IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jouret/v96y2020i1p155-167.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Brand Building on the Doorstep: The Importance of the First (Physical) Impression

Author

Listed:
  • Moreau, C. Page

Abstract

Many brands spend considerable resources to optimize the consumer’s online path to purchase only to have their products arrive unceremoniously on the consumer’s doorstep a few days later in a battered cardboard box. In this article, I argue that many firms are foregoing an opportunity to both strengthen their brand and decrease return rates when they ignore the potential of a product’s delivery package to create a brand-building experience. Why are investments in doorstep branding effective and which firms stand to benefit the most from them? The goal of this article is to raise these questions, offer a framework to address them, and provide preliminary evidence in a proof-of-concept study demonstrating that branding experiences can travel directly to the consumer’s front door.

Suggested Citation

  • Moreau, C. Page, 2020. "Brand Building on the Doorstep: The Importance of the First (Physical) Impression," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 155-167.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jouret:v:96:y:2020:i:1:p:155-167
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretai.2019.12.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435919300910
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretai.2019.12.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. van de Calseyde, Philippe P.F.M. & Zeelenberg, Marcel & Evers, Ellen R.K., 2018. "The impact of doubt on the experience of regret," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 97-110.
    2. Hamermesh, Daniel S & Biddle, Jeff E, 1994. "Beauty and the Labor Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1174-1194, December.
    3. Wenyan Zhou & Oliver Hinz & Alexander Benlian, 2018. "The impact of the package opening process on product returns," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 11(2), pages 279-308, September.
    4. Xiangshun Kong & Mingyao Ai & Kwok Leung Tsui, 2018. "Flexible sliced designs for computer experiments," Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Springer;The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, vol. 70(3), pages 631-646, June.
    5. Camargos, Tomás P.L. & Pottie, Daniel L.F. & Ferreira, Rafael A.M. & Maia, Thales A.C. & Porto, Matheus P., 2018. "Experimental study of a PH-CAES system: Proof of concept," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 165(PA), pages 630-638.
    6. Markus M. Mobius & Tanya S. Rosenblat, 2006. "Why Beauty Matters," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(1), pages 222-235, March.
    7. Masiero, Lorenzo & Qiu, Richard T.R., 2018. "Modeling reference experience in destination choice," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 58-74.
    8. ., 2018. "A natural experiment: the Americas," Chapters, in: A History of the Global Economy, chapter 14, pages 239-258, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    9. J.J. Brakus & B.H. Schmitt & L. Zarantonello, 2009. "Brand Experience: What Is It? How Do We Measure It? And Does It Affect Loyalty?," Post-Print hal-00799102, HAL.
    10. Heiman, Amir & McWilliams, Bruce & Zilberman, David, 2001. "Demonstrations and money-back guarantees: market mechanisms to reduce uncertainty," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 54(1), pages 71-84, October.
    11. Grewal, Dhruv & Roggeveen, Anne L. & Nordfält, Jens, 2017. "The Future of Retailing," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 1-6.
    12. Verhoef, Peter C. & Kannan, P.K. & Inman, J. Jeffrey, 2015. "From Multi-Channel Retailing to Omni-Channel Retailing," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 174-181.
    13. Alem, Yonas & Behrendt, Hannah & Belot, Michele & Bíró, Anikó, 2018. "Mindfulness and Stress- a Randomised Experiment," EfD Discussion Paper 18-9, Environment for Development, University of Gothenburg.
    14. Hoch, Stephen J & Ha, Young-Won, 1986. "Consumer Learning: Advertising and the Ambiguity of Product Experience," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 13(2), pages 221-233, September.
    15. Barbara E. Kahn & J. Jeffrey Inman & Peter C. Verhoef, 2018. "Introduction to Special Issue: Consumer Response to the Evolving Retailing Landscape," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(3), pages 255-259.
    16. Hjort, Klas & Lantz, Björn, 2016. "The impact of returns policies on profitability: A fashion e-commerce case," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 4980-4985.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schnurr, Benedikt & Wetzels, Martin, 2020. "The conditional enjoyment-enhancing effect of shipping box aesthetics," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    2. Monika Imschloss & Martin Schwemmle, 2024. "Value creation in post-pandemic retailing: a conceptual framework and implications," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 94(6), pages 851-889, August.
    3. Duong, Quang Huy & Zhou, Li & Meng, Meng & Nguyen, Truong Van & Ieromonachou, Petros & Nguyen, Duy Tiep, 2022. "Understanding product returns: A systematic literature review using machine learning and bibliometric analysis," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 243(C).
    4. Gopal Das & Shailendra Pratap Jain & Durairaj Maheswaran & Rebecca J. Slotegraaf & Raji Srinivasan, 2021. "Pandemics and marketing: insights, impacts, and research opportunities," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 49(5), pages 835-854, September.
