Knowledge that Transforms

To increase transaction compliance, marketers sometimes temporally reframe the cost of a product from an aggregate one-time expense to a series of small ongoing expenses, often in spite of the fact that the physical payments remain aggregated. This temporal reframing is identified in this article as the "pennies-a-day" (PAD) strategy. A two-step consumer decision-making process of (1) comparison retrieval and (2) transaction evaluation is posited to explain effectiveness of this strategy. In a series of laboratory studies, general support for PAD effectiveness across a range of product categories and specific support for the proposed two-step model was found. The PAD framing of a target transaction is shown to systematically foster the retrieval and consideration of small ongoing expenses as the standard of comparison, whereas an aggregate framing of that same transaction is shown to foster the retrieval and consideration of large infrequent expenses. This difference in retrieval is shown to significantly influence subsequent transaction evaluation and compliance.

Research suggests that individuals mentally track the costs and benefits of a consumer transaction for the purpose of reconciling those costs and benefits on completion of the transaction (Prelec and Loewenstein 1998; Thaler 1980, 1985). In transactions where costs precede benefits, this can lead to a systematic and economically irrational attention to sunk costs (Arkes and Blumer 1985; Thaler 1980). In this article, we consider economic exchanges in which costs significantly precede benefits, as with many prepayment types of consumer transactions. We predict a consumer will gradually adapt to a historic cost with the passage of time, thereby decreasing its sunk-cost impact on the consumption of a pending benefit. We label this process of gradual adaptation to costs “payment depreciation.” In a series of experiments, we find evidence of payment depreciation across a range of consumer transactions and offer insight into the behavioral implications of temporally separating costs from benefits.

The significance of volunteering for both individuals and society has lead to numerous studies on this behavior across the social sciences. However, virtually no prior research has evaluated how and to what extent organizations can effectively encourage individuals to contribute time to a worthy cause. The present research uses a social norm perspective to examine the conditions under which promotional appeals based on group need and promises of recognition affect volunteerism. The perspective suggests that norm compliance can be expected only when the prescribed behavior is both important to the group's welfare and subject to group-mediated rewards. Consequently, we hypothesize that promotional appeals based on group need and promised recognition are effective only when they are used in combination. Results of a laboratory and a field experiment are consistent with this hypothesis and provide insights into the process by which the appeals affect individuals' decisions to help. The results also have implications for understanding and promoting other socially desirable behaviors such as recycling, energy conservation, litter reduction, and the purchase of “green” products.

Visual information search is a combination of two distinct types of behavior. Goal-directed search behavior occurs when consumers use stored search routines to collect information in a deliberate manner. In contrast, exploratory search behavior occurs when consumers are confronted with multiple pieces of information but have little stored knowledge about how to proceed with the information gathering. This article reports on an investigation into exploratory search behavior and attempts to establish a connection between the layout of objects in a display and the amount of attention devoted to each of these objects. The research has implications for catalog page layout and visual merchandising.

This research examines the persuasive effect of emotional appeals on members of collectivist versus individualist cultures. The results of two experiments demonstrate that ego-focused (e.g., pride, happiness) versus other-focused (e.g., empathy, peacefulness) emotional appeals lead to more favorable attitudes for members of a collectivist culture, while other-focused versus ego-focused emotional appeals lead to more favorable attitudes for members of an individualist culture. Experiment 2 was conducted to examine the psychological mechanism underlying these effects. The results indicated that the generation of and elaboration on a relatively novel type of thought (individual thoughts for members of a collectivist culture, collective thoughts for members of an individualist culture) account for the persuasive effects found in this research. These results are interpreted within an ability-motivation framework, and theoretical implications involving cross-cultural persuasion effects are discussed.

Journal Article Choosing to Avoid: Coping with Negatively Emotion-Laden Consumer Decisions Get access Mary Frances Luce Mary Frances Luce Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 24, Issue 4, March 1998, Pages 409–433, https://doi.org/10.1086/209518 Published: 01 March 1998 Article history Received: 01 January 1996 Revision received: 01 June 1997 Published: 01 March 1998

It has been suggested that evaluations may be based on a "How-do-I-feel-about-it?" heuristic, which involves holding a representation of the target in mind and inspecting feelings that this representation may elicit. Previous studies have shown that reliance on such feelings depends on whether or not they are believed to be representative of the target. This article argues that reliance on feelings also depends on whether feelings toward the target are regarded as relevant. Consistent with this thesis, findings from three experiments indicate that reliance on the "How-do-I-feel-about-it?" heuristic is more likely when the decision maker has consummatory as opposed to instrumental motives. Results also suggest that subtle feelings toward the target are indeed instantiated in the process, and that the process may be more likely among individuals with a propensity to process information in a visual and sensory manner.

Journal Article Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption? Get access Douglas B. Holt Douglas B. Holt Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Consumer Research, Volume 25, Issue 1, June 1998, Pages 1–25, https://doi.org/10.1086/209523 Published: 01 June 1998 Article history Received: 01 December 1995 Revision received: 01 June 1997 Published: 01 June 1998

Assessing the applicability of frameworks developed in one country to other countries is an important step in establishing the generalizability of consumer behavior theories. In order for such comparisons to be meaningful, however, the instruments used to measure the theoretical constructs of interest have to exhibit adequate cross-national equivalence. We review the various forms of measurement invariance that have been proposed in the literature, organize them into a coherent conceptual framework that ties different requirements of measure equivalence to the goals of the research, and propose a practical, sequential testing procedure for assessing measurement invariance in cross-national consumer research. The approach is based on multisample confirmatory factor analysis and clarifies under what conditions meaningful comparisons of construct conceptualizations, construct means, and relationships between constructs are possible. An empirical application dealing with the single-factor construct of consumer ethnocentrism in Belgium, Great Britain, and Greece is provided to illustrate the procedure.

Consumer decision making has been a focal interest in consumer research, and consideration of current marketplace trends (e.g., technological change, an information explosion) indicates that this topic will continue to be critically important. We argue that consumer choice is inherently constructive. Due to limited processing capacity, consumers often do not have well-defined existing preferences, but construct them using a variety of strategies contingent on task demands. After describing constructive choice, consumer decision tasks, and decision strategies, we provide an integrative framework for understanding constructive choice, review evidence for constructive consumer choice in light of that framework, and identify knowledge gaps that suggest opportunities for additional research.