is it better to convey warmth or competence? the effect of

Running head: THE EFFECT OF REPOSITIONING ON BRAND PERCEPTION

“Is It Better to Convey Warmth or Competence?”

The Effect of Repositioning on Brand Perception

BSc. J.T.A. Verstappen (429952)

Supervisor: Dr. R.M.A. Nelissen

Second assessor: Dr. ing. N. van de Ven

Department of Social Psychology, Tilburg University

June 2018

THE EFFECT OF REPOSITIONING ON BRAND PERCEPTION 2

Abstract

Do people always accept the repositioning of a brand? Acceptance is here defined as the

belief in the claimed intentions of a brand after executing a repositioning strategy. Based on

the stereotype content model, we predicted that people accept the repositioning if the brand is

shifting from an image that convey warmth to a position of competence rather than vice versa.

Ninety-eight participants were individually shown advertisements of Tony Chocolonely or

Nespresso before or after these brands repositioned their market position. Participants judged

the brands on different features by completing an online questionnaire. Results suggested that

repositioning didn’t have an effect on brand perception. Participants found Tony Chocolonely

a warmer brand than Nespresso. Additional analyses revealed that the message in the

advertisement of Tony Chocolonely was more credible than the message of Nespresso. In

conclusion, people do not accept a repositioning more if the brand is shifting from an image

that convey warmth to a position of competence rather than vice versa.


The Effect of Repositioning on Brand Perception

Businesses use different positioning strategies to create a distinct reputation in the

mind of customers (Brooksbank, 1994; Devlin, Ennew, & Mirza, 1995; Kalafatis, Tsogas, &

Blankson, 2000). Repositioning is one example of such a strategy. It is the placing of a brand

in a different position than where it is currently present in the market to create new

associations, feelings and attitudes within the mind of the consumer. It is often a strategy

chosen by companies due to change in consumer needs, competition with other firms or image

concerns (Keller, Heckler, & Houston, 1998). Many firms might find it hard to consider

repositioning as a strategy, because both success and failure of other businesses who used

repositioning have been present in the past (Aaker, Vohs, & Mogilner, 2010; Boustridge &

Carrigan, 2000; Carrigan & Attala, 2001; Chernev & Blair, 2015; Hoefler & Keller, 2002;

Mohr, Webb, & Harris, 2001; RSA Inquiry, 1995; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001). For example,

McDonalds is a fast-food company still working on their repositioning strategy. Years ago,

they suffered from a reputation of being a firm that sold bad food and one of the possible

causes of delivering obesity all over the world. Furthermore, the documentary Super Size Me

in which director Morgan Spurlock showed the unhealthy consequences of eating

McDonalds’ products probably didn’t change this image. Nowadays, McDonalds spends a lot

of money in changing their appearance. New healthier products as salads and vegetables are

presented on their menus. Further, the restaurants are renovated to a more modern and cleaner

place. Eventually, these changes must all lead to more positive perceptions about McDonalds

within the mind of customers and of course more profits.

The question is if this repositioning strategy of McDonalds indeed will be successful.

As told earlier, there is no guarantee that such a strategy always works based on past

experiences of other companies. Consumers may not always appreciate the repositioning of a

firm. This research aims to come up with a reason why and when a repositioning strategy


could work. We try to find new insights about the processes behind the perceptions of

repositioning. It is therefore valuable for the corporate world and the life of consumers.

A Tale of Two Repositioning Strategies

An example of a firm that decided to use repositioning as a strategy is Nespresso.

Before the repositioning, Nespresso tried to achieve a reputation of being a luxurious, high

quality brand. They did this by for example contracting a famous actor (George Clooney) to

show up in their commercials and through their slogan (i.e. “Nespresso what else”, see

Appendix A). Nowadays, it seems that Nespresso wants to be seen differently in the eyes of

the consumer. Thus, instead of showing features of luxury brands their new commercial

includes attributes of a prosocial nature like care for the farmers who made the product and

their community (see Appendix B). They want to be perceived as caring and warm, but still

also competent. Tony Chocolonely (TC) is another firm that tries to reposition their current

market position, but they do this in the exact opposite direction. Before the repositioning, TC

aimed to get a reputation of being a firm that cares about social concerns of their employees’

lives and about how their product is made. For example, consumers can read information

about the non-slavery working conditions on product labels and their social mission (i.e.

