In this research, the author examines the impact of brand extensions on consumer memory for parent brand information. The author proposes that such exposure will strengthen parent brand memory stru...

In this research, the author examines the impact of brand extensions on consumer memory for parent brand information. The author proposes that such exposure will strengthen parent brand memory structures and facilitate retrieval processes. The author hypothesizes that the impact of extensions will be moderated by parent brand dominance, extension fit, extension number, and product category crowdedness. Two experiments are conducted. The first demonstrates that (1) exposure to brand extensions facilitates the speed with which subjects can categorize parent brands correctly, (2) this result is moderated by parent brand dominance such that nondominant brands benefit more from such exposure, and (3) extension fit moderates this effect for nondominant but not for dominant parent brands. The second study demonstrates that (1) longitudinal exposure to brand extension advertising facilitates parent brand recall but that (2) both recall and recognition are facilitated to a lesser degree than that resulting from exposure to parent brand advertising.

Can pleasant ambient scents enhance consumer memory for branded products? If so, why? The authors examine the effects of ambient scent on recall and recognition of brands in two studies. In the first (i.e., encoding) phase of each study, subjects are asked to evaluate familiar and unfamiliar brands while viewing digital photographs of products on a computer screen; stimulus viewing times are measured covertly on the computer. Ambient scent is manipulated in the experiment room through a diffuser. In the second (i.e., retrieval) phase, conducted 24-hours later, brand recall and recognition accuracy are assessed. In both studies, ambient scent improves both recall and recognition of familiar and unfamiliar brands. This pattern emerges whether or not the scent is congruent with the product category (Study 1), and the enhancement in brand memory is due to the presence of ambient scent during encoding rather than retrieval (Study 2). Although ambient scent apparently did not alter subjects' self-assessed mood or arousal levels, it increased their attention in terms of longer stimulus viewing times. Mediation analyses suggest that the attention mechanism most likely explains why ambient scent improves brand memory.

People like graspable objects more when the objects are located on the dominant-hand side of their body or when the handles point toward their dominant-hand side. However, many products do not have handles or are not graspable (e.g., services, objects hanging on the wall). Can nongraspable products nevertheless benefit from the effects of appealing to viewers’ dominant hands? The present research shows that, yes, consumers respond more positively to nongraspable products if a haptic cue (an object that is graspable or suggestive of hand action) is located within the same visual field as the target and is positioned to appeal to the viewer’s dominant hand. This result is driven by the creation and transfer of perceived ownership from cue to target. These findings extend the use of haptic cues to nongraspable products and uncover the critical role played by perceived ownership, including its ability to transfer from one object to another located in the same visual field. Moreover, the current research demonstrates situations in which the use of haptic cues will not enhance response.

As editors of the Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), we have had the privilege of shepherding thousands of manuscripts through the peer review process. In addition to authors, the peer review process at JMR involves reviewers, associate editors (AEs), and coeditors (CoEs), as well as production and managing editors. Reviewers and AEs play a crucial role as advisers to CoEs in deciding what to publish, as well as in providing feedback to authors that can help improve the quality of manuscripts. Despite its critical and widely acknowledged importance, many see the peer review process as shrouded in a degree of mystery, which is necessary in part to maintain objectivity of evaluators, protect authors’ intellectual property, minimize conflicts of interest, and preserve the anonymity of reviewers and authors in our double-anonymized system. Our unique position provided us access to behind-the-scenes data about the peer review process at JMR. The goal of this editorial is to use these data to empirically describe the review process and answer questions that are of interest to key stakeholders of the journal: authors, reviewers, editorial board members, and researchers in general. Some of the questions that we address are as follows:

The authors examine an important anomaly in investment behavior - namely, the tendency to fall prey to the effects of contextual and presentation biases, which emerge when people make different decisions as a function of how information is presented to them. They also identify an important factor that moderates these effects. The results from four studies show that investors with a stronger tendency to engage in pre-decision outcome elaboration are less susceptible to various contextual and presentation biases and are more likely to make consistent investment choices. Furthermore, the authors find that encouraging pre-decision elaboration on both the potential benefits and the potential risks of investing helps investors who tend not to engage in such elaboration become less influenced by peripheral cues, such as information framing and presentation mode. The findings offer implications for decision research and for the design, presentation, and communication of financial products.

Does the number of funds offered in a defined contribution plan affect how many funds consumers choose to invest in or how they spread dollars across the funds they choose? Across three experiments and the analysis of defined contribution plan data, the authors explore these issues by examining investors' tendency to engage in the 1/n heuristic— that is, allocating their dollars evenly across all available investment options. The authors decompose this heuristic into its two underlying behavioral dimensions: the tendency to invest in all available funds (which they label “1/n # ”) and the tendency to spread the invested dollars evenly across chosen funds (which they label “1/n $ ”). The authors argue that choosing from larger fund assortments taxes investors' cognitive resources, which leads to more simplified diversification strategies. They find that increasing the fund assortment size decreases the tendency to invest in all available funds (1/n # ) but increases the tendency to spread the invested dollars evenly among the chosen alternatives (1/n $ ), provided that the number of funds chosen for investment allows for easy equal dollar allocations. The authors integrate their results with prior research regarding asset choice and allocation heuristics.