Previous research finds that consumers classify in-group (but not out-group) members as integral to their social-self. The present research is the first to propose and find that consumers also classify owned (but not unowned) objects as integral to their personal-self (Experiment 1).
This chapter provides a critical review of the emerging field of consumer experience and experiential marketing.
Substantial evidence suggests that discount factors vary significantly between individuals and that this variation exists between members of the same household. This paper introduces a model of consumption and savings in which household members discount the utility from their future consumption at different rates. Each period household members bargain efficiently over their consumption and saving choices.
Studies of social judgment found that the way bicultural individuals respond to cultural cues depends on their cultural identity structure. Biculturals differ in the degree to which they represent their two cultural identities as integrated (vs. nonintegrated), which is assessed as high (vs. low) bicultural identity integration (BII), respectively. High BII individuals assimilate to cultural cues, yet low BII individuals contrast to these cues. The current studies reveal that this dynamic extends to consumer behavior and elucidate the underlying psychological mechanism.
As noted by Samuelson in his introduction of the Strong Independence axiom, essentially the same set of axioms rationalize an Expected Utility representation of preferences over lotteries with (i) a scalar payoff such as money and (ii) vector payoffs such as quantities of different commodities. Assume a two-good setting, where an individual's preferences satisfy the Strong Independence axiom for lotteries paying off quantities of each good separately.
The diagnosticity of feelings in judgment depends not only on their representativeness and relevance, but also on people's trust in their feelings in general. Trust in feelings is the degree to which individuals believe that their feelings generally point toward the "right" direction in judgments and decisions.
Over the course of a repeated game, players often exhibit learning in selecting their best response. Research in economics and marketing has identified two key types of learning rules: belief and reinforcement. It has been shown that players use either one of these learning rules or a combination of them, as in the Experience-Weighted Attraction (EWA) model. Accounting for such learning may help in understanding and predicting the outcomes of games.
The modal scientific approach in consumer research is to deduce hypotheses from existing theory about relationships between theoretic constructs, test those relationships experimentally, and then show “process” evidence via moderation and mediation. This approach has its advantages, but other styles of research also have much to offer. We distinguish among alternative research styles in terms of their philosophical orientation (theory-driven vs. phenomenon-driven) and their intended contribution (understanding a substantive phenomenon vs. building or expanding theory).
In recent years academic research has focused on understanding and modeling the survey response process. This paper examines an understudied systematic response tendency in surveys: the extent to which observed responses are subject to state dependence, i.e., response carryover from one item to another independent of specific item content. We develop a statistical model that simultaneously accounts for state dependence, item content, and scale usage heterogeneity.