativeness focuses on the origination and production o...

This article explores the provision of extraordinary hedonic experiences on commercial, multiday river rafting trips in the Colorado River basin. White water river rafting provides a dramatic illustration of some of the complex features of delivering an extraordinary experience. Multiple methods were employed over two years of data collection to ar...

Technology champions are members of organizations presenting new technology to fellow members who are potential users. They are widely accepted as instrumental in many implementation settings. In the perspective that dominates the current literature, champions are allied with outside technology, and users are slow to adopt innovation. Much effort h...

The social context of new product adoption behavior is a key aspect of the diffusion of innovations. Yet little is known about the process by which social contextual factors influence individual adoption decisions. This research develops and tests a model of the effects of perceived consumption visibility and superorder group influence on new produ...

Develops and tests a model of the relationship between international tourism and visitors' postvacation attitudes toward the host or destination culture. Path analysis of data from 96 Ss is used to examine the linkages between pleasure travel motivations, level of intercultural interaction, vacation satisfaction, and visitors' postvacation attitude...

This paper empirically examines the effects of discriminatory fees on ATM investment and welfare, and considers the role of coordination in ATM investment between banks. Our main findings are that foreign fees tend to reduce ATM availability and (consumer) welfare, whereas surcharges positively affect ATM availability and the different welfare comp...

This study examined how characteristics of a referent and of a service affect perceived referent influence in the recommendation of a service provider. The study experimentally manipulated the source (referent) of influence to be dissimilar to the consumer or similar (cooriented) to the consumer. The study contrasted service choices in which consum...

Past research on consumer information has emphasized the effects of informed consumers on the provision of goods by sellers. These comprise supply-side effects. This paper examines the effects of informed consumers on other consumers’ product choices. These are demand-side effects. Directions for research are outlined.

Mental imagery is receiving increased attention in consumer behavior theory and research. This article describes imagery, characterizing it as a processing mode in which multisensory information is represented in a gestalt form in working memory, and discusses research on the unique effects of imagery at low levels of cognitive elaboration. It spec...

Examined the frequency with which consumers provide information about 7 dimensions that have been shown to be important in consumers' evaluations of retailers. Findings from telephone interviews with 203 heads of households indicate that consumers discussed some retail image dimensions more frequently than others, and some types of retailers (groce...

The research focus is individuals who have information about many kinds of products, places to shop, and other facets of the market, and initiate discussions with and respond to information requests from other consumers. Specifically, the authors develop a Likert-type scale to measure consumers' propensity to provide general shopping and marketplac...

The research focus is individuals who have information about many kinds of products, places to shop, and other facets of the market, and initiate discussions with and respond to information requests from other consumers. Specifically, the authors develop a Likert-type scale to measure consumers’ propensity to provide general shopping and marketplac...

Analysis of the responses to a nationwide survey of investors demonstrates that individuals who invest in real estate differ in a predictable way from those who invest in assets other than real estate. Two types of real estate investment vehicles are studied: income-producing (rental) property and real estate securities. A multiple group discrimina...

This paper examines the relationship between perceived information costs and expected returns, expected range of returns, ownership and sources of information for a group of affluent investors in a multi-market setting (across a variety of investments). Findings show that investors expect excess returns and greater risk in areas characterized by hi...

The marketing literature affirms the value of a customer orientation to organizational performance, but it is relatively silent on the implementation of this orientation. This research reports the results of a paired-comparison ethno-graphic study of the dynamics of implementing a customer orientation in a major public school district. Changes at a...