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Packaging waste makes up more than 10% of the landfilled waste in the United States. While consumers often want to make environmentally friendly product choices, we find that their perceptions of the environmental friendliness of product packaging may systematically deviate from its objective environmental friendliness. Eight studies (N = 4,103) document the perceived environmental friendliness (PEF) bias whereby consumers judge plastic packaging with additional paper to be more environmentally friendly than identical plastic packaging without the paper. The PEF bias is driven by consumers' "paper = good, plastic = bad" beliefs and by proportional reasoning, wherein packaging with a greater paper-to-plastic proportion is judged as more environmentally friendly. We further show that the PEF bias impacts consumers' willingness to pay and product choice. Importantly, this bias can be mitigated by a "minimal packaging sticker" intervention, which increases the environmental friendliness perceptions of plastic-only packaging, rendering plastic-packaged products to be preferable to their plastic-plus-paper-packaged counterparts. This research contributes to the packaging literature in marketing and to research on sustainability while offering practical implications for managers and public policy officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the way that individuals pay for a good or service influence the amount of connection they feel after the purchase has occurred? Employing a multi-method approach across four studies, individuals who pay using a relatively more painful form of payment (e.g., cash or check) increase their post-transaction connection to the product they purchased and/or the organization their purchase supports in comparison to those who pay with less painful forms of payment (e.g., debit or credit card). Specifically, individuals who pay with more painful forms of payment increase their emotional attachment to a product, decrease their commitment to nonchosen alternatives, are more likely to publicly signal their commitment to an organization, and are more likely to make a repeat transaction. Moreover, the form of payment influences post-transaction connection even when the objective monetary cost remains constant and when the psychological cost is indirect (i.e., donating someone else's money). Increasing the psychological pain of payment appears to have beneficial consequences with respect to increasing downstream product and brand connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a systematic and comprehensive meta-analysis of the literature on financial education interventions that focuses on financial education studies designed to strengthen the financial knowledge and behaviors of consumers. The analysis identifies 188 papers and articles that present impact results of interventions designed to increase consumers' financial knowledge (financial literacy) or skills, attitudes, and behaviors (financial capability). These papers are diverse across a number of dimensions, including objectives of the program intervention, expected outcomes, intensity and duration of the intervention, delivery channel used, and type of population targeted. However, there are a few key outcome indicators where a subset of papers are comparable, including those that address savings behavior, defaults on loans, and financial skills such as record keeping. The results from the meta-analysis indicate that financial literacy and capability interventions can have a positive impact in some areas (e.g., increasing savings) but not in others (e.g., reducing loan defaults). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Avoidable harm—that is, harm to service users caused by unsafe or improper interventions, practices or services and which could have been mitigated or prevented—is embedded in social care legislation and inspections. However, the concept of avoidable harm has largely been defined by policymakers, academics, practitioners, regulators and services, with little known about service users' experiences of avoidable harm in practice. This survivor-controlled review maps and synthesises peer-reviewed literature on service users experience of social and psychological avoidable harm in mental health social care (MHSC) in England. The review was guided by an Advisory Group of practitioners and service users. Six databases were systematically searched between January 2008 and June 2020 to identify relevant literature. Following de-duplication, 3,529 records were screened using inclusion and exclusion criteria. This led to full-text screening of eighty-four records and a final corpus of twenty-two papers. Following data extraction, thematic analysis was used to synthesise data. Six key themes were identified relating to relationships and communication, information, involvement and decision-making, poor support, fragmented systems and power-over and discriminatory cultures. Impacts on MHSC service users included stress, distress, disempowerment and deterioration in mental health. We discuss our findings and indicate future research priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer switching can play a significant role in enabling competitive retail markets. This paper examines the factors influencing consumer switching across 14 different retail markets in 27 European countries (EU27) using a micro-econometric analysis of consumer switching behaviour data from the European Commission's Consumer Market Monitoring Survey. The results provide evidence that consumer attitudes to various market components are highly significant factors in explaining consumer switching behaviour in the EU27. In addition, this paper also examines cross-market effects on consumer switching behaviour. Focusing on the case of energy retail markets, the odds of switching in these markets are found to be considerably greater for a consumer who has switched in at least one other retail market. Finally, consumers' accessibility to the internet is also shown to have a strong positive association with switching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research examines how the knowledge that a product is made using a traditional method influences perceptions of its quality. We propose that consumers believe that a brand using traditional methods is beneficial for society because it is concerned about cultural preservation and this belief has a positive effect on perceived quality. Six experimental studies show that consumers evaluate products produced with a method described as traditional to be higher in quality than similar products that are not described as traditionally made and this effect is mediated by the belief that the brand is beneficial for society. Consistent with this theory, the positive effect of traditional production on perceived quality is attenuated when consumers view the brand to be unconcerned about cultural preservation, such as when the use of a traditional method is framed as a follower strategy (i.e. it imitates the actions of other brands) or when the brand is a multinational company. By showing that the mere mention of a traditional method can be another subtle way to position a brand as a moral actor, these findings contribute to the understanding of the link between perceived social responsibility and product evaluations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers frequently receive refunds from prior purchases. In this research, we examine if money refunded from previous purchases is more likely to be spent than money that does not go through a refund process. Across nine pre-registered studies, we test how consumers' willingness to spend depends on the transaction history of their money. We find that, when people receive a refund and do not need to replace the originally purchased item, they are more likely to spend the refunded money on a discretionary purchase than they are to spend non-refunded money that is otherwise identical. We suggest that this pattern arises because refunded money is earmarked as "spending money" at the time of the initial purchase and then retains that earmark even after the refund is issued. When refunds arrive, therefore, they seem free from obligations and easy to spend. This research documents the psychology of purchase refunds, a topic largely unaddressed in the mental accounting literature to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Production waste, or inefficiencies in product manufacturing, is a major contributor to environmental problems. Consider production waste in garment manufacturing—which has been criticized for wasteful use of natural resources (e.g. using excessive water and fabric) and wasteful disposal of resource residuals (e.g. discarding excessive wastewater and fabric scraps). The present research examines consumer reactions to production waste and its mitigation as a function of whether it is characterized in terms of resource use versus disposal. A series of seven studies (including field and secondary data) finds that (i) consumers are less sensitive to wasteful resource use than disposal due to lower perceptions of environmental harm; (ii) likewise, consumers are less sensitive to waste mitigation targeting resource use than disposal due to lower perceptions of environmental benefit; and (iii) these waste reaction differences are attenuated when resource scarcity or long-term orientation is heightened (which increases consumer sensitivity to resource use). Together, this research sheds light on how, why, and when consumers are averse to production waste, while providing guidance regarding interventions focused on fighting production waste and promoting sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of advertising on how and what consumers learn from product experience. A hypothesis-testing framework is adopted where consumers treat advertisements as tentative hypotheses that can be tested through product experience. Two experiments were conducted using product categories that provided either ambiguous or unambiguous evidence about product quality. The first experiment showed that when consumers have access to unambiguous evidence, judgments of product quality are dependent only on the objective physical evidence and unaffected by advertising. However, advertising had dramatic effects on perceptions of quality when consumers saw ambiguous evidence; judgments and product inspection behavior protocols showed that advertising induced consumers to engage in confirmatory hypothesis testing and search. The second experiment showed that advertising influenced quality judgments by affecting the encoding of the physical evidence; retrieval of ad-consistent evidence also appeared to occur, though to a lesser degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is in reply to the comments made by authors David J. Curry and David J. Faulds in their paper "Indexing Product Quality: Issues, Theory, and Results," which is in response to the authors original paper, "The Concept of Quality and the Efficiency of Markets for Consumer Products," from the 1984 issue of the "Journal of Consumer Research." In their paper, Curry and Faulds state that quality scores are sensitive to weighting schemes only when the weights within two schemes are not in the same rank order and when the entries in the covariance matrix among attributes are mostly negative. While the author agrees with the second statement, he disputes the first, believing their procedure does not fit with the data they are evaluating.

The use of documentary evidence such as historical records, novels, existing advertisements, and photographs has been little used in consumer research. This paper presents an exposition of content analysis methodology and, tangentially, reviews the existing studies in consumer behavior using this rich approach.
