Knowledge that Transforms

The idea that consumers use products to feel good about themselves is a basic tenet of marketing. Yet, in addition to the motive to self-enhance, consumers also strive to confirm their self-views (i.e., self-verification). Although self-verification provides self-related benefits, its role in consumer behavior is poorly understood. To redress that gap, we examine a dispositional variable—trait self-esteem—that predicts whether consumers self-verify in the marketplace. We propose that low (vs. high) self-esteem consumers gravitate toward inferior products because those products confirm their pessimistic self-views. Five studies supported our theorizing: low (vs. high) self-esteem participants gravitated toward inferior products (study 1) because of the motivation to self-verify (study 2). Low self-esteem consumers preferred inferior products only when those products signaled pessimistic (vs. positive) self-views and could therefore be self-verifying (study 3). Even more telling, low self-esteem consumers’ propensity to choose inferior products disappeared after they were induced to view themselves as consumers of superior products (study 4), but remained in the wake of negative feedback (study 5). Our investigation thus highlights self-esteem as a boundary condition for compensatory consumption. By pinpointing factors that predict when self-verification guides consumer behavior, this work enriches the field’s understanding of how products serve self-motives.

For many, it is difficult to imagine that sharing used clothes with strangers and/or buying low quality, temporary garments could ever be preferable to owning our own. However, new findings from the Journal of Consumer Research suggest there may be contexts in which, and consumers for whom, this may in fact be true. We suggest that, given this work, consumer researchers are uniquely situated to explore whether we have indeed reached the proposed, “End of Ownership” (Perzanowski and Schultz 2017), as it has been known. If so, we must ask what may be gained as the desire for ownership wanes, in addition to what marketers, consumers and society might stand to lose in its absence.

Many studies document the benefits of presenting smaller quantities of products, particularly when differences in quantity relate to availability or popularity. However, we know less about the effects of quantity differences in contexts unrelated to scarcity, such as when products are depicted in ads, special displays, or online retailing settings. The present research builds on extant literature by investigating a previously unexplored question: How do product perceptions differ depending on whether consumers view a single unit in isolation, versus as one unit among identical product replicates? Five experiments demonstrate that presenting multiple product replicates as a group (vs. presenting a single item) increases product efficacy perceptions because it leads consumers to perceive products as more homogeneous and unified around a shared goal. That is, consumers perceive greater product entitativity when viewing a group of product replicates. As a result, the perceived and actual ability of products to deliver that function (i.e., product efficacy) increases.

In light of consumers’ growing dependence on their smartphones, this article investigates the nature of the relationship that consumers form with their smartphone and its underlying mechanisms. We propose that in addition to obvious functional benefits, consumers in fact derive emotional benefits from their smartphone—in particular, feelings of psychological comfort and, if needed, actual stress relief. In other words, in a sense, smartphones are not unlike adult pacifiers. This psychological comfort arises from a unique combination of properties that turn smartphones into a reassuring presence for their owners: the portability of the device, its personal nature, the subjective sense of privacy experienced while on the device, and the haptic gratification it affords. Results from one large-scale field study and three laboratory experiments support the proposed underlying mechanisms and document downstream consequences of the psychological comfort that smartphones provide. The findings show, for example, that (a) in moments of stress, consumers exhibit a greater tendency to seek out their smartphone (study 2); and (b) engaging with one’s smartphone provides greater stress relief than engaging in the same activity with a comparable device such as one’s laptop (study 3) or a similar smartphone belonging to someone else (study 4).

Consumers often encounter advertisements in the background while primarily focused on other stimuli (e.g., while multitasking). Consumers’ perceived level of distraction by these background ads serves as a metacognitive cue from which inferences are drawn. When consumers perceive themselves to be relatively distracted by a background advertisement, they draw on an underlying lay theory that distraction implies interest in the contents of the distracting stimulus to make the metacognitive inference that they have positive evaluations of the advertised brand. Across five studies, we provide evidence for this proposed metacognitive inferential process by demonstrating that perceived distraction does not enhance brand evaluations when the distraction = interest lay theory is not perceived to be (1) diagnostic or (2) applicable to the current context (e.g., when consumers have little interest in the product category being advertised). Thus, this research introduces distraction as a new metacognitive experience from which consumers draw inferences and offers important insights into when and how background ads shape brand evaluations.

