Article D - Cheng, Y., & Mukhopadhyay, A. (2024).

Question 1

What is this article about? NAME: An Aversion to Intervention: How the Protestant Work Ethic Influences Preferences for
Natural Healthcare

Answer 1

→ The study aims to look at how consumers respond and relate to natural healthcare.
Often, consumers either have stong preferences for artificial health care options or for natural products, but there has rarely been studies on the psychological causes for these preferences. → The cause can partly be influenced by…
Protestant Work Ethics (PWE) = cultural value system that emphasizes: hard work, discipline, frugality, responsibility, delayed gratification.
* “Hard work leads to success”
* “People should earn their rewards”
* “Idleness is morally wrong”
→ The following studies will try to prove or find evidence that people who align more strongly with PWE are more likely to prefer natural healthcare options because they are more averse to external intervention in general.

Question 2

Hypotheses

Answer 2

H1: Increasing strength of belief in the protestant work ethic is associated with increasing intention to choose or purchase relatively more natural healthcare options

H2: The greater intention to choose or purchase more natural healthcare options among those who believe strongly (vs. weakly) in the protestant work ethic is driven by a stronger general aversion to external intervention.

H3a: A stronger belief in PWE is more likely to be associated with a decreased purchased intention of healthcare options that represent a higher intrusiveness of external intervention

H3b: A stronger belief in the PWE is no more likely to be associated with a decreased purchase intention of healthcare options that only represent a higher extent of external intervention.

Question 3

Studies

Question 4

Implications

Answer 4

• Safety and efficacy are important concerns when marketing medicine, but cultural factors also impact healthcare preferences and decisions: Protestant * Work Ethic (PWE) leads people to favor treatments that symbolically align with self-reliance and minimal external intervention— even when the objective benefits of natural versus synthetic options are equivalent.
• Targeting and positioning: firms that manufacture natural medicine could target high-PWE consumers; firms that use modern artificial methods should target low-PWE consumer
• PWE can be manipulated (Study 4), therefore messages that increase/decrease PWE can be selectively used in marketing communications