improving society) is communicated via their website (see Appendix C). They do this by for

instance protesting against child labor. Consequently, they make clear that they have the best

ecological conditions in which their ingredients can grow. Recently, TC also wants to be seen

differently. Besides their reputation of being a caring and warm brand they aim to be

perceived as being a luxurious and competent brand. For example with their limited edition

products and their exclusive category on their website (see Appendix D). Both Nespresso and

TC try with repositioning to be seen as a brand that is both competent and warm. The major

differences between TC and Nespresso are their initial market position and the way of getting


to their new desired position. Both strategies may not be equally effective. People might have

different toughts, feelings or attitudes on the different repositioning strategies of both brands.

In the following section, we will explain with the use of the stereotype content model

why the repositioning of TC probably works better than the repositioning of Nespresso. The

stereotype content model delivers insights in the differences between the dimensions warmth

and competence and explains the processes in forming perceptions.

Stereotype content model

Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, and Xu (2002) developed the stereotype content model (SCM) to

describe a multidimensional way of how perceptions are formed (for a visualization example

of the model, see Appendix E). They suggest that the creation of perceptions are captured by

two different dimensions, namely warmth (i.e. likeability, sociability, morality) and

competence (capability, abilities). For example, elderly people could possess features that

indicate as being high on the warmth dimension, but low on the competence dimension.

Consequently, they might be friendly, but they are not very efficient. Another example of a

group could be poor people. They might possess features that indicate them as both low on

competence as low on the warmth dimension. For example, they might not be very creative

and are also not very kind. The dimensions of warmth and competence are relevant for

surviving for individuals and groups in social relationships. They help to identify social

threats. Specifically, people need to know what others‘ their intentions might be and if those

intentions can be executed by those others. The warmth dimension provides the information

about whether those intentions might be damaging, while the competence dimension delivers

the information about whether others are capable of acting on those intentions (Cuddy, Fiske,

& Glick, 2008; Fiske, Cuddy, & Glick, 2007). In sum, people form perceptions of others in

which warmth and competence are the two essential dimensions.


Brands are perceived in the same way as people (Aaker, 1997; Sung, Choi, Ahn, &

Song, 2015). If we stick to the examples of Nespresso and TC, Nespresso might initially be

seen low on warmth but high on competence because of their features. These are features that

exhibit high quality, luxury and sophistication for competence, but unfriendliness and

insincerity for warmth. On the other hand TC might initially be seen as high on the warmth

dimension, but low on the competence dimension due to their features. These are features that

could display friendliness, honesty and morality for the warmth dimension, but they might be

lacking in features as inventiveness and resourcefulness for the competence dimension. Now

both brands wants to be perceived as high on competence and high on warmth through

repositioning. The question remains if both firms are successful in their transformation. The

research question for this study is; Do consumers accept a repositioning more if the brand is

shifting from an image that convey warmth to a position of competence rather than vice

versa?

Acceptance is here defined as the belief in the claimed intentions of a brand after

executing a repositioning strategy. If people accept the repositioning of a brand more, they are

more inclined to belief that the brand has the right intentions to do what they claim. This

belief can be seen in the judgements people gave about the features or character of the brand.

This occurs when there is a change in people’s brand perception, after the repositioning of the

brands, towards a more warm and competence character. Accordingly, people see the change

in image Nespresso and TC are trying to accomplish with their claims and judge if these are

indeed convincing enough to change their perception about the two brands.

Based on the implications of the SCM, we suppose the following concerning the

perception of repositioning strategies. When the brand wants to make a transition from being

high on the dimension warmth to being both high on the dimensions of warmth and

competence, this repositioning strategy will be accepted more. We assume that this is the case


with the brand Tony Chocolonely (TC). Consumers evaluate TC from the start of the firm and

see the features as explained earlier. That is why they will be perceived as high on the

dimension of warmth. The reason why consumers accept the repositioning of TC is that the

new exclusive products TC made can be checked upon immediately. Consumers can buy the

new products of TC and verify if these products have good quality. In this way is the claim of

TC that they are both a warm and competent brand is very reliable, because consumers can eat

the chocolate and infer the qualities of the brand. It is very easy to check for consumers if TC

is indeed both a warm and a competent brand. The buying of the new products gives proof for

such a claim instantly.

