Showing papers in "Journal of Consumer Research in 2021"

How Concrete Language Shapes Customer Satisfaction

Abstract: Consumers are often frustrated by customer service. But could a simple shift in language help improve customer satisfaction? We suggest that linguistic concreteness—the tangibility, specificity, or imaginability of words employees use when speaking to customers—can shape consumer attitudes and behaviors. Five studies, including text analysis of over 1,000 real consumer–employee interactions in two different field contexts, demonstrate that customers are more satisfied, willing to purchase, and purchase more when employees speak to them concretely. This occurs because customers infer that employees who use more concrete language are listening (i.e., attending to and understanding their needs). These findings deepen understanding of how language shapes consumer behavior, reveal a psychological mechanism by which concreteness impacts person perception, and provide a straightforward way that managers could help enhance customer satisfaction.

Re-examining the Experiential Advantage in Consumption: A Meta-Analysis and Review

Abstract: A wealth of consumer research has proposed an experiential advantage: consumers yield greater happiness from purchasing experiences compared to material possessions. While this research stream has undoubtedly influenced consumer research, few have questioned its limitations, explored moderators, or investigated filedrawer effects. This has left marketing managers, consumers, and researchers questioning the relevance of the experiential advantage. To address these questions, the authors develop a model of consumer happiness and well-being based on psychological needs (i.e., autonomy, relatedness, self-esteem, and meaningfulness), and conduct an experiential advantage meta-analysis to test this model. Collecting 360 effect sizes from 141 studies, the meta-analysis supports the experiential advantage (d = 0.383, 95% CI [0.336, 0.430]), of which approximately a third of the effect may be attributable to publication bias. The analysis finds differential effects depending on the type of dependent measure, suggesting that the experiential advantage may be more tied to relatedness than to happiness and willingness to pay. The experiential advantage is reduced for negative experiences, for solitary experiences, for lower socioeconomic status consumers, and when experiences provide a similar level of utilitarian benefits relative to material goods. Finally, results suggest future studies in this literature should use larger sample sizes than current practice.

Assimilating and Differentiating: The Curvilinear Effect of Social Class on Green Consumption

Abstract: Building on optimal distinctiveness theory, this research examines the effects of social class on green consumption. Across six studies, we find a curvilinear effect of social class on green consumption, with the middle class having greater propensity for green consumption compared to the lower and upper classes. This effect can be explained by tension between need for assimilation (NFA) and need for differentiation (NFD) that varies among the three social classes in establishing their optimally distinctive identities. The lower class has a dominant NFA, the upper class has a dominant NFD, and the middle class has dual motivation for assimilation and differentiation. Concomitantly, green consumption has the dual function of assimilation and differentiation. The middle class perceives green consumption as simultaneously assimilating and differentiating, which satisfies their dual motivation and enhances their propensity for green consumption. By contrast, the lower class perceives the differentiation function of green consumption as contradicting their dominant NFA, and the upper class perceives the assimilation function as contradicting their dominant NFD, which lower both their propensities for green consumption. Furthermore, these effects are moderated by consumers’ power distance belief. These novel findings have significant theoretical and practical implications on building a more sustainable society.

I Own, so I Help Out: How Psychological Ownership Increases Prosocial Behavior

Abstract: This article explores the consequences of psychological ownership going beyond the specific relationship with the possession to guide behavior in unrelated situations. Across seven studies, we find that psychological ownership leads to a boost in self-esteem, which encourages individuals to be more altruistic. In addition, we show that the effect of psychological ownership on prosocial behavior is not driven by self-efficacy, perceived power, reciprocity, feeling well-off, or affect. Examining materialism and mine-me sensitivity as individual differences moderating the effect of psychological ownership on prosocial behavior, we find that the effect does not hold for individuals low on materialism or mine-me sensitivity. Finally, we attenuate the effect of psychological ownership on prosocial tendencies by making the negative attributes of one’s possessions relevant.

