Marketing for all seasons: how seasonal fluctuations impact marketing and product success
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Authors
Ma, Judy
Issue Date
2015-08
Type
Electronic thesis
Thesis
Thesis
Language
ENG
Keywords
Management
Alternative Title
Abstract
In my second essay, I examine the impact of the weather, one of the most apparent situational factors, on how positively consumers evaluate products and services upon retrospection. Both anecdotal and empirical evidence indicate that the weather impacts consumers’ choices (people consume more ice cream in hot weather) and shopping behavior (shopping malls have less traffic during snow storms). However, little is known about how the weather impacts consumers’ post-consumption evaluations of products and services. In this research, I propose that consumer reviews are biased by incidental weather conditions, both during experience and during evaluation. Based on mood-as-information theory, bad weather conditions, such as rainfall, should have a negative impact on consumer evaluations while good weather conditions, such as mild temperatures, should have a positive impact on consumer evaluations. I hypothesize that, in addition to this directionally congruent relationship, if the weather during experience was better (worse) than the weather during retrospective evaluation, then ratings may be more positive (negative) because past states are evaluated in comparison with current states. I test my hypotheses using both online consumer review data and an experiment. My findings provide evidence that (1) the weather during experience and during retrospection have directionally congruent impacts on the positivity of reviews and (2) a comparative effect dominates the directionally congruent effect of weather during retrospection so that negative changes in weather from the time of experience to the time of review are associated with more positive reviews. I discuss the research and managerial implications of these findings.
Description
August 2015
School of Management
School of Management
Full Citation
Publisher
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY