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Journal of Consumer Research
Current Issue Highlights
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Egocentric Categorization and Product Judgment: Seeing Your Traits in What You Own (and Their Opposite in What You Don't) Liad Weiss
Gita V. Johar
Previous research uses categorization principles to analyze the interplay between individuals and groups. The present research uniquely employs categorization principles to analyze the interplay between individuals and products. It proposes that consumers classify owned (but not unowned) products as integral to their personal self. Consequently, consumers judge product traits (masculinity) as consistent with their own traits (assimilation) if they own the product, but as inconsistent with their own traits (contrast) if they interact with the product but do not own it, even when owning the product is nondiagnostic of its properties (following random ownership assignment). For example, less creative consumers who enter a drawing for an iPhone may judge it as less creative (assimilation) if they win the product, but as more creative (contrast) if they do not win the product. Moderators of these effects are identified, and their theoretical and substantive implications are discussed.
Volume 40, Number 1, June 2013
DOI: 10.1086/669330
Selected Media Mentions Business Insider
Science Daily Is the iPad creative? It depends on who's buying it
EurekAlert! |
The Megaphone Effect: Taste and Audience in Fashion Blogging Edward F. McQuarrie
Jessica Miller
Barbara J. Phillips
The megaphone effect refers to the fact that the web makes a mass audience potentially available to ordinary consumers. The article focuses on fashion bloggers who acquire an audience by iterated displays of aesthetic discrimination applied to the selection and combination of clothing. The authors offer a theoretical account of bloggers' success in terms of the accumulation of cultural capital via public displays of taste and describe how the exercise of taste produces economic rewards and social capital for these bloggers. The article situates fashion blogging as one instance of a larger phenomenon that includes online reviews and user-generated content and extends to the consumption of food and home decor as well as clothing. In these instances of the megaphone effect, a select few ordinary consumers are able to acquire an audience without the institutional mediation historically required.
Volume 40, Number 1, June 2013DOI: 10.1086/669042
Selected Media Mentions |
Looking into the Future: A Match between Self-View and Temporal Distance Gerri Spassova
Angela Y. Lee
Representing an event in abstract (vs. concrete) terms and as happening in the distant (vs. proximal) future has been shown to have important consequences for cognition and motivation. Less is known about factors that influence construal level and perceived temporal distance. The present research identifies one such factor and explores the implications for persuasion. An independent self-view is associated with abstract representations of future events and with perceiving these events as happening in the more distant future, whereas an interdependent self-view is associated with concrete representations of future events and with perceiving these events as happening in the more proximal future. Furthermore, a match (vs. mismatch) between the temporal frame of an advertisement and the self-view of the recipient leads to systematic changes in advertisement effectiveness and product appeal. These results add to the construal level theory and the self literatures and have practical implications for advertisers.
Volume 40, Number 1, June 2013
DOI: 10.1086/669145 Selected Media Mentions Science Daily
Phys.Org Targeting diet products: Why are more independent consumers better at delaying gratification?
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Magnitude, Time, and Risk Differ Similarly between Joint and Single Evaluations Christopher K. Hsee
Jiao Zhang
Liangyan Wang
Shirley Zhang
Arguably, all choice options involve three basic attributes: magnitude (outcome size), time (of occurrence), and probability (of occurrence), and are evaluated in one of two basic evaluation modes: JE (joint evaluation, involving comparison of multiple options) and SE (single evaluation, without comparison). This research explores how reactions to the three basic attributes (and their associated functions -- utility, time discounting, and probability weighting) vary between the two basic evaluation modes. Nine studies, tapping diverse contexts, yield two general results: first, for all these attributes, consumers are more sensitive to variations near endpoints (zero magnitude, no delay, and 0% or 100% probability) than in other regions, and this differential sensitivity is more pronounced in SE than in JE. Second, when faced with options involving a trade-off between magnitude and time (delay) or between magnitude and probability (risk), consumers are both more delay averse and more risk averse in SE than in JE.
Volume 40, Number 1, June 2013
DOI: 10.1086/669484
Selected Media Mentions Science Codex
Phys.Org Comparison investing: Why are consumers more willing to take risks when they can compare products?
EurekAlert! |
