JCR Cover
November 5, 2013
Follow us on Twitter


=
Featured Media
The Sydney Morning Herald



 





Journal of Consumer Research
Current Issue Highlights


Extended Self in a Digital World

Russell W. Belk

The extended self was proposed in 1988. Since it was formulated, many technological changes have dramatically affected the way we consume, present ourselves, and communicate. This conceptual update seeks to revitalize the concept, incorporate the impacts of digitization, and provide an understanding of consumer sense of self in today's technological environment. It is necessarily a work in progress, for the digital environment and our behavior within it continue to evolve. But some important changes are already clear. Five changes with digital consumption are considered that impact the nature of self and the nature of possessions. Needed modifications and additions to the extended self are outlined, and directions for future research are suggested. The digital world opens a host of new means for self-extension, using many new consumption objects to reach a vastly broader audience. Even though this calls for certain reformulations, the basic concept of the extended self remains vital.
 
Volume 40, Number 3, October 2013
DOI: 10.1086/671052

 

Selected Media Mentions

 

Slate   

 

From embarrassing Facebook posts to controversial Tweets, why are consumers oversharing online?
EurekAlert!  
 
 

The Endowment Effect as Self-Enhancement in Response to Threat

Promothesh Chatterjee 
Caglar Irmak 
Randall L. Rose 

The discrepancy between willingness to pay and willingness to accept for a product, referred to as the endowment effect, has been investigated and replicated across various domains because of its implications for rational decision making. The authors assume that implicit processes operate in the endowment effect and propose an explanation that is derived from the two main accounts of the effect, ownership and loss aversion. Based on the implicit egotism and self-affirmation literatures, the model argues that selling is perceived as an implicit self-threat and that sellers, as a part of their automatic defense mechanism, respond to this self-threat by enhancing the value of the self-associated object. Five studies test these conjectures and provide support for the proposed model
 
Volume 40, Number 3, October 2013
DOI: 10.1086/671344

 

Selected Media Mentions

 

The Telegraph  

 

Buying a used car? Be sure to flatter the seller
EurekAlert!  
 
 

Single-Option Aversion

Daniel Mochon

This article documents single-option aversion, an increase in consumer desire to search when faced with a single option. This effect can lead to a product being chosen more often when competing alternatives are included in the choice set, contrary to various rational models of search, as well as to recent research on choice conflict showing that additional options can lead to higher deferral rates. A series of lab studies document this effect, differentiate it from other context effects, and test some of its boundary conditions. Single-option aversion is not driven by the information provided by the additional options, the desire to search is critical for this effect to occur, and the effects of single-option aversion are not limited to the immediate choice set. These results have both practical and theoretical implications for the understanding of consumer search and choice deferral. 
 
Volume 40, Number 3, October 2013
DOI: 10.1086/671343

 

Selected Media Mentions

 

Science Daily 

 

Why are consumers less likely to buy a product when it's the only option?
EurekAlert!  
 
 

The Social Context of Temporal Sequences: Why First Impressions Shape Shared Experiences

Rajesh Bhargave
Nicole Votolato Montgomery

Many hedonic experiences consist of a temporal sequence of episodes, such as viewing a series of paintings in an art gallery. These events may be shared with others (joint context) or experienced alone (solo context). However, past research has mostly studied solo contexts, finding that consumers evaluate experiences with an improving trend more positively than those with a declining trend, due to a recency effect in memory-based evaluations. The present research investigates the moderating role of social context on global evaluations of experiences. Consumers instructed to undergo hedonic experiences presented as an improving or declining trend replicated the greater evaluation of improving sequences in solo contexts, but demonstrated an attenuation of this preference in joint contexts. These differences occur because joint experiences trigger a more holistic (less analytic) processing style, contributing to primacy-based assimilation, in which evaluations of later episodes assimilate to first impressions (evaluations of the start).
 
Volume 40, Number 3, October 2013
DOI: 10.1086/671053

 

Selected Media Mentions

 

Phys.Org  

 

Why do appetizers matter more when you're dining out with friends?
EurekAlert!  
 
 



 


The Journal of Consumer Research is sponsored by: