Knowledge that Transforms

This study proposes a typology of reasons why people substantially delay important consumer decisions. The delay reasons we study are drawn from delay typologies identified in other contexts as well as from the product diffusion literature. Two studies reported here examine why subjects delay consumer decisions. These support most of the reasons in the proposed typology, while some unanticipated delay reasons also emerge. We find that the delay reasons are related to the reasons consumers stop delaying, a process that we call delay closure, and are also related to the amount of time that consumers spend in different stages of the decision-making process. A final study supports a conceptual framework to classify these delay reasons based on the two dimensions of internal versus external locus of causation, and whether the purpose of delay is related to the decision or to unrelated activities.

The Affect Intensity Measurement (AIM) scale assesses the strength of the emotions with which individuals respond to an affect-laden stimulus. This study investigated the extent to which individual differences in affect intensity influence the message recipient's responses to emotional advertising appeals. In two experiments high affect intensity individuals, compared with those who scored low on the AIM scale, (1) manifested significantly stronger emotional responses to the emotional advertising appeal and (2) showed no differences in emotional response intensity when exposed to a nonemotional appeal. Both negative and positive emotions mediated the influence of affect intensity on attitude formation.

The impact of presenting full-color, black-and-white, and color-highlighted ad photos is examined under different processing resource conditions. When viewers devote few resources to processing, ads with some color outperform black-and-white ads. However, when viewers engage in more effortful ad processing, attitudes are sensitive to the match between available and required resources. When the substantial resources devoted to ad processing are inadequate for thorough ad scrutiny, black-and-white ads or those that color highlight aspects highly relevant to ad claims are more persuasive. By contrast, when available resources better approximate those required for extensive ad scrutiny, full-color ads or ads that color highlight ad photo elements that are highly relevant to the ad claims are more persuasive than either black-and-white ads or ads that color highlight aspects of low relevance to ad claims. These outcomes are interpreted by extending notions offered by elaboration-likelihood and resource theories.

This article introduces the subculture of consumption as an analytic category through which to better understand consumers and the manner in which they organize their lives and identities. Recognizing that consumption activities, product categories, or even brands may serve as the basis for interaction and social cohesion, the concept of the subculture of consumption solves many problems inherent in the use of ascribed social categories as devices for understanding consumer behavior. This article is based on three years of ethnographic fieldwork with Harley-Davidson motorcycle owners. A key feature of the fieldwork was a process of progressive contextualization of the researchers from outsiders to insiders situated within the subculture. Analysis of the social structure, dominant values, and revealing symbolic behaviors of this distinct, consumption-oriented subculture have led to the advancement of a theoretical framework that situates subcultures of consumption in the context of modern consumer culture and discusses, among other implications, a symbiosis between such subcultures and marketing institutions. Transferability of the principal findings of this research to other subcultures of consumption is established through comparisons with ethnographies of other self-selecting, consumption-oriented subcultures.

Although consumer researchers have investigated impulse buying for nearly 50 years, almost no research has empirically examined its normative aspects. This article presents conceptual and empirical evidence that consumers' normative evaluations (i.e., judgments about the appropriateness of engaging in impulse buying behavior) moderate the relationship between the impulse buying trait and consumers' buying behaviors. Specifically, the relationship between the buying impulsiveness trait and related buying behaviors is significant only when consumers believe that acting on impulse is appropriate. The findings from two studies across student and retail customer samples converge and support the hypothesized moderating role of consumers' normative evaluations.

The present inquiry examines the psychosocial meanings and processes that shape consumers' sense of body image and the consumption behaviors motivated by those perceptions. Poststructuralist interpretive procedures were used to analyze interviews with 30 male and female consumers, aged 6-54. This discourse analysis led to the development of three process-oriented themes: (1) the ideology of self-control, (2) the social processes of normalization and problematization, and (3) the operation of the disciplinary gaze. The systematic manifestations of these themes are illustrated across a range of consumer experiences and body-focused perceptions, implications of these themes for the theoretical conceptualizations of body image and the nature of self-concept in contemporary consumer culture are discussed.