Knowledge that Transforms

How do consumers make themselves responsible for social change? Consumer responsibilization refers to the institutional shaping of individuals into responsible subjects tasked with driving social change through market participation. Prior research shows that responsibilization generates tensions for consumers but says less about how they work through these tensions to craft responsible subjectivities. Drawing on a multi-sited ethnography of zero-waste lifestyles in Denmark, this study examines consumers’ efforts to act responsibly amid uncertainty, balance personal well-being with the common good, and promote responsible consumption without appearing judgmental. The analysis reveals that consumers address these tensions through consumer responsibilization work—a threefold process of self-problematization, moralization, and intensification. Consumers enact this process through self-techniques that enable them to scrutinize the adequacy of their conduct, interpret consumption as a moral obligation, and strengthen their commitment to a responsible lifestyle. These self-techniques draw on local understandings of responsibility and are sustained through mundane interactions in which consumers hold themselves and one another accountable. The findings shift attention from institutional responsibilization to the culturally situated self-techniques through which consumers enact it in everyday life. They thereby recast responsibilization as a technical, situated, and relational process that reproduces neoliberal governmentality through consumer lifestyles.

Firms can bundle material goods together in various ways, including based on their usage complementarity (i.e., the likelihood that the goods are used together). While prior research has investigated the consequences of bundling products that are high (vs. low) in usage complementarity, the current research uncovers the benefits of bundling products that are moderate in usage complementarity (e.g., a coffee mug and a folding chair). Thirteen pre-registered experiments show that bundling products that are moderate in usage complementarity offers companies a unique advantage: Bundling these products prompts consumers to view them as relatively more experiential compared to bundling products that are low or high in usage complementarity and compared to their non-bundled components. This perceptual shift occurs because bundling products with moderate usage complementarity increases contextualization—the degree to which consumers consider the setting in which the products could be used rather than the use of the products themselves. It also changes consumer behavior in ways that can benefit firms (e.g., increasing purchase likelihood when seeking an experience). This research offers theoretical contributions to the bundling and material-experiential literatures and practical implications for companies interested in different bundling approaches and obtaining the advantages of heightened experiential perceptions for material goods.

This research investigates how the method of paying a shared expense affects purchase satisfaction. When multiple consumers share an expense (e.g., a meal, Uber ride, or vacation), each consumer can pay their own share directly, or one consumer can pay the total and others can repay them. Eight preregistered studies showed that indirect payment through another consumer led to higher purchase satisfaction versus direct payment to the vendor. This effect emerged regardless of the existing relationship (friend, acquaintance, or disliked person), or whether the consumers spent different amounts. Mediation evidence showed that indirect payment increased purchase satisfaction by providing relief from resolving indebtedness. Moderation evidence further supported our proposed process as this effect disappeared when either a financial obligation was made salient, or the focal consumer initially paid the total. This research highlights the distinction between direct and indirect payment paths in shared expenses, contributing a new construct to the consumer finance area. It also has implications for consumers who should realize the effects of shared expenses on their decision satisfaction and budgeting, and marketers who could encourage shared payments to increase satisfaction at little cost.

We revisit the widely accepted finding that paying with cash is more painful than paying with card by conducting the first systematic mega-replication (including 13 large-scale preregistered replications; a total of 32,371 participants, 65 products, and 57 price points ranging from $1.09 to $400). The aggregate evidence reveals four insights: (1) leveraging a broad set of established paradigms, we replicate the finding that paying with cash is more psychologically painful than paying with card, even among today’s consumers who own multiple cards, digital wallets, and virtual currencies; (2) comparing two outcome variables—amount spent and willingness-to-pay (WTP), we find a more reliable and larger overall direct effect of payment method on amount spent than on WTP; (3) these direct effects of payment method on outcome variables are mediated by pain of paying; (4) the mode-of-payment effect on pain of paying (and thereby on outcome variables) is moderated by individual differences, particularly the relative frequency of using cash versus card. We outline actionable guidance and future directions for researchers and practitioners interested in examining mode-of-payment effects, and discuss the value of and suitable approaches for future theory-driven large-scale replications.

In the United States, spending on political campaigns has surged dramatically. This paper introduces and examines “party-defiance ads,” a novel and increasingly common type of political advertisement in which candidates criticize their own party and take a position typically associated with the opposing party. Given the importance of party loyalty, defiance ads appear counterintuitive and risky. Why would candidates air ads in which they criticize their party? Across eight main studies and eight supplemental studies (N = 11,473), including an analysis of voting outcomes in recent elections, we investigate how consumers react to the use of defiance ads. We find that though defiance ads can be risky and trigger backlash, they have the potential to provide benefits to candidates. We identify when and why consumers support, tolerate, and penalize defiance ads in the context of both general elections and primaries. Our findings examine a previously undocumented advertising strategy, contribute to debates about affective polarization by showing that consumers can occasionally set partisan loyalty aside in favor of strategic considerations like electability, introduce electability as an important construct for research on consumer behavior, and provide practical insights for managers interested in using defiance ads.

