Journal of Consumer Research

Fisher, Matthew; Newman, George E; Dhar, Ravi

2018 Journal of Consumer Research

doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucy017

Across many different contexts, individuals consult customer ratings to inform their purchase decisions. The present studies document a novel phenomenon, dubbed “the binary bias,” which plays an important role in how individuals evaluate customer reviews. Our main proposal is that people tend to make a categorical distinction between positive ratings (e.g., 4s and 5s) and negative ratings (e.g., 1s and 2s). However, within those bins, people do not sufficiently distinguish between more extreme values (5s and 1s) and less extreme values (4s and 2s). As a result, people’s subjective representations of distributions are heavily impacted by the extent to which those distributions are imbalanced (having more 4s and 5s vs. more 1s and 2s). Ten studies demonstrate that this effect has important consequences for people’s product evaluations and purchase decisions. Additionally, we show this effect is not driven by the salience of particular bars, unrealistic distributions, certain statistical properties of a distribution, or diminishing subjective utility. Furthermore, we demonstrate this phenomenon’s relevance to other domains besides product reviews, and discuss the implications for existing research on how people integrate conflicting evidence.

Kupor, Daniella; Tormala, Zakary

2018 Journal of Consumer Research

doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucy021

When people seek to persuade others to purchase a particular product or service, they often give an extremely favorable review of it as a means of doing so. Despite the intuitive appeal of this strategy, the current research demonstrates that a moderately positive review is sometimes more persuasive. In particular, when the perceived default evaluation in a given context is extremely positive, moderately positive reviews that deviate from that default can become more persuasive. In contrast, when the perceived default is moderately positive, extremely positive reviews tend to be more persuasive. This deviation effect occurs because reviews that deviate from the perceived default are believed to be more thoughtful, and thus accurate, which enhances their persuasive impact. This effect is demonstrated in eight experiments set in a diverse range of consumer contexts.

Consiglio, Irene; De Angelis, Matteo; Costabile, Michele

2018 Journal of Consumer Research

doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucy009

This research investigates whether a contextual factor—social density, defined as the number of people in a given area—influences consumers’ propensity to share information. We propose that high- (vs. low-) density settings make consumers experience a loss of perceived control, which in turn makes them more likely to engage in word of mouth to restore it. Six studies, conducted online as well as in laboratory and naturalistic settings, provide support for this hypothesis. We demonstrate that social density increases the likelihood of sharing information with others and that a person’s chronic need for control moderates this effect. Consistent with the proposed process, the effect of social density on information sharing is attenuated when participants have the opportunity to restore control before they engage in word of mouth. We also provide evidence that sharing information restores perceived control in high-density environments, and we disentangle the effect of social density from that of physical proximity.

Warren, Caleb; Barsky, Adam; Mcgraw, A Peter

2018 Journal of Consumer Research

doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucy015

Consumers regularly experience humor while buying and using products, procuring services, and engaging in various consumption experiences, whether watching a movie or dining with colleagues. Despite an expansive literature on how humor influences advertisers’ communication goals, far less is known about how humor appreciation and comedy production influence the likelihood of attaining various consumption goals, from experiencing pleasure and making better decisions to staying healthy and building relationships. Drawing on a wide range of findings from multiple disciplines, we develop a framework for understanding and investigating the different ways in which experiencing and creating laughter and amusement help—and sometimes hurt—consumers reach their goals. The framework provides key insights into the nuanced role of humor and comedy in consumer welfare.

Veresiu, Ela; Giesler, Markus

2018 Journal of Consumer Research

doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucy019

Prior consumer research has investigated the consumer behavior, identity work, and sources of ethnic group conflict among various immigrants and indigenes. However, by continuing to focus on consumers’ lived experiences, researchers lack theoretical clarity on the institutional shaping of these individuals as ethnic consumers, which has important implications for sustaining neocolonial power imbalances between colonized (immigrant-sending) and colonizing (immigrant-receiving) cultures. We bring sociological theories of neoliberal governmentality and multiculturalism to bear on an in-depth analysis of the contemporary Canadian marketplace to reveal our concept of market-mediated multiculturation, which we define as an institutional mechanism for attenuating ethnic group conflicts through which immigrant-receiving cultures fetishize strangers and their strangeness in their commodification of differences, and the existence of inequalities between ethnicities is occluded. Specifically, our findings unpack four interrelated consumer socialization strategies (envisioning, exemplifying, equipping, and embodying) through which institutional actors across different fields (politics, market research, retail, and consumption) shape an ethnic consumer subject. We conclude with a critical discussion of extant scholarship on consumer acculturation as being complicit in sustaining entrenched colonialist biases.

