Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract Bicultural consumers now represent a third of the US population and are the fastest growing demographic group in the United States. This shift in consumer markets presents a challenge for marketers as they try to design brand strategies to serve this important group. In this article, the authors show that certain types of brands, specifically paradox brands that incorporate contradictory brand meanings, are particularly appealing to bicultural consumers. Results from seven studies reveal that bicultural consumers evaluate paradox brands more favorably and choose paradox brands more than traditional brands without contradictions. Furthermore, bicultural consumers exhibit more favorable evaluations and greater choice of paradox brands than do monocultural consumers. These cultural differences are attributable to greater cognitive flexibility found among biculturals, particularly those who adopt an acculturation strategy of integrating their different cultural identities. Greater cognitive flexibility, in turn, prompts stronger engagement with a paradox brand, which contributes to more favorable brand evaluations and choice. Contributions of this research for understanding bicultural consumers, marketing to bicultural consumers, and directions for future research are discussed.

Abstract Perceived financial constraints are ubiquitous, and prior research suggests that consumers who feel financially constrained are especially likely to engage in compensatory consumption to signal positive attributes or offset the aversiveness associated with their state. However, it is unclear whether spending confers greater happiness when consumers feel financially constrained. Seven high-powered studies (N = 7,228) demonstrate that perceived financial constraints decrease the happiness consumers derive from their purchases. This effect is robust across several purchase types and occurs in part because consumers who perceive greater financial constraints are more likely to consider opportunity costs when evaluating their purchases (studies 2A and 2B). Consistent with this mechanism, the effect attenuates when all consumers are prompted to consider opportunity costs (study 3) and when consumers consider planned purchases (study 4). The negative effect of perceived financial constraints on purchase happiness results in an important behavioral outcome: less favorable consumer reviews (studies 5A and 5B). The authors conclude by meta-analyzing their file drawer (25,765 participants; 42 studies) to explore how the effect differs across several purchase types and discussing theoretical and practical implications for consumers and marketers.

Abstract How, and to what extent, consumer choices are influenced by the context in which the product is consumed remain important marketing questions. In this article, the authors develop a parsimonious context-dependent multidimensional unfolding model that can accommodate consumers’ context-specific behaviors via ideal points in multiattribute space along with brand locations in that space while accounting for unobserved heterogeneity in consumer behavior. The authors provide an empirical illustration using panel data on beer brand choices in different contexts from U.S. beer consumers. They find more heterogeneity in behavior across social versus nonsocial contexts than across in-home and out-of-home consumption. The authors then show how the model can be used to derive a firm’s optimal direction of brand repositioning given its competitive landscape in the various consumption contexts. Since consumer preferences can be correlated across contexts, they show that a movement toward the ideal point in one context does not necessarily improve the firm’s market competitiveness in other contexts; thereby hurting the brand’s overall performance.

Abstract Nine studies investigate when and why people may paradoxically prefer bad news—for example, hoping for an objectively worse injury or a higher-risk diagnosis over explicitly better alternatives. Using a combination of field surveys and randomized experiments, the research demonstrates that people may hope for relatively worse (vs. better) news in an effort to preemptively avoid subjectively difficult decisions (studies 1 and 2). This is because when worse news avoids a choice (study 3A)—for example, by “forcing one’s hand” or creating one dominant option that circumvents a fraught decision (study 3B)—it can relieve the decision-maker’s experience of personal responsibility (study 3C). However, because not all decisions warrant avoidance, not all decisions will elicit a preference for worse news; fewer people hope for worse news when facing subjectively easier (vs. harder) choices (studies 4A and B). Finally, this preference for worse news is not without consequence and may create perverse incentives for decision-makers, such as the tendency to forgo opportunities for improvement (studies 5A and B). The work contributes to the literature on decision avoidance and elucidates another strategy people use to circumvent difficult decisions: a propensity to hope for the worst.

Abstract The consumer literature on branding to date coalesces around the notion that brands are constantly contested. Brand contestation arises where the actions of consumer brand actors meet, and sometimes confront, those of the brands’ legal owners. This article integrates the extant branding research, a qualitative prestudy, and two complementary empirical studies to advance a theoretical process model of brand contestation. First, an in-depth analysis of thirty historical cases reveals its dynamics and how both the magnitude of contestation and the momentum of mobilization affect brand contestations’ scope and evolution. Second, interviews with upper-level marketing and branding executives add an emerging perspective that brand managers can use the energy generated by consumers’ contestation to develop antifragility—a brand’s ability to grow and thrive as a result of contestation.