When writing a review, influencers market their credibility–a critical antecedent to consumers’ attitudes towards reviewers, reviews, and brands. This research examines how consumer reviews shape source credibility and subsequent word-of-mouth (WOM) of influencers. Nineteen studies (N = 7,330), across several product categories and situations, find that consumers perceive negative reviewers as less credible than positive reviewers due to an expectancy-violation of social norms: negativity violates prior expectations for positive reviews. Study 1 finds that while a negative review is viewed as more helpful, the reviewer is perceived as less credible. Studies 2-5 test the expectancy-violation account, finding that the effect on credibility is mediated by social norms (study 2), is mitigated when consumers have ambiguous prior expectations, and reverses when expectations are negative (studies 3-5). Studies 7A-7I replicate this effect across many domains. This reduction in source credibility has downstream consequences, decreasing consumers’ willingness to follow a subsequent recommendation and the source on social media (studies 6A and 6B). While criticism may be intended to damage a brand and/or to help other consumers, this research finds that criticism hinders WOM and the credibility of a reviewer/influencer. Thus, critics are less credible, and have less influence, when positivity is expected.

Trendsetters and cutting-edge brands constantly seek new styles and fresh designs that set them apart from previous trends. However, in recent decades, these early adopters and innovators have also increasingly turned to selected pieces from the past, a market phenomenon often referred to as “vintage.” But what are vintage products exactly? This research develops a unified framework for understanding vintage consumption using a multimethod approach that combines interviews, surveys, online product scraping, structural equation modeling, experiments, and data on over 2,000 vintage products across 16 categories collected at vintage fairs, stores, and online retailers. Vintage is a composite formative construct determined by three dimensions: moderate age, iconicity, and scarcity. By mapping its nomological network, the authors clarify the dimensions vintage shares with related constructs (i.e., antique, secondhand, retro), examine its downstream consequences for consumers, and identify its managerial implications. Vintage products deliver personal (e.g., heritage connection and authenticity), social (e.g., coolness), and sustainability benefits (e.g., environmental responsibility) for consumers. Moreover, highlighting a product’s age, iconicity, and scarcity can enhance consumer responses to vintage more than to new products. This research provides a theoretical foundation for understanding vintage consumption and offers guidance for identifying and positioning vintage products in the marketplace.

Singularization has long been an essential element of value creation in markets for various types of goods that become prized for their uniqueness, but has only recently gained prominence in digital markets. However, very little is known about how digital goods are singularized (i.e., valorized as unique). This study enriches extant research on singularization by shifting attention from physical to digital goods and by exploring singularization as a socio-technical process shaped by varied social actors and technological forces. Inspired by Reckwitz’s (2020) sociology of singularities, this multimethod qualitative study of a market for singularized digital goods uncovers four vectors of digital singularization, variable ways in which technology mediates digital singularization, and multiple tensions that mark this process. In addition to advancing nascent work on digital singularization, this study contributes to broader singularization research by theorizing singularization as a social, technology-mediated process that is inherently precarious. Moreover, this study provides new insights into digital possession and value creation in digital markets, as well as into contemporary “singularity markets” more broadly.

When consumers see someone else’s experience shared on social media, they often infer whether the sharer had relatively intrinsic or extrinsic motives for originally engaging in this experience. While prior research has documented how these inferred motives affect viewers’ social evaluations of the sharer, the present research demonstrates these inferences can shift viewer beliefs about the experience itself. The findings from six studies show that when viewers infer a sharer originally had either relatively intrinsic or extrinsic motives for consuming an experience they shared about, these inferences increase viewer beliefs that the experience is well suited to satisfy that same type of motive. This shift in the expected motive-based value of the experience, in turn, influences viewers’ behavior during and after their own engagement in a similar experience. However, when viewers are highly familiar with the experience that was shared, the expected motive-based value of the shared experience is not influenced by viewers’ inferences about the sharer’s original motives. Altogether, this research documents a new social influence phenomenon on social media and discusses managerial implications of these findings.

In recent years, firms’ depictions of some historically underrepresented identities (HUIs) in marketing communications have elicited backlash, while depictions of other HUIs have been more broadly accepted. The present work develops a framework to explain when and why these divergent responses occur. We propose that, while liberals respond positively to the depiction of all HUIs due to their prioritization of the Fairness moral foundation, conservatives’ responses are more nuanced and depend on how a focal identity is perceived on two dimensions: agency and normativity with respect to descriptive norms related to bodily purity. These dimensions produce a four-quadrant typology whereby, due to their greater emphasis on the Purity/Sanctity moral foundation, conservatives respond negatively only to HUIs perceived as high on both dimensions (e.g., an obese model, a transgender model, or a model who wears a hijab). We validate this framework by showing that conservatives’ negative responses are attenuated when an identity is perceived as low on either dimension. We further identify a managerially relevant boundary condition, wherein conservatives’ negative reactions are also attenuated when the focal identity appears as a numerical minority within a broader campaign featuring primarily non-HUIs.