Language and Consumer Dishonesty: A Self-Diagnosticity Theory

Abstract: How does foreign language influence consumer dishonesty? We propose a self-diagnosticity theory arguing that compared to one’s native language, using a foreign language makes lying appear less self-diagnostic, thereby increasing or decreasing lying depending on which aspect of the self is salient. In situations where lying reflects an undesirable, dishonest self, using a foreign language increases lying. In contrast, in situations where lying primarily reflects a desirable (e.g., competent or compassionate) self, using a foreign language decreases lying. Ten studies, spanning various languages, consumer contexts, and experimental paradigms, support the theory. The studies establish that the effect of language on lying jointly depends on the self-diagnosticity of lying and on whether lying is diagnostic of a positive or a negative aspect of the self. The findings highlight self-diagnosticity as a valuable lens to understand the behavior of bilingual consumers and offer practical guidance for addressing dishonesty in the marketplace.

Audio Mining: The Role of Vocal Tone in Persuasion

Abstract: Persuasion success is often related to hard-to-measure characteristics, such as the way the persuader speaks. To examine how vocal tones impact persuasion in an online appeal, this research measures persuaders’ vocal tones in Kickstarter video pitches using novel audio mining technology. Connecting vocal tone dimensions with real-world funding outcomes offers insight into the impact of vocal tones on receivers’ actions. The core hypothesis of this paper is that a successful persuasion attempt is associated with vocal tones denoting (1) focus, (2) low stress, and (3) stable emotions. These three vocal tone dimensions—which are in line with the stereotype content model—matter because they allow receivers to make inferences about a persuader’s competence. The hypotheses are tested with a large-scale empirical study using Kickstarter data, which is then replicated in a different category. In addition, two controlled experiments provide evidence that perceptions of competence mediate the impact of the three vocal tones on persuasion attempt success. The results identify key indicators of persuasion attempt success and suggest a greater role for audio mining in academic consumer research.

The Politicization of Objects: Meaning and Materiality in The U.S. Cannabis Market

Abstract: In this article, we theorize how marketplace objects and their properties facilitate market legitimacy. Adopting assemblage theory, we examine a politically contested market—the U.S. recreational cannabis market—using retail sales data, public opinion polls and surveys, mainstream media coverage, and interviews with producers and consumers. We find that objects convey meaning in the market by creating sensory or discursive alignment between new or contested products and products from existing, legitimate markets, and by creating sensory or discursive distancing between new products and products in existing, illegitimate markets. We further find that different types of consumers play different roles in the overall legitimation process because they perceive alignments and misalignments differently. We present a conceptual model that links object meaning with the market and broader, cultural, and societal levels, demonstrating how materiality contributes to the overall legitimation of a politically contested market.

How Do Platforms Empower Consumers? Insights from the Affordances and Constraints of Reclame Aqui

Abstract: Consumer feedback platforms offer consumers tools to provide feedback on their market and consumption experiences. Beyond broad prior characterizations, little is known about the specific means by which platforms affect empowerment. Elements of empowerment identified in extant studies include voice, choice, justice, inclusion, catalysis, and consciousness-raising. We research a popular Brazilian platform to learn how platforms facilitate and constrain consumer empowerment. Our approach is immersive, a more-than-human netnography of the platform involving depth interviews with twenty-one of its consumer and corporate users. Findings show same-side and cross-side network effects driving the ability of the platform to offer consumers empowerment. Furthermore, affordances are critically important. Affordances provide opportunities for consumer choice, voice, justice, and inclusion. However, platforms’ cross-side network effects create economic considerations that limit those opportunities in theoretically and practically important ways. Although other feedback platforms might offer catalysis and consciousness-raising elements of empowerment, our focal platform does not. Earlier studies of consumer empowerment on the Internet may have been overly general and exuberant because they failed to recognize the constraining impacts of network effects, affordances, and algorithms. Consumer-citizenry, collective action, and consumer power are thoroughly transformed in the age of the platform, opening up new spaces for further investigation.

