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Influencer marketing has become big business. But while influencers have the potential to spread marketing messages and drive purchase, some posts get lots of engagement and boost sales, while others do not. What makes some posts more impactful? This work examines how sensory language (e.g., words like “crumble” and “juicy” that engage the senses) shapes consumer responses to influencer-sponsored content. A multimethod investigation, combining controlled experiments with automated text, image, and video analysis of thousands of sponsored social media posts, demonstrates that sensory language increases engagement and willingness to buy the sponsored product. Furthermore, the studies illustrate that these effects are driven by perceived authenticity. Sensory language leads consumers to infer that influencers actually use the product they are endorsing, which increases perceived authenticity, and thus engagement and purchase. These findings shed light on how language shapes responses to influencer-sponsored content, deepen understanding of the drivers of authenticity, and suggest how to develop more impactful social media campaigns.

Over the last 50+ years, there has been a huge rise in interest in consumer language research. This manuscript spotlights the emergence and evolution of this area, identifying key themes and trends, and highlighting topics for future research. Work has evolved from exploration of broad language concepts (e.g., rhetorics) to specific linguistic features (e.g., phonemes) and from monologues (e.g., advertiser to consumer) to two-way dialogues (e.g., consumer to service representative and back). We discuss future opportunities that arise from past trends, and suggest two important shifts that prompt questions for future research: the new shift towards using voice (vs. hands) when interacting with objects, and the ongoing shift towards using hands (vs. voices) to communicate with people. By synthesizing the past, and delineating a research agenda for the future, we hope to encourage more researchers to begin to explore this burgeoning area.

Consumers often communicate their attitudes and opinions with others, and such word of mouth has an important impact on what others think, buy, and do. But might the way consumers communicate their attitudes (i.e., through speaking or writing) shape the attitudes they express? And, as a result, the impact of what they share? While a great deal of research has begun to examine drivers of word of mouth, there has been less attention to how communication modality might shape sharing. Six studies, conducted in the laboratory and field, demonstrate that compared to speaking, writing leads consumers to express less emotional attitudes. The effect is driven by deliberation. Writing offers more time to deliberate about what to say, which reduces emotionality. The studies also demonstrate a downstream consequence of this effect: by shaping the attitudes expressed, the modality consumers communicate through can influence the impact of their communication. This work sheds light on word of mouth, effects of communication modality, and the role of language in communication.

When sharing information and opinions about products, services, and experiences, communicators often use either past or present tense (e.g., “That restaurant was great” or “That restaurant is great”). Might such differences in verb tense shape communication’s impact, and if so, how? A multimethod investigation, including eight studies conducted in the field and lab, demonstrates that using present (vs. past) tense can increase persuasion. Natural language processing of over 500,000 online reviews in multiple product and service domains, for example, illustrates that reviews that use more present tense are seen as more helpful and useful. Follow-up experiments demonstrate that shifting from past to present tense increases persuasion and illustrate the underlying process through both mediation and moderation. When communicators use present (rather than past) tense to express their opinions and experiences, it suggests that they are more certain about what they are saying, which increases persuasion. These findings shed light on how language impacts consumer behavior, highlight how a subtle, yet central linguistic feature shapes communication, and have clear implications for persuasion across a range of situations.

Some cultural products (e.g., books and movies) catch on and become popular, while others fail. Why? While some have argued that success is unpredictable, we suggest that period-to-period shifts in sentiment—what we term sentiment volatility—enhance engagement. Automated sentiment analysis of over 4,000 movies demonstrates that more volatile movies are evaluated more positively. Consistent with the notion that sentiment volatility makes experiences more stimulating, the effect is stronger in genres where evaluations are more likely to be driven stimulation (i.e., thrillers rather than romance). Further, analysis of over 30,000 online articles demonstrate that people are more likely to continue reading more volatile articles. By manipulating sentiment volatility in follow-up experiments, we underscore its causal impact on evaluations, and provide evidence for the role of stimulation in these effects. Taken together, the results shed light on what drives engagement, the time dynamics of sentiment, and cultural analytics or why some cultural items are more successful.

Consumers are often frustrated by customer service. But could a simple shift in language help improve customer satisfaction? We suggest that linguistic concreteness—the tangibility, specificity, or imaginability of words employees use when speaking to customers—can shape consumer attitudes and behaviors. Five studies, including text analysis of over 1,000 real consumer–employee interactions in two different field contexts, demonstrate that customers are more satisfied, willing to purchase, and purchase more when employees speak to them concretely. This occurs because customers infer that employees who use more concrete language are listening (i.e., attending to and understanding their needs). These findings deepen understanding of how language shapes consumer behavior, reveal a psychological mechanism by which concreteness impacts person perception, and provide a straightforward way that managers could help enhance customer satisfaction.

