Sajeev Varki

University of South Florida | USF · College of Business

Purpose-Compared to typical brand extension research focusing on functional and symbolic attributes, this paper aims to examine brand extensions based on a brand's primary sensory attributes. Specifically, this paper investigates the interplay between brand equity and primary sensory attributes in shaping consumers' evaluations of brand extensions....

Purpose Compared to typical brand extension research focusing on functional and symbolic attributes, this paper aims to examine brand extensions based on a brand's primary sensory attributes. Specifically, this paper investigates the interplay between brand equity and primary sensory attributes in shaping consumers' evaluations of brand extensions....

Prior studies on product recalls have found that product recalls hurt the recalling firm’s market value. However, little is known about how a product recall affects the market value of the recalling firm’s competitors. It is not clear whether a recall helps or hurts the market value of the recalling firm’s competitors. Using data from the US automo...

As the number of consumer transgressions (i.e., acts of deliberately violating the established marketplace codes of conduct) continues to increase, so do their financial repercussions for companies. Though academic and managerial interest in addressing this issue is growing, research on how to dissuade consumers from committing transgressions remai...

In this article, we explore Active White Space (AWS)—the space between individual logo design elements—as a stylistic modification that revamps a logo design yet preserves its extant associations. Across three studies, we find AWS to be an effective stylistic logo tool. In Study 1, we find that adding AWS to pictorial logos improves their visual ev...

Consumer transgression is an emerging field of study within service marketing (Fullerton and Punj 2004; Harris and Reynolds 2004; Jones et al. 2011; Lovelock 1994; Tonglet 2002). Some of the topics that service scholars have examined include contagious effects of consumer transgressions in access-based services such as car sharing (Schaefers et al....

Advertising research suggests that the use of white space increases readability, engages attention, reduces clutter, adds depth, and enhances the focal message delivery (Ambler and Hollier 2004; Pracejus et al. 2006; Olsen et al. 2012). Research on logo design also places a great emphasis on design simplicity, as a minimal design elucidates a more...

Consumers are increasingly consulting online consumer reviews prior to purchase. This research seeks to deepen our understanding of how consumers utilize online reviews by examining the interplay between review valence (average rating) and variance in the context of intrinsic and extrinsic cues. We begin by demonstrating that consumers who consider...

Consumers are increasingly consulting online consumer reviews prior to purchase. This research seeks to deepen our understanding of how consumers utilize online reviews by examining the interplay between review valence (average rating) and variance in the context of intrinsic and extrinsic cues. We begin by demonstrating that consumers who consider...

In theory, a good ad gets noticed. However, the sheer volume of advertisements creates challenges for advertisers who want to want to create ads that break through the clutter to get a consumer’s attention. Advertisers may increase the visual complexity of advertisements to break through the clutter. Visual complexity can draw the viewer into the a...

In our paper we contribute to the burgeoning literature in the psychology of debt repayment. Across three experiments, we explore the effects of the type (hedonic or utilitarian) and the timing of debt on consumers’ repayment of debts when managing multiple debt accounts. While prior literature has demonstrated that consumers who own multiple credi...

Attraction effect is observed when consumers, who are indifferent between two brands, disproportionately choose one alternative (the “target”) over the other (the “competitor”) when a decoy brand, uniformly inferior to the target, but not the competitor, is introduced into the choice set. While this effect is widely known and replicated, there is l...

We examine the differential effects of ad novelty and message usefulness—frequently conceptualized as the two major dimensions of ad creativity—on the following variables: attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, brand trust, ad recall, and brand recall. Novelty and usefulness influence attitude toward the brand, but only usefulness influ...

The marketing literature has proposed that customer loyalty to brands grows through phases (R. L. Oliver, 1999) or conditions (A. S. Dick & K. Basu, 1994) and has linked many antecedent constructs to the development of loyalty. What has not been determined is whether the relationships between loyalty and its antecedents remain constant as customers...

Purpose The paper seeks to show that marketing and psychology literature can shed light on why investors exhibit preferences for certain price ends. The perspective adopted is that the stock market is a marketplace in which investors, as consumers, buy and sell (i.e. exchange) financial products such as stocks. Design/methodology/approach The pape...

Marketing researchers have actively sought to account for the heterogeneity in households' preferences and responses to marketing-mix elements (e.g., price, promotion) when analyzing scanner-panel data. This is because not doing so biases response coefficient estimates that can potentially alter the conclusions drawn from such analyses. In this art...

The authors examine the impact of consumer involvement on consumers'willingness to engage in relationships with service providers, because healthy relationships between consumers and service providers depend on the voluntary participation of consumers in relationships. They also examine the effect that involvement has on consumers' expectations of...

Increasingly, firms are recognizing the value of establishing close relationships with their customers as a means of retaining existing customers. Also, firms are realizing that the intangible aspects of a relationship are not easily duplicated by competition, thus providing a sustainable competitive advantage to the firm. In this paper, we provide...

Consider the case whereJ instruments are used to classify each ofI objects relative toK nominal categories. The conditional grade-of-membership (GoM) model provides a method of estimating the classification probabilities of each instrument (or judge) when the objects being classified consist of both pure types that lie exclusively in one ofK nomina...

Compared to the emphasis that service quality research has received in service marketing, much less work has been done on the role of price perceptions and their effect on customer retention. This article seeks to fill this gap in the literature. The authors build propositions of price’s role vis-à-vis customer value, satisfaction, and behavioral i...

In marketing, qualitative data are used in theory development to inves-tigate marketing phenomena in more depth. After qualitative data are col-lected, the judgment-based classification of items into categories is rou-tinely used to summarize and communicate the information contained in the data. In this article, the authors provide marketing resea...

Although there have been many research articles about how to measure service quality, how service quality perceptions are formed, what effect service quality has on behavior, and service quality’s financial impact, there has been little discussion to date of the potential impact of service quality on competitive marketing decisions. This paper cons...

Increasingly, there is greater appreciation of the impact of technology on marketing practice. Many strategies like mass customization, relationship marketing, interactive marketing, etc., have gained increased attention, in part, from advancements in manufacturing and information technology. In this paper, we formally examine how technology has ma...

Many business practitioners have addressed the importance of delighting the customer as an extension of providing basic satisfaction. Yet the concept of customer delight has not been given a clear behavioral foundation, and the antecedents and consequences of customer delight, when manifest in specific service contexts, have not been empirically ex...

The authors argue that interactive media, such as the Internet, will functionally displace traditional mass media, because interactive media will be better able to serve the communication needs of individuals. The authors show that in the age of interactivity audiences will shift from being large, heterogeneous, and anonymous to being small, homoge...