Journal of Consumer Behaviour最新文献

This study aims to explore how different sources of inspiration (namely, users, artificial intelligence (AI), and professional designers) as external stimuli influence customers' willingness to participate in user design. Results from four experiments show that inspiration from users, AI, and professional designers all positively influence customers' willingness to participate in user design. Self-competence is found to mediate such effects. Moreover, we further identify that the effects of inspiration stimuli on customers' willingness to participate in user design is moderated by customer knowledge and product type (hedonic vs. utilitarian). Customers with low level of knowledge are more likely to be inspired by user designs and AI-generated designs than professional designer counterparts. For utilitarian products, customers are more likely to be inspired by user designs and AI-generated designs. In contrast, for hedonic products, customers are more likely to draw inspiration from professional designers. Our finding suggests that open innovation communities should offer a variety of designs from users and AI to inspire their users, thus encouraging their participation in user design.

This article examines the influence of framing a brand's concept as functional versus symbolic in the advertising of a new vertical line extension. In this research, we carried out two online experiments and collected data from 415 participants recruited from MTurk to investigate the moderating role of believability on the effect of brand concept framing on consumers' purchase intentions of vertical line extensions. The results indicate that (i) consumers evaluate a vertical extension advertising message more positively when it is framed in a consistent manner with the targeted price/quality segment and not with its parent brand or existing product line and that (ii) this effect is moderated by consumer believability such that an advertising framing effect is found for high, but not low, in believability. Perceptions of category fit mediate the relationship between framing brand concept and the evaluation of the extension. This study contributes to the advertising and marketing literature by exploring how consumers can interpret brand concept framing in advertising messages of vertical line extensions differently depending on their level of believability and, in turn, influence their purchase intentions.

This study investigates the consumers' processing route of WTPM for green products from consumers' self-concepts. Employing the norm activation model and Lazarus appraisal theory, this study proposes the direct and indirect routes of self-concepts (i.e., green and product self-concepts) that influence consumers' WTPM. The causal chain of green product virtue and green perceived value is explored. Online survey data for 313 Indian green consumers inform the findings. The findings reveal that consumers' product self-concept and green self-concept influence their WTPM through green product virtue and green perceived value. Such findings support the sequential mediation effect. This study provides an alternative and novel psychological mechanism for how consumers' self-concepts can influence WTPM through green product virtue and green perceived value. The findings inform green marketers to use green product virtue and green perceived value to induce green consumers' WTPM while designing effective segmentation and communication strategies.

Data intelligence (DI) is constantly influencing consumers. According to the theory of environmental psychology model, when consumers are stimulated by enterprise DI in mobile shopping, they can easily transform emotional reactions into corresponding behaviors. Based on this theory, this research adopts a hybrid method combining qualitative interview and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to explore the multifactor synergistic effects of DI factors on consumer emotions and mobile shopping intentions. Study 1 extracts five DI factors through qualitative study using NVivo software. All but one of the five DI factors had strong effects on consumer emotions. Study 2 uses the fsQCA method to analyze large-sample survey data, revealing four configurations of DI factors that trigger positive consumer emotions and three that trigger mobile shopping intentions. The presence of intelligent search, intelligent recommendations, and intelligent logistics are the core conditions that trigger positive consumer emotions and mobile shopping intentions, while the presence or absence of intelligent customer service and intelligent pricing trigger positive consumer emotions and mobile shopping intentions. The research results supplement the existing theories and provide practical guidance for enterprises in DI stimulus design and government in DI environment construction.

Consumers frequently forecast how their choices will make them feel in future consumption situations. One possible influence during such affective forecasting is their current emotional state. Although the impact of incidental emotions on consumer decision making is well established, limited research has examined the impact of incidental emotions on affective forecasting. The purpose of the present research is to contribute to the understanding of the effects of certainty–uncertainty, as a key appraisal dimension of incidental emotions, on the process and outcome of affective forecasting. The results of four experimental studies demonstrate that experiencing uncertainty associated incidental emotions, such as fear and hope, during affective forecasting, leads to smaller forecasting error compared with experiencing certainty emotions, such as anger and happiness. Furthermore, heuristic processing, as a result of the certainty versus uncertainty appraisals, plays a mediating role in the effect of certainty–uncertainty on forecasting error. The findings of the present research extend the effects of the certainty–uncertainty appraisals in the context of consumer affective forecasting and elucidate the impact of incidental emotions on decision making.

