Journal of Consumer Psychology最新文献

Consumers generally prefer natural to synthetic drugs, a phenomenon known as the “natural preference.” Through six experiments and one archival study, the current research shows that while consumers have a general preference for natural drugs over synthetic drugs, this preference is stronger when the goal is to treat psychological rather than physical conditions. Process evidence indicates an important mechanism that explains the amplified natural preference for treating psychological conditions: Consumers are more concerned about their true selves being altered when treating psychological conditions, and they perceive natural drugs to be less likely than synthetic drugs to affect their true selves. The current research provides novel insights into the natural preference. It also offers policy and managerial implications for marketing natural remedies and pharmacological treatments for mental health conditions.

Consumers often use spatial metaphors to describe time. Through six studies, the present research demonstrates that time metaphors influence consumers' perceptions of the temporal distance to future events. Specifically, an ego-moving metaphor, which characterizes the movement of the self across a timeline from present to future, leads consumers to perceive a target event as more temporally distant than a time-moving metaphor that illustrates the movement of the event from future to present. This time metaphor distance effect arises because the ego-moving (vs. time-moving) metaphor hinders psychological arousal and thus makes the events seem more temporally distant. We also demonstrate a downstream consequence of this effect: by lengthening the perceived temporal distance, the ego-moving (vs. time-moving) metaphor leads to greater consumer impatience in a waiting context.

Research indicates that in general, curiosity leads to more intense processing of an advertisement, which might result in a more skeptical response toward a persuasive message. However, we propose the opposite and argue that a process of evoking curiosity toward a stimulus in the first step (with the creation of an information gap) and resolving it in the second step creates a positive affective experience. Upon receiving curiosity-resolving information after becoming curious, consumers are less skeptical toward the advertised product, which leads to a more favorable attitude and a higher purchase intention. Based on four studies, we demonstrate curiosity's skepticism-reducing effect, its downstream consequences, and the underlying mechanism of positive affect. We show that this curiosity-stimulating way of information disclosure caused the effect instead of the information itself, which remained constant. The effects occur for integral curiosity, directed at the focal product, and for incidental curiosity, elicited by an unrelated stimulus. These results contribute to understanding consumer responses to curiosity-evoking advertisements, which are widespread, and provide implications for consumer psychologists, practitioners, and policy makers.

Consumers are often viewed unfavorably when using luxury products. They are seen as seeking status and managing impressions, and therefore judged as inauthentic. How can luxury consumers alleviate these negative social consequences? Our pilot studies suggest that although many consumers are passionate about luxury products and brands, they avoid sharing this passion with others because they fear being judged negatively. However, we propose that publicly expressing one's passion for luxury can mitigate the social costs of luxury consumption. Six experiments (including three supplemental experiments) show that expressing passion for luxury causes others to perceive luxury consumers as more authentic, consequently increasing perceptions of their warmth and trustworthiness, and leading others to demonstrate greater interest in knowing more about them. Expressing passion for luxury enhances perceived authenticity by prompting observers to attribute the luxury consumption more to intrinsic motivation (e.g., consuming luxury for inherent enjoyment and pleasure) rather than extrinsic motivation (e.g., status enhancement). The effects of passion expression are attenuated for non-luxury consumption because non-luxury consumption is generally unlikely to elicit inferences about extrinsic motives.

Brands are increasingly engaging in social marketing campaigns that take stances on important social issues. Such campaigns can garner considerable awareness and effectively encourage consumers to purchase the focal brand. However, they can also outrage other consumer segments who disapprove of the brand's social stance. While social campaigns that outrage consumer groups would normally be undesirable, our research investigates how they can alternatively have a positive impact for brands that support the attacked value. This prediction is based on the premise that outrage expressed towards a social campaign threatens the value involved, causing consumers who want to defend that value to engage in symbolic protective responses by strengthening self-brand connections and increasing purchase intentions. Five experiments validate this theorizing, and further show that these social threat effects are moderated by the type of outgroup that expressed the outrage and the level of viral support the expressed outrage received. Implications for the social marketing and brand relationship literatures are discussed.

Across three preregistered studies and five supplementary datasets, we predicted and found that conservatives were more inclined to complain than liberals due to conservative consumers feeling a greater sense of entitlement. This research contributes to the literature by introducing consumer entitlement as a novel explanation for ideological differences in consumer behavior, and by building on previous work suggesting that conservative consumers complain less than liberals (Journal of Consumer Research, 2017, 44, 477). Evidence is provided across several service contexts and types of complaining behaviors. Study 1 and 4 supplementary datasets supported the basic process. Next, theory-relevant boundary conditions provided converging process evidence. In Study 2, complaining intentions decreased among conservatives when they felt less (vs. more) entitled than the target of social comparison. In Study 3, complaining intentions decreased among conservatives when a service recovery was framed as providing special treatment. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

Technological innovation is shaping products and markets to appeal to consumer enduring needs. Given the rise in non-physicality of products and consumers' increasing participation in peer-to-peer markets, this research examines the relationship between non-physicality of goods and disparities in seller–buyer valuations, a critical component of market inefficiencies. In a meta-analysis of 598 observations across 129 articles, the authors find that non-physical (vs. physical) goods have significantly larger seller–buyer valuation disparities (i.e., larger endowment effects). This pattern is consistent across non-physical categories, including market and non-market goods. The authors argue the immateriality of non-physical goods reduces evaluability and enhances perceived complexity, leading to greater asymmetries in information processing between sellers and buyers. Congruent with construal level theory, marketing tactics associated with low categorization levels (emphasizing product features) influence consumer valuations of physical goods, but not non-physical goods. Instead, consumer valuations of non-physical goods are asymmetrically influenced by tactics with high categorization levels (accentuating collective identity). This research foreshadows challenges in, and provides managerial implications for, the marketing and transactions of non-physical products.

This research examines how the effort that consumers exert to earn money affects their risk tolerance. We theorize and find that working harder—that is, more effortful earning—increases perceived ownership and valuation of earnings, and thus aversion to losing them, resulting in lower risk tolerance, even when risk is associated with better expected outcomes. Documenting this causal negative effort–risk relationship is important because it (1) runs contrary to consumers' lay beliefs and population-level analysis which conversely suggest a positive effort–risk correlation (i.e., a Simpson's paradox, Experiment 2), (2) expands understanding of how the way in which people acquire money affects risk tolerance beyond classic research on windfall gains (i.e., unanticipated rewards) and house money (i.e., unrealized gains), and hence (3) reveals a unique mechanism of perceived ownership that drives this negative causal relationship. Leveraging this unique mechanism, we further show that this negative effort–risk relationship can be attenuated by changing the currency of the money that consumers earn to be one that consumers have low ownership over (e.g., Bitcoin for non-crypto users).

Nostalgia is a prevalent emotion that confers psychological benefits and influences consumer behavior. We developed and validated the 98-word Nostalgia Dictionary to automatize the assessment of nostalgicity in narratives (e.g., customer reviews, social media). First, we created an initial wordlist by identifying the most frequently used words in nostalgia narratives and by relying on the nostalgia literature. Second, we finalized the dictionary by testing experimentally the expanded wordlist for its capacity to differentiate nostalgia from related emotions. Third, we validated the dictionary by demonstrating that it corresponds to self-reports and coder-ratings of nostalgia, produces result patterns expected by theory, and predicts favorability ratings of books and consumer experiences, even after adjusting for positive emotion words. We discuss the potential of the Nostalgia Dictionary to advance research and practice.