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The article discusses the relevance of research previously published in the journal and other consumer research journals to the outcomes of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the June 23, 2016 Brexit referendum in Great Britain. Topics include the impact of motivated reasoning and motivated forgetting on election predictions, the impacts of anxiety and pessimism on voting decision, and the relation of consumer research to purported fake news.

This research examines how the body type of consumers affects the food consumption of other consumers around them. We find that consumers anchor on the quantities others around them select but that these portions are adjusted according to the body type of the other consumer. We find that people choose a larger portion following another consumer who first selects a large quantity but that this portion is significantly smaller if the other is obese than if she is thin. We also find that the adjustment is more pronounced for consumers who are low in appearance self-esteem and that it is attenuated under cognitive load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the effects of incidental similarity shared between a salesperson and a potential customer. We show that an incidental similarity, such as a shared birthday or birthplace, can result in a more favorable attitude and a higher intention to purchase. We argue and find that the need for connectedness underlies its persuasive effects in an interpersonal context. In addition, we show that the valence of the salesperson's behavior and the possibility of an extended service relationship moderate the process. When the need for connectedness is mitigated, the positive effects of incidental similarity can be lost or even reversed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, the authors examine the impact of imagination-focused visualization on the evaluation of really new products (RNPs)—that is, products that provide novel benefits but involve high learning costs. They compare imagination-focused visualization with memory-focused visualization and demonstrate that an imaginative focus leads to higher evaluations of an RNP but has no effect on the evaluation of incrementally new products, which involve continuous innovations that are easier to understand. They find that the underlying mechanism for this effect is imagination's impact on the perceived value of new benefits rather than on the learning costs. Furthermore, they show that the advantage of an imaginative focus is not simply due to the increased focus on product benefits, because imagination still leads to higher product evaluation than memory-focused visualization, even if participants in both conditions are asked to think about product benefits exclusively. Finally, an explicit focus on learning costs while using an imaginative approach draws attention away from product benefits and attenuates the advantage of imagination on product evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research finds that consumers exhibit weak self-brand connections to brands associated with out-groups. We extend this work by demonstrating that products associated with dissociative reference groups have a greater impact on consumers' negative self-brand connections, product evaluations, and choices than do products associated with out-groups more generally. In addition, both situational priming and chronic identification with one's in-group moderate the avoidance of products associated with dissociative reference groups. Further, we demonstrate the conditions under which dissociative influence does not occur and discuss the implications of the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented for several previously published articles on consumer research, together with abstracts of these articles, discussing topics such as individual food decision making, consumer behavior and product labels, and the link between perceptual biases and overconsumption.

In their paper, Li, Gordon and Gelfand (this issue) introduced the Tightness–Looseness (T–L) framework to the consumer domain, and offered several ideas on how this framework could be applied to consumer behavior. In this commentary, we examine the T–L framework through the consumer lens and discuss how the uniqueness of the consumption context can refine and broaden this psychological framework. We identify four questions that aim to enrich our discussion of this framework from the perspective of consumer research, and to motivate future research questions. Specifically, we consider 1) how the interplay between the tightness/looseness of a culture and its effect on consumer behavior can be a bi-directional relationship, 2) how variances in T–L in different consumption subcultures and aspects of society (e.g., economic, political) can impact consumer behavior, 3) how the examination of T–L at different stages in the consumption process is a relevant and important question to consider, and 4) how T–L may contribute to further investigation and understanding of punishment toward business and consumer norm violators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]