Trickle-down theories suggest that status symbols and fashion trends originate from the elites and move downward, but some high-end restaurants serve lowbrow food (e.g., potato chips, macaroni and cheese), and some high-status individuals wear downscale clothing (e.g., ripped jeans, duct-taped shoes). Why would high-status actors adopt items traditionally associated with low-status groups? Using a signaling perspective to explain this phenomenon, the authors suggest that elites sometimes adopt items associated with low-status groups as a costly signal to distinguish themselves from middle-status individuals. As a result, signals sometimes trickle round, moving directly from the lower to the upper class, before diffusing to the middle class. Furthermore, consistent with a signaling perspective, the presence of multiple signaling dimensions facilitates this effect, enabling the highs to mix and match high and low signals and differentiate themselves. These findings deepen the understanding of signaling dynamics, support a trickle-round theory of fashion, and shed light on alternative status symbols.

Variety-seeking is a fundamental aspect of choice. But given circadian rhythms in chronobiology, might variety-seeking vary by time of day? Four studies, including an empirical analysis of millions of purchases, demonstrate diurnal variation in variety-seeking. Variety-seeking is lower in the morning than other times of day. People pick less varied flavors of yogurt, for example, when choosing in the morning. Further, the results demonstrate the underlying role of circadian changes in physiological stimulation and arousal. The effect is mediated by a physiological measure of arousal (i.e., body temperature) and moderated by factors that shape physiological arousal (i.e., sunlight and individual differences in circadian preferences). These findings shed light on drivers of variety-seeking and the biological basis of consumer behavior more generally.

Self-control is an important driver of choice, but might it also change choice’s meaning, making it seem less indicative of preference? Decades of research suggest that preference and choice are often intertwined. Choice often originates from one’s preferences. As a result, choice is often seen as a reflection of preference, leading people to infer their preferences by observing their own choices. We suggest that self-control attenuates this process. Because self-control often overrides personal desires in favor of external constraints, norms, and long-term considerations, we propose that self-control is associated with a sense of attenuated correspondence between choice and individual preference. Five experiments suggest that when the notion of self-control is salient, people are less likely to see their choices as reflecting their preferences or to infer preference from previous choices. As a result, evoking the notion of self-control attenuates the tendency to view choice as indicative of preference, even in contexts unrelated to where self-control was originally evoked. Thus, self-control shapes not only choice itself, but also the perceived meaning of choice.

How does something’s temporal location—that is, whether it occurred in the past or will occur in the future—affect whether people talk about it? Seven studies demonstrate that two factors, affective arousal and self-presentation, interact to shape time’s impact on word of mouth. Future experiences are more affectively arousing than equivalent past ones. Whether this heightened arousal increases or decreases sharing, however, depends on how the topic potentially being discussed reflects on the sharer. For topics that reflect well on the sharer, arousal increases sharing such that people are more likely to talk if the event is happening in the future (vs. the past). When topics make the sharer look bad, however, this is no longer the case. These findings shed light on when people talk about and deepen understanding of the psychological drivers of word of mouth.

People often share word of mouth with others, and such social sharing is an integral part of everyday life. But the content (e.g., stories, news, information) that people transmit can be acquired in different ways. Sometimes people find content themselves, and other times people receive content from others (e.g., via email or conversation). Might these different acquisition methods impact subsequent sharing, and if so, how? Six studies demonstrate that acquisition method can impact transmission through changing how content is processed. Compared to received content, people are more likely to associate found content with themselves, which decreases processing. Reduced processing, in turn, lowers sensitivity to diagnostic content characteristics (e.g., whether content is interesting or well written), which reduces these characteristics’ impact on sharing. Thus while receivers are more likely to share interesting (than boring) content, the difference is attenuated (and in some cases, disappeared) among finders. These findings deepen insights into the psychological drivers of word of mouth and shed light on how contextual factors, content characteristics, and the self interact to drive social transmission.

