Browsing by Author "Bettman, James R"
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Item Open Access A Multi-Dimensional Approach to Social Relationships in Consumer Behavior(2020) Gullo, KelleyWhile consumer research has long explored social influences in consumer phenomena, the literature rarely considers the implications of different dynamics in relationships. In this dissertation, I take a multi-dimensional perspective on social relationships in consumer behavior. In Chapter 1, I develop a conceptual framework of social relationships that situates different types of relationships along three theoretically orthogonal and consumer-relevant relational dimensions: closeness, competitiveness, and power. I argue that these key relational dimensions jointly shape consumer phenomena in important ways. Then, in Chapter 2, I provide an empirical demonstration of this framework in the context of a novel source of social influence: the effect of making consumption choices for different types of others. I focus on two theoretically relevant relational dimensions, closeness and competitiveness, and show across eight experiments that making goal-related consumption choices for others can influence subsequent goal-related choices for the self, depending on the type of relationship with the other. I conclude by considering the practical and theoretical implications of taking a multi-dimensional approach to consumer behavior.
Item Open Access A Multiple Goal Perspective on Eating Behavior(2016) Liu, Peggy JieAlthough people frequently pursue multiple goals simultaneously, these goals often conflict with each other. For instance, consumers may have both a healthy eating goal and a goal to have an enjoyable eating experience. In this dissertation, I focus on two sources of enjoyment in eating experiences that may conflict with healthy eating: consuming tasty food (Essay 1) and affiliating with indulging dining companions (Essay 2). In both essays, I examine solutions and strategies that decrease the conflict between healthy eating and these aspects of enjoyment in the eating experience, thereby enabling consumers to resolve such goal conflicts.
Essay 1 focuses on the well-established conflict between having healthy food and having tasty food and introduces a novel product offering (“vice-virtue bundles”) that can help consumers simultaneously address both health and taste goals. Through several experiments, I demonstrate that consumers often choose vice-virtue bundles with small proportions (¼) of vice and that they view such bundles as healthier than but equally tasty as bundles with larger vice proportions, indicating that “healthier” does not always have to equal “less tasty.”
Essay 2 focuses on a conflict between healthy eating and affiliation with indulging dining companions. The first set of experiments provides evidence of this conflict and examine why it arises (Studies 1 to 3). Based on this conflict’s origins, the second set of experiments tests strategies that consumers can use to decrease the conflict between healthy eating and affiliation with an indulging dining companion (Studies 4 and 5), such that they can make healthy food choices while still being liked by an indulging dining companion. Thus, Essay 2 broadens the existing picture of goals that conflict with the healthy eating goal and, together with Essay 1, identifies solutions to such goal conflicts.
Item Open Access Antecedents and Consequences of Authenticity in the Marketplace(2019) Du, Katherine MargaretConsumers value and seek authenticity in the marketplace, including in their products, themselves, and others. Due to its appeal to consumers, the study of authenticity in the marketplace has recently accelerated in consumer research. Adding to this research, in this work I explore antecedents and consequences of perceived authenticity related to both consumers and market offerings.
Essay 1 (“Goldilocks Signaling: How the Number of Signaling Items in an Ensemble Affects Perceptions of Consumer Authenticity”) explores how multi-product signals—consumption ensembles—are perceived by observers. Specifically, this research explores how the number of identity-signaling items (e.g., Nike items) a consumer includes in their ensemble affects observer perceptions of the consumer’s identity-specific authenticity (e.g., authenticity as an athlete). If consumers wish to be seen as authentic, essay 1 demonstrates that they have to balance self-presentation with the perception that they are trying too hard to signal. Accordingly, I find that consumers with ensembles featuring a moderate or “just right” number of signaling items are generally (with some boundaries) perceived as most authentic in relation to the identity they are signaling—a “Goldilocks signaling” effect. I demonstrate that consumers make these inferences both spontaneously, without direct prompting regarding authenticity from experimenters, and reflecting the choice patterns of more versus less authentic consumers. Furthermore, such perceptions are important to consumers’ social relationships; I demonstrate that perceived authenticity can affect how much observers like the identity-signaling consumer and how confident they are in the consumer’s identity-relevant skill. This research is one of very few experimental papers in consumer behavior to consider ensemble signaling and provides new insights into the psychological processes underlying judgments of consumers’ authenticity.