Thompson, Craig J; Henry, Paul C; Bardhi, Fleura

2018 Journal of Consumer Research

doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucy018

Culturally oriented consumer research has predominantly been framed by two ideal types of reflexivity, which we characterize as existential and critical reflexivity. Drawing from our research on divorced women who have been displaced from their domestically oriented, middle-class lifestyles, we develop an alternative conceptualization—reactive reflexivity—that highlights a different relationship among consumer agency, social structures, and identity goals and practices. Rather than embracing their post-divorce lifestyles as a revitalizing challenge (per existential reflexivity) or liberation from a constraining gender role (per critical reflexivity), our participants felt estranged from their current lifestyle and reflexively viewed their pre-divorce lifestyle as a structure of relative empowerment that had afforded emotional, aesthetic, and status-oriented benefits. In reflexive response to these perceived lifestyle discontinuities, they engaged in discordant practices of taste that sought to insulate their aesthetic predispositions from structurally imposed socioeconomic constraints and, ultimately, to accomplish a reactive identity goal of regaining their displaced status as middle-class homemakers. We discuss the implications of our analysis for theorizations of consumer taste and the relationships between gender ideologies and reflexive consumption practices.

Shen, Hao; Sengupta, Jaideep

2018 Journal of Consumer Research

doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucy011

This research merges insights from the communications literature with that on the self-brand connection to examine a novel question: how does speaking versus writing about a liked brand influence the communicator’s own later reactions to that brand? Our conceptualization argues that because oral communication involves a greater focus on social interaction with the communication recipient than does written communication, oral communicators are more likely to express self-related thoughts than are writers, thereby increasing their self-brand connection (SBC). We also assess the implications of this conceptualization, including the identification of theoretically derived boundary conditions for the speech/writing difference, and the downstream effects of heightened SBC. Results from five studies provide support for our predictions, informing both the basic literature on communications, and the body of work on consumer word of mouth.

Hossain, Mehdi Tanzeeb

2018 Journal of Consumer Research

doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucy020

This research examines how people’s mental accounting is influenced by their thinking style (analytic vs. holistic). Mental accounting literature shows that people mentally allocate their resources into certain accounts and track expenses against them. The current research, however, finds that while analytic thinkers show such “mental labeling effect,” the holistic thinkers’ mental accounting system is flexible. Specifically, analytic thinkers limit their expenses of rebate money to similar category purchases, whereas holistic thinkers show preference for both similar and dissimilar category items (studies 1 and 2). Study 3 shows the mental accounting divergence across analytic- and holistic-thinking groups by examining how they use mental accounting rules in spending gift cards (vs. cash). Study 4 exhibits the underlying psychological process in showing that this effect is attributed to differences in categorization flexibility between the analytic- and holistic-thinking groups. In addition, the above effects are moderated by product type. The divergence in mental accounting between analytic and holistic thinkers is mostly evident in utilitarian (vs. hedonic) consumption instances. Study 5 provides further insights into the moderation effect. The implications of these findings include divergence in cross-category effects of price promotions, and the effect of cross-market discounts between analytic and holistic thinkers.

Van Kerckhove, Anneleen; Pandelaere, Mario

2018 Journal of Consumer Research

doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucy013

Many apps require consumers to evaluate products by swiping them to the right or left. This work explores whether product orientation affects the product evaluations communicated by swiping movements, compared with those made by pressing onscreen buttons. Building on stimulus-response compatibility (SRC) theory, which suggests that irrelevant product display features can activate certain behavioral responses when the product display and the behavioral response share a common dimension, this study predicts that the horizontal direction (left to right or right to left) cued by a product’s orientation should facilitate a swipe movement in the congruent direction. Five studies indicate that when people use swiping movements to evaluate objects, their evaluations are influenced by the object’s orientation, whereas evaluations conveyed through button presses reveal no orientation effect. The orientation effect for swiping responses also disappears when the objects contain a direction cue that is incongruent with their orientation, and when only one directional swipe movement is defined as a valid response option. Moreover, the effect holds for subjective evaluations but is eliminated for objective judgments, when these involve no time pressure.

Schroll, Roland; Schnurr, Benedikt; Grewal, Dhruv

2018 Journal of Consumer Research

doi: 10.1093/jcr/ucy014

The loss of a sense of humanness that stems from increasing mechanization, automation, and digitization gives firms an impetus to develop effective ways to humanize products. On the basis of knowledge activation theory, this article systematically investigates a novel humanization approach: the use of typefaces that appear to be handwritten. Across several laboratory and field studies, the authors provide evidence of the positive effect of handwritten typefaces, reveal the mechanisms that lead to these outcomes, and outline some boundary conditions. Specifically, the results show that handwritten typefaces create perceptions of human presence, which lead to more favorable product evaluations (and behavior) by enhancing the emotional attachment between the consumer and the product. However, these effects are mitigated for brands to which consumers already feel a sense of attachment. Finally, the effects reverse when the products are functionally positioned or functional in nature. The present article thus extends understanding of humanization processes and provides guidelines for how and when brands should use handwritten typefaces.