Consumers prefer brands positioned around identities they possess. Accordingly, the consumer identity literature emphasizes the importance of a clear fit between brands and target identities, suggesting that identity marketing that explicitly links brands to consumer identity should be most effective. In contrast, five studies demonstrate that explicit identity-marketing messages can backfire. Messages that explicitly connect a particular brand to consumer identity increase the salience of external determinants of behavior, reducing consumers' perceptions of agency in identity expression. Hence, compared to messages that merely reference consumer identity, messages that explicitly define identity expression reduce purchase likelihood, despite more clearly conveying identity relevance. These findings highlight the need to consider consumers' need for agency in addition to their drive for self-definition and expression through consumption, offering a foundation to examine both the risks and the rewards of identity marketing.

How does controversy affect conversation? Five studies using both field and laboratory data address this question. Contrary to popular belief, controversial things are not necessarily more likely to be discussed. Controversy increases likelihood of discussion at low levels, but beyond a moderate level of controversy, additional controversy actually decreases likelihood of discussion. The controversy-conversation relationship is driven by two countervailing processes. Controversy increases interest (which increases likelihood of discussion) but simultaneously increases discomfort (which decreases likelihood of discussion). Contextual factors such as anonymity and whether people are talking to friends or strangers moderate the controversy-conversation relationship by impacting these component processes. Our framework sheds light on how, when, and why controversy affects whether or not things are discussed.

Consumers share word of mouth face to face, over social media, and through a host of other communication channels. But do these channels affect what people talk about and, if so, how? Laboratory experiments, as well as analysis of almost 20,000 everyday conversations, demonstrate that communicating via oral versus written communication affects the products and brands consumers discuss. Compared to oral communication, written communication leads people to mention more interesting products and brands. Further, this effect is driven by communication asynchrony and self-enhancement concerns. Written communication gives people more time to construct and refine what to say, and self-enhancement motives lead people to use this opportunity to mention more interesting things. These findings shed light on how communication channels shape interpersonal communication and the psychological drivers of word of mouth more broadly.

Consumer researchers have recognized for a long time that people consume in ways that are consistent with their sense of self (Levy 1959; Sirgy 1982). Important thought leaders in our field have described and documented that consumers use possessions and brands to create their self-identities and communicate these selves to others and to themselves (e.g., Belk 1988; Fournier 1998; McCracken 1989). Although early research tended to focus on broad conceptual issues surrounding consumers and their sense of self, recent research takes a more granular approach, breaking down the relationship between identity concerns and consumption to look at the effects of specific self-related goals and of different aspects of self-identity on consumer behavior. For example, why would someone drive his Prius to work but drive his BMW to a blind date? Impression management? Value expression? Need for affiliation? The current collection of articles on self-identity and consumer behavior (appearing over the last two years) complements and adds to a growing body of work that has already appeared in JCR. Five of these six articles focus on specific relationships between self-identity-related goals and consumer behavior, exploring needs such as affiliation and distinctiveness, self-verification, and self-affirmation. The sixth paper explores the effect of identity activation on memory. The experiments in these articles fall into two paradigms. First, researchers threaten an aspect of self-identity to investigate how consumers engage in restorative behavior. In this paradigm, researchers may also allow consumers to bolster an aspect of selfidentity to mitigate the need for self-repair. Second, researchers measure or manipulate (prime) a particular aspect of self-identity or a particular identity-related goal to examine the effect on subsequent consumer behavior. Taken altogether, the papers in this collection provide us with a more nuanced understanding of consumer behavior as it relates to self-identity. While this collection of recent articles moves us forward, the wide variety of self-identity goals and countless aspects of self-identity make this an extremely fruitful area for future research. The first article, by White, Argo, and Sengupta, finds that consumers respond differently to self-threats depending on their self-construal. When independent selves are salient, a threat to the self activates the need to bolster self-worth through dissociation from identity-linked products, lowering preferences for such products. When interdependent selves are active, self-threat activates the need to belong, which manifests itself in an increased association with identity-linked products, enhancing product preferences. These findings persist across many different operationalizations of self-construal. Thus, how consumers restore their sense of self after a threat depends on which self-goal is activated, which in turn depends on the consumers’ self-construal. Next, the article by Townsend and Sood explores how the choice of an aesthetically pleasing product can affirm a consumer’s threatened sense of self. Rather than identify a specific social identity, the researchers link aesthetics to personal values. The choice of a highly aesthetic product can boost one’s self-esteem by confirming one’s value for beauty. The researchers show that the choice of a highly aesthetic product meets consumers’ needs to self-affirm after a self-threat by replicating the positive effects of selfaffirmation on a variety of downstream variables established in psychological research. For example, choosing a well-designed product increased openness to counterarguments and reduced commitment toward a failing course of action. The third article, by Ward and Broniarczyk, also falls into the self-threat paradigm. Here, the threat arises from a naturally occurring consumer setting: gift giving. Identity-incongruent gifts to close friends threaten consumers’ sense of self, while incongruent gifts to distant friends do not. Close friends are

