Psychology and Marketing

The present research focuses on the interplay between two common features of the customer service chatbot experience: gaze direction and anthropomorphism. Although the dominant approach in marketing theory and practice is to make chatbots as human‐like as possible, the current study, built on the humanness‐value‐loyalty model, addresses the chain of effects through which chatbots' nonverbal behaviors affect customers' willingness to disclose personal information and purchase intentions. By means of two experiments that adopt a real chatbot in a simulated shopping environment (i.e., car rental and travel insurance), the present work allows us to understand how to reduce individuals' tendency to see conversational agents as less knowledgeable and empathetic compared with humans. The results show that warmth perceptions are affected by gaze direction, whereas competence perceptions are affected by anthropomorphism. Warmth and competence perceptions are found to be key drivers of consumers’ skepticism toward the chatbot, which, in turn, affects consumers’ trust toward the service provider hosting the chatbot, ultimately leading consumers to be more willing to disclose their personal information and to repatronize the e‐tailer in the future. Building on the Theory of Mind, our results show that perceiving competence from a chatbot makes individuals less skeptical as long as they feel they are good at detecting others’ ultimate intentions.

Product scarcity can influence purchase decisions, but this relationship is multifaceted due to the influence of various cues. This study aims to integrate knowledge on this subject through a meta-analysis. The findings suggest that the likelihood of purchasing a scarce product is greater under (i) scarcity conditions of excessive demand (rather than restricted supply) and variety (rather than a category), but not urgency (limited quantity and limited time) scarcity, and (ii) product conditions of enduring luxuries (as opposed to transitory luxuries) and the presence (rather than absence) of social signalling and seasonality. From a theoretical standpoint, this study offers a typology of product and scarcity cues and employs meta-analysis to enhance our understanding of the relationships between product scarcity, product and scarcity cues, and purchase decisions. From a managerial standpoint, the study suggests that product scarcity can affect purchase decisions and can be ethically utilized as a marketing strategy.

While scholarly acumen of consumer engagement, defined as a consumer's resource investment in his/her brand interactions, is burgeoning, its theoretical interface with consumer stress remains tenuous, exposing an important literature-based gap. Specifically, consumers' engagement with brands, or brand-related elements (e.g., online brand communities, frontline staff, service robots, social media pages, etc.), may either induce, or ensue from, individuals' consumption-related stress (e.g., through perceived resource depletion, brand-related performance anxiety, choice overload, pandemics, climate change, supply shortages, etc.). Addressing this gap, we develop a conservation of resources theory-informed framework of the consumer engagement/stress interface that identifies consumer engagement as either (i) a consumer stressor (e.g., by placing demands on consumers, including in self-service or coproduction tasks), or (ii) a stress-reducing coping mechanism (e.g., by facilitating the development of brand-related learning, skills, or resilience). We, then, introduce the articles contained in this section, which are also linked to the proposed framework. We conclude by outlining avenues for further research in the integrative area of consumer engagement/stress. K E Y W O R D S challenge stressor, conservation of resources theory, consumer engagement (CE), distress, eustress, hindrance stressor, stress

Omnichannel represents a customer-oriented distribution paradigm through which retailers can deliver a seamless customer experience and create an authentic brand narrative that is communicated to customers across diverse touchpoints. Despite the increasing relevance of the omnichannel approach, research on how omnichannel can affect the customer experience remains scant. This research consists of a qualitative study and three experimental studies. Drawing from signaling theory, we contend that the signal congruency established by omnichannel-where all the channels are aligned and convey a consistent message to customers-can enhance consumers' purchase intention and perceptions of brand authenticity. We further investigate the role of brand authenticity as a mediator of the relationship between multichannel customer experience (seamless vs. non-seamless) and purchase intention, as well as of brand untrustworthiness as a moderator of the relationship between multichannel customer experience and brand authenticity. The results show that a seamless multichannel customer experience has a significant main effect on purchase intention and that participants in the seamless multichannel customer experience condition perceive the brand as more authentic than those in the non-seamless multichannel customer experience condition. Both the mediation and moderation hypotheses are supported. These findings enhance the literature on signaling theory and omnichannel. They also provide insightful implications for retailers in terms of managing the omnichannel customer experience. Overall, this study integrates the research areas of brand authenticity and omnichannel and provides valuable insights by indicating how seamlessness can boost consumers' perception of brand authenticity. Furthermore, the study advances our knowledge by investigating the impact of brand authenticity as both a result of the omnichannel customer experience and a predictor of purchase intention.

