Consumers generally prefer precise probabilities or outcomes over imprecise ranges with the same expected value, a bias known as ‘ambiguity aversion.’ We argue that two elementary principles of numerical cognition explain great heterogeneity in this bias, affecting consumer choices in many domains where options are characterized by varying levels of uncertainty (e.g., lotteries, discounts, investment products, vaccines, etc). The first principle, the ‘compression effect,’ stipulates that consumers’ mental number lines are increasingly compressed at greater number magnitudes. This alone suffices to predict ambiguity aversion as it causes a midpoint (e.g., $40) to be perceived as closer to the upper bound of a range (e.g., $60) compared to its lower bound (e.g., $20). Furthermore, as the compression effect distorts the mental number line especially at lower numbers, it follows that ambiguity aversion should decrease around greater numbers. The second principle, the ‘left-digit effect’ causes a range’s relative attractiveness to decrease (increase) disproportionately with every left-digit transition in its lower (upper) bound, thus increasing (decreasing) ambiguity aversion. Due to the overall compression effect, the impact of the left-digit effect increases at greater numbers. We present 34 experiments (N = 10634), to support the theory’s predictions and wide applicability.
{"title":"How Numerical Cognition Explains Ambiguity Aversion","authors":"Marina Lenkovskaya, Steven Sweldens","doi":"10.1093/jcr/ucae041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae041","url":null,"abstract":"Consumers generally prefer precise probabilities or outcomes over imprecise ranges with the same expected value, a bias known as ‘ambiguity aversion.’ We argue that two elementary principles of numerical cognition explain great heterogeneity in this bias, affecting consumer choices in many domains where options are characterized by varying levels of uncertainty (e.g., lotteries, discounts, investment products, vaccines, etc). The first principle, the ‘compression effect,’ stipulates that consumers’ mental number lines are increasingly compressed at greater number magnitudes. This alone suffices to predict ambiguity aversion as it causes a midpoint (e.g., $40) to be perceived as closer to the upper bound of a range (e.g., $60) compared to its lower bound (e.g., $20). Furthermore, as the compression effect distorts the mental number line especially at lower numbers, it follows that ambiguity aversion should decrease around greater numbers. The second principle, the ‘left-digit effect’ causes a range’s relative attractiveness to decrease (increase) disproportionately with every left-digit transition in its lower (upper) bound, thus increasing (decreasing) ambiguity aversion. Due to the overall compression effect, the impact of the left-digit effect increases at greater numbers. We present 34 experiments (N = 10634), to support the theory’s predictions and wide applicability.","PeriodicalId":15555,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Research","volume":"41 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141568579","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michelle F Weinberger, Ernest Baskin, Kunter Gunasti
Relational gifts are given among known social connections and are oriented towards relationship work and care. An abundance of gifting research over the past 50 years has focused on gift selection and reception, most recently on variables driving mismatches between what givers and recipients think make good gifts. That work lays an essential foundation. However, important opportunities remain to deepen understandings by broadening the focus to view gifting as a relational, social, and often longitudinal process that is intertwined within evolving social and cultural contexts. This paper conceptualizes three under-researched areas of opportunity on relational gifting: 1) understanding the evolving and contextualized experience of a gift in recipients’ lives, 2) tracing the gift circuit, the dynamics of gifting within social relationships over time, and 3) mapping relational gifting as a dynamic gift system that reflects and reinforces social structure and networks of care. Together, these three areas present important ground for future psychological, sociological, and anthropological consumer research that deepens understanding of when, how, and why relational gifts matter and the relational work that these gifts enable. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to set an agenda for a new generation of relational gifting research.
