JCR Cover
October 23, 2012

    

 



Journal of Consumer Research
Highlights from Two Years Ago

You Like What I Like, but I Don't Like What You Like: Uniqueness Motivations in Product Preferences
Caglar Irmak

Beth Vallen

Sankar Sen

Consumers often gauge their own and others' preferences for products through social comparisons. This research examines the role of consumer need for uniqueness (CNFU) in two common social comparisons: projection and introjection. Consumers project (i.e., rely on their own preferences to estimate those of others), regardless of their CNFU. However, high-CNFU consumers are less likely than low-CNFU ones to introject (i.e., rely on estimates of others' preferences to gauge their own). Moreover, alleviating the introjection-induced threat to the high-CNFU consumer self-concept by having them deliberate on their differentness from others increases their likelihood of introjection. Together, these findings confirm the authors' basic contention that the process underlying introjection is more motivational in nature than that underlying projection.

Volume 37, Number 3, October 2010

DOI: 10.1086/653139

 

Selected Media Mentions  

  


Feeling Mixed but Not Torn: The Moderating Role of Construal Level in Mixed Emotions Appeals
Jiewen Hong

Angela Y. Lee 


This research examines how construal level (i.e., how abstractly or concretely people represent information in memory) affects consumer responses to mixed emotions appeals. The results of five studies show that, consistent with prior research, participants experienced discomfort when they encountered mixed emotions appeals and developed less favorable attitudes toward the ad relative to pure positive emotional appeals, but this was the case only for those who construed information at a concrete, low level. Participants who construed information at an abstract, high level did not experience much discomfort; hence, they found mixed emotions and pure positive emotional appeals equally persuasive. The authors further demonstrate that the chronic construal level associated with people's age and cultural background underlies the moderating effects of age and culture on consumer attitudes toward mixed emotions appeals documented in prior research.

Volume 37, Number 3, October 2010

DOI: 10.1086/653492    

 

Motivational Compatibility and Choice Conflict
Jonathan Levav

Ran Kivetz

Cecile K. Cho


For most forms of conscious consumer choice, product attributes serve as the means that consumers use to accomplish their goals. Because there is competition between products in the marketplace, consumption decisions typically present conflict between means to achieve a goal. In this article, the authors examine the consequences of conflict between regulatory means on consumer decisions and show that its resolution depends on whether the means -- that is, the attributes -- are compatible with the consumer's regulatory orientation. Compatibility with more than one attribute arouses acute decision conflict and evokes decision processes that result in a pronounced tendency to make counternormative choices. Incompatibility with a product's attributes leads to choosing extreme alternatives, which suggests the presence of a "pick-your-poison" effect. The authors test their hypotheses using the attraction, compromise, and deferral paradigms. They close by discussing their results in the context of the Lewinian view of decision conflict.

Volume 37, Number 3, October 2010

DOI: 10.1086/653044



Evaluative Conditioning Procedures and the Resilience of Conditioned Brand Attitudes
Steven Sweldens

Stijn M. J. Van Osselaer

Chris Janiszewski  


Changing brand attitudes by pairing a brand with affectively laden stimuli such as celebrity endorsers or pleasant pictures is called evaluative conditioning. This attitude change can occur in two ways, depending on how brands and affective stimuli are presented. Attitude change can result from establishing a memory link between brand and affective stimulus (indirect attitude change) or from direct "affect transfer" from affective stimulus to brand (direct attitude change). Direct attitude change is significantly more robust than indirect attitude change, for example, to changes in the valence of affective stimuli (unconditioned stimulus revaluation: e.g., endorsers falling from grace), to interference by subsequent information (e.g., advertising clutter), and to persuasion knowledge activation (e.g., consumer suspicion about being influenced). Indirect evaluative conditioning requires repeated presentations of a brand with the same affective stimulus. Direct evaluative conditioning requires simultaneous presentation of a brand with different affective stimuli.

Volume 37, Number 3, October 2010

DOI: 10.1086/653656  

 

 


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