What factors constitute a “strong” brand attitude? This study divided affective brand evaluation into two factors: pride and closeness and demonstrated that brand attitudes based on closeness were less susceptible to negative word-of-mouth messages than those based on pride. The reason for this was hypothesized as follows: closeness can be based on intuitive evaluation, whereas pride can be an emotion derived from deliberate thinking. This hypothesis was tested by an experiment comparing the strength of brand attitude with deliberate thinking through product usage, to the strength of brand attitude based on intuitive response without product usage. The result showed that closeness was resistant against negative word-of-mouth messages, regardless of product usage. However, pride was less susceptible when participants used the products and thought deliberately than when they did not use them (only read the advertisement). Finally, the limitations and practical implications of this study were discussed.

In this study, we examine market dynamics and relationship between market maturity and the transition of social interests. We define “socio-cognition” as a social construct that affects both consumers' product preferences, pertaining to product attributes or functions, and firms' product development direction, and examine its qualitative alteration. We set relevant hypotheses with respect to the transition of socio-cognition, and discuss the measurement and analytical procedures to investigate this transition. As a result, we find that the change in product labels is closely related to the transition of the socio-cognitive focus.

A new functional food-labeling system was implemented in April 2015 in Japan. However, it is not yet fully understood how Japanese consumers recognize food function. It is desirable that various stakeholders' understandings of food function are identical in order to enable consumers to be healthy by choosing functional food. In the present study, we aimed to explore the relationship between nutritional knowledge and understanding of food function among various food experts and health-minded consumers. From the results of a questionnaire about nutritional knowledge, we extracted three clusters of stakeholders. Further, we found differences between these clusters in the number of words and in the content of open-ended answers for the questionnaire on food function. These results provide a useful reference for the promotion of an appropriate understanding and use of functional food.