Corporate social responsibility is commonly viewed solely as a tool for enhancing company reputations and engendering goodwill among customers. In contrast, this research shows that the impact of ...corporate social responsibility can extend beyond public relations and customer goodwill to influence the way consumers evaluate a company’s products. Specifically, this research documents that acts of social goodwill—even when they are unrelated to the company’s core business, as in the case of charitable giving—can alter product perceptions, such that products of companies engaged in prosocial activities are perceived as performing better. More important, the data show that inferences drawn from a company’s prosocial actions are strong enough to alter the product evaluations even when consumers can directly observe and experience the product. The data further show that this effect is a function of the moral undertone of the company’s motivation for engaging in socially responsible behavior and is attenuated when consumers believe that the company’s behavior is driven by self-interest rather than by benevolence. By documenting that social goodwill can benefit consumer perceptions of product performance, these findings show that doing good can indeed translate into doing well.
•Fluent stimuli promote a sense of structure that can compensate for low control.•People therefore find fluent stimuli especially attractive when they lack control.•The effect is weaker when ...alternative compensatory strategies are readily available.•I document this effect in both the lab and in real-world stock market valuations.
Everyday life is replete with situations that can undermine the perception of personal control. In the current research, the author demonstrates that these experiences can have a pronounced impact on judgment and decision making by increasing evaluative preferences for fluent stimuli. The author argues this occurs because fluent stimuli promote a sense of structure that helps compensate for low control. Consistent with a compensatory process, the data further show that this effect is attenuated when alternative compensatory control strategies are readily available. Six studies document this effect and its implications for how individuals evaluate an organization’s offerings, brand name, tagline, and stock—including two studies examining fluency effects in stock market valuations. Taken together, these findings provide convergent evidence in support of the author's theorizing that fluent stimuli represent a novel means by which individuals attempt to compensate for low control.
Prior research has suggested that consumers believe that products made using sustainable, environmentally friendly technologies are likely to underperform those made using traditional methods. We ...question the robustness of this assumption and identify scenarios in which sustainability is likely to have the opposite effect, strengthening rather than weakening consumers' product performance beliefs. Specifically, we argue that sustainability is likely to produce a halo effect able to attenuate and even override the negative impact of compensatory inferences underlying consumers' belief that sustainability comes at the expense of performance. We propose that this halo effect stems from consumers' view of the company as a moral agent engaged in a prosocial behavior. In this context, we identify two factors that are likely to influence the strength of the halo effect: the degree to which consumers view the company as a moral agent whose actions aim to benefit society and the degree to which moral concerns are prominent in consumers' minds. Following this line of reasoning, we identify two ways in which managers can increase the perceived performance of sustainable products: by associating sustainable benefits with the company rather than with its products and by emphasizing the societal benefits of sustainability. We test these predictions in a series of four empirical studies that show convergent evidence for our theorizing. Our findings have important public policy implications, documenting actionable strategies that managers can use to mitigate the potential negative impact of sustainability and strengthen the perceived performance of sustainable products.
This article is part of the issue “Consumer Psychology for the Greater Good”
Consumers increasingly expect brands to "pick a side" on divisive sociopolitical issues, but managers are reluctant to risk alienating customers who oppose their position. Moreover, research on ...identity-based consumption and negativity bias suggests that corporate political advocacy (CPA) is more likely to repel existing customers who oppose the CPA than to attract new customers who support it, implying that the net effect will be negative even if consumers overall are evenly divided in their support/opposition. In this research, the authors posit that despite this negativity bias in individual-level choice, the net effect of CPA at the market level is determined by a sorting process that benefits small-share brands and hurts large-share brands. This is because having few customers to lose and many to gain can offset the risk of the negativity bias in consumers' identity-driven responses to CPA, potentially leading to a net influx of customers for small-share brands. Five experiments provide support for this theorizing and identify authenticity as a necessary condition for small share brands to benefit.
