Abstract: The effects of word-of-mouth (WOM) communications and specific attribute information on product evaluations were investigated. A face-to-face WOM communication was more persuasive than a printed format (experiment 1). Although a strong WOM effect was found, this effect was reduced or eliminated when a prior impression of the target brand was available from memory or when extremely negative attribute information was presented (experiment 2). The results suggest that diverse, seemingly unrelated judgmental phenomena—such as the vividness effect, the perseverance effect, and the negativity effect—can be explained through the accessibility-diagnosticity model.

Abstract: Although both consumption emotion and satisfaction judgments occur in the post-purchase period, little is known about their correspondence. This article investigates the interrelationships between the two constructs by way of taxonomic and dimensional analyses to identify patterns of emotional response to product experiences. Five discriminable patterns of affective experience were uncovered, which were based on three independent affective dimensions of hostility, pleasant surprise, and interest. The results extend prior findings of a simple bidimensional affective-response space and reveal that satisfaction measures vary in their ability to represent the affective content of consumption experiences.

Abstract: This article provides an empirical review and synthesis of published studies that have used content-analysis methods Harold Kassarjian's critical guidelines for content-analysis research were used to examine the methods employed in 128 studies The guidelines were expanded by providing an empirical investigation of multiple dimensions of objectivity Reliability issues were also assessed by examining factors central to the replication and interjudge coefficient calculations The findings indicate a general need for improvement in the application of content-analysis methods Suggestions for calculating reliability coefficients and for improving the objectivity and reliability of research are offered

Abstract: Why do consumers sometimes act against their own better judgment, engaging in behavior that is often regretted after the fact and that would have been rejected with adequate forethought? More generally, how do consumers attempt to maintain self-control in the face of time-inconsistent preferences? This article addresses consumer impatience by developing a decision-theoretic model based on reference points. The model explains how and why consumers experience sudden increases in desire for a product, increases that can result in the temporary overriding of long-term preferences. Tactics that consumers use to control their own behavior are also discussed. Consumer self-control is framed as a struggle between two psychological forces, desire and willpower. Finally, two general classes of self-control strategies are described: those that directly reduce desire, and those that overcome desire through will power.

Abstract: This article examines two factors that differentiate between successful and unsuccessful brand extensions: product feature similarity and brand concept consistency. The results reveal that, in identifying brand extensions, consumers take into account not only information about the product-level feature similarity between the new product and the products already associated with the brand, but also the concept consistency between the brand concept and the extension. For both function-oriented and prestige-oriented brand names, the most favorable reactions occur when brand extensions are made with high brand concept consistency and high product feature similarity. In addition, the relative impact of these two factors differs to some extent, depending on the nature of the brand-name concept. When a brand's concept is consistent with those of its extension products, the prestige brand seems to have greater extendibility to products with low feature similarity than the functional brand does.

Abstract: Perceived control is proposed to be a crucial variable in mediating the consumer's emotional and behavioral responses to the physical environment and the contact personnel that constitute the service encounter. Results of an experimental test of this proposition confirm the importance of perceived control in mediating the effects of two situational features of the encounter—consumer density (the number of consumers that are present in a service setting) and consumer choice (whether it is a person's own decision to enter into, and stay in, a service situation)—on the pleasantness of the service experience and the consumer's approach-avoidance responses to the service encounter.

Abstract: This article reviews theories that might explain how advertising causes dissatisfaction with the self. It is hypothesized that consumers compare themselves with idealized advertising images. Exposure to such images may change consumers' comparison standards for what they desire or lower perceptions of their own performance on relevant dimensions; the result is lowered satisfaction. Exploratory and experimental research examined these hypotheses in the context of idealized images of physical attractiveness in ads targeted at young women. Evidence for comparison was found. Results suggest that idealized images raised comparison standards for attractiveness and lowered satisfaction with one's own attractiveness.

