Data from several experiments show that, contrary to traditional models of variety seeking, individuals choose to switch to less‐preferred options even though they enjoy those items less than they ...would have enjoyed repeating a more‐preferred option. Two explanations for this finding are tested. Results indicate no evidence of a benefit to more‐preferred options due to the contrast to less‐preferred alternatives. However, the results of three studies suggest that retrospective global evaluations favor varied sequences that also include less‐preferred items as opposed to sequences that only include more‐preferred items, even though these more varied sequences result in diminished enjoyment during consumption.
Five studies examined the hypothesis that people overestimate the influence of self-interest on attitudes and behaviors. The results strongly supported the hypothesis. In Study 1, participants ...overestimated the impact that financial reward exerted on their peers' willingness to donate blood. In 4 subsequent studies, participants overestimated the impact that group membership had on their peers' attitudes (Studies 2, 3, and 4) and behaviors (Study 5). The tendency to overestimate the impact of self-interest on others was largely unrelated to the impact that it had on participants' own attitudes and behaviors. Implications of the lay person's belief in the power of self-interest are discussed.
The authors argue that people's tendency to diversify their allocations of money and consumption choices over alternatives gives rise to decisions that vary systematically with the subjective ...grouping of available options. These subjective groupings are influenced by subtle variations in the presentation of options or elicitation of preferences. Studies 1-4 demonstrate such "partition dependence" in allocations of money to beneficiaries, consumption experiences to future time periods, and choices to a menu of consumption options. Study 5 documents weaker partition dependence among individuals with greater relevant experience discriminating among options, and Study 6 shows that the effect is attenuated among participants with stronger or more accessible intrinsic preferences.
Four studies investigated whether people feel inhibited from engaging in social action incongruent with their apparent self-interest. Participants in Study 1 predicted that they would be evaluated ...negatively were they to take action on behalf of a cause in which they had no stake or in which they had a stake but held stake-incongruent attitudes. Participants in Study 2 reported both surprise and anger when a target person took action on behalf of a cause in which he or she had no stake or in which he or she held stake-incongruent attitudes. In Study 3, individuals felt more comfortable engaging in social action and expected others to respond more favorably toward their actions if the issue was described as more relevant to their own sex than to the opposite sex. In Study 4, the authors found that providing nonvested individuals with psychological standing rendered them as likely as vested individuals to undertake social action. The authors discuss the implications of these results for the relationship between vested interest, social action, and attitude-behavior consistency.
Results from four experiments indicate that people expect to enjoy an experience more when it will follow a worse experience. We find that consumers expect hedonic contrast effects even when they do ...not experience such effects. Whereas individuals remember the absence of contrast effects after a short delay (study 1), individuals reporting retrospective judgments after a long delay (study 2) recalled that they had experienced contrast effects. These biased memories about contrast effects are eliminated when individuals focus on enjoyment during the experience. The present experiments document the time course of erroneous beliefs about contrast effects, mechanisms underlying their resistance to change, and the impact of these expectations about contrast effects on consumer choice.
When considering the purchase of a new product, will consumers be more likely to make the purchase if they think about using it every day or if they think about using it every week? From an economic ...perspective, using a durable product more frequently should increase its perceived value. However, we show that perceived usage frequency relative to other consumers can influence product interest more than absolute usage frequency. In five studies, we use scale labels, advertisements, and customer reviews to invoke either a high-frequency or low-frequency norm. We show that high-frequency cues create less product interest and lower willingness to pay than low-frequency cues because consumers infer that their relative usage frequency will be lower, reducing the product's perceived fit. This effect is moderated by the consumer's perceived similarity to the standard of comparison and the consumer's own characteristics.
Four experiments test the hypothesis that an unfavorable outcome of a good decision leads individuals to switch away from that decision due to negative emotional responses to the outcome. Negative ...emotional reactions led many participants to abandon the option that they recalled as having been more successful overall in the past (Study 1) and which they expected to perform better in the future (Study 2). A prompt to consider the future success rates of the two alternatives did not eliminate switching (Study 2). An experimental manipulation in Study 3 indicated that individuals switch when they focus on their affective reactions rather than beliefs about the earlier disappointing outcome. In Study 4, individuals with a general tendency to focus on cognitions (i.e., those high in need for cognition) were less likely to switch away from the better option following a disappointing outcome. These results suggest that an emotional reaction to a negative outcome can lead people to switch away from the options that they believe are most likely to be successful on the next occasion.
When is sociality congruent with self‐care? Ratner, Rebecca K.; Kim, Nicole You Jeung; Wu, Yuechen
Journal of consumer psychology,
January 2023, 2023-01-00, Letnik:
33, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Kumar and Epley (2023) argue that people underinvest in spending time, effort, and money on other people, and that consumers' own well‐being would improve from increased “sociality.” We pose two ...questions to enhance understanding of the relationship between sociality and efforts to benefit one's own well‐being: (1) when will other‐oriented consumption promote versus hinder consumers' own well‐being, and (2) what leads consumers to embrace versus forego efforts to improve their well‐being (i.e., self‐care) that does not involve sociality? We propose that the degree to which the consumer is concerned about incorporating others' preferences, the magnitude of resources involved, and the temporal dynamics of consumption will be relevant factors in addressing these two questions. Future research to explore the proposed three factors and other factors will be important for consumers who seek to improve their well‐being as well as marketers who seek to promote it.
This work examines the trade‐offs that consumers in relationships make between the overall quality of an activity (i.e., experience quality) and the ability to share the activity in physical ...proximity to a relationship partner (i.e., togetherness). A pilot study and five experiments demonstrate that consumers value togetherness (vs. experience quality) relatively more when they share the experience with a close (vs. distant) relationship partner. Importantly, this work documents a novel mechanism underlying the value that consumers place on togetherness: a desire to create shared memories. Supportive of this mechanism, the extent to which consumers value togetherness (vs. experience quality) is increased when outcomes for the self and the partner are asymmetrical (vs. symmetrical) if choosing to be apart and is reduced when the experience is framed as utilitarian (vs. hedonic) and when consumers are reminded that they can create shared memories even when apart. Taken together, this work extends previous research on shared consumption by documenting a desire to create shared memories as a novel driver of consumer decision‐making in the context of close relationships.
This paper introduces consumer empowerment as a promising research area. Going beyond lay wisdom that more control is always better, we outline several hypotheses concerning (a) the factors that ...influence the perception of empowerment, and (b) the consequences of greater control and the subjective experience of empowerment on consumer satisfaction and confidence.