Creating Responsible Subjects: The Role of Mediated Affective Encounters

Abstract: Why do people willingly bestow upon themselves the responsibility to tackle social problems such as poverty? Consumer research has provided valuable insight into how individuals are created as responsible subjects but has yet to account for the crucial role of affective dynamics in subject formation. We draw upon affect theorizing and nascent research on “affective governmentality” in organization and policy studies to theorize the formation of responsible subjects via affective encounters (i.e., consumption encounters through which consumers’ capacities to affect and to be affected change), and to explore how affective encounters are mediated downstream. Through a qualitative investigation of the online microloan market, we explain how market intermediaries contribute to the creation of affective-entrepreneurial subjects who willingly supply interest-free loans to the disadvantaged. The intermediaries accomplish this by nurturing and dramatizing a structure of feeling that subtends affective encounters and by deploying apparatuses of affirmation and relatability to target and intervene into affective encounters. In addition to illuminating the affective dynamics involved in consumer responsibilization and subject formation more broadly, our study facilitates critical reflection on the subject-formative power of consumer experiences and experiential marketing and carries important implications for research on charitable giving and critical thinking on microcredit.

How Do Consumers React to Company Moral Transgressions? The Role of Power Distance Belief and Empathy for Victims

Abstract: This research proposes that consumers vary in their response to company moral transgressions as a function of power distance belief (PDB), which is the extent that consumers accept inequality (a prominent moral principle). Specifically, consumers with lower PDB tend to feel more empathy for victims, which in turn heightens harm perceptions and negative moral emotions, leading to less favorable reactions toward the transgressing company. A series of nine studies and four supplementary experiments provides converging evidence for the PDB effect and underlying empathy-based process, while identifying victim salience and company crisis response strategy as theoretically and pragmatically relevant moderators. Specifically, the PDB effect emerges when victim salience is high (evoking greater empathy among lower-PDB consumers) but is attenuated when victim salience is low (and empathy is not evoked). Likewise, the PDB effect on company evaluations can be mitigated when the transgressing company offers both an apology and remedy, which together signal the company’s empathy for victims and remedy for harm that are salient to low-PDB consumers. Together, these findings shed light on how consumer reactions to company moral transgressions vary by culture, transgression characteristics, and company response strategies, providing guidance to companies in crisis.

The Regeneration of Consumer Movement Solidarity

Abstract: Consumer research has focused on the various resources and tactics that help movements achieve a range of institutional and marketplace changes. Yet, little attention has been paid to the persistence of movement solidarity, in particular its regeneration, despite a range of threats to it. Our research unpacks mechanisms that help consumer movement solidarity to overcome threats. Drawing on a 6-year ethnographic study of consumer movements in Exarcheia, a neighborhood in central Athens, Greece, we find that consumer movement solidarity persists despite a cataclysmic economic crisis that undermines their prevalent ideology and the emotional fatigue, that is, common in such movements. Three key mechanisms serve to overcome these threats: performative staging of collectivism, temporal tactics, and the emplacement of counter-sites. Overall, our study contributes to consumer research by illuminating how threats to solidarity are overcome by specific internal mechanisms that enable the regeneration of consumer movement solidarity.

The Role of Emotion Discourse and Pathic Stigma in the Delegitimization of Consumer Practices

Abstract: Drawing on institutional theory and discursive psychology, this article elucidates how actors use emotion discourse to undermine the legitimacy of consumer practices. Based on an empirical investigation of the bullfighting controversy in Spain, our work shows how activists engage in the production and circulation of compelling emotional prototypes of their adversaries. Such emotional prototypes constitute the discursive foundations of a pathic stigma, which, once established, taints the identity of the social groups associated with the practice. Our work frames the centrality of pathic stigmatization as a cultural mechanism mediating the relationship between emotion discourse and the subsequent delegitimization of consumer practices. We make three key contributions to the literature: we advance a rhetorical perspective on emotions and their role in deinstitutionalization processes; we further develop the theory of marketplace sentiments by showing how sentiments operate downstream; and we provide evidence of the sociocultural mechanisms underpinning the emotional vilification, stereotyping and stigmatization of consumer collectives.

