Journal of Consumer Psychology最新文献

Past work has found that there is often a mismatch between the types of gifts that individuals send and the types of gifts that recipients would prefer to receive. Moving beyond gift choice, the present work explores a novel type of giver–recipient mismatch—beliefs about the importance of sending an on-time gift. Specifically, the current work offers evidence that gift givers systematically overestimate the negative impact that a late occasion-based gift will have on their relationship with the recipient, which occurs because gift givers believe that sending a late gift will signal that they care about the recipient to a lesser extent than what the recipient perceives. As such, gift givers' overestimation of relationship harm from a late gift is attenuated when they signal care in some other way (e.g., with the amount of effort put into creating the gift). Finally, we explore the consequences of degree of gift lateness as well as the decision to not send an occasion-based gift at all on gift givers' overestimation of relationship harm.

This research examines how red ambient color in restaurants/cafeterias influences food choices. Prior research shows that red directly related to a food product (such as on nutrition labels or plates/cups) leads to avoidance of unhealthy foods. Yet, many successful fast-food restaurants (e.g., McDonald's and Dairy Queen) use red in their ambiance, suggesting that in the context of food/eating, ambient red may have a different meaning than product-related red. Indeed, the current research shows that consumers associate ambient red (e.g., wall color) with unhealthy restaurants. The presence of ambient red (vs. blue, gray, or white) leads to greater preference for unhealthy (i.e., high calorie, high fat, and indulgent) food options because consumers draw on ambient factors to make inferences about products sold in a retail establishment and then choose contextually appropriate products. The effect is moderated by the extent to which a consumer associates red with unhealthy restaurants. This research highlights how, in the context of food/eating, the placement of red influences its meaning and ultimately whether consumers approach or avoid unhealthy foods.

Firms often ask consumers to either spend time to save money (e.g., Lyft's “Wait & Save”) or spend money to save time (e.g., Uber's “Priority Pickup”). Across six preregistered studies (N = 3631), including seven reported in Appendix S1 (N = 2930), we find that asking consumers to spend time to save money is perceived as fairer than asking them to spend money to save time (all else equal), with downstream consequences for word-of-mouth, purchase intentions, willingness-to-pay (WTP), and incentive-compatible choice. This is because spend-time-to-save-money offers reduce concerns about firms' profit-seeking motives, which consumers find aversive and unfair. The effect is thus mediated by inferences about profit-seeking and attenuates when concerns about those motives are less salient (e.g., for non-profits). At the same time, we find that spend-money-to-save-time offers (e.g., expedited shipping) are more common in the marketplace. This research reveals how normatively equivalent trade-offs can nevertheless yield contradictory fairness judgments, with meaningful implications for marketing theory and practice.

Home is typically understood as a singular place that provides a sense of groundedness, belonging, and well-being. Yet, this singular notion of home is challenged in global mobility, where consumers live and travel across borders and relocate internationally frequently. We expect globally mobile consumers to experience multiple and multilayered notions of home with significant psychological consequences for their sense of well-being, ownership, and identity. In a qualitative study of 40 globally mobile consumers, we examine what it means to have multiple homes and how consumers cope with it. We identified four types of home that coexist in global mobility: emotional home, home away from home, base of operation, and home on the road. These types are characterized by different degrees of permanence and serve different psychological benefits that are at times in opposition or complementary (respectively, belonging and ontological security, functioning and psychological ownership, productivity, and flexibility). We also explored how this home portfolio provokes emotional, social, and cognitive consequences with which globally mobile consumers cope through strategic use of marketplace resources.

We set forth an agenda for Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) research in consumer psychology, focusing in particular on four pathways: (1) factoring in multiple identities, including moral identities, to account for contextual elevation or suppression of moral foundations in predicting which decisions consumers moralize and when; (2) broadening the methodological usage of MFT to include more targeted causal research as well as expanding the utility of correlational research; (3) increasing discriminant validity between MFT and other constructs by studying moral foundations as individually manipulable and focusing on their incremental predictive validity over and above demographics and related constructs; and (4) recognizing that researcher biases regarding morality can leak into the publication process, necessitating clear distinctions between prescriptive versus descriptive research. These pathways facilitate more precise and stronger predictive validity for applying MFT in consumer psychology, yielding greater theoretical and practical utility across researcher perspectives.