Essay 2 (“True to the Original or to the Creator? How Consumers Navigate the Tension Between Iconic and Expressive Authenticity in Evaluations of Creative Adaptations”) explores the role of authenticity in consumers’ evaluations of creative adaptations by leveraging the context of cover songs. I demonstrate that consumers’ evaluations of cover songs are driven by the relative value they place on the cover’s iconic—truth to the original—and expressive—truth to the cover artist—authenticity. Greater difference from the original causes consumers to perceive the cover song as more expressively authentic but less iconically authentic. Consumers often value both these types of authenticity, hence causing them to prefer cover songs that are moderately versus more or less different from their original. Consumers who are highly attached to the original, however, place increased value on iconic authenticity and hence prefer cover songs that are less different from their beloved original. In addition to showing support for this theory, I cast doubt on other, more general theories that could drive this effect. My findings provide a first detailed view of how multiple different types of authenticity affect consumer evaluations.
Together, these essays advance understanding of antecedents and consequences of multiple types of authenticity for both consumers (essay 1) and consumption objects (essay 2) in the marketplace.
Item Open Access Conversation Pieces: The Role of Products in Facilitating Conversation(2017) Wiener, Hillary Jane DoescherPositive social interactions and relationships are a fundamental human need, but it is not always easy to initiate conversations with potential relationship partners. Seven studies show the role that conversation pieces, or products that elicit questions and comments from others, can play in helping consumers to achieve their social goals. Studies 1 and 2 explore what makes a product a conversation piece and how different types of conversation pieces differentially affect social interactions. Studies 3-7 examine how observers (consumers who see another person displaying a conversation piece) use conversation pieces to facilitate social interactions. Studies 3 and 4 show that observers are more likely to approach people displaying conversation pieces than those who are not, as long as these products increase observers’ predictions of conversation quality. Study 5 demonstrates that observers generate better opening lines when they start a conversation with someone wearing a conversation piece than with someone who is not. Study 6 provides field experiment evidence that starting a conversation by asking about a conversation piece increases self-disclosure and improves perceived conversation quality, and study 7 explores the role of self-disclosure in conversations in more depth.
Item Open Access Do the Clothes Make the Man? How Gaps Between Current and Ideal Self Goals Shape Product-Related Perceptions and Behavior(2011) Samper, Luz-AdrianaI present a framework that describes how perceived discrepancies from an ideal, or hoped-for, self influence how people view and behave with products associated with identity attainment (i.e., "symbolic props"). In the first half of this framework, I demonstrate that individuals who perceive that they are more discrepant from their aspired identity (i.e., more aspirationally discrepant individuals) view symbolic props as more "instrumental," or useful, in helping them achieve identity goals. I demonstrate that this effect is egocentric, mediated by motivation, and only occurs when the perceived rate of progress toward one's aspirational goals is high enough to merit engagement toward the goal. In the second half of the framework, I show that for more aspirationally discrepant individuals, the use of symbolic props may actually limit effort on goal-relevant tasks. These studies suggest an ironic effect whereby aspirational discrepancy may lead to acquisition of goal-relevant props to the detriment of performance-relevant effort.
Item Open Access Feeling Good and Doing Better: How Specific Positive Emotions Influence Consumer Behavior and Well-being(2009) Cavanaugh, Lisa AnnMarketers seek to create and consumers seek to cultivate a variety of positive emotional experiences. Despite their importance to consumer behavior, researchers have lacked a clear understanding of the distinct behavioral consequences of specific positive emotions. My dissertation examines how different positive emotions (e.g., hope, love, and pride) can differentially affect consumers' decisions and behaviors. I find that positive emotions can not only be differentiated but also that specific positive emotions lead to distinctly different patterns of consumption behavior, such as considering more options, donating in different ways, engaging in more effortful actions, or performing more socially conscious consumption behaviors benefiting distant others. I find important differences both with momentary emotional experiences and downstream consequences of chronic emotional experiences.