We suspect that consumers will accept the repositioning of Nespresso to a lower

extent, because it aims to make the transition from being high on the competence dimension

to being both high on the warmth and competence dimension. Consumers evaluate Nespresso

from the start of the firm and judge their attributes as explained earlier. That is why we

assume that they will be perceived as high on the dimension of competence. With the making

of a new commercial the firm want to reposition and to be perceived as high on the dimension

of competence, but also high on the dimension of warmth. The reason why consumers accept

the repositioning of Nespresso less is that the message from the new commercial (i.e.

Nespresso now cares about the community and the life of farmers) cannot be checked upon

immediately. Consumers can still the buy the products from Nespresso, but they are probably

not able to infer that Nespresso cares about farmers. Consequently, people might not have the

abilities to conclude that Nespresso is a warm, friendly brand. In this way the claim Nespresso

tries to make of being both a warm and competent brand is not immediately reliable, because

consumers aren’t capable to make such a judgment after just one claim about being warm.

The buying of new Nespresso products does not give such proof instantly. It would be

required to observe the employees, the working conditions of those employees, the


community they live in and the behavior of their superiors to confirm if they really have the

right intentions.

In sum, if consumers are directly able to verify the claim the brand is making, they are

more inclined to accept the repositioning of the brand. Competence claims can be checked

upon right away. This is not the case with claims about the warmth dimension. Consequently,

the repositioning of TC is more accepted than the repositioning of Nespresso. With this in

mind the next hypotheses will be tested in this study;

“Repositioning is more accepted when a brand is making the transition from being

high on the warmth dimension to both high on warmth and on the competence dimension,

compared to a transition from being high on the competence dimension to both high on

warmth and the competence dimension.”

Present study

To test whether repositioning is more accepted when the brands transitions from an

image of being perceived as high on the dimension warmth to being perceived as high warmth

and competence we investigated how people’s perceptions about brands are affected by a

repositioning strategy. To do so, we measured people’s perception of Tony Chocolonely and

Nespresso. Participants either judged an original TC and Nespresso advertisement from

before the repositioning strategy or judged both the original and new advertisement after the

repositioning strategy in a 2x2 mixed model design. On the one hand, the reason for this

design was that participants automatically compared the two brands when they made an

evaluation about the features of the brands. In this way, participants were better able to make

a distinction when it comes to the character and repositioning strategies of both Tony

Chocolonely and Nespresso. Furthermore, if participants would only answer the questions


about only one of the two brands, we would not able to see if there are differences in brand

perceptions between brands. If people evaluate the two brands differently after the

repositioning, we might be able to infer which repositioning strategy is more accepted or less

accepted.

Method

Participants

One hundred and twenty-one Dutch participants (Mage=29.6 years, S.D. =13.5,

45.9% female, 54.1% male) were recruited through the use of Facebook with a snowball

sampling method. As a result, friends and acquaintances were invited to participate in the

study and kindly asked if they were able to invite others amongst their friends and

acquaintances. 23 of the participants were removed from the sample because they didn’t agree

with the informed consent (N =2), weren’t familiar with the brands (N =8), didn’t give any

responses (N =12) or only agreed with the informed consent but didn’t provide any other

responses (N =1). Familiarity with the brands was a criterium for completing the survey. If

people didn’t know one of the brands, they were also not able to compare the brands. Hence,

98 participants took part in the survey. The participation in this study was on voluntary basis.

There were no restrictions on recruiting based on demographic characteristics.

Procedure and materials

In order to examine the acceptance and attitudes people have regarding the

repositioning of brands we used an online survey. This survey consisted of different pages and

was titled Research Brand perceptions (in Dutch: Onderzoek Merkpercepties). The first


question participants answered was about the familiarity with the brands. If they were not

familiar with the brands, then comparison of the two brands was also not possible and

therefore they couldn’t complete the survey. After the familiarity question, participants were

randomized to one of the conditions and saw either only the original advertisements or both

the original and the new advertisement.