Brands are a fact of everyday life and an omnipresent reality for consumers. Understanding how consumers respond to brands—what they think and feel and how they act toward them—is a critical aspect of consumer research. Consumer research in branding is expansive in nature and has investigated a wide range of topics in terms of how different kinds of consumers respond to different types of brands and branding activities in various contexts (Schmitt 2012). Researchers have explored how consumer responses to brands vary by factors such as knowledge, experience, gender, attitudes, and cultural background. They have studied the effects of brands that vary by product or industry type, personality or other image factors, country of origin, and more. They have explored branding as applied to products or services, people, countries and other geographical locations, and the like. Different forms of marketing activity relating to various aspects of the classic marketing mix (the “4 Ps”: product, price, place, and promotion) have been assessed, and the contexts studied have included a host of situations or settings. Consumer researchers have studied these topics—and others—in numerous articles published in JCR though the years. This research curation, however, focuses on branding research only over the past several years, highlighting five main themes from this more recent era of research: The pleasure and/or pain of brands Brand attachment and loyalty Consumer relevance and distinctiveness in branding Consumer communications about brands Managerial branding considerations Despite the relatively short time period involved, these five themes exhibit some of the diversity in subject matter characteristic of branding research. Some of these themes tap into broader interests in consumer research that also can be found in research streams outside of branding. Others capture phenomena wholly unique to the branding area. All themes reflect conceptual rigor and practical relevance. For each theme, we provide some background and highlight the findings of two recent JCR articles, one of which we describe in more detail in the form of its abstract and discussion of its future research implications. We conclude with commentary on other future research directions for brands and branding. In theory, brands can play many different roles for consumers. In a basic sense, brands can make consumer lives simpler, easier, or more rewarding. Moreover, brands can take on rich meaning and allow consumers to signal to others, or themselves, who they are or who they would like to be and what they value. Yet not all consumers ascribe to the positive qualities of brands, and some consumers actively dislike brands and branding in general. Understanding the basic forces—positive and negative—associated with brands is an enduring consumer research priority. Reimann, Nuñez, and Castaño (2017) show the remarkable power of brands to insulate consumers from physical pain. Brands allow consumers to cope with pain by offering them a reassuring sense of social connectedness. On the other hand, Brick et al. (2018) show the yin-yang of brands in one of the most important aspects of consumers’ lives: their relationship with close others. They find that brands can also be a source of conflict, as summarized in their abstract below. Brick et al., “Coke vs. Pepsi: Brand Compatibility, Relationship Power, and Life Satisfaction” (2018) Individuals often evaluate, purchase, and consume brands in the presence of others, including close others. Yet relatively little is known about the role brand preferences play in relationships. In the present research, the authors explore how the novel concept of brand compatibility, defined as the extent to which individuals have similar brand preferences (e.g., both partners prefer the same brand of soda), influences life satisfaction. The authors propose that when brand compatibility is high, life satisfaction will also be high. Conversely, because low brand compatibility may be a source of conflict for the relationship, the authors propose that it will be associated with reduced life satisfaction. Importantly, the authors predict that the effects of brand compatibility on conflict and life satisfaction will depend upon relationship power. Across multiple studies and methodologies, including experimental designs (studies 2, 3, 5) and dyadic data from real-life couples (studies 1, 4, 6), the authors test and find support for their hypotheses. By exploring how a potentially unique form of compatibility influences life satisfaction, including identifying a key moderator and an underlying mechanism, the current research contributes to the literatures on branding, close relationships, consumer well-being, and relationship power. Several aspects of this research are noteworthy. One crucial consideration, building on past research and worthy of further study, is how brands are embedded in consumer lives and part of their identities in profound ways. Additionally, this research reinforces one of the most central considerations in branding—compatibility, or “fit”—which manifests in different ways with many different branding phenomena (e.g., brand extensions, leveraged secondary associations from cause marketing or sponsorship). Finally, another valuable insight suggested by this research is the polarization that can occur with brands; that