Abstract Trade-offs between attributes are common when making product choices. Prior research suggests that consumers tend to avoid the extremes and opt for the middle options when they make a trade-off decision between two key product attributes (e.g., tastiness and healthiness of food items) in one step. In this research, we examine how consumers make such trade-off decisions in a two-step choice process in which consumers first choose between product categories competing on two key attributes and then make a final choice within the chosen category. In three studies, we show that when holding the actual choice options unchanged, consumers are more likely to make a more extreme final choice, prioritizing a single attribute rather than compromising when they follow a two-step choice process instead of a one-step process.

Abstract Consumers use brands in many combinations, from mixing-and-matching multiple brands (e.g., Nike shoes, Puma shirt, and Asics shorts) to using products primarily or solely from one brand (e.g., Nike shoes, shirt, and shorts). This work explores how such combinations affect observers’ trust in another consumer’s recommendations. Comparing two combination types—mixed-brand combinations (where all/most branded products are from different brands) and dominant-brand combinations (where all/most branded products are from the same brand)—nine studies establish that observers tend to have less trust in recommendations from those who use dominant-brand combinations (studies 1A–1C). This is driven by inferences about how the products were chosen: observers believe others who use dominant-brand combinations placed relatively greater importance on the brand—a feature that often serves as a mental shortcut for choices—and therefore infer these consumers made quicker, less thoughtful decisions (studies 2A and 2B). While the effect diminishes when observers hold particularly favorable attitudes toward the focal brand (study 3), it can alter observers’ own downstream behaviors (e.g., social media following intentions, information seeking, and recommendation taking; studies 4A–4C). Together, the findings confirm that brand combinations elicit responses distinct from single brands, offering fruitful avenues for future research.

Abstract Merely anticipating a future sad event motivates consumers to “accumulate happiness” in order to enhance their ability to cope with the anticipated sadness later—a phenomenon that we call banking happiness. To bank happiness, consumers not only choose positive stimuli over non-positive stimuli when given the choice, but even when such a choice does not exist, tend to recall more positive memories. Consumers bank happiness because of the lay theory that happiness is a resource that can be accumulated (i.e., banked) and consumed later. As a proactive mood-regulation strategy, banking happiness differs from reactive mood regulation: (a) the strength of consumers’ happiness-is-bankable lay belief predicts their tendency to bank happiness, but not their propensity to repair their negative moods after actually experiencing sadness; (b) consumers who are more future-oriented are more likely to bank happiness in the face of anticipated sadness, whereas those who are more present-oriented are more likely to regulate their negative mood when they actually experience sadness. Further, believing that happiness is bankable may increase consumers’ engagement with positive stimuli when anticipating sadness, possibly boosting the hedonic utility consumers obtain from the positive stimuli and helping them to build a stronger buffer against the negative stimuli.

Abstract Licensing is a well-documented form of justifying individual indulgent choices, but less is known about how licensing affects food decision-making patterns over time. Accordingly, we examine whether consumers incorporate licensing strategically and deliberately in their long-term consumption patterns and identify reward programs as a context in which strategic licensing is likely to occur. We propose that members with lower-calorie consumption patterns strategically indulge more on reward purchase occasions and that forethought is required for such an effect to occur. A longitudinal study analyzing 272,677 real food purchases made by 7,828 consumers over a 14-month period provides striking evidence of our key proposition. An exploration of the interpurchase time-related aspect of purchase acceleration suggests that forethought on behalf of consumers is necessary for strategic licensing to occur. A subsequent experimental study (N = 605) comprising five consecutive choice occasions provides additional evidence of forethought by demonstrating that strategic licensing occurs only when expected (but not windfall) reward occasions are involved, and by showing that anticipated negative affect for not indulging is the driving mechanism. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our results for consumers, managers, and public policymakers.

Abstract This article explores the possibility that product features may resonate differently with different consumers based on how consumers classify the product in relation to their selves. Prior research has shown that relating products to a consumer’s self affects product memory, judgment, and choice. Here we identify a novel way in which the self contextualizes consumers’ product decisions: egocentric processing. We introduce a theoretical distinction between two types of product features based on relative applicability to people versus products: person-related (e.g., toughness) and product-related (e.g., durability). Seven experiments demonstrated that consumers use self-categorization cues, such as ownership or brand, to classify products in relation to the category of self. Consumers then use the category of self, to which person-related features neatly apply, to process information about in-self products. Person-related features thus gain three advantages in consumer decisions about in-self (vs. out-self) products: greater consideration, faster processing, and higher importance. We see these advantages especially when (1) similar advantages are present in self-judgment, (2) consumers are self-focused, and (3) the self-categorization cue is self-defining. Our findings both open up new ways for marketers to increase the appeal of products for specific consumer segments and demonstrate ways to identify and target these segments.