The follow-up question consisted of different statements about the message given in

the advertisement. Participants had to judge how plausible, persuasive and reliable the

message was. This was also called the credibility of the message. Answers were given on a

Likert-scale from 1 (=totally disagree) to 7 (=totally agree). The function of these questions

was that we could see if the actual presentation of the message in the advertisements of both

Tony Chocolonely and Nespresso had any influence on the brand perceptions. Specifically, if

the advertisements of one of the brands would have been more credible compared to the

advertisements of the other brand, than the acceptance of the repositioning strategy could

possibly be explained by the way the advertisements were presented. We wanted to exclude

this possible explanation. The reliability for the scales of the credibility of the message are

reported in table 1. This table also includes the reliability statistics for the scales for brand

perception and ethical consumerism.

Consequently, the measurement for the brand perception(s) were captured by answers

given on several statements regarding both the warmth and competence dimensions. These are

taken from the survey used in the research of Fiske et al. (2002). Examples of statements for

the warmth dimension were if the brand is kind, friendly or generous. Examples for the

competence dimension were if the brand is intelligent, creative or smart. The answers on the

statements were given on a Likert scale from 1 (=does not totally fit with the character of the

brand) to 7 (=does totally fit with the character of the brand).

The following questions were about the willingness to buy (WTB), willingness to pay


(WTP) and the overall evaluations for one of the brands. The function of these questions was

to see if the repositioning of the brands was accepted, whether people then also were inclined

to buy a product of one of the brands, more willing to pay for one of the brands and gave a

better overall evaluation. Just like with the other scales, we first checked with a reliability

analysis if it was possible to combine the three variables to one scale. Unfortunately, the

reliability of this scale was too low. For this reason we considered WTB, WTP and the overall

evaluations as individual variables. WTB was measured by asking how likely it was for the

participants to buy either Nespresso coffee or Tony Chocolonely chocolate the upcoming

month. Answering was possible on a Likert-scale from 1 (=definitely not likely) to 7

(=definitely likely). WTP was measured by asking participants either for Nespresso how

much money they would like to spend on a coffee cup or for Tony Chocolonely how much

they would like to spend on a chocolate bar. The answers were given on two different sliders

for each of the brands. The reason for this was due to possible anchoring effects. Consumers

might pay more for a chocolate bar than just one coffee cup. The overall evaluation was

measured by asking how participants think about Nespresso or Tony Chocolonely in general.

The answer were given on a scale from -5 (=very negative) to 5 (=very positive).

After the questions for the perceived brand perception, WTB, WTP and the overall

evaluation participants were asked if they could evaluate statements about themselves as an

ethical consumer (Roberts, 1996)1. In the end we asked participants about their demographic

information. All the descriptive information for each variable are specified in table 2.

1 The statements about ethical consumerism were taken from the socially responsible consumer behavior (SRCB) scale. These statements

were used in the survey, but not relevant to this specific study. This scale is utilized in research on ethical consumption From “Will the real

socially responsible consumer please step forward?” by J. A. Roberts, 1996, Business horizons, 39(1), 79-84. Copyright 2018 by Business

Source Elite.


Design and analysis

This study had a 2x2 mixed model design. There were 2 levels for the between-subject

factor “repositioning”. One group included the participants before the repositioning of the

brands (N =50) and one group contained the participants after the repositioning of the brands

(N =48). Also for the within-subject factor “brand” there were 2 levels. One level stood for

the brand Tony Chocolonely, the other level for the brand Nespresso. Depending on the

condition, participants were asked to evaluate either the original advertisement of Nespresso

and Tony chocolonely (i.e. These are the advertisements before the repositioning of the

brands) or they were asked to evaluate both the original and the new advertisement (i.e. the

advertisements after the repositioning) of the two brands. The answers on the questions of the

survey indicated if the repositioning of the brands were accepted or not. Possibly, there could

be differences between groups. There was a difference in acceptance if the answers given for

the questions in the “Before repositioning” group differed compared to the answers given on

the questions for the “After repositioning” group. For example if participants rated Nespresso

as low (e.g. 2) on the dimension of warmth and high (e.g. 6) on the dimension of competence

for the original advertisement in the group “Before repositioning”, then there had to be a

different score when the evaluation was for the “After repositioning” group. For example, in

this group participants rated Nespresso as high (e.g. 4) for the dimension of warmth and high

(e.g. 6) on the dimension of competence. Also there could be differences within the groups.

Thus, between the two brands within in the group “Before repositioning” or between the two

brands in the group “After repositioning”. The scores for the brand perceptions within the

groups are compared with the same measures as between groups.