Disease detection is critical throughout the consumer lifecycle. Effective communication not only influences consumers' motivation to participate in disease detection but also has a significant impact on prevention outcomes. While previous literature has examined the effectiveness of the gain frame versus the loss frame in motivating detection behaviors, existing studies have produced mixed results, with the underlying psychological process remaining unclear. The present research sheds light on these issues by examining the moderating role of age. Across four experiments, we demonstrate the interactive effects of age and message framing on the effectiveness of health communication advocating disease detection for prevention. We find that as age increases, gain-framed disease detection appeals become more persuasive than loss-framed appeals, and that information diagnosticity is one psychological mechanism driving this effect. This research contributes to the literature on framing effects, age differences in information processing, and health compliance persuasion. Our findings also provide insights into how to engage consumers of different ages in disease detection and subsequently enable better prevention and intervention.

Recent technological advancements have empowered nonhuman entities, such as virtual assistants and humanoid robots, to simulate human intelligence and behavior. This paper investigates how autonomous agents influence individuals' perceptions and behaviors toward others, particularly human employees. Our research reveals that the socio-emotional capabilities of autonomous agents lead individuals to attribute a humanlike mind to these nonhuman entities. Perceiving a high level of humanlike mind in the nonhuman, autonomous agents affects perceptions of actual people through an assimilation process. Consequently, we observe “assimilation-induced dehumanization”: the humanness judgment of actual people is assimilated toward the lower humanness judgment of autonomous agents, leading to various forms of mistreatment. We demonstrate that assimilation-induced dehumanization is mitigated when autonomous agents possess capabilities incompatible with humans, leading to a contrast effect (Study 2), and when autonomous agents are perceived as having a high level of cognitive capability only, resulting in a lower level of mind perception of these agents (Study 3). Our findings hold across various types of autonomous agents (embodied: Studies 1–2 and disembodied: Studies 3–5), as well as in real and hypothetical consumer choices.

Consumer demand for size-inclusive fashion is growing, including the call for clothing to be modeled in larger sizes. This call has prompted brands to decide how to model their clothing, in particular, on category pages (i.e., webpages where consumers compare different items). Should brands use varied model sizing, where clothing is presented using models of various sizes? Or should brands use traditionally thin models who are the same nonvaried model size? This research explores female consumers' responses to varied model sizing. Across five studies, we demonstrate a model-sizing dilemma where female consumers rate impressions of brand values higher but rate shopping ease lower when brands use varied rather than nonvaried model sizing. We show the decrease in shopping ease is driven by lower perceptions of organization during the shopping experience. Importantly, we find that this dilemma can be mitigated by displaying varied model sizing in a more organized manner using hover and filter features.

Repeat consumption, a common aspect of consumers' daily lives, often results in hedonic adaptation such as satiation or boredom. In line with a growing body of research exploring methods to alleviate hedonic adaptation, this research proposes and finds that creative thinking can effectively reduce hedonic adaptation. Through five experiments conducted across various consumption contexts (music listening, video watching, photograph viewing, snack eating), we show that creative thinking reduces hedonic adaptation by fostering cognitive flexibility during repeat consumption (e.g., enjoying the same photograph from different aspects across repetitions). Supporting this underlying mechanism, the mitigating effect of creative thinking on hedonic adaptation attenuates when consumers' cognitive flexibility is constrained, or when the product itself possesses sufficient complexity that naturally encourages cognitive flexibility over repetitions. Overall, this research sheds light on how creative thinking helps alleviate hedonic adaptation in repeat consumption, with implications for marketing managers and practitioners.

If you are having a hard day, what can someone else do to help you feel better? Maybe they could verbally comfort you or maybe they could give you a small gift. In seven studies, including an in-person real gifting study, we find that receiving a small material gift, such as a candy bar or flowers, improves receivers' affect more than a supportive conversation with a close other does. We investigate the mechanism for this effect and find that support receivers perceive a gift to be a larger sacrifice than a conversation. This occurs because gifts seem more receiver-focused (i.e., actions done solely to benefit the receiver) than do conversations. This difference in perceived sacrifice makes gifts (vs. conversations) more effective at promoting emotional recovery.