Budget Depreciation: When Budgeting Early Increases Spending

Abstract: While budgeting in advance is seen as a good practice to control spending, this research shows that budgeting too early for a specific purchase may increase spending. We argue that as the temporal separation between budget setting and actual purchase increases, consumers become more willing to overspend because of what we term “budget depreciation.” Consumers adapt to the reference point set by the budget such that, over time, the budgeted level becomes the status-quo spending. Thus, as more time passes, pain of payment from the budgeted amount decreases, and the willingness-to-spend increases. Across a secondary dataset of real estate purchases, one field study, and three experiments, we find evidence that consumers who set a budget in the distant (vs. near) past are more likely to overspend relative to their budget. The effect emerges for single purchase occasions rather than a category of purchases over multiple occasions. It emerges because of the hypothesized pain-of-payment process (e.g., effect is stronger among tightwads, who feel greater pain from spending; effect is mitigated under budget reassessment, which prevents pain adaptation). Our work contributes to the mental budgeting literature by invoking a role for temporal separation and draws a novel connection to prior work on payment depreciation.

How the Eyes Connect to the Heart: The Influence of Eye Gaze Direction on Advertising Effectiveness

Abstract: A model’s eyes are a powerful and ubiquitous visual feature in virtually any advertisement depicting a person. But does where the ad model’s eyes look matter? Integrating insights from social psychology and performance and visual art theory, we demonstrate that when the ad model’s gaze is averted (looking away from the viewer), the viewer is more readily transported into the ad narrative and responds more favorably to the ad than when the ad model’s gaze is direct (looking directly at the viewer). Five multi-method experiments (field and lab studies) illustrate that averted gaze (direct gaze) enhances narrative transportation (spokesperson credibility) to boost the effectiveness of emotional (informative) ads. Study 1 is a Facebook field study that demonstrates the effect of averted (vs. direct) gaze direction on advertising effectiveness using a real brand. Studies 2a and 2b implicate enhanced narrative transportation as the underlying process mechanism by measuring (study 2a) and manipulating (study 2b) narrative transportation. Studies 3a and 3b examine ad contexts in which direct gaze can enhance ad effectiveness: when the ad has informational (vs. emotional) appeal (study 3a), and when the viewer prefers not to identify with the negative emotional content of the ad (study 3b).

Attachment to and Detachment from Favorite Stores: An Affordance Theory Perspective

Abstract: Project Summary Like homes, neighborhoods, and cities, retail locations offer significant opportunities for attachment far from domestic spheres. In commercial settings, consumers construct personal geographies, and find stable references for their lives. Our work advances previous consumer research by showing how these relationalities are situated, implicitly unstable and often impermanent. Individuals attach to commercial spaces in multiple ways, through both immediate and slow processes. We theorize that multiple affordances of spaces—whether sensual, symbolic, or cerebral—trigger meaningful ties, stimulate new affective and practice repertoires and may exert a transformative power in personal biographies. Bonds evolve in tandem with individuals’ life courses and are also impacted by events beyond consumers’ control, such as store closures. Whether disruptive or constructive, detachments can precipitate constructive change, allowing individuals to mobilize the emotional and cognitive resources at the base of their affective bond with treasured places, and redirect these assets more effectively. Forced and voluntary detachment from retail spaces are thus interpreted as integral and complementary components of attachment. Data Generation Data were collected by multiple ethnographic methods, including participant observation, phenomenological interviews, and in a few cases the combined application of projective techniques to facilitate the emergence of both symbolic meanings attributed to participants’ specific experiences and their immediate and embodied relationships with their treasured commercial places. Participants’ bonds with commercial places were investigated along functional, sensory, emotional, and symbolic dimensions. Data collection was carried out in two stages, in 2005 and from 2012 to 2013. Data Overview This data project encompasses 44 interview transcripts from the first round and 11 interview transcripts from the second round of data collection. Participants’ names have been changed to protect their identity.

Safe Together, Vulnerable Apart: How Interstitial Space in Text Logos Impacts Brand Attitudes in Tight versus Loose Cultures

Abstract: This research demonstrates that interstitial space in textual brand logos—that is, spacious (vs. compact) arrangement of letters—unfavorably influences brand attitude by reducing product safety perceptions. When potential threats are salient, the effect tends to occur within tight (but not loose) cultures, characterized by sensitivity to threats and a need for rigid social structures. When threats are not salient, the effect appears to occur across cultures. Five studies, including lab and field experiments, as well as archival dataset analysis, provide supportive evidence.

