Journal of Consumer Research
    
Ahead of Print Highlights
May 13, 2014

Something to Chew On: The Effects of Oral Haptics on Mastication, Orosensory Perception, and Calorie Estimation

Dipayan Biswas
Courtney Szocs
Aradhna Krishna
Donald R. Lehmann 

 

This research examines how oral haptics (due to hardness/softness or roughness/smoothness) related to foods influence mastication (degree of chewing) and orosensory perception (orally perceived fattiness), which in turn influence calorie estimation, subsequent food choices, and overall consumption volume. Consistent with theories related to mastication and orosensory perception, oral haptics related to soft (vs. hard) and smooth (vs. rough) foods lead to higher calorie estimations. This "oral haptics-calorie estimation" (OHCE) effect is driven by the lower mastication effort and the higher orosensory perception for soft (vs. hard) and smooth (vs. rough) foods. Further, the OHCE effect has downstream behavioral outcomes in terms of influencing subsequent food choices between healthy versus unhealthy options as well as overall consumption volume. Moreover, mindful calorie estimation moderates the effects of oral haptics on consumption volume.   


DOI: 10.1086/675739
Published Online March 19, 2014 

We'll Be Honest, This Won't Be the Best Article You'll Ever Read: The Use of Dispreferred Markers in Word-of-Mouth Communication

Ryan Hamilton
Kathleen D. Vohs
Ann L. McGill 


Consumers value word-of-mouth communications in large part because customer reviews are more likely to include negative information about a product or service than are communications originating from the marketer. Despite the fact that negative information is frequently valued by those receiving it, baldly declaring negative information may come with social costs to both communicator and receiver. For this reason, communicators sometimes soften pronouncements of bad news by couching them in dispreferred markers, including phrases such as, "I'll be honest," "God bless it," or "I don't want to be mean, but ..." The present work identified and tested a phenomenon termed the dispreferred marker effect, in which consumers evaluate communicators who use dispreferred markers as more credible and likable than communicators who assert the same information without dispreferred markers. The dispreferred marker effect can spill over to evaluations of the product being reviewed, increasing willingness to pay and influencing evaluations of the credibility and likability of the evaluated product's personality.


DOI: 10.1086/675926
Published Online April 1, 2014 

When Identity Marketing Backfires: Consumer Agency in Identity Expression

Amit Bhattacharjee
Jonah Berger
Geeta Menon 

  

Consumers prefer brands positioned around identities they possess. Accordingly, the consumer identity literature emphasizes the importance of a clear fit between brands and target identities, suggesting that identity marketing that explicitly links brands to consumer identity should be most effective. In contrast, the authors demonstrate that explicit identity-marketing messages can backfire. Messages that explicitly connect a particular brand to consumer identity increase the salience of external determinants of behavior, reducing consumer perceptions of agency in identity expression. Hence, compared to messages that merely reference consumer identity, messages that explicitly define identity expression reduce purchase likelihood, despite more clearly conveying identity relevance. These findings highlight the need to consider consumer need for agency in addition to their drive for self-definition and expression through consumption, offering a foundation to examine both the risks and the rewards of identity marketing.  


DOI: 10.1086/676125
Published Online April 4, 2014 

Accepting Inequality Deters Responsibility: How Power Distance Decreases Charitable Behavior

Karen Page Winterich
Yinlong Zhang  


Could power distance, which is the extent that inequality is expected and accepted, explain why some countries and consumers are more likely to engage in prosocial behavior, including donations of both money and time? Higher power distance results in weaker perceptions of responsibility to aid others, which decreases charitable behavior. Both correlational and causal evidence is provided in a series of studies that examine country-level power distance as well as individual and temporarily salient power distance belief. Consistent with the mediating role of perceived responsibility, results reveal that uncontrollable needs and communal relationship norms are boundary conditions that overcome the negative effect of power distance on charitable behavior. These results explain differences in charitable giving across cultures and provide implications for nonprofit organizations soliciting donations.    


DOI: 10.1086/675927
Published Online March 19, 2014

Judging a Part by the Size of Its Whole: The Category Size Bias in Probability Judgments

Mathew S. Isaac
Aaron R. Brough  

  

Whereas prior research has found that consumer probability judgments are sensitive to the number of categories into which a set of possible outcomes is grouped, categorization can also bias predictions when the number of categories is fixed. Specifically, the experiments document a category size bias in which consumers perceive an outcome as more likely to occur when it is categorized with many rather than few alternative possibilities, even when the grouping criterion is irrelevant and the objective probability of each outcome is identical. For example, consumers irrationally predicted being more likely to win a lottery if their ticket color matched many (vs. few) of the other gamblers' tickets -- and wagered nearly 25% more as a result. Consumer perceptions of risk and probability are influenced not only by the number of categories into which possible outcomes are classified but also by category size.  


DOI: 10.1086/676126
Published Online March 28, 2014 


Decisions at a Distance

(Spring 2014)

Curator: Rebecca Hamilton

The Politics of Consumer Identity Work (Autumn 2013)

Curator: Craig J. Thompson

Curator: Rebecca Ratner

      
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