Positive emotions differ reliably in the degree to which they create a lens of problem-solving, social connection, and perceived control. For example, I find that positive emotions characterized by a social connection lens (e.g., love and gratitude) lead to increases in socially conscious behaviors benefiting distant others. The tendency to perceive one's environment through a problem-solving lens (which characterizes hope and interest but not love and gratitude) leads to larger consideration sets and engagement in more effortful environmental actions. I also examine how positive emotions characterized by different lenses, such as perceived control (e.g., pride) and social connection (e.g., love), produce distinct behaviors within the same consumption context (e.g., giving in different ways in response to a fundraising appeal). Five studies demonstrate that positive emotions can be characterized in ways that allow prediction of distinct forms of broadening and specific consumption behaviors.
Item Open Access Goal Structure and Reference Points in Consumer Motivation(2018) Wallace, Scott GordonGoals play an essential role in many aspects of consumer behavior, and how best to effectively set and structure goals has long been a question of interest to researchers, marketers, and consumers in general. The same basic goal can be structured in many ways: by setting a specific goal of greater or lesser difficulty, by instead setting a range goal, by defining various subgoals along the way, or simply by aiming to do as well as possible. Although the intentions behind them are similar, these different ways of structuring a goal have important consequences for motivation and behavior. Prior research has explored several of these consequences, largely focusing on the difficulty and perceived value of the goal, on the level of ambiguity in its objectives, or on the level of commitment it produces. This dissertation takes a new perspective on this problem, examining the consequences of goal structure for the motivational and affective dynamics of goal pursuit. To explore this question in a comprehensive way, this research considers the salient reference points that are available during goal pursuit when goals are structured in various ways. This approach offers valuable new insights by connecting the issue of goal structure to the theory of goals as reference points, a prevailing framework in goals research more broadly. In three essays, I explore novel aspects of pursuing specific versus non-specific goals (Essay 1), of pursuing range goals (Essay 2), and of pursuing goals that focus on behavioral restraint rather than achievement (Essay 3). Together, these essays offer valuable insights for effective goal-setting, strategies for effective goal pursuit, and theoretical contributions to research on the psychology of consumer goal pursuit.
Item Open Access How Should I Think About It?: Perceived Suitability and the Resolution of Simultaneous Conflicting Preferences(2007-08-08) Bond, SamuelConsumers often face conflict between what "makes sense" and what "feels right" - between logical analysis and intuition. This dissertation focuses on the means by which such conflict is resolved. Extending dual-process models of judgment, we suggest that consumers often select a processing output based on their assessment regarding the appropriateness of experiential (system-1) and analytical (system-2) responses. Specifically, we propose distinct mechanisms that affect the weighting of experiential versus analytical outputs by influencing the perceived suitability of each processing mode, and we test these mechanisms in a series of experimental studies. In order to demonstrate the broad applicability of our framework, these studies investigate numerous domains in which the 'head' and 'gut' produce opposing responses, employ diverse manipulations of perceived suitability, and utilize multiple judgment and evaluation measures.The dissertation is organized in three chapters. Chapter One provides an overview of dual-systems theories and introduces the notion of simultaneous conflicting preferences. In addition, the chapter describes our conceptualization of perceived suitability as a metacognitive construct and lays out a model by which this construct influences the resolution of conflicting preferences. Chapter Two presents six empirical studies spanning a number of paradigms relevant to consumer behavior and social cognition. As an initial demonstration, Studies 1-2 utilized a semantic priming task to manipulate representations of experiential and analytical processing, and then tested the effects of this manipulation in a game of chance pitting a logically superior option against one that was perceptually appealing. Studies 3-6 expanded our model to situations involving conflict between implicit and explicit brand attitudes. Three of these studies (3, 5, and 6) tested the proposition that prior-formed, 'implicit' attitudes will affect even overt preferences to the extent that experiential processing is deemed suitable to the evaluation task. The other (Study 4) identified various decision characteristics that may affect the perceived suitability of each processing mode in real-world decisions. Chapter Three concludes the dissertation by reviewing the evidence for our conceptual model and discussing both theoretical and practical contributions of the question "How should I think about it?" in situations pitting instincts against reason.Item Open Access Look on the Bright Side: Self-Expressive Consumption and Consumer Self-Worth(2008-04-24) Dalton, Amy N.This research investigates the interplay between self-worth and consumption, and explores the substantive phenomenon of trading up. Laboratory experiments were conducted in which participants were led to fail (or not) on an intelligence test, which threatened their feelings of self-worth (or not). Following the failure, participants made consumer choices. Of key interest was whether threatened self-worth would result in more "trading up" - that is, selecting more expensive products or retail stores. Results revealed that compared to consumers whose self-worth was not threatened, threatened consumers demonstrated more self-expressive consumption: trading up when a product portrayed "me" (high on self-relevance), or not trading up when a product portrayed "not me" (low on self-relevance). Self-relevance was operationalized in terms of choice sets (i.e., the choice between two Duke t-shirts vs. two white t-shirts) and individual differences in the tendency to consider material objects part of the self (this was measured via a questionnaire).