{"title":"Relational Gifting: Conceptual Frameworks and an Agenda for a New Generation of Research","authors":"Michelle F Weinberger, Ernest Baskin, Kunter Gunasti","doi":"10.1093/jcr/ucae042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae042","url":null,"abstract":"Relational gifts are given among known social connections and are oriented towards relationship work and care. An abundance of gifting research over the past 50 years has focused on gift selection and reception, most recently on variables driving mismatches between what givers and recipients think make good gifts. That work lays an essential foundation. However, important opportunities remain to deepen understandings by broadening the focus to view gifting as a relational, social, and often longitudinal process that is intertwined within evolving social and cultural contexts. This paper conceptualizes three under-researched areas of opportunity on relational gifting: 1) understanding the evolving and contextualized experience of a gift in recipients’ lives, 2) tracing the gift circuit, the dynamics of gifting within social relationships over time, and 3) mapping relational gifting as a dynamic gift system that reflects and reinforces social structure and networks of care. Together, these three areas present important ground for future psychological, sociological, and anthropological consumer research that deepens understanding of when, how, and why relational gifts matter and the relational work that these gifts enable. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to set an agenda for a new generation of relational gifting research.","PeriodicalId":15555,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Research","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141577336","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gwarlann de Kerviler, Catherine Demangeot, Pierre-Yann Dolbec
Reviewing products and services is a widespread consumer activity in which millions engage. Why and how do consumers review differently from one another? Prior work assumes that consumers commonly understand what reviewing is. Consequently, it attributes differences in reviewing to individual variations in psychological, motivational, and sociodemographic characteristics, consumption experiences, and expertise. This central assumption is problematic because it fails to consider that differences in how consumers understand reviewing may explain why they approach and perform reviewing differently. To address this gap, we analyze a large qualitative data set composed of reviews and interviews with their authors. Our insights complement prior work by theorizing the sociocultural shaping of reviewing. We answer why consumers review differently by inductively theorizing the concept of reviewing orientation—a cultural model comprising a set of interconnected characteristics that shapes how consumers review and translates into a distinct reviewer voice—a reviewer’s standpoint expressed within a review. We answer how consumers review differently by developing three reviewing orientations: communal sharing, systemic evaluation, and competitive punditry. Finally, we discuss the transferability of the findings, the role of institutional dynamics in reviewing, and recommendations for online review platforms and marketers.
{"title":"Why and How Consumers Perform Online Reviewing Differently","authors":"Gwarlann de Kerviler, Catherine Demangeot, Pierre-Yann Dolbec","doi":"10.1093/jcr/ucae040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae040","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewing products and services is a widespread consumer activity in which millions engage. Why and how do consumers review differently from one another? Prior work assumes that consumers commonly understand what reviewing is. Consequently, it attributes differences in reviewing to individual variations in psychological, motivational, and sociodemographic characteristics, consumption experiences, and expertise. This central assumption is problematic because it fails to consider that differences in how consumers understand reviewing may explain why they approach and perform reviewing differently. To address this gap, we analyze a large qualitative data set composed of reviews and interviews with their authors. Our insights complement prior work by theorizing the sociocultural shaping of reviewing. We answer why consumers review differently by inductively theorizing the concept of reviewing orientation—a cultural model comprising a set of interconnected characteristics that shapes how consumers review and translates into a distinct reviewer voice—a reviewer’s standpoint expressed within a review. We answer how consumers review differently by developing three reviewing orientations: communal sharing, systemic evaluation, and competitive punditry. Finally, we discuss the transferability of the findings, the role of institutional dynamics in reviewing, and recommendations for online review platforms and marketers.","PeriodicalId":15555,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Research","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141551652","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mohamed A Hussein, Courtney Lee, S Christian Wheeler
In 2022, Democrats spent $53 million on ads helping far-right candidates win Republican primaries. Paying for ads that support far-right candidates, the reasoning went, could help Democrats win in the general elections because it is easier to beat extreme than moderate candidates. In the current research, we ask: how do consumers react to the use of “meddle ads”? On the one hand, because of rising levels of polarization, consumers might be accepting, or even supportive, of meddle ads. On the other hand, because meddle ads might come across as unethical and risky, consumers might be averse to their use. Across seven main studies and ten supplemental studies (N = 7,740) using multiple empirical approaches—including conjoint analysis, vignette studies, incentive-compatible donation studies, and analysis of online comments using human coders and NLP tools—we find that consumers are averse to the use of meddle ads. This aversion is driven by three factors: concerns about the character of the candidate, outcome-related risk (losing elections), and system-related risk (losing trust in democracy). These findings contribute to research on political marketing, provide practical guidance for marketers around meddle ads, and identify a novel type of risk perceptions with implications for consumer behavior research.