Results

The following hypothesis was tested and analyzed. The hypothesis “Repositioning is

more accepted when a brand is making the transition from being high on the warmth

dimension to both high on warmth and on the competence dimension, compared to a

transition from being high on the competence dimension to both high on warmth and the

competence dimension.” It is important to note that the dataset contained several missing

values. We were not completely sure why some participants were not able to fill in all the

questions on the survey. A couple of participants seemed to show a response pattern that

could indicate a lack of motivation. Other participants gave the impression of having some

data randomly missing. For this reason, all missing values are specified for each variable in

table 3.

We conducted a two-way mixed ANOVA to test whether the repositioning strategy

had an effect on the warmth dimension when it comes to brand perception. The analysis

revealed that the repositioning strategy did not have an effect on the dimension warmth, F (1,

72) = .682, p = .412, Ƞ2 = .009. As expected, participants found the brand Tony Chocolonely

warmer than the brand Nespresso, F (1, 72) = 38.677, p = .0001, Ƞ2 = .349. No interaction

effect was found, F (1, 72) = .381, p = .539, Ƞ2 = .005. After the analysis in respect to the

warmth dimension, we conducted several other two-way mixed ANOVA’s. An overview of

all the results are presented in table 4.

Repositioning strategy did not have an effect on the competence dimension, F (1, 72)

= .904, p = .345, Ƞ2 = .012. Participants found TC and Nespresso about equally competent, F

(1, 72) = .017, p = .896, Ƞ2 = .000. Again, no interaction effect is shown, F (1, 72) = .023, p =

.879, Ƞ2 = .000.


Furthermore, there was no effect of repositioning strategy on willingness to buy, F (1,

73) = .443, p = .508, Ƞ2 = .006. Participants were both evenly willing to purchase a product

from TC compared to Nespresso, F (1, 73) = .002, p = .964, Ƞ2 = .000. No interaction effect

was found, F (1, 73) = 1.034, p = .313, Ƞ2 = .014. There was also no effect of repositioning

on willingness to pay, F (1, 70) = .293, p = .590, Ƞ2 = .004. There was an interaction effect, F

(1, 70) = 4.044, p = .048, Ƞ2 = .055. Depending on the fact that the brands had executed their

repositioning strategy, people wanted to pay more for either TC or Nespresso. The analysis

revealed no main effect, F (1, 70) = .010, p = .919, Ƞ2 = .000. The repositioning strategy

didn’t have an effect on the overall evaluations of the brands, F (1, 72) = .453, p = .503, Ƞ2 =

.006. Also no interaction effect was found, F (1, 72) = .163, p = .688, Ƞ2 = .002. The same

analysis showed no main effect, F (1, 72) = .015, p = .903, Ƞ2 = .000. The evidence suggest

that participants feel somewhat the same in general about TC and Nespresso.

The additional analysis revealed that the repositioning strategy didn’t have an effect on

the credibility of the message in the advertisements, F (1, 73) = .663, p = .418, Ƞ2 = .009. We

did found a main effect, F (1, 73) = 8.796, p = .004, Ƞ2 = .108. Participants were more

inclined to belief the message of the advertisement from TC compared to the message in the

advertisement of Nespresso. No interaction effect has been found, F (1, 73) = 1,532 p = .220,

Ƞ2 = .021.

Discussion

This online experiment showed no effect of repositioning on brand perception. That is,

repositioning is not accepted more if the brand is making the transition from being warm to

both warm and competent compared to the transition of being competent to both a competent

and warm brand. In line with our expectations, we should have found that Tony Chocolonely


(TC) benefitted more from the repositioning than Nespresso. We didn’t find support for the

hypothesis back in the results. As expected, participants evaluated both brands based on their

features and indicated that the brand TC was warmer than Nespresso. We had good reason to

belief that Nespresso was the most competent brand based on their characteristics. However,

TC and Nespresso were judged as equally competent. The function of the questions regarding

WTB, WTP and the overall evaluation was to see if a repositioning strategy was more

accepted, what kind of effect this would have on these variables. There was an interaction

effect regarding WTP, but due to the fact that there is no difference in acceptance concerning

the repositioning strategies we are not able to draw conclusions related to this subject. In

addition, the credibility of the message was more credible for TC than Nespresso, but the

repositioning strategy didn’t have an effect on the evaluations of the credibility of the

message. Thus, the acceptance of the repositioning strategy couldn’t be explained by the way

the advertisements were presented.