Abstract: The consumption of aesthetic plastic surgery is examined within the broader context of daily life in an investigation of the motives and the self-concept dynamics underlying this symbolic consumer behavior. Data were collected in multiple, in-depth, ethnographic interviews, and analyzed by a constant comparative method revealing insights into both a priori and emergent themes. A priori themes regarding body image, impression management, symbolic self-completion, and possible selves are developed through a literature review and discussed briefly in light of the findings. Emergent themes, including role transitions, sexual selves and romantic fantasies, control and efficacy, and identity play are developed and embedded in a discussion of identity reconstruction and personal rites of passage. It is concluded that consumption activities are important to both the maintenance and the development of a stable, harmonious self-concept. Directions for future research are discussed.

Abstract: Existing research suggests that, relative to males, females often are more concerned with the particulars of message claims when processing advertising messages. This research examines how males process messages, when gender differences in processing are likely to occur, and whether variance in either information availability (the extent of message encoding) or information accessibility (the richness of message encoding) is likely to mediate such differences. The findings suggest that whether gender differences in processing occur depends on the nature of the response task and the level of cue incongruity contained in the message. Differences in the accessibility of message cues and in the genders' likelihood of using alternative processing strategies seem likely to account for these findings.

Abstract: This article examines three alternative procedures for analyzing multitrait-multimethod matrices: the Campbell-Fiske procedure, confirmatory factor analysis, and the direct product model. The implicit assumptions, as well as the strengths and weaknesses, of each approach are presented and their implications discussed. It is proposed that one should carefully examine model assumptions, individual parameters, and various diagnostic indicators, as well as overall model fits. The implications of these recommendations are illustrated through reanalyses of data from earlier studies of consumer behavior. Potentially misleading conclusions in these studies are corrected in demonstrations of the three procedures. The results show that methods often have multiplicative effects, a finding that supports the direct product model, which has not been previously used in consumer research. The need for multiple-method, multiple-measure approaches to research is highlighted by examining the limitations of single-method, single-measure approaches to theory testing.

Abstract: A structural equations model of the determinants of external search for automobiles is developed and tested on survey data from recent automobile purchasers By considering how perceived risk and perceived benefits affect search, by specifying the role of experience and knowledge in the search process more precisely than in other field studies of search, and by modeling the interrelationship between the various determinants of search, we attempt to provide new insights into the determinants of search behavior for automobiles and other consumer durables

Abstract: This study develops and tests a hierarchical model of advertising effects on viewing time. The ads studied represent a sample of commercials aired during prime-time broadcasts, and the effects are analyzed across the ads rather than across people. Primary emphasis is placed on the attempt to explain a simulated behavioral measure of attention to television commercials—that of channel switching (zapping) and fast-forwarding through ads on prerecorded programs (zipping). In addition, the study demonstrates a chain of effects from the content of television ads, through emotional reactions and attitude toward the ad, to actual viewing behaviors.

Abstract: Thanksgiving Day is a collective ritual that celebrates material abundance enacted through feasting. Thanksgiving Day both marks and proves to participants their ability to meet basic needs abundantly through consumption. So certain is material plenty for most U.S. citizens that this annual celebration is taken for granted by participants. Not just a moment of bounty but a culture of enduring abundance is celebrated. This article draws on ten data sets compiled over a five-year period. We interpret the consumption rituals of Thanksgiving Day as a discourse among consumers about the categories and principles that underlie American consumer culture. That is, Thanksgiving Day is read as an enacted document orchestrated symbolically and semiotically through consumption. The cultural discourse of Thanksgiving Day negotiates meanings and issues in both the domestic and national arenas that are difficult for many to acknowledge, articulate, and debate verbally. Through the use of multiple perspectives and sources of data, we attempt to elucidate both the emic and etic meanings of this holiday.

Abstract: The things to which we are attached help to define who we are, who we were, and who we hope to become. These meanings are likely to be especially salient to those in identity transitions. In this study we examine such meanings by comparing favorite possessions of Indians in India and Indians who immigrated to the United States. Because the Indian sense of self differs considerably from Western concepts, these immigrants provide an interesting and important group in which to examine the use of possessions in securing identity. Results suggest that possessions play an important role in the reconstruction of immigrant identity.