is, the same brand can elicit decidedly different responses from different people. Greater attention to the downside of brands and branding and their more detrimental effects with certain consumers is needed. Not all brands have the same importance to consumers, and understanding why some brands take on special meaning has much theoretical and managerial importance. In a practical sense, in today’s intensely competitive marketplace, firms are going to greater and greater lengths to try to forge strong bonds with consumers and build mutually beneficial relationships. Understanding consumer-brand relationships has been a fertile research topic for years now as the complexity of those relationships continues to spawn intriguing and productive new research directions. Khamitov, Wang, and Thomson (2019) offer a comprehensive meta-analysis of factors affecting when and how different types of brand relationships increase loyalty. The authors find that various brand, loyalty, time, and consumer characteristics all can affect brand relationship elasticity. They specifically reinforce the power of the intangible and emotional qualities of brands. Huang, Huang, and Wyer (2018) home in on a very specific consideration—how consumers connect with brands in crowded social settings, as summarized in their abstract. Huang et al., “The Influence of Social Crowding on Brand Attachment” (2018) Feeling crowded in a shopping environment can decrease consumers’ evaluations of a product or service and lower customer satisfaction. However, the present research suggests that a crowded environment can sometimes have a positive impact on consumer behavior. Although feeling crowded motivates consumers to avoid interacting with others, it leads them to become more attached to brands as an alternative way of maintaining their basic need for belongingness. The effect does not occur (a) when the crowding environment is composed of familiar people (and, therefore, is not considered aversive); (b) when individuals have an interdependent self-construal (and consequently, high tolerance for crowdedness); (c) when people are accompanied by friends in the crowded environment; (d) when the social function of the brands is made salient; (e) when people have never used the brand before; or (f) when the brand is referred to as a general product rather than a specific brand. Understanding situational and contextual influences on consumer behavior with respect to brands offers much practical value to marketing managers who must make many different types of decisions based on assumptions about how consumers will behave in particular places or at particular times. Identifying boundary conditions in these and other ways is important to provide a more nuanced depiction of how consumers actually think, feel, and act toward brands under certain circumstances or in specific settings. Finally, more generally, this research underscores the contingent nature of consumer processing of brands and the need to thoroughly investigate moderator variables that can impact the direction and strength of branding effects in meaningful ways. Distinctiveness is at the core of branding and a key element in virtually any definition of brands. Branding success is all about differentiation and offering consumers unique value. Unique value requires relevance, too; accordingly, another core branding concept is brand relevance and how meaningful a brand is to consumers. Ensuring that brands are relevant and differentiated, however, is a challenging managerial priority in today’s fluid and fast-changing marketplace. Consumers are also seeking relevance and differentiation and consequently demanding personalized, customized brand offerings that suit their individual preferences and distinguish them from others. In part because of these new dynamics, many important consumer research opportunities are emerging in how consumers and brands fit into their respective landscapes. Torelli et al. (2017) show how consumer feelings of cultural distinctiveness in foreign locations can lead to consumer preferences for more culturally aligned brands, even if those brands may be deficient in other ways. In a desire to connect with home and not feel as distinctive, consumers broaden how they actually think of “home.” By expanding their in-group boundaries in that way, they exhibit preferences to include culturally related brands that are merely similar in geographic proximity or sociohistorical or cultural roots. Puzakova and Aggarwal (2018) show how a consumer desire for distinctiveness can actually result in less preference for an anthropomorphized brand, as summarized in their abstract. Puzakova and Aggarwal, “Brands as Rivals: Consumer Pursuit of Distinctiveness and the Role of Brand Anthropomorphism” (2018) Although past research has shown that anthropomorphism enhances consumers’ attraction to a brand when social-connectedness or effectance motives are active, the current research demonstrates that anthropomorphizing a brand becomes a detrimental marketing strategy when consumers’ distinctiveness motives are salient. Four studies show that anthropomorphizing a brand positioned to be distinctive diminishes consumers’ sense of agency in identity expression. As a result, when distinctiveness goals are salient, consumers are less likely to evaluate anthropomorphized (vs. nonanthropomorphized) brands