Do people’s perceptions that they live in a harsh environment influence their food choices? Drawing on life-history theory, we propose that cues indicating that the current environment is harsh (e.g., news about an economic crisis, the sight of people facing adversity in life) lead people to perceive that resources in the world are scarce. As a consequence, people seek and consume more filling and high-calorie foods, which they believe will sustain them for longer periods of time. Although perceptions of harshness can promote unhealthy eating, we show how this effect can be attenuated and redirected to promote healthier food choices.

AbstractBenign and malicious envy are a consequence of an unfavorable upward comparison to another individual (i.e., a negative self-other discrepancy). Benign (malicious) envy occurs when people believe the envied individual deserves (does not deserve) his/her advantage. Prior research has shown that benign envy motivates a person to address the self-other discrepancy via self-improvement, whereas malicious envy does not. This research shows that both types of envy, not just benign envy, can motivate self-improvement, provided that the opportunities to do so occur outside the envy-eliciting domain. Benign envy increases the accessibility of the belief that effort determines whether people are rewarded; hence, it motivates process-focused goal pursuit and the use of products that emphasize effort-dependent self-improvement. Malicious envy increases the accessibility of the belief that the effort does not determine whether people are rewarded; hence, it motivates outcome-focused goal pursuit and the use of products that emphasize effort-independent self-improvement. Implications and potential extensions in the areas of envy, self-conscious emotions, and goals are discussed.

The seller's threshold price in name-your-own-price auctions varies over time. However, consumers must bid without knowing when these variations occur because the threshold price is unobservable to them. This paper uses an analytical model and laboratory auctions to explore how the frequency of changes in the threshold price impacts consumer bidding behavior in name-your-own-price auctions. In particular, we consider how the frequency of these expected changes affects the optimal pattern of bid sequences (e.g., strictly increasing over time or following a nonmonotonic pattern). We find that when the probability of a price change is moderate, consumers may have an incentive to use nonmonotonic bidding patterns. Rather than steadily increasing their bids over time, consumers will, at some point in the bid sequence, decrease their bid. However, when the expected probability of a price change is very low or very high, consumers do not have an incentive to use nonmonotonic bidding patterns. Interestingly, impatient bidders are more likely to decrease their bids at some point in the bid sequence than patient bidders. Finally, we find that more frequent price changes may increase customer satisfaction.

Despite evidence that consumers appreciate freedom of choice, they also enjoy recommendation systems, subscription services, and marketplace encounters that seemingly occur by chance. This article proposes that enjoyment can, in some contexts, be higher than that in contexts involving choice. This occurs as a result of feelings of serendipity that arise when a marketplace encounter is positive, unexpected, and attributed to some degree of chance. A series of studies shows that feelings of serendipity positively influence an array of consumer outcomes, including satisfaction and enjoyment, perceptions of meaningfulness of an experience, likelihood of recommending a company, and likelihood of purchasing additional products from the company. The findings show that strategies based on serendipity are even more effective when consumers perceive that randomness played a role in how an encounter occurred, and not effective when the encounter is negative, the encounter occurs deterministically (i.e., planned by marketers to target consumers), and consumers perceive that they have enough knowledge to make their own choices. Altogether, this research suggests that marketers can influence customer satisfaction by structuring marketplace encounters to appear more serendipitous, as opposed to expected or entirely chosen by the consumer.