Peeter Verlegh

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam | VU · Department of Marketing

Financial policymakers increasingly rely on behavioural insights to protect the interests of consumers. However, little is known about how citizens feel about interventions designed to nudge their financial behaviour. Most literature on the acceptability of behavioural interventions focuses on the health domain. To address this gap, we present the...

What are the effects of a brand’s owned social media? This meta-analysis examines the impact of owned social media on social media engagement and sales. Whereas the findings support some current beliefs, e.g., owned social media are more effective to boost sales for new (vs. mature) products, it highlights several novel insights. Contrary to popula...

Purpose Consumers play a central role in the creation of transformative value, enhancing the well-being of people and the planet. With this article, the authors synthesize service and communication scholars' views to conceptually discuss opportunities and challenges on how to involve consumers in the ideation, creation and dissemination of transfor...

To what extent do consumers incorporate the identity of brands they endorse on social media into their self-concept? We argue that, contrary to popular belief, online brand endorsements may not necessarily lead to inclusion of the brand into the self and may, consequently, lead to contrast effects that negatively affect consumers’ self-evaluations....

Purpose Opinion leaders are increasingly important as a source of information, with consumers judging them to be more credible than other media and more influential than other consumers. Thus, companies have an interest in engaging opinion leaders to post about products and brands, and the authors analyse different incentives for encouraging them t...

The Covid-19 pandemic increases consumers’ worries and makes them experience a loss of control over their lives. We investigate how these factors affect the roles that brands play in consumers’ lives. Results of a longitudinal survey (N = 5,393) and an online experiment (N = 387) show that brands gain relevance and are more firmly included in consu...

Should all brands initiate online customer engagement activities to entertain consumers beyond informing them? This work presents the idea that (in)consistency between the nature of an engagement initiative (i.e., entertaining or informative) and the perception of the brand (i.e., warm versus competent) influences the extent to which consumers perc...

This study investigates the interplay between online and face-to-face (FtF) feedback on stress during an important life event. We present data on a two-month, six-wave longitudinal study of 468 Chilean adolescents across three important stages of a competitive national university selection test (Prueba de Selección Universitaria [PSU]) to assess lo...

Previous research has consistently demonstrated that organic food is typically seen as healthier. The aim of the present study is to investigate how these health inferences influence taste perceptions of organic food. In Study 1, we show that a neutral food product with an organic label is perceived as more healthy than the same product without suc...

As consumers continue to struggle with issues related to unhealthy consumption, the goal of front-of-package (FOP) nutrition labels is to provide nutrition information in more understandable formats. The marketplace is filled with different FOP labels, but their true effects remain unclear, as does which label works best to change perceptions and b...

Tables 4, 5 and 6 in the original version of this article contained some incorrect calculations. The correct tables are shown below.

Distinguishing between consumers’ positive and negative affect is a popular approach in both marketing research and practice, but such valence-based approaches sacrifice specificity and explanatory power. As emotions of the same valence can greatly differ with regard to their underlying appraisal patterns, they also differently affect consumer judg...

Background: Increasing numbers of patients consult Web-based rating platforms before making health care decisions. These platforms often provide ratings from other patients, reflecting their subjective experience. However, patients often lack the knowledge to be able to judge the objective quality of health services. To account for this potential...

Research into green advertising has mainly investigated how green appeals can enhance product attitudes, sales, and brand image. But what happens after people have purchased a ‘green’ product advertised in a green ad? In two experiments, we show that purchasing a green product may have paradoxical post-purchase effects, such that it may lower inten...

Source characteristics are a key determinant of preferences and choice in the interpersonal influence process. Extant literature documents the positive impact of similarity between oneself and an opinion provider on advice taking, but much less is known about how dissimilarity affects choice. While earlier research assumed that people ignore or dis...

Is sharing emotions on social media bad for your emotions? This question has raised concern in parents, educators, the media, and the general public. This dissertation proposes that the academic field and the current societal debate may benefit from asking a more specific question: ‘what constitutes online emotion sharing, and which underlying mech...

Open access article. Download here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1094996818300495 *** Consumers can engage with brands online in a variety of ways, ranging from playing a branded game to writing a review or viewing branded content. This work presents a consumer-based taxonomy of these digital engagement practices. By means of...

