Knowledge that Transforms

Theory on identity negotiations posits that a person's identity-construction project ceases upon death. We tested this proposition using death-ritual consumption experiences of consumers in Asante, Ghana, West Africa. We found that bereaved Asante consumers engage in conspicuous ritual consumption in pursuit of newer social identities for their deceased and themselves and that funerals involve a reciprocal and continuing relationship between the living and the dead. In addition, we found that terror-management theory is limited in its relevance for non-Western contexts. We also detected limits to the ability to transform global capital into local capital.

The effects of repeated advertising exposures depend on the size of the interval, or space, between ad exposures. A meta-analysis of 97 verbal learning studies identified several stimulus characteristics and learning context factors that interact with stimulus spacing to facilitate memory for repeated information. The majority of the findings are consistent with the predictions of two enhanced processing explanations of learning—the retrieval hypothesis and the reconstruction hypothesis. These two hypotheses predict that an effective repetition strategy should encourage incidental processing during one presentation of the material and intentional processing during the other presentation of the material, but the hypotheses differ about the optimal order of these two types of processing. Thus, the most effective repetition strategy may be a combination of spaced exposures that alternate in terms of media that are involving (e.g., television commercials) and less involving (e.g., billboards, product placements).

This article examines how dynamic changes in information cost structure and time preferences affect consumers' search and switching behavior over time and lead to lock-in. The information cost structure is conceptualized as a trade-off of initial setup costs and ongoing usage costs. Lock-in is defined as consumers' decreased propensity to search and switch after an initial investment, which is determined both by a preference to minimize immediate costs and by an inability to anticipate the impact of future switching costs. The results of three experiments support the proposed mechanism. Experiment 1 shows that a small initial investment is sufficient to produce lock-in. Experiment 2 shows that the results of a prior investment on lock-in are not due to psychological commitment but to a shift in relative costs of incumbent and new options. Experiment 3 shows that respondents fail to anticipate how their prior investment will lock them in.

Although the effects of shapes on area perceptions have been widely investigated, we replicate, extend, and generalize one of the few studies to relate the effects of shapes to consumption volumes (Raghubir and Krishna 1999). While Raghubir and Krishna demonstrate the effect of the elongation of prepoured drinks on consumption volume, we have people pour their own drinks in a series of controlled field experiments. Two experiments in cafeterias show that both children and adults pour and consume more juice when given a short, wide glass compared to those given a tall, slender glass, but they perceive the opposite to be true. We conclude that the elongation of glasses negatively influences consumption volume in a single-serving context. A third potentially policy-relevant field experiment conducted with Philadelphia bartenders and liquor shows that the effect of elongation is moderated—but not eliminated—with pouring experience.

Common sense suggests that consumers make more satisfying decisions as they consider their options more closely. Yet we argue that such close consideration can have undesirable consequences because it may induce attachment to the options—a sense of prefactual ownership of the choice options. When consumers then select one option, they effectively lose this prefactual possession of the other, nonchosen options. This yields a feeling of discomfort (“choosing feels like losing”) and an increase in the attractiveness of the forgone option, compared to its appeal before the choice. A series of nine experiments provides evidence of this phenomenon and support for our explanation.

Drawing on our work in two postsocialist countries, Hungary and Romania, we contribute to understanding product involvement and brand commitment. We demonstrate that prominent political-cultural discourses, cultural intermediaries, social influences, and life themes and projects collectively prompt product involvement. We introduce the concept of involvement with branded products and examine its origins within a sociohistorical context. We consider the origins of brand commitment and illustrate that consumers with little interest in either the product category or the idea of branded products may be committed to particular brands. Further, we contribute to understanding the relationships among product involvement, brand commitment, and brand experimentation.

This article examines how time constraints influence consumers' product evaluations over different levels of price information. To understand the effects of time constraints (time pressure), a conceptual framework incorporating both the motivational and the resource effects of time constraints on consumers' information processing is developed. Using price as the attribute information to be evaluated, specific hypotheses about the effects of time constraints on the relationship between price and consumers' perceptions of quality and monetary sacrifice are proposed. The results of a replicated experiment show that perceptions of quality and monetary sacrifice exhibit different response patterns depending on the time constraints, price levels, and subjects' motivations to process information. Additional analyses provide insights into how these two perceptions are integrated to form perceptions of value.

This article focuses on somatic experience—not just the process of thinking bodily but how the body informs the logic of thinking about art. We examine the links between embodiment, movement, and multisensory experience insofar as they help to elucidate the contours of art appreciation in a museum. We argue that embodiment can be identified at two levels: the phenomenological and the cognitive unconscious. At the first level, individuals are conscious of their feelings and actions while, at the second level, sensorimotor and other bodily oriented inference mechanisms inform their processes of abstract thought and reasoning. We analyze the consumption stories of 30 museum goers in order to understand how people move through museum spaces and feel, touch, hear, smell, and taste art. Further, through an analysis of metaphors and the use of conceptual blending, we tap into the participants' unconscious minds, gleaning important embodiment processes that shape their reasoning.

The research agenda for this article is to examine how individuals process information presented through virtual interaction with a product (object interactivity) and the impact that this has on their purchase intentions if they are looking for an aesthetic experience (browsers) or to find specific information (searchers). It is proposed that the congruency between users' goals and the delivery of product information will influence discursive processing and thus attitudes. However, what is most effective for creating favorable product attitudes is not necessarily most effective in raising purchase intentions. This is because imagery processing should play a more prominent role in affecting purchase intentions because, when estimating their own behavior, people likely run a mental simulation of themselves performing that behavior. It is predicted that object interactivity will evoke vivid mental images of product use regardless of the users' goals and thus increase intentions. The results of four experiments support these hypotheses.

A crucial communication task for unknown brands is to build the knowledge in consumers' minds necessary to become established. However, communication effectiveness may depend on prior familiarity of the advertised brand. The findings of two experiments using television ads and computer Internet ads revealed that brand familiarity influenced repetition effectiveness. In particular, repetition of advertising attributed to an unfamiliar brand showed decreased effectiveness; when the same advertising was attributed to a known, familiar brand, repetition wearout was postponed. Negative thoughts about tactic inappropriateness were seen to arise with repetition, particularly for an ad for an unfamiliar brand, driving, in part, the decreases in repetition effectiveness.