Tourists travel the entire globe to be in the presence of peoples, places, and objects they cannot buy or otherwise take possession of except in a spiritual sense. This essay explores the noneconomic relation at the heart of tourism, which is now said to be the largest economic sector in the world. The dominant way commercially successful destinations have organized touristic experience has been to model themselves as closely as possible on the ego. Other commodities sold on the basis of their intangible qualities may be implicated in the same narcissistic ego structure. Some questions are raised about the sustainability of ego-based consumption.
The present research demonstrates that consumers tend to vary their use of decision rules independent of option and set characteristics. In five experiments, increased choice of a particular option (e.g., lower price, brand name, or compromise option) was associated with relatively decreased choice of that same (generic) option on occasions that followed. Results indicate that this inherent rule variability is not an effect of background contrast but instead relates to consumers' favorable valuation of decision change itself. This research implies that the idea of contingent decision making applies not only to decision outcomes but also to decision processes.
Solomon (1983) proposed that products, as social stimuli, influence reflected appraisals. Appraisals, in turn, influence self-definition. Kleine, Kleine, and Kernan (1993, study 2) empirically supported Solomon's hypothesis. Appraisals were found to completely mediate the relationship between possessions and self-definition. Appraisals are thus an essential link between possession sets and individuals' self-definitions. The current study extends the Kleine et al. (1993) model in two important ways. First, we combined insights from identity theory, appraisal theory, and the sociology of emotions literatures to offer a more precise and comprehensive conceptualization of the appraisal process that includes both cognitive and emotional components. The conceptualization distinguishes appraisals of possessions from appraisals of performance and reflected versus self-appraisals. Second, symbolic interactionist theory suggests that social interactions and media are social communication discourses that, like possessions, influence self-definitions via appraisals. The extended model incorporates these possibilities. Data collected from individuals with an identity based on one of two freely chosen athletic activities provides encouraging support for the extended model. The result pattern provides insights into how appraisals mediate the relationship between social communication discourses and self-definition.
This article examines how ads with different combinations of source and nonsource cues activate culture-bound cognitions among members of a dominant culture and members of a subculture within that dominant culture. As participants in both the dominant culture and their own subculture, members of subcultures are posited to possess knowledge of both groups. As such, their reactions to mainstream advertising are expected to be similar to those of members of the dominant culture. However, because members of the dominant culture are not as familiar with the subculture, their reactions to cues contained in subculture-targeted ads will differ from those of members of the subculture. Results of an experiment show that dominant culture source cues activate highly internalized dominant cultural models for all participants, leading to self-referencing and favorable ad attitudes. However, subculture source and nonsource cues interact to activate subcultural knowledge, induce self-referencing, and enhance ad attitudes only among members of the subculture.
Self-generated validity research has demonstrated that responding to survey questions changes subsequently measured judgments and behavior. We examine the scope and persistence of the effect of measuring satisfaction on customer behavior over time. In a field experiment conducted in a financial services setting, we hypothesize and find that measuring satisfaction (a) changes one-time purchase behavior, (b) changes relational customer behaviors (likelihood of defection, aggregate product use, and profitability), and (c) results in effects that increase for months afterward and persist even a year later. These results raise questions concerning the design, interpretation, and ethics in the conduct of applied marketing research studies.
One of the greatest challenges in advertising health-related information is overcoming the target audiences' self-positivity bias (i.e., the tendency for people to believe that they are invulnerable to disease). In this article, we show that the self-positivity bias hinders message processing, and we demonstrate that message cues can reduce this bias and engage people in more precautionary thinking and behavior. We identify the process by which risk-behavior cues provided in the message affect people's estimates of their vulnerability (self-risk estimates), depth of message processing, attitudes, and behavioral intentions. We test and find support for our theory in three studies that specify the types of risk behaviors that make the contraction of a disease seem easy versus difficult (study 1), that examine their interactive effects with the number of risk behaviors that are enumerated (study 2), and that delineate the underlying process by which these effects manifest (study 3). We demonstrate that the self-positivity bias acts as an a priori hypothesis on the basis of which people process and test incoming risk-behavior information, as would be predicted by confirmatory hypothesis testing theory. Our findings affect the theoretical understanding of how memory- and message-based factors work in opposing ways and suggest a more comprehensive framework for understanding memory- versus message-based judgments. Our results also have implications for media strategy and public health policy by differentiating between commonly used risk-behavior messages that are beneficial to the communicator's goals (e.g., increase compliance) and those that are detrimental to the communicator's goals (e.g., decrease compliance).
This research examines whether or not repetition of features of a stimulus are subject to wear-out effects that have until now only been tested for the stimulus as a whole. When consumers process features in either a shallower or deeper manner, the level of processing performed dictates the effect of repeated feature exposure on their judgments. When repeated exposures to features are processed in a shallower fashion, there is an enhancement in evaluations with no subsequent downturn, whereas repeated exposure to features that are processed more deeply results in evaluations that exhibit the classic inverted U-shaped pattern.
We present a conceptual as well as empirical analysis showing that 11–12-year-old children, relative to adults, evaluate brand extensions by relying more on surface cues (e.g., brand name characteristics used to launch the extension) and less on deep cues (e.g., category similarity between the parent brand and the extension category). In experiment 1, children gave equivalent evaluations of brand extensions regardless of category similarity (e.g., Coca-Cola extending to iced tea vs. toffee), whereas adults rated near extensions (e.g., iced tea) more favorably than far extensions (e.g., toffee). In experiment 2, children evaluated near extensions more favorably than far extensions when they were cued to make similarity judgments prior to evaluation but rated near and far extensions equivalently when they were not cued prior to evaluation. In experiment 3, children based their evaluations on the extension name's linguistic characteristics regardless of category similarity, whereas adults based their evaluations on category similarity regardless of name characteristics. Children rated extensions with a rhyming name (e.g., “Coca-Cola Gola” iced tea; “Wrigley's Higley” toffee) more positively than extensions with a nonrhyming name (e.g., “Coca-Cola Higley” iced tea; “Wrigley's Gola” toffee), whereas adults rated them similarly. Theoretical implications on branding and categorization research as well as managerial implications are discussed.
Previous research demonstrates that rhetorical figures differentially affect the extent of ad processing. Specifically, tropes (a type of figure) deviate more from expected language use than schemes, with the greater deviation yielding more extensive ad processing. We extend previous research in two ways by focusing on the incongruity differences that exist between schemes and tropes. Study 1 uses syndicated data (Starch readership scores) to test how figures combine to affect the extent of processing. Results show that when figures leverage unique mechanisms (i.e., schemes and tropes), their combination yields incremental processing gains. Alternatively, when figures leverage redundant mechanisms (e.g., multiple tropes), their combination yields no incremental processing. Study 2 is an experiment that tests how figures separate in affecting the focus of ad processing. Results show that schemes generate a generalized focus on the entire ad, including both ad-stylistic and message-related aspects, while tropes generate a more selective focus on message-related aspects.
Consumer researchers are wrestling with the crisis of representation that has challenged contiguous disciplines over the past decade. Traditional or conventional prose articles seem increasingly insufficient as vessels for representing our understandings and experiences. In this article, we demonstrate how poetry contributes to the research enterprise. We use our own experiences as researcher-poets to illustrate how the writing and close reading of poetry can take us directly to the heart of consumption. Our essay is intended to provide a philosophical basis for the inclusion of poetry between the covers of this journal.