Mining Consumer Minds: Downstream Consequences of Host Motivations for Home-Sharing Platforms

Abstract: This research sheds light on consumer motivations for participating in the sharing economy and examines downstream consequences of the uncovered motivations. We use text-mining techniques to extract Airbnb hosts’ motivations from their responses to the question “why did you start hosting.” We find that hosts are driven not only by the monetary motivation “to earn cash” but also by intrinsic motivations such as “to share beauty” and “to meet people.” Using extensive transaction-level data, we find that hosts with intrinsic motivations post more property photos and write longer property descriptions, demonstrating greater engagement with the platform. Consequently, these hosts receive higher guest satisfaction ratings. Compared to hosts who want to earn cash, hosts motivated to meet people are more likely to keep hosting and to stay active on the platform, and hosts motivated to share beauty charge higher prices. As a result, these intrinsically motivated hosts have a higher customer lifetime value compared to those with a monetary motivation. We employ a multimethod approach including text mining, Bayesian latent attrition models, and lab experiments to derive these insights. Our research provides an easy-to-implement approach to uncovering consumer motivations in practice and highlights the consequential role of these motivations for firms.

The Curse of the Original: How and When Heritage Branding Reduces Consumer Evaluations of Enhanced Products

Abstract: Heritage branding is a common marketing strategy that has been shown to increase product appeal. Here, we find that certain forms of heritage branding can also have potentially negative consequences by leading consumers to react negatively to changes made to the brand’s original, flagship product—even if those changes objectively improve it. We demonstrate that when firms engage in heritage branding that emphasizes a brand’s longevity, consumers evaluate enhanced products less favorably than the original versions of those same products due to decreased perceptions of continuity authenticity. We demonstrate this effect across a variety of product domains (e.g., cosmetics, cookware, and food products), using online experiments as well as in-person product trials. Moreover, we provide a framework that distinguishes between types of heritage branding cues that lead to negative evaluations of enhanced products versus those that do not. Finally, beyond identifying an important boundary condition based on specific aspects of heritage branding, we further show how the negative evaluations of enhanced products can be attenuated if brands reframe product changes as continuous with the brand’s origins. Together, these studies contribute to existing theory regarding heritage branding and authenticity, while also providing a number of practical recommendations for heritage brands.

Beliefs about whether spending implies wealth

Abstract: Spending is influenced by many factors. One that has received little attention is the meaning that people give to the act of spending. Spending money might imply that someone is relatively wealthy—since they have money to spend—or relatively poor—since spending can deplete assets. We show that people differ in the extent to which they believe that spending implies wealth (SIW beliefs). We develop a scale to measure these beliefs and find that people who more strongly believe that SIW spend their own money relatively lavishly and are, on average, more financially vulnerable. We find correlational evidence for these relationships using objective financial-transaction data, including over 2 million transaction records from the bank accounts of over 2,000 users of a money management app, as well as self-reported financial well-being. We also find experimental evidence by manipulating SIW beliefs and observing causal effects on spending intentions. These results show how underlying beliefs about the link between spending and wealth play a role in consumption decisions, and point to beliefs about the meaning of spending as a fruitful direction for further research.

Goal Conflict Encourages Work and Discourages Leisure

Abstract: Leisure is desirable and beneficial, yet consumers frequently forgo leisure in favor of other activities—namely, work. Why? We propose that goal conflict plays an important role. Seven experiments demonstrate that perceiving greater goal conflict shapes how consumers allocate time to work and leisure—even when those activities are unrelated to the conflicting goals. This occurs because goal conflict increases reliance on salient justifications, influencing how much time people spend on subsequent, unrelated activities. Because work tends to be easier to justify and leisure harder to justify, goal conflict increases time spent on work and decreases time spent on leisure. Thus, despite the conflicting goals being independent of the specific work and leisure activities considered (i.e., despite goal conflict being “incidental”), perceiving greater goal conflict encourages work and discourages leisure. The findings further understanding of how consumers allocate time to work and leisure, incidental effects of goal conflict on decision-making, and the role of justification in consumer choice. They also have implications for the use of “time-saving” technologies and the marketing of leisure activities.

