A.V. Muthukrishnan and Amitava Chattopadhyay
Executive Summary
Firms sometimes create negative initial impressions on potential customers and then face the problem of how to change these initial impressions. For example, in the early 1990s, Food Lion was the fastest-growing supermarket chain in the United States. From 1987 to 1991, the chain's net income grew at a compounded rate of 27%, with growth coming from both same-store sales and the opening of new stores. In 1992, everything changed. The ABC television network broadcast a news story on the unsanitary conditions in the chain's deli and meat departments, which had disastrous consequences for Food Lion's image and caused an overnight decrease in sales.
For potential customers in markets not yet served by Food Lion, the story about sanitary practices created a negative initial impression. A key question that Food Lion faced was, How could it overcome these unfavorable first impressions? Unfortunately, little work in marketing has examined strategies that firms can follow to overcome a bad first impression. This is a problem of great practical significance and is the focus of the this research.
In this research, the authors contrast the efficacy of comparative and noncomparative new information about a target brand when the initial impression of this brand is positive or negative. Consistent with extant research, the authors show that positive initial impressions change more in the face of comparative information. However, when the initial evaluation is negative, new information that is noncomparative leads to a greater change in attitudes. This research identifies a clear approach to rectifying initial negative impressions, an approach that is directly opposite to that recommended in contexts in which a firm is trying to enhance an initial positive evaluation.
The authors conclude that any competitive marketplace gives consumers many opportunities to reconsider their evaluations. Such opportunities exist whenever consumers are exposed to, for example, the brand's own advertising, competitor advertising, word-of-mouth information about other consumers' experiences with the brand, and the results from industry satisfaction surveys. Each represents a potential challenge to the target brand, and therefore how evaluations are updated in the face of such challenges is an important issue in consumer behavior and psychology.
Biography
A.V. Muthukrishnan is Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong. He received a PhD from the University of Florida. His research interests are mainly in the areas of consumer and managerial decision making. He teaches judgment and decision making at all levels and marketing research at the MBA level at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research has appeared in Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Marketing Letters, and International Journal of Research in Marketing. He received the John A. Howard/AMA Doctoral Dissertation Award in 1993 and an honorable mention in the Robert Ferber Award competition in 1996. He serves as a reviewer for all the major journals in the field. He was on the editorial review board of Journal of Marketing from 2002 to 2005.
Amitava Chattopadhyay is the L'Oreal Chaired Professor in Marketing-Innovation and Creativity and Professor of Marketing at INSEAD. He holds a PhD from the University of Florida and a PGDM from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Professor Chattopadhyay is an expert on branding and communication. His research has appeared in leading journals, including Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, Marketing Science, and Management Science. He has served on the editorial review boards of Journal of Consumer Psychology, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal of International Business Studies. Chattopadhyay's research earned him the Robert Ferber Award.
Journal of Marketing Research, Vol. XLIV, No. 2, May 2007
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