Behavioral public policies are aimed at influencing the behavior of the public in a way that is advantageous for the public itself and within the law. Sanders, Snijders and Hallsworth (2018, this issue) summarize the state of the art of this new field of study and introduce a number of challenges and opportunities for the time to come. We address a...

Firms struggle to manage touchpoints in their customer journey that consumers perceive as dissatisfying. Based on attribution theory and associative learning we examine branded outsourcing as a strategic means to reduce such touchpoints’ negative impact on brand evaluations. We find in the field and in a series of experimental studies that brands c...

Product harm information spreading in the marketplace may have profound consequences for companies, public policy makers and consumer well-being. However, limited research is available on what makes consumers share such information with others. This paper examines how self-relevance and self-construal affect the sharing of product harm information...

Research shows that people search for balance in their moral (e.g., environmentally friendly) behaviors such that they feel licensed to behave less morally after a previous moral act (licensing) and cleanse previous morally questionable behaviors by subsequently behaving more morally (cleansing). This article investigates whether this balancing may...

Marketers increasingly seek to build brand advocacy not only via traditional word of mouth (in-person WOM) but also by engaging their (loyal) customers via online media (eWOM). In a survey and three follow-up experiments, however, we show that brand loyalty is less positively related to spreading eWOM than in-person WOM (Studies 1-3). We find that...

Online consumer reviews provide relevant information about products and services for consumers. In today's networked age, the online consumer review platform market is hyper-competitive. These platforms can easily change different design characteristics to get more reviewers and to nudge reviewers to deliver higher quality reviews. This study explo...

Purpose Social network sites (SNSs) are an important part of consumers’ everyday lives, and have been recognized as a useful marketing channel. However, little is known about how brands should communicate in order to be more effective and maximize the diffusion of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) in these platforms. This paper explores the effect o...

Online reviews are a commonly used source of product information to guide consumers in their purchasedecisions. This source of information helps them to make better-informed decisions. Communicators ononline review platforms have multiple goals, but only one of them is to provide accurate information.Before posting comments, they could read previou...

In this work we examine the interactive effect of packaging design and explicit packaging cues on quality inferences. Although the effect of explicit cues on product perception has been studied extensively, systematic research on this topic is still in its infancy. Furthermore, it has never been investigated whether design cues and explicit cues in...

Textual paralanguage cues (TPC) have been signaled as effective emotion transmitters online. Though several studies have investigated their properties and occurrence, there remains a gap concerning their communicative impact within specific psychological processes, such as the social sharing of emotion (SSE, Rimé, 2009). This study content-analyzed...

Recent research increasingly highlights that consumers engage in online brandendorsements (e.g. Facebook likes) to signal their identity, but has failed to explain whydifferent consumers use this type of signaling to differing degrees. This paper addressesthis gap by looking at a culturally constructed individual difference variable, namelyself-con...

This study investigates the effects of advergame customization features and trust in the brand advertised in the advergame on players’ brand attitude and personal information disclosure. Moreover, we examine to what extent players’ privacy concerns moderate these effects. Drawing on self-determination theory and uncertainty reduction theory, we dev...

Purpose and Approach This Chapter has three central goals: First, it aims to introduce the concept of consumers’ online brand endorsements, which we define as consumers’ intentional, public, and positive online affiliations with brands (e.g., liking a brand page on Facebook). Second, it provides an overview of the drivers and consequences of this p...

Purpose and Approach This Chapter has three central goals: First, it aims to introduce the concept of consumers’ online brand endorsements, which we define as consumers’ intentional, public, and positive online affiliations with brands (e.g., liking a brand page on Facebook). Second, it provides an overview of the drivers and consequences of this p...

Brands often seek endorsements by consumers on social media (e.g., likes on Facebook). But is this marketing strategy feasible for all brands? To answer this question, this research investigates in seven studies the processes that underlie consumers' intention to endorse brands on social media. We suggest that consumers aim to signal their identity...

Why people donate to charity or how people may be persuaded to donate to charity is a widely studied topic. What happens after people donated to charity, however, is largely understudied. On the one hand, people may be motivated to behave morally in subsequent decisions because of consistency concerns. On the other hand, people may feel licensed to...