We had some shortcomings in this study. For instance, there were a lot of questions

unanswered by several participants on the questionnaire. This could have major consequences

for the results of the study. Our results would be more accurate if we wouldn’t have lost this

information. Moreover, the conclusions we made based on those results would have provided

a more complete and valid image. Now there is a chance that we were on the right path with

our ideas and that there might be differences when it comes to the perceptions of different

repositioning strategies. However, due to these unfortunate circumstances we are not able to

conclude all of this with certainty. The reason(s) why some participants didn’t complete the

survey are difficult to determine. Lack of motivation, hard questions, privacy issues or

technical difficulties are all possible reasons, but we cannot conclude anything for sure. It is

thus important in future research about repositioning to avoid these problems in order to get

more accurate and reliable results. Another possible limitation of the study could be a flaw in


terms of the manipulation. The advertisements utilized in the survey from Nespresso were

real-life professionally made TV commercials. The advertisements from TC were pictures of

advertisements taken from TCs’ own website. Ergo, It might be very hard to compare and

judge the advertisements if they don’t have the same appearance. More comparable

advertisements with the same formats would be better in the future. Maybe, there also might

be other kind of repositioning manipulations that work better to research the underlying

mechanism. We used Nespresso and TC as real-life practical examples in the survey to make

the study as tangible as possible. The disadvantage of that is that we used brands that people

might already have certain attitudes about. Regardless of presenting a new commercial or

giving new information about the brands, new possible attitudes and judgments are also based

on the pre-existing experiences of people in the past. Therefore if the proposed mechanism is

present, it is important that future researchers come up with non-existing brands in new

studies and experiments. In this way we become better to observe the effect of a repositioning

strategy. Suggestively spoken, a new study could include clothing brands which portray the

same assumed characteristics as the brands utilized in our experiment. Participants read about

the history of those brands and their repositioning plans in some sort of modern magazine

article. Possibly, they also see a professional commercial of the brands to make participants

feel more involved. Eventually, participants fill in the same questionnaire as presented in our

experiment. Of course, this proposal is just all hypothetically spoken. For future studies it is

open for improvements and more interpretations.

Based on the stereotype content model (Cuddy, Fiske, & Glick, 2008; Fiske, Cuddy,

Glick, & Xu, 2002) and also on the evidence presented by Aaker (1997) and Sung, Choi, Ahn

and Song (2015) we predicted that repositioning must be more beneficial for brands convey

an image of being warm, compared to an image of being competent. Our findings suggested

that this was not the case. Our thoughts, ideas and predictions in this study were based on the


assumption that the creation of people’s perceptions are based on two dimensions (i.e. warmth

and competence). There is some evidence that not two, but three dimensions exist to shape

people’s perception (Brambilla, Rusconi, Sacchi, & Cherubini, 2011; Brambilla, Sacchi,

Rusconi, Cherubini, & Yzerbyt, 2012; Landy, Piazza, & Goodwin, 2016). According to this

evidence, warmth seems to be divided in two separate dimensions. Namely, sociability and

morality. This research suggest that morality is the most dominant dimension of the three

because it determines the outcome of the other two dimensions. If people have the right

intentions directed to others morally, then it is always desirable for those people also to be

sociable (i.e. friendly, generous) and competent (i.e. capable, intelligent) in order to act on

those right intentions. In the case of our study with the repositioning of a brand, people might

find it desirable if a brand if is capable of acting on morally right intentions. Both TC and

Nespresso try to exhibit features that might indicate those intentions and that’s why people

might want to belief that they can act on those intentions. This could be a reason why there

were no differences regarding the acceptance of the different repositioning strategies in this

study. Future research might need to consider morality as the third dimension in examining

people’s perception concerning repositioning strategies.

To summarize, this research has taken the first step into finding out about the

acceptance of repositioning when it comes to brand perception. Despite the efforts made for

the study, we did not find what we were looking for. In conclusion, People do not accept a

repositioning more if the brand is shifting from an image that convey warmth to a position of

competence rather than vice versa. Nevertheless, this study is still of value in order to make

future researchers aware of the difficulties regarding the research of brand perception on

repositioning. These are difficulties like how to operate, defining the appropriate variables

and knowing which materials to use in gathering the most accurate and valid results.


