Knowledge that Transforms

Technological advancements enable firms to anticipate service failures and apologize to consumers more effectively than ever. However, are apologies always the best policy? Five experiments, including a large-scale field experiment, demonstrate that apologies backfire when consumers are not aware of the failure. Apologies decrease consumer satisfaction, trust, recommendation intentions, and repatronage behavior. This is because apologies increase awareness that a failure occurred. Accordingly, apologies backfire for both mild and severe failures so long as there is room to increase awareness of the failure. Moreover, apologies backfire more than notifications about a service failure because although both increase awareness of the aspect of the service experience that was a failure, apologies uniquely increase awareness that this constituted a failure. Beyond increasing awareness, apologies backfire by decreasing perceived service quality and competence. However, apologies also increase perceived warmth and honesty. Consequently, apologizing can be beneficial when consumers are already aware of a failure because apologies are less likely to backfire and more likely to enhance positive perceptions of the firm. These findings challenge the conventional wisdom that apologies are always the best policy when something goes wrong and provide insight into when and when not to apologize.

Art and artisanal objects carry the potential for moral transformations. Although consumer research suggests a relationship between aesthetic taste and morality, scholars have not deeply considered the role of material design in shaping consumers’ moral self. We address this missing link by theorizing the formative process of design-mediated morality: defined as the transmission of moral values into design objects through manifestos and design scripts, which allow consumers to experience morality in direct material engagements. We draw on a longitudinal ethnography of the New Nordic Food movement and its iconic flagship restaurant, noma, to demonstrate the influence of manifestos in streamlining moral virtues with aesthetic expressions. We identify three distinct scripting strategies (simulation, estrangement, and sensitization) that steer consumers’ sensory and affective engagement with design objects. Our findings also explain that consumers’ moral awakening is tied to direct material engagement (or “thinging”) with said objects. By highlighting the embodied dimensions of moralization, our work connects and advances research streams on market-mediated moralization, taste formation, and experiential marketing. We conclude with critical reflections on the role of artisanal movements and design in affecting moral transformations, as well as outline avenues for future research on design-mediated morality in everyday consumption contexts.

This article presents the first systematic empirical investigation into a longstanding question in retail: Is it better to display prices upfront or reveal them later in the purchase process? Two large-scale field studies demonstrate that delayed price disclosure can either increase or decrease sales. Supporting lab studies reveal that one plausible explanation is that a price delay allows price beliefs to shift consumers’ internal reference prices upward or downward, creating either positive or negative price expectation disconfirmations when prices are revealed. When consumers anticipate prices should be expensive (e.g., from premium brands or upscale stores), a price delay allows price beliefs to shift price expectations upward, making purchases more likely when prices are revealed. Conversely, when consumers anticipate prices should be inexpensive (e.g., sales events or discount stores), a price delay allows price beliefs to shift price expectations downward, making purchases less likely when prices are revealed. Our findings offer retailers actionable insights on when to reveal prices to customers. In doing so, the authors contribute to the literature on price obfuscation and challenge the conventional wisdom that shopping experiences should always minimize friction. (184 words)

Across two field experiments and several preregistered lab experiments, we demonstrate that confirmation nudges, which ask consumers whether they would like to confirm or change their initial choice, impact choice. First, consumers navigating a subscription company’s smartphone app were randomized to a control or confirmation nudge condition, which asked them to either confirm their initial choice or switch to an annual subscription. Confirmation nudges increased subscribers’ choice of the annual subscription by over 8 percentage points—an effect size similar to default effects tested by the same company. In experiment 2, conducted by a jewelry retailer, confirmation nudges had countervailing effects, increasing purchases of a nudged service plan add-on but decreasing originally planned jewelry purchases likely because it added a step and thus frictions to the purchase process. Confirmation nudges had larger effects when nudged options were desirable and among consumers who would benefit from the nudge (experiments 3 and 4). However, they were perceived as more manipulative than comparison conditions (experiment 5). We suggest that confirmation nudges undo tendencies to focus on initially preferred options, shifting attention toward alternatives relative to control conditions. Consistent with this, confirmation nudges were especially effective when the wording of the confirmation prompt focused on the “switch” option.

