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Past research in consumer behavior typically assumes that distraction during the decision process needs to be avoided. However, a common piece of advice given to consumers who have to make complex decisions is to distract their attention away from the decision problem for some moments. The current research shows that distraction can indeed help consumers to differentiate attractive from unattractive products. Yet this occurs only for consumers with a configural mind-set who tend to form coherent representations of products in their memory. For consumers with a featural mind-set, who typically hold mixed product representations, distraction does not affect product evaluations. This implies that it is the specific processing mind-set of consumers that determines whether distraction leads to more product differentiation or not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine three sets of established behavioral hypotheses about consumers' in-store behavior using field data on grocery store shopping paths and purchases. Our results provide field evidence for the following empirical regularities. First, as consumers spend more time in the store, they become more purposeful--they are less likely to spend time on exploration and more likely to shop/buy. Second, consistent with "licensing" behavior, after purchasing virtue categories, consumers are more likely to shop at locations that carry vice categories. Third, the presence of other shoppers attracts consumers toward a store zone but reduces consumers' tendency to shop there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present research establishes that the innocuous behavior of coupon redemption is capable of eliciting stigma by association. The general finding across four studies shows that the coupon redemption behavior of one consumer results in a second non-coupon-redeeming shopper being stigmatized by association as cheap when a low as compared to a high value coupon is redeemed. More important, the research identifies a number of factors that protect a non-coupon-redeeming shopper from the undesirable experience of stigma by association, even during another shopper's redemption of a low value coupon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws upon the utopian studies literature to integrate two strands of contemporary consumer research, the study of place and space and the analysis of consumer/marketer relations. Based on a longitudinal study of a festival shopping mall, we provide an emergent theory of how the utopian marketplace is experienced, a theory that hinges around three interlinked conceptual categories: sensing displace, creating playspace, and performing artscape, which are subverted by the center management's maladroit refreshment of the retail offer. The relevance of this theorization for place-based scholarship, together with its implications for researchers of consumer/marketer relations, is also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research proposes that negotiators consider each other's payoffs in their evaluation of potential settlements beyond the level necessary to maintain the bargaining relationship. We further hypothesize that the way in which negotiators weight their opponents' payoffs, relative to their own, is a function of characteristics of the relationship and of the bargainers' personalities. Specifically, we consider liking of the other party, payoff expectations, satisfaction with past settlements, the likelihood of future negotiations, egocentricity, and power orientation. We demonstrate the impact of these factors on the satisfaction negotiators derive from profiting more and less than their opponents using data from an experiment in which subjects negotiate with computer-simulated opponents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tactile behavior is a basic communication form as well as an expression of interpersonal involvement. This article presents three studies offering evidence for the positive role of casual interpersonal touch on consumer behavior. More specifically, it provides initial support for the view that tactile stimulation in various consumer behavior situations enhances the positive feeling for and evaluation of both the external stimuli and the touching source. Further, customers touched by a requester tend to comply more than customers in no-touch conditions. Implications for consumer behavior theory and research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heritage Village, home of the PTL ministry, is the focus for a study of consumer behavior involving an explicit synthesis of worship and shopping. The present investigation seeks to better understand the way these pursuits, seemingly philosophically opposed, are brought together for joint consumption. Notions of pilgrimage and sacralization of the secular are useful constructs in examining this merger of religion and consumption, but a priori formulations must be modified to more fully explain the behavior of consumers at Heritage Village. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four experiments and one study were conducted to test the hypothesis that stimuli associated with spending can elicit spending responses. In all experiments, credit card stimuli were either present or absent in situations in which subjects were given an opportunity to spend. Credit card stimuli directed spending such that the probability, speed, or magnitude of spending was enhanced in the presence of credit card cues. A conditioning explanation was used to interpret the results. [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]

Japanese department stores became major art entrepreneurs in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Since the Mitsukoshi department store launched its art section in 1907 to display and sell the art of prominent contemporary artists, other Japanese department stores followed suit. The primary customer of the department store art sections was the rising urban middle class, who needed works of art with which to decorate tokonoma (decorative alcoves) of their new houses. By occupying a house with tokonoma, which had previously been built only in elite domestic architecture, and participating in the cultural practices associated with that space, the new middle class attempted to legitimize their cultural taste, which acted not only as a conspicuous marker of social status but also as an active determinant of it in the fluid conditions of modern Japan. This article explores how department stores allowed the new middle-class customers, who lacked both the proper financial means and the cultural competence to indulge their craving for ‘high culture’, to become members of the cultural elite in exchange for shopping at their art sections. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]