Persuasion is an important element of human communication. But in many situations, we resist rather than embrace persuasive attempts. Resistance to persuasion has been studied in many different disciplines, including communication science, psychology, and marketing. The present paper reviews and connects these diverse literatures, and provides an o...

Atypical food packaging draws attention in the retail environment, and therefore increases product salience. However, until now, no research has focused on how atypical packaging affects the persuasive impact of other food information. In the present study, we propose that atypical packaging enhances processing of product information, affecting pro...

This article presents a typology of the different ways in which consumers resist advertising, and the tactics that can be used to counter or avoid such resistance. It brings together literatures from different fields of study, including advertising, marketing, communication science and psychology. Although researchers in these subfields have shown...

Recently, advice taking has received attention in decision making research, and some studies suggest that emotions may play a role in this process. Yet, a clear account of how emotions influence advice taking is lacking. The current research introduces a parsimonious explanation by suggesting that such effects can be predicted on the basis of two e...

Purpose ‐ The purpose of this paper is to re-conceptualize the distinction between global and local brands, providing a more comprehensive framework, which considers both geographical distribution and ownership. It examines main and interactive effects of consumers' perceptions of these factors, and studies how ethnocentrism (CET) and price affect...

This study assesses the consequences of consumers’ self-disclosing of identification information in interactive advertising campaigns on social network sites (SNSs), for brand, product and campaign responses. Building on social response and brand relationship theory, these effects are predicted and tested in an experiment in which consumers did or...

In today's multicultural societies, ethnic targeting is an increasingly important marketing strategy. Two main approaches to target ethnic minorities have emerged in recent years: messaging consumers when their ethnic identity is most salient, and doing so with spokespeople or models with the same heritage as the targeted minority. In this paper, w...

Credibility in E-WOM: how review perceptions impact their persuasiveness Credibility in E-WOM: how review perceptions impact their persuasiveness Previous research illustrated the impact of (a) a review’s valence and (b) its perceived credibility on customers’ product attitudes. Though both might have independent effects on product attitudes, we pr...

Referral reward programs have been shown in past research to stimulate referrals and also to contribute positively to customer lifetime value and firms’ profitability. In this paper we examine whether, how, and under what conditions providing a reward for a referral affects receivers’ responses to the referral. Based on a multiple motives inference...

Research on language abstraction has primarily been focused on the language that is used to describe (intergroup) behaviors, while limited attention has been given to communication about objects. This article aims to fill this gap and studies biases in language abstraction in the descriptions of interactions with objects. Study 1 demonstrated a lin...

Geloofwaardigheid van e-WOM De invloed van reviewpercepties op de persuasieve impact van online reviews Inleiding Reeds geruime tijd zijn bedrijven zich bewust van de impact die mond-tot-mondre-clame (word-of-mouth, WOM) kan uitoefenen op het imago, en dus de verkoop, van producten en diensten. Vooral met de komst van zogenoemde online reviewwebsi-...

While sponsorship disclosure is proposed as a remedy for covert marketing, i.e., tactics such that the persuasive nature of the communication is not clear to consumers, little is known about whether or when disclosures prompt consumers to correct for persuasion. Three experiments reveal that covert marketing, in the form of subtle product placement...

When do we describe an experience with a product concretely, and when abstractly?Language abstraction in communication about products When do we describe an experience with a product concretely, and when abstractly?Language abstraction in communication about products A main property of language is its abstractness, and language abstraction is a val...

GABY SCHELLEKENS, PEETER VERLEGH & ALE SMIDTS When do we describe an experience with a product concretely, and when abstractly? Language abstraction in communication about products A main property of language is its abstractness, and language abstraction is a valuable and useful communication signal which can be used by communicators to optimize th...

Holiday destinations inevitably evoke vivid imagery and associations. Think, for example, of the beauty of the Geiranger fjord in Norway, the romantic lights of the Paris Eiffel tower or the Parthenon in Greece. Such landmarks are exemplifications of what the country offers. The Geiranger fjord exemplifies the natural beauty of Norway, the Eiffel t...

