In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

In this study, we consider the online consumer as both a shopper and a computer user. We test constructs from information systems (Technology Acceptance Model), marketing (Consumer Behavior), and psychology (Flow and Environmental Psychology) in an integrated theoretical framework of online consumer behavior. Specifically, we examine how emotional and cognitive responses to visiting a Web-based store for the first time can influence online consumers' intention to return and their likelihood to make unplanned purchases. The instrumentation shows reasonably good measurement properties and the constructs are validated as a nomological network.A questionnaire-based empirical study is used to test this nomological network. Results confirm the double identity of the online consumer as a shopper and a computer user because both shopping enjoyment and perceived usefulness of the site strongly predict intention to return. Our results on unplanned purchases are not conclusive. We also test some individual and Web site factors that can affect the consumer's emotional and cognitive responses. Product involvement, Web skills, challenges, and use of value-added search mechanisms all have a significant impact on the Web consumer. The study provides a more rounded, albeit partial, view of the online consumer and is a significant steptowards a better understanding of consumer behavior on the Web. The validated metrics should be of use to researchers and practitioners alike.

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Applying the Technology Acceptance Model and Flow Theory to Online Consumer Behavior

This article provides a synthesizing overview of the past 20 yr. of consumer research addressing the sociocultural, experiential, symbolic, and ideological aspects of consumption. Our aim is to provide a viable disciplinary brand for this research tradition that we call consumer culture theory (CCT). We propose that CCT has fulfilled recurrent calls for developing a distinctive body of theoretical knowledge about consumption and marketplace behaviors. In developing this argument, we redress three enduring misconceptions about the nature and analytic orientation of CCT. We then assess how CCT has contributed to consumer research by illuminating the cultural dimensions of the consumption cycle and by developing novel theorizations concerning four thematic domains of research interest.

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Consumer Culture Theory (Cct): Twenty Years of Research

Intuition and previous research suggest that creating a compelling online environment for Web consumers will have numerous positive consequences for commercial Web providers. Online executives note that creating a compelling online experience for cyber customers is critical to creating competitive advantage on the Internet. Yet, very little is known about the factors that make using the Web a compelling experience for its users, and of the key consumer behavior outcomes of this compelling experience.Recently, the flow construct has been proposed as important for understanding consumer behavior on the World Wide Web, and as a way of defining the nature of compelling online experience. Although widely studied over the past 20 years, quantitative modeling efforts of the flow construct have been neither systematic nor comprehensive. In large parts, these efforts have been hampered by considerable confusion regarding the exact conceptual definition of flow. Lacking precise definition, it has been difficult to measure flow empirically, let alone apply the concept in practice.Following the conceptual model of flow proposed by Hoffman and Novak (1996), we conceptualize flow on the Web as a cognitive state experienced during navigation that is determined by (1) high levels of skill and control; (2) high levels of challenge and arousal; and (3) focused attention; and (4) is enhanced by interactivity and telepresence. Consumers who achieve flow on the Web are so acutely involved in the act of online navigation that thoughts and perceptions not relevant to navigation are screened out, and the consumer focuses entirely on the interaction. Concentration on the navigation experience is so intense that there is little attention left to consider anything else, and consequently, other events occurring in the consumer's surrounding physical environment lose significance. Self-consciousness disappears, the consumer's sense of time becomes distorted, and the state of mind arising as a result of achieving flow on the Web is extremely gratifying.In a quantitative modeling framework, we develop a structural model based on our previous conceptual model of flow that embodies the components of what makes for a compelling online experience. We use data collected from a largesample, Web-based consumer survey to measure these constructs, and we fit a series of structural equation models that test related prior theory. The conceptual model is largely supported, and the improved fit offered by the revised model provides additional insights into the direct and indirect influences of flow, as well as into the relationship of flow to key consumer behavior and Web usage variables.Our formulation provides marketing scientists with operational definitions of key model constructs and establishes reliability and validity in a comprehensive measurement framework. A key insight from the paper is that the degree to which the online experience is compelling can be defined, measured, and related well to important marketing variables. Our model constructs relate in significant ways to key consumer behavior variables, including online shopping and Web use applications such as the extent to which consumers search for product information and participate in chat rooms. As such, our model may be useful both theoretically and in practice as marketers strive to decipher the secrets of commercial success in interactive online environments.

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Measuring the Customer Experience in Online Environments: A Structural Modeling Approach

This article reviews the construct and measurement of materialism and concludes that materialism is appropriately conceptualized as a consumer value. The development of a values-oriented materialism scale with three components—acquisition centrality, acquisition as the pursuit of happiness, and possession-defined success—is described. In validation tests high scorers (compared with low scorers) desired a higher level of income, placed greater emphasis on financial security and less on interpersonal relationships, preferred to spend more on themselves and less on others, engaged in fewer voluntary simplicity behaviors, and were less satisfied with their lives.