Prior research has suggested that consumers believe sustainable products tend to underperform compared with those made using traditional methods, a phenomenon referred to as the “sustainability ...liability.” Despite early conceptual justification and evidence supporting this argument, recent research has not attempted to validate this effect and assess its practical relevance. By employing a variety of scenarios adapted from prior studies, the authors quantify the magnitude of the sustainability-liability effect and show that it is relatively small and unlikely to be meaningful. This research also estimates the boundary conditions to identify scenarios in which a significant sustainability-liability effect might occur. Using archival data, the authors demonstrate that the association between sustainability and inferior product performance has decreased over time, explaining the discrepancy between their findings and prior research. These findings have important public policy implications, providing decision makers with empirical evidence that designing and promoting eco-friendly products can benefit society without detracting from the perceived performance of the company's offerings.
When consumers anticipate feeling embarrassed by a purchase, they often purchase additional products to mitigate the threat. The current research demonstrates that nonembarrassing additional ...purchases do not necessarily attenuate anticipated embarrassment but may, paradoxically, exacerbate it instead. Results further show that when additional purchases do attenuate anticipated embarrassment, they can do so independently of their effect on the salience of the embarrassing product. Five experiments provide converging evidence that additional purchases attenuate (vs. exacerbate) anticipated embarrassment to the extent that they are perceived to counterbalance (vs. complement) the undesired identity communicated during purchase. These results contrast with the traditional explanation for this strategy, which holds that additional purchases mitigate embarrassment because they compete with the embarrassing product for observers’ attention. This research contributes to a more precise understanding of consumer coping and impression management by identifying shopping basket composition as an important factor in purchase embarrassment.
Mark Twain purportedly once quipped, "Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it." Underlying this pithy observation is the idea that we often lack control over the events in ...our lives. Indeed, everyday life is replete with experiences that threaten personal control by undermining the belief that one can personally predict, affect, and steer events in the present and future (Kay et al. 2009). This raises the question as to whether and how personal control threats influence consumers' downstream judgments and decisions. One prediction is that incidental personal control threats will worsen outcome expectancies. This stems from past research showing that people often overestimate their likelihood for positive outcomes because they assume future conditions and behaviors will be ideal (Tanner and Carlson 2009). This suggests that perceiving low control in one context may serve as a generalized reminder that the world is not ideal, which in turn would make salient the fact that factors outside one's control could preclude positive outcomes in other contexts as well. Thus, incidental threats personal control threats may lower the perceived likelihood for positive outcomes more generally. In contrast, I argue that incidental threats to personal control are likely to increase the perceived likelihood for positive outcomes. I develop this hypothesis by adopting a motivational framework whereby personal control is construed not only as a situational appraisal but also as a fundamental motivation (Fiske 2014; Heider 1958; Kelly 1955). Building on the notion that control motivation reflects a more fundamental need for competence-that is, the need to use control effectively in shaping one's environment (Burger 1987)-I posit that threats to personal control heighten people's desire for competence, motivating them to believe they will be effective in producing desired outcomes in unrelated domains. I report three experiments that test this proposition in the context of financial decision making. Experiment 1 examines whether an incidental personal control threat improves outcome expectancies and, if so, whether this is mediated by greater perceived competence. I manipulated personal control using a writing task where respondents elaborated on either a movie they had recently seen (baseline-control condition) or a fabricated quotation from a philosopher, which was pretested to threaten personal control (low-control condition). Next, respondents completed an ostensibly unrelated task where they constructed a stock portfolio. They reported how likely it was that their portfolios would outperform the average and their perceived competence in constructing the portfolio (Note: because the outcome expectancy DV is a relative measure whereas the perceived competence DV is absolute, one does not necessarily imply the other-thus, a respondent could perceive himself as incompetent in the task but still expect to perform as well or better than the average simply because he perceives others as equally incompetent). Results showed that respondents believed their portfolios were more likely to outperform when they were in the low (vs. baseline) control condition (p=.04, d=.23), and greater perceived competence mediated this effect (95% CI=.01-.21). Experiment 2 provides additional evidence for my proposition that this effect is driven by a heightened desire for competence by showing that it is stronger for positive outcomes perceived as more diagnostic of competence. I first