Highlights from Two Years Ago
February 10, 2015
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Taste Regimes and Market-Mediated Practice
Zeynep Arsel Jonathan Bean
Taste has been conceptualized as a boundary-making mechanism, yet there is limited theory on how it enters into daily practice. In this article, the authors develop a practice-based framework of taste through qualitative and quantitative analysis of a popular home design blog, interviews with blog participants, and participant observation. A taste regime is defined as a discursively constructed normative system that orchestrates practice in an aesthetically oriented culture of consumption. Taste regimes are perpetuated by marketplace institutions such as magazines, websites, and transmedia brands. The authors show how a taste regime regulates practice through continuous engagement. By integrating three dispersed practices -- problematization, ritualization, and instrumentalization -- a taste regime shapes preferences for objects, the doings performed with objects, and what meanings are associated with objects. This study demonstrates how aesthetics is linked to practical knowledge and becomes materialized through everyday consumption.
DOI: 10.1086/666595
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Goal Reversion in Consumer Choice
Kurt A. Carlson Margaret G. Meloy Elizabeth G. Miller
How do consumers manage goal conflicts before making a choice? This question was studied by examining emerging preferences in choices involving two products that were means to conflicting goals. These preference patterns revealed that an initially active goal, which had been set aside to reconcile a goal conflict, exerted greater than expected influence on the remainder of the choice process. This influence was manifest in a tendency for consumers to revert to the product aligned with the initially active goal upon seeing information that objectively favored neither product. The prevalence of the reversion (flip-flop) preference pattern suggests that activation of a set-aside goal escalates when it is set aside, much as if its pursuit had been impeded by an external force. In addition to revealing goal reversion in a variety of choice contexts, the studies in this article also find that goal reversion is moderated by goal conflict.
Volume 39, Number 5, February 2013
DOI: 10.1086/666471
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The Influence of Base Rate and Case Information on Health-Risk Perceptions: A Unified Model of Self-Positivity and Self-Negativity
Dengfeng Yan Jaideep Sengupta
This research examines how consumers use base rate (disease prevalence in a population) and case information (an individual's disease symptoms) to estimate health risks. Drawing on construal level theory, the authors propose that consumer reliance on base rate (case information) will be enhanced (weakened) by psychological distance. A corollary of this premise is that self-positivity (underestimating self-risk vs. other-risk) is likely when the disease base rate is high but the case information suggests low risk. In contrast, self-negativity (overestimating self-risk vs. other-risk) is likely when the disease base rate is low, but case information implies high risk. Six experiments provide convergent support for this thesis, using different operationalizations of construal level, base rate, and case risk across multiple health domains. These findings inform the extant literature on health-risk perception and also provide theoretical implications for research on social comparisons, as well as that on the use of base rate versus case information.
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The Effect of Red Background Color on Willingness-to-Pay: The Moderating Role of Selling Mechanism
The authors investigate the effect of red backgrounds on willingness-to-pay in auctions and negotiations. Data from eBay auctions and the lab show that a red (vs. blue) background elicits higher bid jumps. By contrast, red (vs. blue) backgrounds decrease price offers in negotiations. An investigation of the underlying process reveals that red color induces aggression through arousal. In addition, the selling mechanism -- auction or negotiation -- alters the effect of color by focusing consumers on primarily competing against other bidders (in auctions) or against the seller (in negotiations). Specifically, aggression is higher with red (vs. blue or gray) color and, therefore, increases bid jumps in auctions but decreases offers in negotiations.
Volume 39, Number 5, February 2013 DOI:10.1086/666466
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The Huffington Post
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