Metaverse is portrayed as the next significant technology innovation with an estimated market opportunity of US $800 billion. Metaverse offers numerous opportunities and an unmatchable user experience, yet its acceptance among the masses is still a long way off. Moreover, within 2 years of its existence and grandiose hype about a huge market potential, the current business sentiments are not so hopeful. Despite the positive and encouraging feedback, the reasons behind the limited success of the metaverse need scientific exploration. This study uses netnography to collect online data from 751 articles (news articles, expert opinions, perspectives, and blogs). Further, we use the text-mining method of structural topic modeling to generate insights from the text data and perform a sentiment analysis. The identified topics are mapped and explained using the behavioral reasoning theory to highlight “reasons for” and “reasons against” metaverse adoption. The study's findings identify flexibility, brand experience, human centricity, and virtual retail experience as enablers of acceptance of the metaverse, while regulatory issues, usage barriers, financial investment, and skepticism act as barriers to adopting the metaverse. Further, social adventure and social influence were identified as enablers categorized under subjective norms. This study contributes to the scarce literature on metaverse adoption and offers actionable insights to marketers to craft marketing strategies to benefit from the metaverse.

In the wake of the significant impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on industries and societies worldwide, the world has transitioned into a new normal marked by increased susceptibility to disruptive, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (DVUCA) events. In this new normal, panic buying has proliferated into a pervasive global consumer behavior, rendering far-reaching implications on economies and societies worldwide and thus necessitating thorough investigation. Existing literature on panic buying is constrained by two noteworthy limitations: firstly, the scarcity of studies that delineate the commercial impact of panic buying, and secondly, the dearth of longitudinal data in panic buying research. Addressing these gaps, this study employs longitudinal multi-sourced monthly and seasonally adjusted secondary data comprising retail revenue of supermarkets and grocery stores and related COVID-19 indicators in Australia to establish a case of panic buying and examine its commercial impact. Using 10 generalized least squares and two-stage least squares regressions, we observe a positive, statistically significant relationship between the intensity of external crises and retail revenue, even when accounting for control and instrumental variables. Specifically, the increasing number of COVID-19 new cases was found to produce a positive and significant effect on supermarket and grocery store revenue, with each new case contributing AU $0.02 million. Therefore, the present study contributes alternative evidence from the field that not only reaffirms the effect of externalities such as COVID-19 in stimulating panic buying among consumers, but also highlights, for the first time, the commercial value of panic buying. The marketing implications of these findings in the new normal are also discussed.

Charitable giving depends on either time or money. Understanding what motivates donors to choose one resource over the other is crucial for various nonprofit organizations. This research, rooted in implicit theories, examines how donors' beliefs about the fixedness or malleability of human attributes influence their preference of donation resource. Three experiments revealed that donors who believe human traits are fixed (entity theory) are more inclined to donate money, while those who view human nature as malleable (incremental theory) are more likely to donate time. The results also suggest that analytic thinking mediates the monetary donations of entity theorists, whereas holistic thinking influences incremental theorists to give their time. This study provides invaluable insights for nonprofit organizations aiming to optimize their fundraising strategies, illustrating how beliefs about human nature can sway preferences for different donation resources.

This research examines how goal type (i.e., attainment vs. maintenance) affects consumers' preferences for different means of self-control (i.e., initiatory vs. inhibitory). Across four studies, the authors demonstrate that pursuing maintenance versus attainment goals decreases the willingness to choose inhibitory self-control but not initiatory self-control. The effect is primarily attributed to two reasons: distinct decision concerns when choosing the means for attainment and maintenance goals; and asymmetry when evaluating initiatory and inhibitory self-control. The effects are consistent across cultures and domains and impact consumers' purchase and real-life behaviours. These findings shed light on the relationship between goal type and self-control preferences and offer insights to both consumers and marketers on how to engage in self-control for long-term goals.

Existing social media influencer marketing research mainly explores how to enhance followers purchase intentions through the mechanisms of improving the follower–influencer relationship, however leaves research gaps regarding how to design effective influencer recommendation information (IRI) to stimulate consumer purchase behaviors. To address the gaps, a research model was established based on the information adoption model. This study collected 2276 influencer recommendation posts from typical Chinese social media influencer marketing platform WeChat Shopping Circle. Text-mining methods were used to develop measurements from influencer posts, and survey data were collected from 20 participants from a large Chinese university to validate measurements. Using negative binomial regression, the empirical study found that the number of consumers who purchase recommended products is determined by the usefulness of IRI, whereby being further affected by content expertise, content novelty, and platform endorsement to influencers. The type of recommended products moderates the relationship between these influencing factors and information usefulness. This study makes contributions by revealing the informational influence mechanism of IRI and identifying what factors can exert effective informational influence for different types of products. It also offers practical implications for the design of influencer recommendation strategies.