favorably and are less likely to choose them to express distinctiveness. This negative effect of brand anthropomorphism, however, is contingent on the brand’s positioning strategy—brand-as-supporter (supporting consumers’ desires to be different) versus brand-as-agent (communicating unique brand features instead of focusing on consumers’ needs) versus brand-as-controller (limiting consumers’ freedom in expressing distinctiveness). Our results demonstrate that an anthropomorphized brand-as-supporter enhances consumers’ sense of agency in identity expression, compared to both an anthropomorphized brand-as-agent and an anthropomorphized brand-as-controller. In turn, enhancing or thwarting consumers’ sense of agency in expressing their differences from others drives the differential impact of anthropomorphizing a brand positioned to be distinctive. Two aspects of this research are especially noteworthy in terms of future research. Given how many marketers are trying to bring their brands to life—literally and figuratively—in today’s digital world, anthropomorphism is likely to continue to be an important consumer research topic. In particular, AI and robotic advances in service settings and elsewhere will raise a number of similar issues in terms of how consumers interact with more human-like marketing devices. These are complex phenomena that will require new theoretical development as well as the careful adaption of concepts from consumer psychology originally developed with humans. Secondly, understanding how consumers and brands are—or want to be—distinctive is a fundamental element of branding that can yield interesting insights with a variety of branding phenomena. Communications are the lifeblood of any brand. In a “paid-earned-owned-shared” media world, consumer-to-consumer communications are taking on increased importance. Different communication channels have different properties, however, that require careful analysis and planning. Understanding what, when, where, how, and why consumers decide to share information or opinions about brands is a research priority that will likely continue to drive research activity for many years to come. Through an extensive text mining study of social media, Villarroel Ordenes et al. (2019) use speech act theory to identify distinct elements—rhetorical styles such as alliteration and repetition, cross-message compositions, and certain visual images—that lead to greater consumer sharing of messages posted by brands. They reinforce the power of informational and emotional content in online brand messages and find some important distinctions in message sharing across Facebook and Twitter social media platforms. Moving to also include the offline world, Shen and Sengupta (2018) found that when consumers communicate about brands to others by speaking versus writing, they develop deeper self-brand connections, as summarized in this abstract. Shen and Sengupta, “Word of Mouth versus Word of Mouse: Speaking about a Brand Connects You to It More than Writing Does” (2018) This research merges insights from the communications literature with that on the self-brand connection to examine a novel question: how does speaking versus writing about a liked brand influence the communicator’s own later reactions to that brand? Our conceptualization argues that because oral communication involves a greater focus on social interaction with the communication recipient than does written communication, oral communicators are more likely to express self-related thoughts than are writers, thereby increasing their self-brand connection (SBC). We also assess the implications of this conceptualization, including the identification of theoretically derived boundary conditions for the speech/writing difference, and the downstream effects of heightened SBC. Results from five studies provide support for our predictions, informing both the basic literature on communications, and the body of work on consumer word of mouth. 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In many situations, consumers use green products without a deliberate choice to use or purchase the product. This research explores how using a green product (e.g., a pair of headphones made from recycled materials) influences the enjoyment of the accompanying consumption experience (e.g., listening to music), even if consumers have not deliberately chosen or purchased the product. Five experiments in actual consumption settings revealed that using a green (vs. conventional) product enhances the enjoyment of the accompanying consumption experience, referred to as the greenconsumption effect. Merely using a green product makes consumers perceive an increase in the extent to which they are valued as individuals by society, which leads to warm glow feelings, and consequently enhances the enjoyment of the accompanying consumption experience. When consumers experience low social worth, the positive effect of using green products on the accompanying consumption experience is amplified. The greenconsumption effect disappears when the negative environmental impact of the green product attribute is low. From a managerial standpoint, the current research identifies instances where brands can benefit from going green and encourages marketers, especially service providers, to promote green products that are instrumental in consumption experiences.