This research also examined two hypotheses regarding how consumption could, in turn, affect feelings of self-worth. The first hypothesis stated that negative feelings of self-worth can be immediately repaired via consumer decisions (here, the decision to trade up or not). Indeed, results revealed that among consumers whose feelings of self-worth were threatened, self-expressive consumption repaired negative feelings of self-worth. The second hypothesis stated that positive attachments between possessions and consumers' feelings of self-worth enable consumers to rely on possessions to protect self-worth. To test this, participants wrote about a possession that was important for who they are and how they feel about themselves (participants in a control condition wrote about a possession important to other people for this reason). Results showed that writing about a self-relevant possession before failing a test buffered the impact on feelings of self-worth. This finding was particularly robust for possessions important to consumers' social relationships.
These findings highlight the bright side of the relationship between consumption and self-worth: consumers respond to threats adaptively - sometimes spending more and sometimes spending less - and functionally - by making consumption decisions that repair self-worth and by relying on possessions to protect self-worth.
Item Open Access Putting ‘Time’ Back in “Me-Time”: Exploring the Relationships between Time Perceptions, Self-Gifting, and Well-Being(2020) Rifkin, JacquelineConsumers are increasingly being encouraged to engage in consumption with the specific intention of improving their own emotional well-being (called “self-gifting consumption”). As a result, the market around self-care and self-gifting has been growing over the last several years. At the same time, however, consumers are also experiencing what has been called a “time famine,” or the sense of not having enough time to accomplish what they need or want to do. Leveraging the academic literatures on self-gifting consumption and time perceptions, this dissertation explores this tension, its psychological underpinnings, and possible solutions. Specifically, two essays explore antecedents of consumer interest in self-gifting, consequences of engaging in self-gifting, and the role of time perceptions in shaping these relationships.
Essay 1 examines the role of perceived time availability in driving consumers’ attitudes toward “self-gifting appeals,” or marketing appeals that communicate the intention to improve one’s emotional well-being through the purchase or consumption of a given offering. Six studies reveal that perceiving time as more (vs. less) abundant leads consumers to resonate more with self-gifting appeals, compared to when the same offerings are positioned in other ways. This occurs because perceived time abundance triggers a heightened sense of contentment—a positive, emotion-like state of feeling complete, and characterized by a desire to focus on one’s emotions—which, in turn, increases attitudes towards appeals that involve a personal, emotional focus (as with self-gifting appeals).
Turning from antecedents to consequences, Essay 2 tests whether engaging in a brief self-gifting experience provides emotional well-being benefits, whether consumers can correctly intuit this outcome, and the potential moderating role of time perceptions. Four studies demonstrate that, despite consumers’ expectations that time scarcity will hamper their ability to derive emotional benefit from self-gifting experiences, time- scarce consumers in fact derive amplified emotional well-being boosts, relative to time- abundant consumers. In addition to improving emotional well-being, self-gifting experiences can also expand one’s sense of available time, particularly for the time-scarce.