Abstract: This article presents a literature review that explains the antecedents and values of visual research. Then it illustrates the use of photographs and audio recordings of informants to enrich interviews. The term “autodriving” indicates that the interview is “driven” by informants who are seeing and hearing their own behavior. Autodriving addresses the obtrusiveness and reactivity inherent in consumer-behavior research by explicitly encouraging consumers to comment on their consumption behavior as the photographs and recordings represent it. Thus, the research aims for a negotiated interpretation of consumption events. The results suggest that photographs offer exciting challenges to informants by encouraging their need to explain themselves.

Abstract: This article examines the impact of two dimensions of music—its fit with the advertised message and its ties to past emotion-laden experiences (indexicality)—on low- and high-involvement consumers' ad processing. Previous research suggests that executional cues in an ad exert their influence primarily under conditions of low involvement in the form of peripheral-route processing. However, this view may be overly simplistic. Certain executional cues may influence central-route (message-based) and peripheral (non-message-based) processing of both high- and low-involvement consumers; however, the direction of this influence may depend on both the specific characteristic of the cue and the level of consumer involvement. The results of this research generally are consistent with these expectations.

Abstract: Although pictures have been shown to enhance the impact of persuasive communications, little is known about the robustness of such effects. This study examines how involvement moderates the process by which pictures affect brand attitudes and purchase intentions. The results show that involvement's moderating role depends on whether pictures convey product-relevant information. Whereas the impact of affect-laden pictures devoid of product-relevant information declines as involvement increases, involvement exerts the opposite effect for product-relevant pictures. The results also demonstrate that the images evoked by pictures and thoughts about a picture's appropriateness play an important mediating role in the persuasion process underlying peripheral pictures.

Abstract: Critical theory is presented as an interdisciplinary approach to seeking knowledge about consumers. Critical theory holds that social problems often result from groups in society being constrained by social structures and processes that they themselves construct and maintain. Critical research involves grasping both the intersubjective understandings of the groups involved and the historical-empirical understanding of the potentially constraining objective social conditions. Contradictions that are discovered provide the stimuli for change. Through the process of critique and dialogue, the critical researcher tries to help people imagine alternative social organizations that facilitate the development of human potential free from constraints.

Abstract: A study of reactions to a novel product attributed the invention to either an expert or a novice. Comprehension of the product description was manipulated by varying information exposure time (Study 1) and contextual prior knowledge (Study 2). As predicted by the heuristic-systematic model, comprehensibility moderated the persuasive impact of source expertise. When comprehension was low, subjects relied on the inventor's expertise in forming their attitudes toward the product, but when comprehension and, hence, systematic processing were higher, source expertise had no impact on subjects' attitudes. In a pilot study, however, subjects attributed comprehensibility to the source and derogated incomprehensible communications.

Abstract: This article investigates homelessness among adult women, an important and growing subpopulation among the homeless. To examine their situation within a consumer-behavior context, an ethnographic case study of a shelter for homeless women run by an order of Roman Catholic sisters was performed. The study focused on how these women became homeless, the effects of early life experiences on their homelessness, available emotional and financial support, possessions that were lost, maintained, or became available during their homeless period(s), their perspectives on their lives at the shelter and its ability to act as a “home,” and their fantasies about home life. Public policy implications and contributions of these findings to the developing literature in consumer behavior regarding the meaning of possessions are discussed.

Abstract: As spirited debate continues on the appropriate philosophical and methodological foundations for consumer research, participants claim the literature has been full of mis conceptions, mis understandings, mis representations, and mis characterizations. Through historical methodology, this article shows that these “misses” stem, at least in part, from the debate's having been historically ill informed about the origins and fundamental beliefs of a group of philosophers called logical positivists. After addressing a fundamental premise of the entire debate (i.e., that contemporary social science and consumer research are dominated by positivism), this article advocates critical pluralism and documents a favorable prognosis for rapprochement.

Abstract: Twenty-one experiments regarding the strength of attitudinal conditioning for various brands of cola were performed. The conditioned stimulus, brand familiarity (various unknown, moderately known, and well-known cola brands), and the embedding context in which conditioning trials occurred (other known or unknown brands) were manipulated. Effects are strongest for unknown and moderately known brands and for colas conditioned in a context of known versus unknown brands. Evidence is also provided showing that attitudes are conditioned only when subjects are aware of the contingency between conditioned and unconditioned stimuli.

