Knowledge that Transforms

Consumers frequently express themselves by posting about products on social media. Because consumers can use physical products to signal their identities, posting about products on social media may be a way for consumers to virtually signal identity. The authors propose that there are conditions in which this action can paradoxically reduce a consumer’s subsequent purchase intentions. Five experiments demonstrate that posting products on social media that are framed as being identity-relevant can reduce a consumer’s subsequent purchase intentions for the same and similar products, as this action allows consumers to virtually signal their identity, fulfilling identity-signaling needs. Fortunately for retailers, the authors suggest theoretically and managerially relevant moderators that attenuate this negative effect on intent to purchase. These findings have important implications for how firms can conduct social media marketing to minimize negative purchase outcomes.

Sales leaders often use threats of punishment to manage poor performers (i.e., laggards), but little research has examined the effect of these threats. The current research addresses this gap by investigating an intervention termed the “bench program” with a field-based quasi experiment and a randomized lab experiment. In the field, the company under study told salespeople in treatment districts that a trainee would replace them at the end of the year if they failed to hit their quota and placed last in their district. Difference-in-differences analyses of matched treatment and control groups show that the bench program had an immediate and sustained impact on performance. Moreover, laggards improved their performance more than higher performers, and salespeople with larger advice networks improved their performance more than salespeople with smaller advice networks. A lab experiment compares the bench program with a program that had the same threat of firing but did not have replacements in sight. Performance in the bench program exceeded that in the firing condition, indicating that the vividness of a threat can increase its deterrent value.

Four experiments supported by six supplemental studies show that premium but higher-priced products (e.g., direct flights, larger-capacity data storage devices) are more popular when the additional cost is made explicit using differential price framing (DPF; e.g., “for $20 more”) rather than being left implicit, as in standard inclusive price framing (IPF; e.g., “for $60 total”). The DPF effect is driven by pricing focalism: relative to IPF, DPF creates a focus on the price difference, which, because it is smaller than the total price, leads to lower perceived expensiveness and thus greater choice share for the premium option. This price framing effect is robust to displaying the total cost of the purchase, bad deals, and easy-to-compute price differences, and it appears to be uniquely effective in pricing contexts. However, DPF effects are reduced among consumers who adopt a slow and effortful decision process. These findings have implications for research on price partitioning, the design of effective pricing strategy, the sources of expensiveness perceptions in the marketplace, and consumer welfare.

As sustainable consumption becomes increasingly important, firms must better understand the drivers behind the consumption of these products. This article examines the effects of mass media in the context of the U.S. hybrid vehicle market. Drawing on monthly sales data, the authors provide evidence that the general coverage of climate change or global warming by major media outlets exerts an overall positive impact on the sales of hybrid vehicles. This impact mainly comes from the media reports that assert that climate change is occurring. In contrast, media coverage that either denies climate change or holds a neutral stance on the issue has little impact. The authors provide preliminary evidence that a social norm advocating for environmentally friendly consumption plays an important role in how media coverage affects consumer purchase. They provide implications for theory and practice and call for future research that examines the causal impact of media in general on consumer decisions, especially in domains that are crucial for the society.

Brand naming challenges are more complex in logographic languages (e.g., Chinese), compared with phonographic languages (e.g., English) because the former languages feature looser correspondence between sound and meaning. With these two dimensions of sound and meaning, the authors propose a four-way categorization of brand name types for logographic languages: alphanumeric, phonetic, phonosemantic, or semantic. Using automobile sales data from China and a discrete choice model for differentiated products, the authors relate brand name types to demand, with evidence showing that Chinese consumers preferred vehicle models with semantic brand names (7.64% more sales than alphanumeric) but exhibited the least preference for phonosemantic names (4.92% lower sales than alphanumeric). Domestic Chinese firms benefited from semantic brand names, whereas foreign firms gained from using foreign-sounding brand names. Entry-level products performed better with semantic brand names, and high-end products excelled when they had foreign-sounding brand names. Thus, the four-way categorization of brand name types should help multinational firms and domestic Chinese firms understand and leverage the association between brand name types and consumer demand.