Overall, this dissertation contributes to the literatures on time perceptions, self- gifting, affective forecasting, and consumer well-being and has implications for the role that consumption and marketing can play in improving consumers’ lives.
Item Open Access Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid: How Word of Mouth Influences the Speaker(2009) Moore, Sarah GossConsumers frequently share stories about consumption experiences with others through word of mouth (WOM). Past research has focused on how hearing WOM influences the listener; I examine how sharing WOM influences the speaker. My proposed model outlines variables that determine storytelling language, predicts how specific language influences speakers' evaluations of experiences, and identifies the process through which language influences speakers. I test this model in five experimental studies and in a field study using Amazon.com data. I find that stories containing relatively more explaining language influence speakers through a process of sense-making. Sense-making helps consumers understand and recover from experiences by allowing them to figure out why experiences occurred and why they liked or disliked them. Making sense of experiences through explaining language has several consequences for consumers. Explaining language can cause paradoxical effects of WOM in terms of consumers' evaluations of experiences and their intentions to repeat and recommend experiences. Explaining positive experiences can decrease speakers' evaluations of experiences, making experiences less positive and decreasing consumers' willingness to repeat and recommend these experiences. Conversely, explaining negative experiences can increase speakers' evaluations of experiences, making experiences less negative and increasing consumers' willingness to repeat and recommend these experiences. In addition, making sense of and explaining experiences decreases consumers' intentions to spread future word of mouth about their experiences.
Item Open Access The Pursuit of Health, Wealth, and Well-being Through Minimalist Consumption(2020) Chabot, AimeeMaterial consumption has increased exponentially in recent decades, establishing most American consumers today as the most materially wealthy humans in history. But what is all of our stuff really buying us? Despite our material wealth, Americans suffer from many poverties and illnesses that seem to be exacerbated rather than alleviated by our culture of consumerism. Even more clear is the threat that our consumption behavior poses to the environment. In seeking solutions to overconsumption, interest in minimalism as a lifestyle has rapidly expanded over the past decade. Given a lack of academic research on this topic, the current work relies on four datasets using quantitative surveys (total N = 1,117) and in-depth qualitative interviews (N = 30 minimalists) to explore the following questions: what does it mean to practice minimalism, what motivates people to adopt minimalism, and what impacts do people report experiencing as a result of practicing minimalism? I find that minimalism is a practice of centering one's values and intentionally allocating and cultivating one's resources across a variety of domains. By investing one’s time, money, attention, energy, and space into that which is most valued and divesting from that which is not, minimalists seek to maximize value and minimize costs. As a result, I suggest that minimalism is a consumption orientation and practice that is value-driven and resource-building. I find that minimalist consumers often adopt minimalism during periods of significant change and transition and are primarily motivated by a desire to reduce stress and increase their psychological well-being. Minimalists report a high number of benefits from practicing minimalism, including increased financial security, improved psychological well-being, less stress, more free time, fewer distractions, and a greater sense of control. In conceptualizing minimalism more broadly, I adapt and extend Antonovsky’s theory of salutogenesis (1979, 1987) to argue that minimalism can be viewed as a case of a salutogenic (vs. pathogenic) consumption orientation – that is, consumption that is focused on building well-being through the active cultivation of valued resources (as compared to consumption that threatens well-being and depletes valued resources). I conclude that minimalism is a promising pathway to greater individual well-being with positive second-order environmental effects.