A Consumer Values Orientation for Materialism and Its Measurement: Scale Development and Validation

A rhetorical figure can be defined as an artful deviation in the form taken by a statement. Since antiquity dozens of figures have been cataloged, ranging from the familiar (rhyme, pun) to the obscure (antimetabole). Despite the frequent appearance of rhetorical figures in print advertisements, their incorporation into advertising theory and research has been minimal. This article develops a framework for classifying rhetorical figures that distinguishes between figurative and nonfigurative text, between two types of figures (schemes and tropes), and among four rhetorical operations that underlie individual figures (repetition, reversal, substitution, and destabilization). These differentiations in the framework are supported by preliminary validation data and are linked to suggested consumer responses. The article also considers the theoretical import of the proposed framework for future research on rhetorical structure in advertising.

Figures of Rhetoric in Advertising Language

Text interpretations, two experiments, and a set of reader-response interviews examine the impact of stylistic elements in advertising that form visual rhetorical figures parallel to those found in language The visual figures examined here— rhyme, antithesis, metaphor, and pun—produced more elaboration and led to a more favorable attitude toward the ad, without being any more difficult to comprehend Interviews confirmed that several of the meanings generated by informants corresponded to those produced by an a priori text-interpretive analysis of the ads However, all of these effects diminished or disappeared for the visual tropes (metaphor and pun) in the case of individuals who lacked the cultural competency required to adequately appreciate the contemporary American ads on which the studies are based Results are discussed in terms of the power of rhetorical theory and cultural competency theory (Scott 1994a) for illuminating the role played by visual elements in advertising Overall, the project demonstrates the advantages of investigating visual persuasion via an integration of multiple research traditions

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Visual Rhetoric in Advertising: Text-Interpretive, Experimental, and Reader-Response Analyses

Print ads exhibit resonance when they combine wordplay with a relevant picture to create ambiguity and incongruity. This article uses multiple perspectives and methods within a framework of critical pluralism to investigate advertising resonance. Semiotic text analyses, a content analysis of contemporary magazine ads, two experiments, and phenomenological interviews combine to yield insights into the operation, prevalence, impact, and experience of resonance. Specifically, the two experiments show that manipulation of resonance produces positive treatment effects in three domains: liking for the ad, brand attitude, and unaided recall of ad headlines. These effects appear contingent on subjects' successful decoding of resonance and their tolerance for ambiguity (an individual difference variable). Implications for future research on resonance and for the use of critical pluralism in consumer advertising research are discussed.

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On Resonance: A Critical Pluralistic Inquiry into Advertising Rhetoric

The megaphone effect refers to the fact that the web makes a mass audience potentially available to ordinary consumers. The article focuses on fashion bloggers who acquire an audience by iterated displays of aesthetic discrimination applied to the selection and combination of clothing. The authors offer a theoretical account of bloggers’ success in terms of the accumulation of cultural capital via public displays of taste and describe how the exercise of taste produces economic rewards and social capital for these bloggers. The article situates fashion blogging as one instance of a larger phenomenon that includes online reviews and user-generated content and extends to the consumption of food and home decor as well as clothing. In these instances of the megaphone effect, a select few ordinary consumers are able to acquire an audience without the institutional mediation historically required.

The Megaphone Effect: Taste and Audience in Fashion Blogging

The goal of rhetorical theory is always to organize the possibilities for persuasion within a domain and to relate each possible stratagem to specific desired outcomes. In this article we develop a visual rhetoric that differentiates the pictorial strategies available to advertisers and links them to consumer response. We propose a new typology that distinguishes nine types of visual rhetorical figures according to their degree of complexity and ambiguity. We then derive empirically testable predictions concerning how these different types of visual figures may influence such consumer responses as elaboration and belief change. The article concludes with a discussion of the importance of marrying textual analysis, as found in literary, semiotic and rhetorical disciplines, with the experimental methodology characteristic of social and cognitive psychology.

Edward F. McQuarrie

Papers

Figures of Rhetoric in Advertising Language

Visual Rhetoric in Advertising: Text-Interpretive, Experimental, and Reader-Response Analyses

On Resonance: A Critical Pluralistic Inquiry into Advertising Rhetoric

The Megaphone Effect: Taste and Audience in Fashion Blogging

Beyond Visual Metaphor: A New Typology of Visual Rhetoric in Advertising