Browsing by Author "Luce, Mary Frances"

Consumers 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.

Positive 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.

I 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.

Marketers 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.

Though societally-held norms about emotion are an ever-present factor that guide and shape our emotional experiences, little research has examined how these norms might influence our consumption behaviors. In my dissertation, I begin to bridge that gap by examining how emotion norms might encourage individuals to make certain consumption choices in an attempt to achieve or avoid specific emotional states. In particular, I focus specifically on the emotion norm associated with the experience of feeling ashamed to explore how emotion norms can lead us to make some rather unexpected choices. Across a series of studies, I find that the emotion norm associated with shame attenuates consumers' basic hedonic impulses and increases their preference for products that elicit mixed emotions. Importantly, I find that this occurs despite our natural preference for feeling positively and despite the fact that feeling mixed emotions is psychologically uncomfortable and aversive. Taken together, this work extends the existing research on motivated emotion, mixed emotions and emotion norms in (1) suggesting a novel reason for why individuals might seek out one emotional state over another (2) providing an explanation for why mixed emotions-eliciting products might succeed in the marketplace (3) demonstrating that not all negative emotions lead to mood repair behavior and (4) examining how emotion norms as fundamental social structures influence consumption behavior.