Abstract: Contrast effects in consumers' judgments of products can stem from changes in how consumers mentally represent the stimuli or in how they anchor rating scales when mapping context-invariant mental representations onto those scales. We present a framework for distinguishing between these types of contrast effects on the basis of whether changes in mean ratings of multiattribute stimuli are accompanied by evidence of changes in their rank order. We also report two empirical studies. In study 1, mean overall ratings of a “core set” of car profiles showed contrast effects due to manipulations of the ranges of gas mileage and price in several sets of “context profiles.” Diagnostic tests implied that these effects reflected changes in response-scale anchoring rather than in mental representations. In study 2, consumers high and low in knowledge of automobile prices showed equally large contrast effects on ratings of the expensiveness of a core set of real cars. Diagnostic tests showed that these reflected true changes in mental representation for low-knowledge consumers but only changes in scale anchoring for more knowledgeable ones. Thus, ostensibly similar context effects on simple ratings have different underlying causes and implications for behavior. The findings suggest alternative interpretations of contrast effects in past research on price perception, consumer satisfaction, and service quality.

Abstract: Three experiments examined the effects of situational factors on the ability to learn simple rules for classifying products and estimating prices. In each experiment, multiattribute information about stereo speakers was presented to subjects in a training phase. However, only one attribute was diagnostic. Analytic processing (i.e., the ability to isolate the diagnostic attribute in a subsequent test of product knowledge) was measured. Results showed that analytic processing varied significantly as a function of memory load, processing goals, type of information search, and the relative perceptual salience of product attributes. Surprisingly little holistic (i.e., multiattribute) processing was observed among nonanalytic subjects. Most of these subjects relied on a small subset of attributes, often placing heavy emphasis on a single nondiagnostic attribute.

Abstract: This article examines the differential effects of two types of semantic cues: (1) cues connoting that an advertised price discount exhibits low consistency over time, and (2) cues connoting that an advertised discount is highly distinctive vis-a-vis competitors. Results suggest that, for manipulations of external reference prices with offering price held constant, semantic cues that connote high distinctiveness are more effective in influencing consumers' price-related evaluations when the external reference price is otherwise implausibly high than are semantic cues that connote low consistency. For manipulations of offering prices with external reference price held constant, however, semantic cues connoting high distinctiveness exert more relative influence on price-related cognitions when offering prices are high.

Abstract: In reference-price models, internal reference price is typically estimated from actual market prices. Given the generally poor price knowledge consumers have exhibited in prior research, the question is whether it is reasonable to use actual market prices to estimate consumers' internal reference-price standards. The initial answer provided in this research, surprisingly, is yes. Although internal reference prices are measurable and do affect consumer price perception, the gains in measuring and using those standards in predicting brand choice for frequently purchased products may not be worth the costs. Reasons why the surrogate price measure may work and implications for the measurement of internal reference-price standards are considered.

Abstract: Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Surveys were used to investigate factors influencing household expenditures for services in the United States. There were significant differences between families with full-time and part-time working wives in expenditures on child care, food away from home, and total services. Household production variables had a significant impact on service expenditures in most instances, while the effects of other variables such as family life cycle, education, race, and geographic location varied by service category and employment status of wife.

Abstract: Especially since the publication of Sawyer's instructive article on the topic, consumer researchers have been concerned that demand artifacts significantly compromise the validity and generalizability of experimental findings In this article we provide an overview of the issues surrounding the demand-artifacts controversy, evaluate the preconditions for demand artifacts, and offer a critique of suppositions about the consequences and appropriate control of demand artifacts Kellaris and Cox's critique of Gorn's well-known classical conditioning experiments provides the backdrop for much of the discussion

Abstract: Although the perception of contextualized objects pervades our everyday experiences, the literature provides little insight into how consumers ascribe meaning to contextualized products, or indeed into what meaning is. We address this gap in the literature by providing a conceptualization of consumption-object meaning and an a priori model for measuring it. An experiment tested several hypotheses concerning how the kind and amount of context affects the meanings people ascribe to ordinary consumption objects (and the labels that they use to identify those meanings). Overall, the findings support the proposed conceptualization.