measured perceived diagnosticity by asking respondents the extent to which they perceived their outcomes in the stock market as reflecting their own competence. I then manipulated personal control by asking respondents to elaborate on something in their lives over which they had no control (low) or complete control (high). Finally, I presented respondents with a price chart for a stock they were considering and measured their perceived likelihood of profit. As predicted, the impact of personal control on outcome expectancies varied as a function of perceived diagnosticity (β=.41,p=.001). I explored this interaction using the Johnson-Neyman technique (Johnson and Neyman 1936; Spiller et al. 2013) to identify regions of significance for the simple effect of personal control at varying levels of perceived diagnosticity. Analysis revealed a positive effect of low (vs. high) personal control on outcome expectancies when perceived diagnosticity was relatively high (i.e., 70.42 or higher on 100-point scale) but a negative effect when perceived diagnosticity was relatively low (i.e., 33.38 or lower). Experiment 3 provides causal evidence for the moderating role of perceived diagnosticity by manipulating rather than measuring it as in E2. I manipulated perceived diagnosticity by varying whether or not personal control was threatened in the same domain as the subsequent judgment. The rationale for this manipulation is that one cannot use control effectively (i.e., be competent) in a domain where one does not have control at all. As such, threatening control in the same domain should make respondents less likely to perceive positive outcomes as reflecting their own competence. To manipulate personal control, I varied perceived predictability, an important antecedent of personal control (Skinner 1996). Respondents first completed an ease-of-retrieval task (Schwarz et al. 1991) where they generated either 12 or 2 ways to predict an event, the rationale being that generating 12 (vs. 2) ways to predict an event is more difficult, thereby lowering perceived predictability. To manipulate threat-domain, I varied whether respondents were asked how to predict the weather (unrelated-domain) or stock price (related-domain). Finally, respondents completed the same financial judgment task as in E2. Analysis revealed the predicted interaction (F(1, 144)=4.26, p=.04), such that respondents in the low (vs. high) predictability condition believed their investment was more likely to be profitable when the threat was unrelated to investment outcomes (p=.003, d=.66), but not when it was related (p=.90, d=.03). This is consistent with the notion that threatened respondents were motivated to exaggerate their likelihood for a positive outcome, but only to the extent that they believed it would reflect positively on their competence. These experiments suggest that the perception of low control can paradoxically make people more optimistic about their outcomes by motivating them to believe they will be effective in unrelated domains. Accordingly, this effect is more likely to occur for positive outcomes perceived as highly diagnostic of competence.
Detailed insights from our experiments x * Consumers act in line with their beliefs, but immediate reactions are stronger in cases of misalignment x Our results confirmed that consumers of a brand ...that engaged in CPA were more (less) likely to choose it when the brand's stance was aligned (misaligned) with their own. ...we also observed a negativity bias in consumers' individual responses: Existing misaligned customers were approximately two times more likely to defect than new aligned customers were to adopt. * Small brands can benefits from CPA, even if the major e x When a brand's initial market share is sufficiently small, engaging in CPA can result in a net increase in customers even if the brand takes a stance that consumers overwhelmingly oppose. The experiments demonstrated that taking the same political stance as a competitor can lead to reduced perceptions of authenticity. ...brands must be cautious when jumping on the CPA bandwagon to avoid potentially being seen as an inauthentic copycat.
When consumers purchase embarrassing products, they often make additional purchases to mitigate the threat. We demonstrate that additional purchases do not necessarily mitigate embarrassment and may, ...paradoxically, exacerbate it instead. We show that additional purchases attenuate (vs. exacerbate) embarrassment to the extent that they counterbalance (vs. complement) the undesired persona.
The perception of personal control is commonly threatened throughout the course of everyday life. This dissertation examines whether and how such experiences influence consumers’ downstream judgments ...and decisions. Specifically, this dissertation investigates the impact of incidental threats to personal control on consumers’ outcome expectancies and decisions in the context of financial decision making. Results from seven empirical studies reveal that incidental threats to personal control paradoxically result in more positive outcome expectancies, such that threatened consumers tend to believe that their investment outcomes are more likely to be positive. Owing to this reduction in perceived risk, threatened consumers are also shown to exhibit greater risk taking. I argue this occurs because personal control threats heighten consumers’ desire to perceive themselves as competent, thereby motivating them to believe that their decisions and behaviors in unrelated domains will be effective in producing desired outcomes. Consistent with this idea, results further show that the effect is more pronounced in scenarios where people perceive positive outcomes as being more rather than less diagnostic of their competence.
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