This research examines the language that consumers use in word of mouth. For both positive and negative product experiences, we demonstrate that consumers use more abstract terms when they describe experiences that are in line with the valence of their product attitude. This effect cannot be explained by differences in valence between abstract and...

Wines from Chile, oranges from Spain, autos from Germany and rock stars from the USA. What makes them special? This chapter examines the impact of the country of origin of products on consumers’ product evaluations. The relevance of this topic was recognized as long ago as the 1960s in one of the earliest papers on international consumer marketing...

Previous research suggests that people form impressions of others based on their facial appearance in a very fast and automatic manner, and this especially holds for trustworthiness. However, as yet, this process has been investigated mostly in a social vacuum without taking interpersonal factors into account. In the current research, we demonstrat...

Understanding the coherence between the attributes of a brand is a key asset for marketers managing brand equity. This study proposes consumer causal maps as a powerful instrument to achieve this purpose. These maps shed light on how different consumer groups think about the brand. Compared to non-owners, brand owners have been able to develop more...

In the current research, we study relationship norms in a word-of-mouth marketing context. The presence of a financial incentive for a recommendation implies that the word-of-mouth behavior may be driven by ulterior motives. This setting triggers both friendship (Equality Matching; EM) and sales (Market Pricing; MP) relationship norms. However, the...

The authors develop a four-dimensional scale to measure members' satisfaction with virtual communities of interest (VCIs). The dimensions consist of members' satisfaction with member-to-member interactions, organizer-to-member interactions and organizer-to-community interactions, all of which come together on the VCI's site. Using a sample of 3605...

Consumers often are positively biased in their evaluations of domestic products vs foreign alternatives. This study establishes economic and socio-psychological motives for this home country bias. Building on social identity theory, this paper shows that home country bias is in part driven by a need for self-enhancement. This influence is stronger...

This study focuses on the positioning of a Western brand (McDonald's) in an Eastern European market (Slovenia), and shows how corporate communication efforts can influence consumer perceptions of brand essence. In order to ensure the long-time viability of a brand's equity, preserving and reinforcing its essence is of primordial importance. A metho...

Brand managers constantly face the dilemma of adapting their brands to changing consumer taste without diluting the brand’s essence. This study presents an approach that can be used to establish which features constitute the essence of a brand, and how candidate new features would affect the perceived essence of the brand. We build on Ahn’s (1998)...

Consumer choice is influenced in a direct and meaningful way by the actions taken by others. These “actions” range from face-to-face recommendations from a friend to the passive observation of what a stranger is wearing. We refer to the set of such contexts as “social interactions” (SI). We believe that at least some of the SI effects are partially...

We study how the range of variation and the number of attribute levels affect five measures of attribute importance: full profile conjoint estimates, ranges in attribute level attractiveness ratings, regression coefficients, graded paired comparisons, and self-reported ratings. We find that all importance measures are affected by the range manipula...

We study how the range of variation and the number of attribute levels affect five measures of attribute importance: full profile conjoint estimates, ranges in attribute level attractiveness ratings, regression coefficients, graded paired comparisons, and self-reported ratings. We find that all importance measures are affected by the range manipula...

The increase in the number of brands, products and services that are available on the market makes it more and more difficult for consumers to choose between alternatives that satisfy their needs. In general, consumers will evaluate the alternatives available by judging one or several cues: informational stimuli about or relating to a product, that...

The theory of reasoned action was applied to study situational influence on the consumption of TV dinners. We investigated five situations, which were either time-related (weekdays vs weekends) or social (“dinner alone”, “dinner with family”, and “dinner with friends”). The intention to use a TV dinner decreased from “alone” via “with family” to “w...

Despite a large body of research, country-of-origin effects are still poorly understood. Combining the strengths of a narrative review with those of a quantitative meta-analysis, our study seeks to establish a firm grounding for country-of-origin research. We review previous country-of-origin research, focusing on cognitive, affective, and normativ...

Although odorants and tastants are perceived by two different senses, the rated intensity of a tastant may increase if an odorant is added. The size of the odor-induced taste enhancement is said to depend on the perceptual similarity between the tastant and the odorant, and on the task instruction which affects subjects' working concepts of attribu...