文档介绍：Preyas S. Desai, Ajay Kalra, & . Murthi
When Old Is Gold: The Role of
Business Longevity in Risky
Situations
The authors examine how a service firm’s longevity may affect consumers’ perceptions of risk in conducting
business with the firm. Depending on the nature of information available to consumers, a firm’s longevity can act in
one of two ways to reduce the consumers’ perceived risk: (1) Longevity may act as an extrinsic cue of the firm’s
quality, or (2) availability of a longer track record of an older firm may allow consumers to make more precise
prediction of the firm’s future quality. The authors develop a set of hypotheses that relate these two effects to
consumers’ preferences and test them in a series of four experiments. They find that a firm’s age can act as an
extrinsic cue of the firm’s quality. When consumers also have information about firms’ intrinsic attributes, the effect
of a firm’s age as an extrinsic cue is diminished under conditions of high involvement. The experiments also show
that consumers prefer firms with longer track records, especially when firms’ performance/quality levels are subject
to more variability. However, when consumers have high aspiration levels, they prefer firms with shorter track
records, even though the consumers perceive these firms as riskier choices.
Keywords: services, marketing strategy, advertising, risk, consumer behavior
irms often advertise their year of inception; a casual Bearden 1982).1 We argue that business longevity may also
examination of Yellow Pages advertisements for auto- act as a useful extrinsic cue about the quality of the firm and
Fmobile repair, plumbers, and various other categories its products and thus reduce consumers’ perceived risk. For
reveals that several firms highlight their starting year in example, consumers may believe that continued survival of
their advertisements. For example, AXA Insurance’s adver- a firm without offering strong benefits to consume