{"title":"How Do Consumers React to Ads That Meddle in Out-Party Primaries?","authors":"Mohamed A Hussein, Courtney Lee, S Christian Wheeler","doi":"10.1093/jcr/ucae039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae039","url":null,"abstract":"In 2022, Democrats spent $53 million on ads helping far-right candidates win Republican primaries. Paying for ads that support far-right candidates, the reasoning went, could help Democrats win in the general elections because it is easier to beat extreme than moderate candidates. In the current research, we ask: how do consumers react to the use of “meddle ads”? On the one hand, because of rising levels of polarization, consumers might be accepting, or even supportive, of meddle ads. On the other hand, because meddle ads might come across as unethical and risky, consumers might be averse to their use. Across seven main studies and ten supplemental studies (N = 7,740) using multiple empirical approaches—including conjoint analysis, vignette studies, incentive-compatible donation studies, and analysis of online comments using human coders and NLP tools—we find that consumers are averse to the use of meddle ads. This aversion is driven by three factors: concerns about the character of the candidate, outcome-related risk (losing elections), and system-related risk (losing trust in democracy). These findings contribute to research on political marketing, provide practical guidance for marketers around meddle ads, and identify a novel type of risk perceptions with implications for consumer behavior research.","PeriodicalId":15555,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Research","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2024-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141551651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This research draws on the theory of culture in action, which explains how consumers selectively mobilize their cultural repertoires to understand and solve daily problems. Contemporary life, however, is increasingly unsettled, challenging the adequacy of consumers’ repertoires and how they use existing institutional cultural resources. This qualitative study identifies four ways that consumers use their cultural repertoires and institutional resources during unsettled times. Formulaic uses are when consumers mobilize familiar cultural tools and existing resources to resettle. Versatile uses are when consumers develop new cultural tools to transform while working within demanding institutional resources. Freewheeling uses are when consumers mobilize familiar cultural tools for play but rework institutional resources to be less demanding. Finally, troubleshooting uses are when consumers extend their existing cultural tools to suffice but reject institutional resources. These varied uses of culture capture how consumers either mobilize or develop their cultural repertoires and institutional resources to serve different ends. This study provides a more dynamic, pragmatic, and nuanced explanation of how consumers summon culture to solve problems during unsettled times. A conceptual model explains this process, and the discussion highlights the theoretical contributions.
{"title":"Using Cultural Repertoires during Unsettled Times","authors":"Ye (Nicole) Yang, Julie L Ozanne, Marcus Phipps","doi":"10.1093/jcr/ucae036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae036","url":null,"abstract":"This research draws on the theory of culture in action, which explains how consumers selectively mobilize their cultural repertoires to understand and solve daily problems. Contemporary life, however, is increasingly unsettled, challenging the adequacy of consumers’ repertoires and how they use existing institutional cultural resources. This qualitative study identifies four ways that consumers use their cultural repertoires and institutional resources during unsettled times. Formulaic uses are when consumers mobilize familiar cultural tools and existing resources to resettle. Versatile uses are when consumers develop new cultural tools to transform while working within demanding institutional resources. Freewheeling uses are when consumers mobilize familiar cultural tools for play but rework institutional resources to be less demanding. Finally, troubleshooting uses are when consumers extend their existing cultural tools to suffice but reject institutional resources. These varied uses of culture capture how consumers either mobilize or develop their cultural repertoires and institutional resources to serve different ends. This study provides a more dynamic, pragmatic, and nuanced explanation of how consumers summon culture to solve problems during unsettled times. A conceptual model explains this process, and the discussion highlights the theoretical contributions.","PeriodicalId":15555,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Research","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2024-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141529785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The assessment of consumer scholarship must move beyond a mere counting of the number of “A”s on a researcher’s CV to include at least some measure of impact. To facilitate a broader assessment of scholarship in consumer research, we provide detailed statistics on the productivity and citation impact of the field’s 340 main gatekeepers: the editors, associate editors, and editorial board members of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Consumer Psychology. In addition, we introduce a new metric, called the p-index, which can be interpreted as an indicator of a researcher’s propensity for thought leadership. Using this metric, we show that productivity and thought leadership do not necessarily go hand in hand in consumer research and that a combination of the two is a good predictor of the level of esteem that consumer scholars enjoy among their peers and of the receipt of major career awards. Our analyses provide greater transparency into how productivity, citation impact, and propensity for thought leadership are currently distributed among prominent consumer scholars. Furthermore, the detailed descriptive statistics reported can serve as useful benchmarks against which other consumer researchers’ records may be meaningfully compared.