Managers are using ambient scent as an important strategic element in various service settings, with food-related scents being especially common. This research examines the effects of food-related ambient scents on children’s and adults’ food purchases/choices. The results of a series of experiments, including field studies at a supermarket and at a middle school cafeteria, show that extended exposure (of more than two minutes) to an indulgent food–related ambient scent (e.g., cookie scent) leads to lower purchases of unhealthy foods compared with no ambient scent or a nonindulgent food–related ambient scent (e.g., strawberry scent). The effects seem to be driven by cross-modal sensory compensation, whereby prolonged exposure to an indulgent/rewarding food scent induces pleasure in the reward circuitry, which in turn diminishes the desire for actual consumption of indulgent foods. Notably, the effects reverse with brief (<30 seconds) exposure to the scent. Whereas prior research has examined cross-modal effects, this research adopts the novel approach of examining cross-modal sensory compensation effects, whereby stimuli in one sensory modality (olfactory) can compensate/satisfy the desire related to another sensory modality (gustatory).

User-generated content has become ubiquitous and very influential in the marketplace. Increasingly, this content is generated on smartphones rather than personal computers (PCs). This article argues that because of its physically constrained nature, smartphone (vs. PC) use leads consumers to generate briefer content, which encourages them to focus on the overall gist of their experiences. This focus on gist, in turn, tends to manifest as reviews that emphasize the emotional aspects of an experience in lieu of more specific details. Across five studies—two field studies and three controlled experiments—the authors use natural language processing tools and human assessments to analyze the linguistic characteristics of user-generated content. The findings support the thesis that smartphone use results in the creation of content that is less specific and privileges affect—especially positive affect—relative to PC-generated content. The findings also show that differences in emotional content are driven by the tendency to generate briefer content on smartphones rather than user self-selection, differences in topical content, or timing of writing. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

This article provides insight into the management of brands that are also people by unpacking the interdependencies that exist between people and brands and focusing on the qualities that make person-brands human rather than on the qualities that make them brands. Using the extended case method to examine 20 years of public data about the Martha Stewart brand, the authors highlight the interdependent relationship between the person and the brand—in particular, consistency and balance—and identify four aspects of the person that can upset these interdependencies: mortality, hubris, unpredictability, and social embeddedness. Mortality and hubris can cause imbalance, but with the right skills and structures, these factors can be proactively managed. Inconsistency in the meanings of the person versus the brand can derive from the person’s unpredictability and social embeddedness and compromise brand value, but it may also enhance brand value by adding needed intimacy and authenticity. This two-bodied conceptualization suggests renewed management principles and contributes to branding theory through identification of the doppelgänger within, new brand strength facets, and emphasis on risk versus returns.

This article investigates how people’s political identity is associated with their financial risk taking. The authors argue that conservatives’ financial risk taking increases as their self-efficacy increases because of their greater social dominance orientation, whereas liberals’ financial risk taking is invariant to their self-efficacy. This central hypothesis is verified in six studies using different measures of political identity, self-efficacy, and financial risk taking. The studies also use different samples of U.S. consumers, including online panels, a large-scale data set spanning five election cycles, and a secondary data set of political donations made by managers at companies. Finally, the authors articulate and demonstrate the mediating effect of individuals’ focus on the upside potential of a decision among conservatives but not liberals.

Interactions between consumers and humanoid service robots (HSRs; i.e., robots with a human-like morphology such as a face, arms, and legs) will soon be part of routine marketplace experiences. It is unclear, however, whether these humanoid robots (compared with human employees) will trigger positive or negative consequences for consumers and companies. Seven experimental studies reveal that consumers display compensatory responses when they interact with an HSR rather than a human employee (e.g., they favor purchasing status goods, seek social affiliation, and order and eat more food). The authors investigate the underlying process driving these effects, and they find that HSRs elicit greater consumer discomfort (i.e., eeriness and a threat to human identity), which in turn results in the enhancement of compensatory consumption. Moreover, this research identifies boundary conditions of the effects such that the compensatory responses that HSRs elicit are (1) mitigated when consumer-perceived social belongingness is high, (2) attenuated when food is perceived as more healthful, and (3) buffered when the robot is machinized (rather than anthropomorphized).