What Makes Content Engaging? How Emotional Dynamics Shape Success

Abstract: Some cultural products (e.g., books and movies) catch on and become popular, while others fail. Why? While some have argued that success is unpredictable, we suggest that period-to-period shifts in sentiment—what we term sentiment volatility—enhance engagement. Automated sentiment analysis of over 4,000 movies demonstrates that more volatile movies are evaluated more positively. Consistent with the notion that sentiment volatility makes experiences more stimulating, the effect is stronger in genres where evaluations are more likely to be driven stimulation (i.e., thrillers rather than romance). Further, analysis of over 30,000 online articles demonstrate that people are more likely to continue reading more volatile articles. By manipulating sentiment volatility in follow-up experiments, we underscore its causal impact on evaluations, and provide evidence for the role of stimulation in these effects. Taken together, the results shed light on what drives engagement, the time dynamics of sentiment, and cultural analytics or why some cultural items are more successful.

Racial Oppression and Racial Projects in Consumer Markets: A Racial Formation Theory Approach

Abstract: The dominant theoretical approach to exploring ethnic and racial inequality in marketing and consumer research focuses on discrete acts of discrimination that stem from social psychological causes (e.g., prejudice, stereotypes, and negative racial attitudes). It holds limited explanatory power for meso- and macro-structural phenomena that also generate racialized outcomes. An implication is that ethnic and racial inequality can be portrayed as something imposed on market systems rather than a routine feature of their functioning. In response, I introduce and synthesize two variants of Racial Formation Theory (RFT) and propose it as a useful theoretical approach for addressing whether and how organizational and institutional actors in market systems engage in goal-directed action that allocates resources in ways that challenge (or reinforce) ethnic and racial oppression.

The Effects of Numerical Divisibility on Loneliness Perceptions and Consumer Preferences

Abstract: This research seeks to examine, first, whether and why consumers perceive divisible versus indivisible numbers differently and, second, how such divergent perceptions influence consumer preferences for marketer-created entities associated with divisible versus indivisible numbers. Integrating insights from two different literatures—numerical cognition and loneliness—we propose and find that numbers perceived to be divisible (vs. indivisible) are viewed as having more “connections” and are therefore deemed to be less lonely. Building on these findings and the literature on compensatory consumption, we then propose and demonstrate that a temporary feeling of loneliness increases participants’ relative preference for various targets—products, attributes, and prices—associated with divisible (vs. indivisible) numbers, which are perceived to be relatively more connected and less lonely. It merits mention that our findings are triangulated across a wide variety of numbers, different product categories, and multiple operationalizations of loneliness.

Not too far to help: residential mobility, global identity, and donations to distant beneficiaries

Abstract: Extant research shows that consumers are more likely to donate to close than distant others, making donations to geographically distant beneficiaries a challenge. This article introduces residential mobility as a novel variable that can lead to increased donations toward distant beneficiaries. This article proposes that residential mobility (vs. stability) leads consumers to have a stronger global identity, whereby they see themselves as world citizens. This global identity results in higher donations to distant beneficiaries. A multi-method approach provides evidence for this prediction. An analysis of a national panel dataset demonstrates that high residential mobility is correlated with donations to distant beneficiaries. Lab experiments, including one with real monetary donations, replicate these effects using both actual moving experience and a residential mobility mindset.

The Psychology of Marginal Utility

Abstract: That wealth has diminishing marginal utility is a fact of life, and that people be sensitive to their current level of wealth when deciding whether to pursue additional wealth is a requirement of rational choice. A series of experiments, spanning diverse contexts, reveal marginal-utility neglect—that people are rather insensitive to their current wealth when deciding how much effort to expend to acquire a monetary reward (e.g., how long to walk to claim a voucher). Moreover, the experiments demonstrate that a marginal-utility-prompting manipulation, which prompts people to consider their current wealth and their need for the reward given their current wealth, produces a significant sensitization effect—making financially richer (vs. less rich) individuals less (vs. more) willing to seek the reward. This manipulation is more effective than either prompting people to consider their current wealth alone or consider their need for the reward alone, suggesting that marginal-utility prompting does not merely draw people’s attention to their current wealth or merely draw their attention to their need for the reward, but links the two elements. This research elucidates the psychology of marginal utility and yields implications beyond the pursuit of monetary rewards.