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Footnotes

1 The statements about ethical consumerism were taken from the socially responsible

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Table 1

Reliability Statistics

Scale Cronbach’s

Alpha

N of items

Credibility message advertisement

Tony Chocolonely

0.894

3

Credibility message advertisement

Nespresso

0.849

3

Brand perception Tony Chocolonely

0.939

16

Brand perception Nespresso

0.917

16

SRCB

0.847

7


Table 2

Descriptive specified for each variable

Before repositioning After repositioning

Tony Chocolonely Nespresso Tony Chocolonely Nespresso

Variable M SD N M SD N M SD N M SD N

Credibility

message

4.70 1.31 42 3.98 1.27 40 4.75 1.29 41 4.44 1.16 41

Brand

perception

warmth

5.08 1.27 38 3.89 1.23 37 5.14 0.97 41 4.19 0.91 38

Brand

perception

competence

4.76 1.19 38 4.79 1.27 37 4.96 0.92 41 4.98 0.81 38

Willingness

To

Buy(WTB)

3.79 1.69 39 2.73 1.88 37 3.32 1.89 41 2.82 1.87 38

Willingness

To

Pay(WTP)

2.23 0.93 38 0.34 0.30 37 2.00 0.88 41 0.48 0.41 36

Overall

Evaluation

2.76 1.84 38 1.89 2.17 37 2.88 1.66 41 2.05 1.90 38

SRCB 2.71 0.90 36 2.71 0.90 36 2.91 0.87 37 2.91 0.87 37


Table 3

Missing Values Statistics

Variable Percentage of Missing

Values

N of Missing Values N Total Valid

Credibility message Tony

Chocolonely

15.3% 15 83

Credibility message

Nespresso

17.3% 17 81

Brand perception warmth

Tony Chocolonely

19.4% 19 79

Brand perception warmth

Nespresso

23.5% 23 75

Brand perception

competence Tony

Chocolonely

19.4% 19 79

Brand perception

competence Nespresso

23.5% 23 75

Willingness To Buy(WTB)

Tony

Chocolonely

18.4% 18 80

Willingness To Buy(WTB)

Nespresso

23.5% 23 75

Willingness To Pay(WTP)

Tony Chocolonely

19.4% 19 79

Willingness To Pay(WTP)

Nespresso

19.4% 19 79

Overall evaluation Tony

Chocolonely

19.4% 19 79

Overall evaluation

Nespresso

23.5% 23 75

SRCB 25.5% 25 73


Table 4

Results 2x2 mixed model ANOVA

Within-subjects

Df MS F Ƞ2 p

Brand perception_ warmth

1.000 41.466 38.677 .349 .0001**

Brand perception_ warmth

x condition

1.000 .408 .381 .005 .539

Brand

perception_competence

1.000 .014 .017 .000 .896

Brand

perception_competence x

condition

1.000 .019 .023 .000 .879

WTB

1.000 .002 .002 .000 .964

WTB x condition

1.000 .965 1.034 .014 .313

WTP

1.000 .007 .010 .000 .919

WTP x condition

1.000 2.792 4.044 .055 .048*

Overall_evaluation

1.000 .016 .015 .000 .903

Overall_evaluation x

condition

1.000 .174 .163 .002 .688

Credibility _message

1.000 12.270 8.796 .108 .004*

Credibility_message x

condition

1.000 2.137 1.532 .021 .220

Between-subjects

Brand perception_warmth

1.000 .963 .682 .009 .412

Brand

perception_competence

1.000 1.366 .904 .012 .345

WTB

1.000 .490 .443 .006 .508

WTP

1.000 .380 .293 .004 .590

Overall_evaluation

1.000 4.33 .453 .006 .503

Credibility_message 1.000 1.132 .663 .009 .418

Significance reached at *p<0.05, **p<0.001


Appendix A

Advertisement from Nespresso before repositioning including commercial link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfyeXrdZZ1o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfyeXrdZZ1o


Appendix B

Advertisement from Nespresso repositioning including commercial link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=defDvr7ZeHU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=defDvr7ZeHU


Appendix C

Advertisement website TC 100% slave-free chocolate


Appendix D

Advertisement website TC Limited editions


Appendix E

Stereotype content model

is it better to convey warmth or competence? the effect of

Documents