对消费者学术研究的评估必须超越单纯计算研究人员简历上 "A "的数量，至少要包括一定程度的影响力。为了便于对消费者研究的学术成果进行更广泛的评估，我们提供了该领域 340 位主要守门人（《消费者研究期刊》和《消费者心理学期刊》的编辑、副主编和编委）的工作效率和引文影响力的详细统计数据。此外，我们还引入了一个名为 p 指数的新指标，它可以被解释为研究人员思想领导力倾向的指标。通过使用这一指标，我们发现，在消费者研究领域，生产率和思想领导力并不一定是相辅相成的，二者的结合可以很好地预测消费者学者在同行中的受尊重程度以及获得重大职业奖项的情况。我们的分析提供了更大的透明度，让人们了解目前著名消费者学者的生产力、引用影响力和思想领导力的分布情况。此外，报告中详细的描述性统计数据可以作为有用的基准，与其他消费者研究人员的记录进行有意义的比较。
{"title":"Benchmarking Scholarship in Consumer Research: The p-Index of Thought Leadership","authors":"Michel Tuan Pham, Alisa Yinghao Wu, Danqi Wang","doi":"10.1093/jcr/ucae009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae009","url":null,"abstract":"The assessment of consumer scholarship must move beyond a mere counting of the number of “A”s on a researcher’s CV to include at least some measure of impact. To facilitate a broader assessment of scholarship in consumer research, we provide detailed statistics on the productivity and citation impact of the field’s 340 main gatekeepers: the editors, associate editors, and editorial board members of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Consumer Psychology. In addition, we introduce a new metric, called the p-index, which can be interpreted as an indicator of a researcher’s propensity for thought leadership. Using this metric, we show that productivity and thought leadership do not necessarily go hand in hand in consumer research and that a combination of the two is a good predictor of the level of esteem that consumer scholars enjoy among their peers and of the receipt of major career awards. Our analyses provide greater transparency into how productivity, citation impact, and propensity for thought leadership are currently distributed among prominent consumer scholars. Furthermore, the detailed descriptive statistics reported can serve as useful benchmarks against which other consumer researchers’ records may be meaningfully compared.","PeriodicalId":15555,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Research","volume":"42 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141147408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Michael Braun, Bart de Langhe, Stefano Puntoni, Eric M Schwartz
Digital advertising platforms have emerged as a widely utilized data source in consumer research; yet, the interpretation of such data remains a source of confusion for many researchers. This article aims to address this issue by offering a comprehensive and accessible review of four prominent data collection methods proposed in the marketing literature: “informal studies,” “multiple-ad studies without holdout,” “single-ad studies with holdout,” and “multiple-ad studies with holdout.” By outlining the strengths and limitations of each method, we aim to enhance understanding regarding the inferences that can and cannot be drawn from the collected data. Furthermore, we present seven recommendations to effectively leverage these tools for programmatic consumer research. These recommendations provide guidance on how to use these tools to obtain causal and non-causal evidence for the effects of marketing interventions, and the associated psychological processes, in a digital environment regulated by targeting algorithms. We also give recommendations for how to describe the testing tools and the data they generate and urge platforms to be more transparent on how these tools work.
{"title":"Leveraging Digital Advertising Platforms for Consumer Research","authors":"Michael Braun, Bart de Langhe, Stefano Puntoni, Eric M Schwartz","doi":"10.1093/jcr/ucad058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucad058","url":null,"abstract":"Digital advertising platforms have emerged as a widely utilized data source in consumer research; yet, the interpretation of such data remains a source of confusion for many researchers. This article aims to address this issue by offering a comprehensive and accessible review of four prominent data collection methods proposed in the marketing literature: “informal studies,” “multiple-ad studies without holdout,” “single-ad studies with holdout,” and “multiple-ad studies with holdout.” By outlining the strengths and limitations of each method, we aim to enhance understanding regarding the inferences that can and cannot be drawn from the collected data. Furthermore, we present seven recommendations to effectively leverage these tools for programmatic consumer research. These recommendations provide guidance on how to use these tools to obtain causal and non-causal evidence for the effects of marketing interventions, and the associated psychological processes, in a digital environment regulated by targeting algorithms. We also give recommendations for how to describe the testing tools and the data they generate and urge platforms to be more transparent on how these tools work.","PeriodicalId":15555,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Research","volume":"43 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141147357","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nature affords transformations to consumers’ social, embodied, and temporal experiences. Yet, consumer research has yet to consider how wild species contribute to and are affected by experiential consumption in nature. With data from an ethnography of fly fishing, we theorize human-fish interactions as interspecies encounters in contact zones. Our findings explain how these encounters are established, engendering processes of interspecies becoming that transform both species. We discuss how these transformations are ordered by power relationships that classify roles for entities enrolled in consumption assemblages. Often, humans exert power over other living entities by classifying them as resources for consumption. Yet we also discover more reciprocal expressions of power between humans and other species. With consumption as a major contributor to the decline of wild species populations, we discuss theoretical and practical implications of our work that are intended to stimulate further research.