The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss some of the issues in content analysis methodology and, tangentially, to review the studies carried out in consumer research using the technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the degree to which consumers use identical or similar brand and store choice strategies across product categories. The analysis is based on data on two pairs of frequently-purchased products and the results indicate that consumers frequently use identical or similar purchasing strategies across product categories. The principal implication of these results is that buying behavior may be governed by general household characteristics such as demographics to a greater extent than past research in this area had indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on foods advertised in supermarket circulars revealed that advertisement for foods at promotional prices influence food choices and shopping behaviour, but no paper reporting the Latin American context was identified. Furthermore, most studies only assessed the products advertised on the front pages and not in the entire circulars. This paper quantifies and categorizes, according to level of processing, the foods advertised in circulars from four Brazilian supermarket chains in order to assess their compatibility with the national dietary guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health. Printed and online circulars were collected between June and July 2016. Foods items advertised were identified and classified into one of four categories using the NOVA classification as unprocessed or minimally processed, processed culinary ingredient, processed or ultra-processed. Sixteen documents were analysed, and 1786 food items identified, where 23% were categorized as unprocessed or minimally processed, and 63% as ultra-processed foods. While the mean proportion of ultra-processed and unprocessed or minimally processed foods advertised on circular covers was similar (p  =   0.49), the mean proportion of ultra-processed foods advertised in the entire circular was significantly higher than unprocessed or minimally processed foods (p  <   0.001). Brazilian supermarket circulars are stimulating the acquisition of ultra-processed foods, which does not encourage food choices to be in line with what is recommended by the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a disaggregated model and a three-stage least squares procedure, this paper estimates the demand for automobiles in the U.S. by size class. While the price elasticity of demand in each submarket was significantly greater than one, factors such as gasoline prices, styling changes, and demographic changes influenced each submarket differently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent paper, Currim, Weinberg, and Wittink (1981) noted that attribute importance weights inferred from conjoint analysis results may be influenced by the number of levels on which an attribute is defined.
For a main-effects part-worth model, attribute importance is typically computed by taking the difference between the "best" and "worst" levels' estimated utilities. Currim, Weinberg, and Wittink argued that the minimum weight obtainable for a three-level attribute is higher than the rain hum weight for an attribute with only two levels, if forced tank order or equivalent preference judgments are collected. However, they recognized that the empirical finding could also be due to a "managerial" reason (attributes perceived as critical are defined on a greater number of levels) or a "psychological" phenomenon (respondents may pay more attention to attributes as the number of levels increases). In this paper, we investigate in more detail the possible relation between derived importances and number of attribute levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper reviews certain of the characteristics of the consumer's spatial behavior. Specifically, the significance of the nearest center postulate, spatial indifference principle, and temporal considerations are examined, together with an assessment of the importance of retail-attraction, socio-economic-status, and cultural-racial factors in conditioning travel patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines a consumer decision-making aid which, in principle, could help reduce the problems associated with the large quantities of increasingly complex information necessary for purchase decisions. The limitations and potential of this method are discussed, and an example is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to summarize and integrate some recent economic theories of consumer behavior based on demand for underlying characteristics of goods. The implications of these theories for research in consumer behavior are discussed, and an attempt is made to compare and integrate these theories with recent developments in multi-attribute scaling and attitude models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces the development of interest in consumer socialization. Major policy and conceptual issues are posed, and research in several areas of study is reviewed. Directions for research are specified in three key areas: consumer socialization processes, content of learning, and permanence of early learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fight for legitimacy, understanding the rules of status games is critical. This idea holds true in the wedding marketplace. However, when legalization of marriage for same-sex couples disrupted the binary wedding script, the rules of the game became less clear to consumers. Couples sometimes found their gendered bodies, roles, and expressions were out of sync with the evolving script of a destabilized wedding field, thus raising legitimacy questions. This situation is defined as hysteresis—meaning delays in the realignment between habitus and the field. Hysteresis results in consumers' disorientation about what forms of capital are valued as well