People often get unnecessarily mired in trivial decisions. Four studies support a metacognitive account for this painful phenomenon. Our central premise is that people use subjective experiences of difficulty while making a decision as a cue to how much further time and effort to spend. People generally associate important decisions with difficulty. Consequently, if a decision feels unexpectedly difficult, due to even incidental reasons, people may draw the reverse inference that it is also important and consequently increase the amount of time and effort they expend. Ironically, this process is particularly likely for decisions that initially seemed unimportant because people expect them to be easier (whereas important decisions are expected to be difficult to begin with). Our studies demonstrate that unexpected difficulty not only causes people to get caught up in unimportant decisions but also to voluntarily seek more options, which can increase decision difficulty even further.

Assortment size has been shown to influence whether consumers make a choice, but could it also influence what they choose? Five studies demonstrate that because choosing from larger assortments is often more difficult, it leads people to select options that are easier to justify. Virtues and utilitarian necessities are generally easier to justify than indulgences; consequently, choosing from larger assortments often shifts choice from vices to virtues and from hedonic to utilitarian options. These effects reverse, however, when situational factors provide accessible reasons to indulge, underscoring the role of justification. Implications for choice difficulty and justification processes are discussed.

This research examines how identity-based interventions can improve consumer health. Results of laboratory and field experiments reveal that associating risky health behaviors with a social identity people do not want to signal can contaminate the behaviors and lead consumers to make healthier choices. College freshman reported consuming less alcohol (experiment 2), and restaurant patrons selected less fattening food (experiment 3), when drinking alcohol and eating junk food were presented as markers of avoidance groups. These findings demonstrate that identity-based interventions can shift the identities associated with real-world behaviors, thereby improving the health of populations.

Research on priming effects has shown that primes with widely shared associations (i.e., stereotypes) affect the subsequent behavior of people in consistent ways (i.e., acting stereotypically). In this article, we present two experiments that show that the same primed construct can have different effects on the subsequent choices of different groups of people. These differences in effects are attributable to the groups having different prime associations. These results highlight the importance of understanding unique, personal associations to primes and suggest that segmentation is also important for predicting nonconsciously influenced choices.

We propose that consumers often make choices that diverge from those of others to ensure that they effectively communicate desired identities. Consistent with this identity-signaling perspective, four studies illustrate that consumers are more likely to diverge from majorities, or members of other social groups, in product domains that are seen as symbolic of identity (e.g., music or hairstyles, rather than backpacks or stereos). In identity domains, participants avoided options preferred by majorities and abandoned preferences shared with majorities. The social group associated with a product influenced choice more in identity domains and when a given product was framed as identity relevant. People diverge, in part, to avoid communicating undesired identities.

The notion of conspicuous consumption (Veblen 1899) suggests that consumers spend lavishly on goods to that symbolize status and visibly communicate wealth and status to others. Analysis of multiple product categories, however, indicates an inverted-U relationship between price and the presence of logos or brand names: High-end products are actually less likely to contain such clear brand markers. Further, experimental studies show that high-end products which use more subtle markers are harder for observers to recognize, more likely to be perceived as cheaper generic equivalents, and less likely to be perceived as status symbols. This research explains this seeming inconsistency through social identity and distinction. Mainstream consumers prefer explicitly marked products which are widely recognizable symbols of prestige. Consequently, insiders prefer subtle markers that differentiate them from the mainstream and thus facilitate communication with others in the know. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the communication of identity, brand management, and the success of cultural products.

How do consumers reconcile conflicting motives for social group identification and individual uniqueness? Four studies demonstrate that consumers simultaneously pursue assimilation and differentiation goals on different dimensions of a single choice: they assimilate to their group on one dimension (by conforming on identity-signaling attributes such as brand) while differentiating on another dimension (distinguishing themselves on uniqueness attributes such as color). Desires to communicate social identity lead consumers to conform on choice dimensions that are strongly associated with their group, particularly in identity-relevant consumer categories such as clothing. Higher needs for uniqueness lead consumers to differentiate within groups by choosing less popular options among those that are associated with their group. By examining both between- and within-group levels of comparison and using multidimensional decisions, this research provides insight into how multiple identity motives jointly influence consumer choice.