People frequently perceive a trade-off between health and taste, leading to poor dietary choices. This research identifies a novel pathway to healthier eating: seeking beauty in food. Across seven preregistered field and lab studies, pursuing beautiful food systematically increased healthy choices without diminishing perceived taste. This effect arises because beauty is positively associated with both health and taste, effectively creating health–taste harmony instead of the commonly perceived conflict. Individuals who sought beauty in food consistently selected healthier options across diverse consumption contexts—including cafeteria meals, self-generated food ideas, grocery lists, and varied menus (with and without images)—and across populations, spanning both adults and children. Notably, the effect was stronger among individuals who more strongly associate beauty with health and weaker in choice sets in which the beauty–health association was less pronounced (e.g., morning cereals). These findings advance motivation theory by positioning beauty as a goal in itself, rather than merely a perceptual cue. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications for consumer behavior, food marketing, and public policy initiatives aimed at promoting healthier eating.

In recent years, a growing number of companies have evolved toward relatively “flat” management structures with minimal hierarchical layers of management. Some even leverage this flatness as a key marketing message and defining element of corporate identity. Although organizational structure has been studied extensively throughout various disciplines, its influence on consumer response has received little attention. This research reveals that a company’s organizational structure can shape consumer perceptions of and subsequent responses to the company. All else being equal, perceived organizational flatness (vs. tallness) tends to induce more positive consumer reactions, such as increased purchase amounts, advertising engagement, purchase intentions, crowdfunding contributions, and brand choice. This phenomenon occurs because consumers infer that flatter companies foster relational egalitarianism, which in turn enhances perceived company warmth. However, the positive effect of perceived flatness is not universal. It is eliminated or reversed among people with a lower preference for egalitarianism and those with conservative political ideologies. This work enriches our understanding of how a company’s organizational attributes, which are usually regarded as beyond the consumer’s purview, may shape consumer perceptions of the company, offering insights for businesses as they embrace new ways of communicating and promoting themselves to consumers.

Technology makes it possible for researchers and practitioners to change the orientation of scales. Scales can be oriented horizontally from left to right with values increasing (0 left–10 right) or decreasing (10 left–0 right), or vertically from top to bottom with values increasing (0 top–10 bottom) or decreasing (10 top–0 bottom). Does the congruence of a scale’s spatial orientation (whether it is horizontal vs. vertical) and magnitude orientation (the direction in which values increase) influence survey responses? Seven preregistered experiments (N = 6,002) and four preregistered supplemental experiments (N = 5,674) examine the effect of a scale’s spatial–magnitude congruence on net promoter scores (NPSs). The results show that scales with incongruent spatial–magnitude orientations result in lower NPS ratings than those with congruent ones. We propose that horizontal and vertical spatial orientations are associated with a specific magnitude orientation in the mind. Horizontal scales feel more intuitive with increasing (0 left–10 right) versus decreasing (10 left–0 right) magnitude. Vertical scales feel more intuitive with decreasing (10 top–0 bottom) versus increasing (0 top–10 bottom) magnitudes. Researchers and managers designing surveys to measure consequential constructs such as NPS should not change the spatial–magnitude orientation of their scales across companies, survey platforms, or time—such changes can render their data less comparable.

People’s mental representation of expenditures is crucial to their budgeting. This article proposes that much like how they represent natural kinds (e.g., animals and plants), people represent expenditures in a hierarchical taxonomy. Seven studies, supported by six norming studies and three pilots, revealed that expenditures are represented hierarchically. We first recover people’s mental representations using a successive pile-sort method that asks people to form hierarchies of categories with common expenditures (e.g., rent, dining out, etc.). The pile-sort reveals consensus in people’s representations of expenditures and that these representations are relatively stable over time. Further, people’s adjustment in their spending behavior can be predicted by the distance between items in their representation. Specifically, when people overspent on an item, they spontaneously adjust spending more on taxonomically closer items. We examine this spontaneous adjustment behavior using both laboratory studies and field data with 6.5 million grocery shopping trips over 12 years. The findings highlight the connection between mental representation and consumer behavior, and they emphasize the importance of studying concepts and categories in the context of consumption.