as perceived absences of materials or recognition from the market. This study investigates consumers' attempts to mobilize gendered capital to resolve hysteresis through realignment of habitus and the script. Grounded in a Bourdieuian field-level analysis of depth interviews with 30 same-sex couples and ethnographic observation in the wedding field, four consumption alignment strategies are identified that consumers leverage to address hysteresis: confronting, masking, collaborating, and experimenting. Consumers' variations in gendered capital explain which consumption alignment strategies they use, with different possibilities for updating habitus and expanding the script. Throughout this process, consumers' moral judgments hinder this pursuit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, U.S. gun rights lobbying groups, politicians, courts, and market actors have sought to responsibilize U.S. consumers to use firearms to address the societal problem of crime. These efforts center an interpretation of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment as an entitlement for individuals to practice armed self-defense. Using interview and online discussion data, this research investigates consumers' responses to responsibilization for this morally fraught set of behaviors, and the role of consumers' various understandings of the right to bear arms in these responses. Findings show that consumers consider multiple, specific armed protection scenarios and accept responsibilization in only a portion of these scenarios while rejecting it for the remainder. Acceptance is determined by their appraisals of the morality of consumer responsibilization subprocesses. Consumers' understanding of the constitutional right serves as a heuristic in these appraisals, with some understandings leading consumers to accept responsibilization across a much larger proportion of scenarios than others. Contributions include illustrating response to consumer responsibilization as a proportionality; illuminating consumers' active role in appraising responsibilizing efforts; and demonstrating how some consumers come to understand a responsibilized behavior as a moral entitlement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many firms are beginning to replace customer service employees with bots, from humanoid service robots to digital chatbots. Using real human–bot interactions in lab and field settings, we study consumers' evaluations of bot-provided service. We find that service evaluations are more negative when the service provider is a bot versus a human—even when the provided service is identical. This effect is explained by consumers' belief that service automation is motivated by firm benefits (i.e. cutting costs) at the expense of customer benefits (such as service quality). The effect is eliminated when firms share the economic surplus derived from automation with consumers through price discounts. The effect is reversed when service bots provide unambiguously superior service to human employees—a scenario that may soon become reality. Consumers' default reactions to service bots are therefore largely negative but can be equal to or better than reactions to human service providers if firms can demonstrate how automation benefits consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global aging demographic is putting pressure on state-delivered health and social care services. As the austerity agenda in the UK cuts state-funded service provision for older people despite increasing demand, social enterprise has become a politically and economically attractive model for the sustainable delivery of some public services. Yet little is known about the impact of social enterprise on the health and wellbeing of older people. In this paper we address this gap in understanding and consider social enterprise activities as complex public health-promoting interventions. Our study aimed to understand what impact social enterprise activities had on the health and wellbeing of participants aged over 50, and also how that impact was created. To achieve this, we conducted qualitative semi-structured interviews with a sample (n = 43) of staff, volunteers, clients and carers aged over 50 who were involved in activities delivered by three social enterprises. Using a thematic analysis to explore manifest and latent themes, two antecedents of subjective younger age emerged explaining how benefit was created, namely downward social comparison and identity. The social enterprise activities we studied benefited participants' health and wellbeing, impacting positively on participants' sense of purpose, social support, connectedness and inclusion. These health and wellbeing benefits can be considered as outcomes of complex public health interventions for older people, and we relate these outcomes to beneficial conditions within the intermediary social determinants of health. We conclude by discussing the future impact of social enterprise activities and current UK policy on the structural determinants of health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reply to an article written by Edward J. Russo, which was written in response to the article "Brand choice behavior as a function of information load: Replication and extension," from the 1974 issue of "Journal of Consumer Research." The authors emphasize that Russo's disagreement with their original paper is not with the contention that consumers can be overloaded with package information. They believe that Russo's conclusion agrees with them, even if he disagrees with their methodology. They conclude by conceding that their paper was not perfect, but insisting that the subject of consumer information processing does need further study.

An introduction is presented for several previously published articles on consumer behavior, together with abstracts of these articles, discussing topics such as numerosity effects, consumers' perceptions of product warranty information, and phonemes and sizes.

