Consumer Psychology Review最新文献

This paper presents a framework on the evolution of psychological theory in both consumer psychology and psychology more generally, moving from empirical observations of relationships to explanatory multi-process models. The authors argue that psychological research appears unnecessarily inhibited, at times, to effects-based or single-process explanations of causal relationships. Such approaches, while fruitful for planting seeds of ideas, may limit the growth of psychological research. To provide a path to deeper theory building, involving more explanatory and predictive models, the authors introduce an approach based on the evolutionary stages of theory. This approach involves stating the necessary conditions to advance an evolutionary stage, along with visual examples of theory and empirical examples largely from the literature in consumer psychology. The upshot is a framework aimed to align scholars in understanding how to think about and discuss theoretical contributions. Finally, by adopting this approach, the authors suggest that psychological science can better address current challenges, such as the replication crisis, and foster more impactful research.

Despite motivations to see themselves as virtuous, consumers commonly engage in behaviors that are bad for themselves or others, such as eating unhealthy food or refusing prosocial requests. I introduce the Pathways for Avoiding Self-Sanction (PASS) model, which explains how consumers violate their standards for virtue without self-sanction. This model posits that consumers have a subjective threshold that they must not cross lest they incur self-sanction and outlines three main pathways through which consumers succumb to the temptation of bad behaviors without crossing this threshold: the self-based path, the behavior-based path, or the threshold-based path. By drawing on shared psychological processes between self-control and moral decision-making, the PASS model organizes self-sanction avoidance strategies across literature in marketing, psychology, organizational behavior, and behavioral economics, offering a comprehensive and parsimonious view of the mechanisms through which consumers engage in maladaptive behaviors that harm themselves, others, and society.

Based on a review of relevant literature, we propose that the proliferation of AI with human-like and social features presents an unprecedented opportunity to address the underlying cognitive and affective drivers of prejudice. An approach informed by the psychology of intergroup contact and prejudice reduction is necessary because current AI systems often reinforce or avoid prejudices. Against this backdrop, we outline unique opportunities for prejudice reduction through ‘synthetic’ intergroup contact, wherein consumers interact with AI products and services that counter stereotypes and serve as a ‘proxy’ members of the outgroup (i.e., counter-stereotypical AI). In contrast to human-human contact, humanizing and socializing AI can reduce prejudice through more repeated, direct, unavoidable, private, non-judgmental, collaborative, and need-satisfying contact. We illustrate the potential of synthetic intergroup contact with counter-stereotypical AI using examples of gender stereotypes and hate speech and discuss practical considerations for implementing counter-stereotypical AI without inadvertently perpetuating or reinforcing prejudice.

The overarching goal of this article is to spur fresh interest in the topic of frugality and new empirical research on it. To do so, this article presents a series of research propositions that are based on the discussions provided in each section. In particular, the second section of this article reviews philosophical and religious accounts of the concept of frugality. The third and fourth sections focus on consumer psychological research on dispositional frugality. The sixth section reflects on two popular consumer lifestyles, miserliness and simple living, that require certain frugal behaviors but are inspired by non-frugal values. The seventh section links both frugal and non-frugal values to two sociological variables: generational cohort and social class. Last, the eighth and ninth sections review new obstacles that consumers face in today's marketplace and how consumers can practice frugality in spite of them.

Researchers often wish to understand how much consumers value a product. To do this, they need to decide on the best way to determine these valuations. Past research in social sciences has developed various elicitation tasks to capture valuations. In this paper, we review that research and offer guidelines for best practices in measuring valuations. We begin with a discussion of the challenges in gauging valuations. We then critically review the different methods for measuring valuations, discussing the strengths and limitations of each. From this review, we develop guidelines for designing studies to assess valuations. Our guidelines focus on three key considerations: (1) selecting the sample for eliciting valuations, (2) determining how to present information to participants, and (3) taking into account research goals and constraints. Our aim is to improve the quality of studies measuring valuations, helping researchers draw more accurate inferences from their work.