Exploratory Shopping: Attention Affects In-store Exploration and Unplanned Purchasing

Abstract: A fundamental function of retailing is to bring products into the view of shoppers, because viewing products can activate forgotten or new needs. Retailers thus employ various strategies to entice shoppers to explore the product assortment and store environment, in the hopes of stimulating unplanned purchasing. This article investigates consumers’ breadth of attention as a mechanism of such in-store exploration and hence of unplanned purchasing. Specifically, attentional breadth is the focus that is directed to a wider or more limited area in processing visual scenes. Across several lab and field experiments, the authors show that shoppers’ attentional breadth activates an exploratory mindset that stimulates visual and physical exploration of shopping environments, ultimately affecting their product choices and unplanned purchasing. The results also show that more impulsive buyers are more susceptible to these effects. The present article thus complements and constrains prior theorizing on mindset theory, attention, store exploration, and unplanned purchasing, all of which are of practical importance to both retailers and consumers.

Online Advertising Suppresses Visual Competition during Planned Purchases

Abstract: Online advertising can help consumers to implement their purchase intentions on shopping websites. This research tests the hypothesis that online advertising can speed-up product search by visually suppressing competing products rather than by enhancing the target product on websites that lack a systematic visual organization. First, a survey shows that searching for products on a shopping website after having clicked on an online ad is a common experience. Second, a lay-theory experiment shows that the majority of participants incorrectly predict that online ads do not affect product search but if these ads do, product search would be independent of shopping website design. Third, three eye-tracking and two search-time experiments reveal that online ads with an image of the target product improved search speed by about 25%, for websites without a systematic visual organization of products. Improved search speed was primarily due to faster rejection of competing products, because the ads helped to perceptually suppress their color features. These results provide new insights into online advertising effects, the fundamental search processes through which these accrue, and how ads can support consumers in making their planned purchases.

How Resource Scarcity Influences the Preference for Counterhedonic Consumption

Abstract: Eight studies show that resource scarcity can influence consumers’ preference for counterhedonic consumption and that the sense of control is an underlying driver of this effect. Using a large-scale field dataset covering 82 countries over a 10-year period, study 1 showed that individuals from countries with greater resources consumed horror movies to a greater extent, but this pattern was not found for other movie genres such as romance or documentary. The remaining studies used diverse experimental approaches and counterhedonic consumption contexts (e.g., movie, novel, haunted house attraction, game) to provide causal and process evidence. Specifically, inducing perceived resource scarcity lowered participants’ preference for counterhedonic consumption (studies 2A–2C). Consistent with the sense-of-control-based mechanism, experimentally lowering participants’ sense of control or boosting it moderated the effect of perceived resource scarcity on their preference for counterhedonic consumption (studies 3A and 3B). The degradation of the sense of control due to perceived resource scarcity mediated the effect (studies 4 and 5). These results add to the literature on conterhedonic consumption as well as resource scarcity and have important managerial implications.

How Does Religion Affect Consumer Response to Failure and Recovery by Firms

Abstract: How might religion influence consumer behavior in the marketplace? The present research proposes that failure and subsequent firm recovery efforts represent a domain that may be particularly sensitive to religion. Specifically, we demonstrate that religion salience promotes a more positive response to failure when accompanied by recovery. This effect is due to heightened forgiveness, a religious value held by many major world religions, which is triggered by signals of firm repentance. In a series of eight studies, theorizing is extended to the moderating roles of both religiosity (with implications for the religion–forgiveness discrepancy) and recovery content (comparing apology vs. compensation) and evidence of generalizability across several major religious affiliations is provided. This research highlights the importance of religion salience to marketers operating in failure–recovery contexts.