This paper sets out necessary and sufficient empirical conditions for rational intrinsic habits models in the revealed preference tradition of Samuelson (1948), Houthakker (1950), Afriat (1967), and Browning (1989). The conditions in the paper are shown to be computationally straightforward and to yield set identification for certain features of the model. The ideas outlined are applied to a microeconomic panel dataset. The addition of habit formation to the discounted utility model is shown to improve the rationalizability of the microdata considerably. Even if habit formation is rejected, it is shown that modest and plausible allowance for heterogeneity in prices and interest rates is sufficient to bring consumption behaviour into line with the theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer trust in the modern food system is essential given its complexity. Contexts vary across countries with regard to food incidents, regulation and systems. It is therefore of interest to compare how key actors in different countries might approach (re)building consumer trust in the food system; and particularly relevant to understanding how food systems in different regions might learn from one another. The purpose of this paper is to explore differences between strategies for (re)building trust in food systems, as identified in two separate empirical studies, one conducted in Australia, New Zealand and the UK (Study 1) and another on the Island of Ireland (Study 2). Interviews were conducted with media, food industry and food regulatory actors across the two studies (n  = 105 Study 1; n  = 50 Study 2). Data were coded into strategy statements, strategies describing actions to (re)build consumer trust. Strategy statements were compared between Studies 1 and 2 and similarities and differences were noted. The strategy statements identified in Study 1 to (re)build consumer trust in the food system were shown to be applicable in Study 2, however, there were notable differences in the contextual factors that shaped the means by which strategies were implemented. As such, the transfer of such approaches across regions is not an appropriate means to addressing breaches in consumer trust. Notwithstanding, our data suggest that there is still capacity to learn between countries when considering strategies for (re)building trust in the food system but caution must be exercised in the transfer of approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the issue of pervasive credit constraints among US households. There is considerable debate about the incidence of constraints and whether the observed low borrowing in some groups of the population arises from low demand or from denial of credit. Using information on unsecured borrowing from the Consumer Expenditure Survey for (1988–1993), the paper estimates credit constraints and shows how these differ with household characteristics. It finds that around 31% of households are constrained, with young college educated households being the most constrained. Moreover, the low level of borrowing observed among black households is shown to be a demand rather than a supply effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we show that when a monopolist incurs certain costs for servicing or maintaining its customer-base, price markups may decrease with high demand — i.e. markups are countercylical. Indeed, for a given market share when demand booms each customer on average will purchase more output and the costs of servicing clients are spread across a larger volume of output sold. This increasing-return effect raises the incentive for the monopolists to expand its market-share by reducing markups. We also find evidence on UK data that industries with higher customer-care costs tend to have a higher degree of coutercyclical markups as compared with industries with lower such costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objects we consume increasingly exist in digital form, from audiobooks and digital photographs to social media profiles and avatars. Digital objects are often argued to be less valued, personally meaningful, and self-relevant than their physical counterparts and are consequently dismissed as poor candidates for possession. Yet, studies have identified highly meaningful, even irreplaceable, digital possessions. In this article, we account for these contradictory narratives surrounding digital possessions, arguing that digital objects are not inherently unsuited to possession, but rather their affordances may not align with consumers' imagined affordances (i.e. the object affordances that consumers anticipate). Drawing from a qualitative study of 25 consumers and their digital possessions, we identify three recurring types of affordance misalignment— missing affordances, covert affordances, and deficient affordances—that mediate how consumers and digital objects interact (pragmatic mediation) and, consequently, consumers' experiences of, and beliefs surrounding, digital objects as possessions (hermeneutic mediation). We demonstrate that these affordance misalignments can create obstacles to consumers' desired experiences of possession and document consumers' attempts to overcome these obstacles by employing alignment strategies , with varied behavioral outcomes. This article advances debates surrounding digital possessions and presents an enriched affordance theory lens that provides new insights into possession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research reveals how a fundamental and pervasive psychological state, feeling powerful, asymmetrically impacts consumers' construction of and response to communications. For senders, power reduces consumers' need-for-justification and lowers the degree of support they seek and use to construct their communications. This lowered degree of support is evidenced by reduced information search, the use of fewer rational-based arguments, and a greater reliance on more concise language. In contrast, for receivers, power increases consumers' expectations for others to justify their positions. As a result, high-power receivers require a greater degree of support in communications from others. Based on a need-for-justification mechanism, the current work derives and demonstrates theoretically driven boundary conditions (e.g. attenuation when a heightened need-for-justification or support already exists) of this relationship. Together, these results provide new insights into how power influences consumers' need-for-justification and how this