Behavioral research typically tests hypotheses in a limited set of researcher-selected contexts. This approach can reveal whether an effect can occur (possibility) but does not indicate whether it holds in other contexts (generalizability). We present Scope Testing with AI-Generated Stimuli (STAGS), a simple approach that uses Generative AI (GenAI) to test predictions across a range, or scope, of stimuli. By assessing whether a prediction holds across this range, STAGS sheds light on the generalizability of the effect. In addition, outsourcing stimulus generation to GenAI makes transparent the otherwise opaque process of stimulus selection, requiring researchers to articulate the scope of stimuli to which their hypothesis applies. We illustrate STAGS in an experiment, showing that specifying the population from which stimuli are sampled can help researchers understand the scope of the effect they are studying. We discuss the benefits and limitations of this approach and propose directions for future exploration.

Persuasion knowledge, which encapsulates consumers' literacy of common marketing tactics and their assumptions about what marketers hope to accomplish by using these tactics, has inspired substantial research in consumer psychology, advertising, and many other fields. The original article introducing the persuasion knowledge model (PKM; Friestad & Wright, 1994) has grown in importance over the past 30 years. A major strength of extant persuasion knowledge research is that it has investigated effects that have applicability to the traditional media advertising context. We point out the need, however, for further theory development aimed at explaining the persuasion knowledge effects that have been observed, and we discuss the value of considering dual-processing theories in this regard. We further contend that persuasion knowledge research should be broadened beyond the context of traditional advertising to encompass content marketing. Finally, we consider how the interplay of theory and effects can allow greater applicability in behavioral research.

Consumer psychology refers to how people think and act within an economic role in market exchange. However, we know little about how consumers actually perceive these roles, or how they understand markets and economic activity more broadly. That is, we lack an understanding of the economic reasoning of non-expert consumers, how it departs from formal economic reasoning, and why. The current paper is intended to address this gap. We provide an integrative review of research on lay economic reasoning that consistently reveals how differently lay consumers and economists think about markets. We propose a unifying mental model to explain these divergences. Suggest why it is reinforced by what lay consumers observe (and do not observe) through firsthand marketplace experience, and note its potential evolutionary basis. We then highlight how understanding lay economic reasoning can not only help explain a wide array of marketplace phenomena, but also provide a novel lens to help advance, generate, and better integrate theory across many active literatures within consumer psychology. Without markets, there are no consumers and there is no marketing. We therefore call for consumer psychologists to take ownership of the study of lay economic reasoning and make markets more central to marketing scholarship.

Financial payments take place in a wide variety of contexts. Expanding on a range of alternative forms of payments outside the common purchase of products and services at a price, this present article focuses on one dimension by which payments differ, namely, whether the payments take place in an exchange with mutual versus unilateral commitment between the buyer and the seller. This framework takes into account the timing and nature of commitments buyers and sellers make in an exchange, thereby further revealing the psychology underlying people's decisions to pay. In particular, the party that is unilaterally committed in an exchange relationship engages in “acts of faith”, whereas the party that is uncommitted engages in decisions of “voluntary reciprocation”.

Classic behaviorist and cognitivist approaches to consumer research are based on very different assumptions concerning the nature of the cognitive processes that drive consumption. Classic behaviorist research assumes that the underlying cognitive processes are extremely complex, and the effort to model them is not likely to lead to useful insights. In contrast, classic cognitivist research assumes that the underlying cognitive processes can be precisely captured with simple cognitive models. The current paper highlights the value of a middle ground. This middle ground favors the assumption that while the underlying processes are highly complex, their impact can be approximated with prediction-oriented cognitive models. The potential of this approach is illustrated with a review of previous research demonstrating how a simple prediction-oriented model can shed light on four interesting consumption puzzles: Buying and not using, the backfiring of certain safety devices, too much and insufficient checking, and underconsumption and overconsumption.