    5. Grewal, Dhruv & Gauri, Dinesh K. & Roggeveen, Anne L. & Sethuraman, Raj, 2021. "Strategizing Retailing in the New Technology Era," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 6-12.
    6. Grewal, Dhruv & Roggeveen, Anne L., 2020. "Understanding Retail Experiences and Customer Journey Management," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 3-8.
    7. Britta Frommeyer & Julia Koch & Carla Scagnetti & Manuel Lorenz & Gerhard Schewe, 2024. "Recycled or reusable: A multi‐method assessment of eco‐friendly packaging in online retail," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 28(1), pages 100-115, February.
    8. Jeannot, Florence & Dampérat, Maud & Salvador, Marielle & El Euch Maalej, Mariem & Jongmans, Eline, 2022. "Toward a luxury restaurant renewal: Antecedents and consequences of digitalized gastronomy experiences," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 518-539.
    9. Castillo-Villar, Fernando Rey & Villasante-Arellano, Ana Josefina, 2020. "Applying the multisensory sculpture technique to explore the role of brand usage on multisensory brand experiences," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    10. Cheng, Andong & Meloy, Margaret G. & Polman, Evan, 2021. "Picking Gifts for Picky People," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 191-206.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jian Ming Luo & Chi Fung Lam & Hongyu Wang, 2021. "Exploring the Relationship Between Hedonism, Tourist Experience, and Revisit Intention in Entertainment Destination," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, October.
    2. Troiville, Julien & Hair, Joe F. & Cliquet, Gérard, 2019. "Definition, conceptualization and measurement of consumer-based retailer brand equity," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 73-84.
    3. Tyrväinen, Olli & Karjaluoto, Heikki & Saarijärvi, Hannu, 2020. "Personalization and hedonic motivation in creating customer experiences and loyalty in omnichannel retail," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    4. Molinillo, Sebastian & Navarro-García, Antonio & Anaya-Sánchez, Rafael & Japutra, Arnold, 2020. "The impact of affective and cognitive app experiences on loyalty towards retailers," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    5. Deng, Weiguang & Li, Dayang & Zhou, Dong, 2019. "Beauty and Job Accessibility: New Evidence from a Field Experiment," GLO Discussion Paper Series 369, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    6. von Hinke Kessler Scholder S, 2009. "Genetic Markers as Instrumental Variables: An Application to Child Fat Mass and Academic Achievement," Health, Econometrics and Data Group (HEDG) Working Papers 09/25, HEDG, c/o Department of Economics, University of York.
    7. Li, Xilin & Hsee, Christopher K., 2021. "Free-riding and cost-bearing in discrimination," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 80-90.
    8. Dong Hoo Kim & Doori Song, 2019. "Can brand experience shorten consumers’ psychological distance toward the brand? The effect of brand experience on consumers’ construal level," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 26(3), pages 255-267, May.
    9. Parrett, Matt, 2015. "Beauty and the feast: Examining the effect of beauty on earnings using restaurant tipping data," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 34-46.
    10. Niclas Berggren & Henrik Jordahl & Panu Poutvaara, 2010. "The Right Look: Conservative Politicians Look Better and their Voters Reward it," CESifo Working Paper Series 3310, CESifo.
    11. Amy King & Andrew Leigh, 2009. "Beautiful Politicians," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 579-593, November.
    12. Gasparin, Isadora & Panina, Ekaterina & Becker, Larissa & Yrjölä, Mika & Jaakkola, Elina & Pizzutti, Cristiane, 2022. "Challenging the "integration imperative": A customer perspective on omnichannel journeys," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    13. Gielens, Katrijn & Steenkamp, Jan-Benedict E.M., 2019. "Branding in the era of digital (dis)intermediation," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 367-384.
    14. Daniel Hamermesh, 2012. "Tall or taller, pretty or prettier: is discrimination absolute or relative?," IZA Journal of Labor Economics, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-17, December.
    15. Dechter, Evgenia Kogan, 2015. "Physical appearance and earnings, hair color matters," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 15-26.
    16. Suyong Song & Stephen S. Baek, 2019. "Shape Matters: Evidence from Machine Learning on Body Shape-Income Relationship," Papers 1906.06747, arXiv.org.
    17. Han, Euna & Norton, Edward C. & Powell, Lisa M., 2011. "Direct and indirect effects of body weight on adult wages," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(4), pages 381-392.
    18. Kim, Sehoon & Connerton, Timothy Paul & Park, Cheongyeul, 2022. "Transforming the automotive retail: Drivers for customers' omnichannel BOPS (Buy Online & Pick up in Store) behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 411-425.
    19. Rees, Daniel I. & Sabia, Joseph J. & Argys, Laura M., 2009. "A head above the rest: Height and adolescent psychological well-being," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 217-228, July.
    20. Sebald, Anna Kathrin & Jacob, Frank, 2020. "What help do you need for your fashion shopping? A typology of curated fashion shoppers based on shopping motivations," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(2), pages 319-334.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jouret:v:96:y:2020:i:1:p:155-167. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.