need affects the ways that consumers construct and respond to communications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a more general analysis of the implications of regret theory for preference reversal. We then report the results of some experiments designed to discriminate between the information-processing explanation of preference reversal and that offered by regret theory. The evidence reported in this paper shows that the preference reversal phenomenon can be generated in an experimental design in which individuals make straight choices rather than being required to report reservation prices. This result seems to be very robust: in all we used 15 different triples of P bet, $ bet and certainty and in every case the majority of violations of transitivity were in the direction corresponding with the classic preference reversal phenomenon (and in the direction predicted by regret theory). There is a regularity in behaviour here that requires an explanation, and that must pose a challenge to any theory that explains choices in terms of transitive preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advertisements are persuasive texts designed to communicate ideas explicitly and implicitly through visual grammar. Counter-advertisements allow students to engage with advertising texts as creators rather than consumers and challenge media messages. Based in critical media literacy theory, this paper explores how elementary students interpret and redesign advertisements to create meaning. This study focused on the messages upper-elementary school students created about alcohol following a 10-lesson alcohol media literacy programme. Text from the counter-advertisements (n = 161) was analysed using discourse analysis. The counter-advertisements were also content analysed for message content, persuasion strategies and production components using a media literacy framework. The content of male-targeted, female-targeted and gender-neutral ads was compared using chi-square analyses. The four main themes identified in the discourse and content analysis were ‘vomit’, ‘sick’, ‘danger’ and ‘poison’, highlighting an emphasis on short-term consequences of alcohol misuse. Sensory (un)appeal was the most frequently used persuasion strategy, while objects/symbols and colour were the most frequently used production components. The use of these devices differed depending upon the advertisement’s target gender. Involving elementary students in the redesign of advertisements is a powerful pedagogy that enables students to demonstrate their understanding of media literacy practices and create health promotion messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of a review of introspective methods in other social science disciplines, we identify five categories of introspection: (1) researcher introspection, (2) guided introspection, (3) interactive introspection, (4) syncretic combinations, and (5) re- flexivity within research. We draw from this literature a set of six methodological issues relevant to the conduct of introspection in consumer research. Because of the recent publication of consumer behavior papers that rely extensively or even exclusively on the researchers' life experiences as data, we consider these methodological issues in detail regarding the conduct of researcher introspection. On the basis of substantive and methodological developments in other categories of introspection, researcher introspection is critiqued in terms of data collection and recording issues, its lack of separation of the roles of the researcher and introspector, and its exclusive focus on one individual. Because of the difficulties of overcoming critical methodological limitations inherent in this research approach, we conclude that researcher introspection has severely limited potential to contribute to future research in consumer behavior. In contrast, we suggest that appropriate use of guided introspection and reflexivity within research can be used to advance theory in consumer behavior. We conclude by discussing the balance between openness and rigor necessitated by the pluralistic composition of the field of consumer research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer researchers have recently turned their attention toward exploring the imaginative, emotional, and evaluative components of the consumption experience. Nevertheless, considerable work remains to be done on the emotional aspects of consumer behavior. Toward that end, this paper assesses comparative reliabilities and validities of two competing typologies of emotion when they are applied to the representation of experiences associated with consumption activities. Specifically, independent samples of judges rated real experiential descriptions on either Mehrabian and Russell's (1974) PAD dimensions or Plutchik's (1980) emotional categories. Further, separate samples of judges evaluated artificial descriptions on the same competing frameworks. These data permit comparisons of reliability, internal validity, and external convergent validity for the two alternative schemes. The results favor Mehrabian and Russell's PAD paradigm and suggest the need for further research exploring types of emotional responses to the varieties of consumption experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the behavioral sciences and mathematical programming, we hypothesize that consumers rank durables by a value (or net value) priority approximated by utility per dollar (or utility minus price) and plan to choose items in that order up to a budget cutoff. This paper derives these hypotheses and develops a convergent linear programming procedure to estimate utility. Using primary field data on reservation prices, purchase probabilities, lottery orders, and combination prizes, we estimate utilities and compare the hypotheses to 215 actual budget plans. LISREL V analysis provides further support for the hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exchange theories posit that trust has an important and favorable influence on dyadic interactions. This paper examines the notion that trust plays a key role in making a seller's tough bargaining strategy successful. In a bargaining experiment, we manipulated subjects' preconceptions about a seller's trustworthiness and bargaining toughness. As hypothesized, a seller's expected trustworthiness-plus-toughness in bargaining led to higher levels of buyer-seller cooperation and agreement and a higher level of buyer concessions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the issue of post-purchase processes of consumers who complain about purchase experiences. Hypotheses about complaining consumers' satisfaction or dissatisfaction with organizational response and their subsequent repurchase behavior are proposed and empirically tested using data from consumers who complained to a major oil company. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a model of individual consumer choice for separate choice occasions. Contrary to the notion that each choice is essentially independent of its predecessors, dependence is proposed as the key to variety-seeking behavior. As an individual's consumption history evolves, the pattern of attribute accumulations changes, leading to preference for items rich in different attributes at different points in time. The model is operationalized using soft drink consumption diaries, and predicts choices better than a model that ignores choice dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the recognition of important experiential aspects of consumption. Specifically, a general framework is constructed to represent typical consumer behavior variables. Based on this paradigm, the prevailing information processing model is contrasted with an experiential view that focuses on the symbolic, hedonic, and esthetic nature of consumption. This view regards the consumption experience as a phenomenon directed toward the pursuit of fantasies, feelings, and fun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer behavior and well-being tend to be intertwined concepts in economics, whereas well-being (including poverty and wealth) has not been of prime interest to consumer behaviorists. Economic concepts of well-being in relation to consumer behavior are clarified and classified in this paper. The main objective of the present study is to further the contemporary effort of establishing a closer link between the behaviorist's and the economist's views of consumer behavior by highlighting the well-being implications inherent in the link. To do so, the bulk of the exposition will be devoted to a digest of the relevant concepts and measures in economics. Such a digest is needed because the indicated inseparability of well-being and behavior in economics is only a one-way relationship; there is no concept of behavior that is separable from well-being,[1] but there are a number of diversified well-being concepts that stand alone and are not necessarily compatible with each other. This gives rise to a lack of clarity concerning the interpretation of well-being in economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A procedure for identifying misleading advertising is presented, based solely on measured consumer beliefs. An advertisement is misleading if an exposed group holds more false beliefs than a comparison group. When ten allegedly misleading advertisements were tested, two were identified as incrementally misleading, and four others were shown to be exploitively misleading. In this paper, we propose and test a procedure for identifying misleading advertising. Contrary to custom, the procedural problem is confronted first, and a definition of misleadingness follows. The procedure is empirically based, as it relies on the measurement of consumer beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illustrates how the Rosen (1974) model of consumer choice can be used to estimate demand and supply functions for product characteristics; in this case, for six characteristics of automobiles. We also show how the demand functions for characteristics can be used to recover consumer preference functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on consumer satisfaction with products has typically ignored influences other than the confirmation of expectations relative to product outcomes. This paper examines the impact of broader, intrapersonal affective variables on satisfaction, and presents empirical results on the relative effects of both types of influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attribution, as a process, is related to consumer decision making by a descriptive model. Published papers that have applied attributional approaches to consumer scenarios are analyzed to highlight both existing problems and opportunities for enhanced understanding. An assessment of the potential for attribution theory in consumer research is offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author presents his comments on the research paper "The Neglected Variety Drive," published in an earlier issue of "Journal of Consumer Research." The author takes issue with Faison's scant citations of earlier work in this area and his use of research in instrumental learning and cognitive consistency to make his argument. Instead, the author suggests that variety drive might have more support if it were viewed as an offshoot of optimal stimulation, which finds its roots in cognitive consistency. The author points to the weaknesses in Faison's argument.

Increasing the knowledge level of consumers with respect to safety principles has been suggested as one method of reducing the number of consumer product related injuries. This paper describes the results of a pilot study aimed at increasing consumer knowledge and presents a new methodology for analyzing the effects of such a program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that explicit recognition of situational variables can substantially enhance the ability to explain and understand consumer behavioral acts. A definition and description of situations is offered, existing research is summarized, and implications for consumer research are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until very recently, the major focus of research in the field of consumer behavior has been on the selection of products, brands and decision choices primarily in the sphere of marketing. The purpose of this paper was to modify a model developed to measure market share to account for the variables that enter into the selection of a political candidate and predict voting behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psychological analysis of consumers' spending and saving behavior in response to inflation, recession, or increased assets and inventories is shown to result in findings that differ from generalizations presented by traditional economic analysis. The paper indicates the usefulness of the methods applied in behavioral studies of economic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]