Item Open Access Unrealistically Optimistic Consumers: a Selective Hypothesis Testing Account for Optimism in Predictions of Future Behavior(2008-04-21) Tanner, Robin JamesIndividuals tend to make unrealistically optimistic self assessments about themselves and their future behavior. While little studied in marketing, unrealistic optimism by consumers may have negative consequences for both marketers and consumers. This dissertation proposes and explores a selective hypothesis testing view of unrealistic optimism. Specifically, I propose that consumers adopt the tentative hypothesis that they will behave in an ideal fashion when predicting their future behavior. They then selectively test this hypothesis by accessing information consistent with it, with the ultimate consequence being unrealistically optimistic predictions of future behavior. To validate this theory I use the following experimental paradigm. I have individuals first provide an idealized estimate for the behavior of interest (e.g., In an ideal world, how often would you exercise next week?) and then provide a second estimate (e.g., How often will you exercise next week?). The idea here is that by making the idealized nature of the ideal behavior salient consumers will be less likely to test a hypothesis of ideal behavior when subsequently providing an estimate. In a series of ten studies, I find that prior consideration of idealistic performance does indeed temper optimism in subsequent self-assessments (henceforth post-ideal estimates). Specifically, post-ideal estimates are free of relative optimism versus expectations of others behaviors, are more reflective of actual past behavior, and better predict actual future behavior. Furthermore, this attenuation of optimism is mediated by increased consideration of realistic thoughts and is moderated by both expertise and decisiveness. All of these results are consistent with selective hypothesis testing being a key driver of unrealistic optimism. Additionally I demonstrate that the debiasing effect of my method extends from behaviors to above average (and in some cases below average) views of traits and abilities. As such my work raises the possibility that selective hypothesis testing underlies a wide variety of self assessment biases. Having found strong support for my selective hypothesis testing view of unrealistic optimism, I also explore the potential consequences that unrealistic optimism may have for consumer decisions. In particular, I demonstrate that unrealistically optimistic predictions of future behavior appear to be associated with greater willingness to pay for socially desirable products (e.g., treadmills) and that attenuation of such optimism can reduce willingness to pay. Some researchers have argued that unrealistic optimism with respect to future behavior causes people to make vice choices in the present because they expect to make virtuous choices in the future (Kahn and Dhar 2007). If so, then the current research suggests one way to help consumers from falling into the trap of justifying vice behaviors with optimistically held views about future actions.Item Open Access “What’s Pain Got To Do With It?”: How the Pain of Payment Influences Our Choices and Our Relationships(2015) Shah, Avni MaheshOne of the most frequent things we do as consumers is make purchase. We pay for a coffee or for food, we pay for necessities around the house, we even pay for one another, buying drinks or dinner for a friend every now and then. In today’s marketplace, the decision of whether to purchase is also coupled with the decision of how to make a purchase. Consumers have so many different methods to pay for their transactions. Can the way a consumer chooses to pay change the likelihood that s/he make a purchase? And then post-purchase, can the payment method used to pay for a purchase influence how connected individuals feel to that product, brand, or organization? Given that we sometimes pay for others (and vice versa), can the way we pay influence our interpersonal relationships?
In what follows, I argue that the way individuals pay, and specifically the pain associated with making a payment, can have a pervasive effect on their decision to make a purchase and how they feel post-transaction. Across three essays, I focus on how the pain of paying can influence the likelihood to purchase an item from a consideration set (Essay 1) and subsequently, how the pain of paying can influence post-transaction connection to a product, organization, or even to other people (Essay 2 and 3). Across field, laboratory, online, and archival methods, I find robust evidence that increasing the pain of paying may initially deter individuals from choosing. However, post-transaction, increasing the pain of payment may have an upside: individuals feel closer and more committed to a product that they purchased, organization that they donated to, and feel greater connection and rapport to who they spent their money on. However, I also demonstrate the boundary conditions of these findings. When individuals are spending money on something that is undesirable, such as paying for a competitor, increasing the pain of payment decreases interpersonal connection and rapport.
Item Open Access When a Brand is a Sincere Friend: Compensatory Response to Social Exclusion(2012) Min, Kate EHow do consumers respond when they experience threats to interpersonal relationships, or social exclusion? This research suggests that consumers will seek brands that are characterized by a specific personality trait dimension. In particular, consumers will seek sincere brands as a means to fulfill the need to belong. I argue that this sincerity orientation effect occurs because the sincerity dimension is positively associated with relationship growth and strength. Several studies demonstrate that when excluded, consumers become biased in their impressions of and preferences for sincere brands; they also feel stronger self-brand connections to sincere brands. Further, two studies demonstrate the moderating roles of identity-relevant affirmation and self-esteem in the relationship between exclusion and sincerity orientation towards brands.