{"title":"Becoming Nature: Encounters in Interspecies Contact Zones","authors":"Annetta Grant, Robin Canniford, Avi Shankar","doi":"10.1093/jcr/ucae032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae032","url":null,"abstract":"Nature affords transformations to consumers’ social, embodied, and temporal experiences. Yet, consumer research has yet to consider how wild species contribute to and are affected by experiential consumption in nature. With data from an ethnography of fly fishing, we theorize human-fish interactions as interspecies encounters in contact zones. Our findings explain how these encounters are established, engendering processes of interspecies becoming that transform both species. We discuss how these transformations are ordered by power relationships that classify roles for entities enrolled in consumption assemblages. Often, humans exert power over other living entities by classifying them as resources for consumption. Yet we also discover more reciprocal expressions of power between humans and other species. With consumption as a major contributor to the decline of wild species populations, we discuss theoretical and practical implications of our work that are intended to stimulate further research.","PeriodicalId":15555,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Research","volume":"64 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2024-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141059070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Katherine L Christensen, Hal E Hershfield, Sam J Maglio
Many consumers say they want to save for the future yet struggle to do so. This research examines this saving behavior problem from a persuasive messaging standpoint. With the goal of helping people take better care of their future selves, we build on a stream of research that has found that the way people view their identities over time affects the saving decisions they make. Although past research on similarity judgments across time almost exclusively starts with the present self and moves forward to the future self, such judgments could theoretically start at any point in time. Here, we explore the possibility of backward mental time travel, by asking people to start in the future and return to the present. A series of studies shows that mentally traveling from the future to the present—rather than the present to the future—increases perceived similarity between selves across time by reducing the uncertainty of the destination self. Lab studies and two large-scale experiments indicate that, as an important outcome of this novel intervention, mentally traveling from the future to the present has a small but positive impact, systematically increasing savings intentions and savings behavior.
{"title":"Back to the Present: How Direction of Mental Time Travel Affects Perceptions of Similarity over Time and Saving Behavior","authors":"Katherine L Christensen, Hal E Hershfield, Sam J Maglio","doi":"10.1093/jcr/ucae029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae029","url":null,"abstract":"Many consumers say they want to save for the future yet struggle to do so. This research examines this saving behavior problem from a persuasive messaging standpoint. With the goal of helping people take better care of their future selves, we build on a stream of research that has found that the way people view their identities over time affects the saving decisions they make. Although past research on similarity judgments across time almost exclusively starts with the present self and moves forward to the future self, such judgments could theoretically start at any point in time. Here, we explore the possibility of backward mental time travel, by asking people to start in the future and return to the present. A series of studies shows that mentally traveling from the future to the present—rather than the present to the future—increases perceived similarity between selves across time by reducing the uncertainty of the destination self. Lab studies and two large-scale experiments indicate that, as an important outcome of this novel intervention, mentally traveling from the future to the present has a small but positive impact, systematically increasing savings intentions and savings behavior.","PeriodicalId":15555,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Research","volume":"60 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140835647","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Consumers have an intuitive belief in “karma” which dictates that bad (good) actions lead to bad (good) outcomes. Consequently, consumers perceive a causal connection between their own wrongdoing toward a company and a subsequent service failure that they experience in their interactions with another company. Eight experiments employing different contexts consistently show that consumers who have previously wronged a company (compared to those in a control group) evaluate another unrelated company more positively in response to a service failure by this company. We argue that this more positive evaluation is due to the greater blame consumers assign to themselves as dictated by the “karmic beliefs” held by consumers whereby the subsequent poor service by a different firm is seen as a karmic payback for their own prior transgression. The proposed effect is mitigated when a person’s karmic belief is reduced. We also examine a number of alternative explanations (e.g., negative experiences, moral balancing, and immanent justice reasoning) and find that our observed effect is more consistent with a karma-based account.
{"title":"Retail Karma: How Our Shopping Sins Influence Evaluation of Service Failures","authors":"Ran Li, Meng Zhang, Pankaj Aggarwal","doi":"10.1093/jcr/ucae027","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucae027","url":null,"abstract":"Consumers have an intuitive belief in “karma” which dictates that bad (good) actions lead to bad (good) outcomes. Consequently, consumers perceive a causal connection between their own wrongdoing toward a company and a subsequent service failure that they experience in their interactions with another company. Eight experiments employing different contexts consistently show that consumers who have previously wronged a company (compared to those in a control group) evaluate another unrelated company more positively in response to a service failure by this company. We argue that this more positive evaluation is due to the greater blame consumers assign to themselves as dictated by the “karmic beliefs” held by consumers whereby the subsequent poor service by a different firm is seen as a karmic payback for their own prior transgression. The proposed effect is mitigated when a person’s karmic belief is reduced. We also examine a number of alternative explanations (e.g., negative experiences, moral balancing, and immanent justice reasoning) and find that our observed effect is more consistent with a karma-based account.","PeriodicalId":15555,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Consumer Research","volume":"39 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2024-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140801753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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