While scholarly acumen of consumer engagement, defined as a consumer's resource investment in his/her brand interactions, is burgeoning, its theoretical interface with consumer stress remains tenuous, exposing an important literature‐based gap. Specifically, consumers' engagement with brands, or brand‐related elements (e.g., online brand communities, frontline staff, service robots, social media pages, etc.), may either induce, or ensue from, individuals' consumption‐related stress (e.g., through perceived resource depletion, brand‐related performance anxiety, choice overload, pandemics, climate change, supply shortages, etc.). Addressing this gap, we develop a conservation of resources theory‐informed framework of the consumer engagement/stress interface that identifies consumer engagement as either (i) a consumer stressor (e.g., by placing demands on consumers, including in self‐service or coproduction tasks), or (ii) a stress‐reducing coping mechanism (e.g., by facilitating the development of brand‐related learning, skills, or resilience). We, then, introduce the articles contained in this section, which are also linked to the proposed framework. We conclude by outlining avenues for further research in the integrative area of consumer engagement/stress.

The traditional theorizing of social justice analyzed people's perceived justice in a bounded society or institution. This conceptualization, however, has limitations in interpreting justice in a boundaryless society with high mobility of people and commodities, which is the reality of contemporary lives. We, therefore, introduce a new concept, “disembedded consumption” (i.e., one's consumption is not constrained by its grounding in the local context of a restricted time and space), to reinterpret social justice. Across five studies, we demonstrate that either human mobility or product mobility can predict disembedded consumption which increases people's perceived justice through heightened resource accessibility. Moreover, we provide further evidence that human mobility and product mobility can be compensated with each other to have a positive effect on disembedded consumption and consequently on perceived justice. The current research for the first time introduces “disembedded consumption” as a consequence of human mobility and product mobility and contributes to the literature on social justice.

The usage of proper names to advertise a product is ubiquitous in the marketplace. In many cases, there is very little information about these names. For example, treatment lotion by “Lady Aiko.” This research examines whether such a strategy effectively increases evaluations for a product. If so, is this strategy more effective when used by a high‐quality brand or a low‐quality brand? Across one field study, one text analytics study, and two experimental studies, we find that the proper name strategy can lead to higher product evaluations and that such names are more effective when advertised for a low‐quality brand. We first propose, using contagion effects, that products advertised with a proper name are more likely to contain the essence of human creation, resulting in greater product effectiveness than identical products without such proper names. Furthermore, we employ the expectation‐disconfirmation account to propose that when the brand has a higher (vs. lower) quality (expectation stage), the product with a proper name strategy (postexpectation stage) leads to small (vs. large) positive disconfirmation, which thereby results in assimilation (vs. contrast) and forming product evaluations similar (vs. higher) to the original assessments of the brand. We offer implications for new product marketers on how to be most effective in influencing product evaluations, as well as policymakers looking to improve consumer welfare by encouraging manufacturers of generic products to consider using a proper name strategy.

Developing rapport during the “moment of truth” when frontline employees (FLEs) interact with customers has long been an important topic for researchers and managers. We suggest incidental similarities—seemingly trivial shared points of comparison between customers and FLEs—can play a vital role during this juncture in service failure and recovery contexts. Across two experimental studies, we investigate several relationships impacted by the presence or absence of an incidental similarity between FLEs and customers for their effect on satisfaction and repatronage intentions. Results suggest incidental similarities can reduce failure attributions toward service providers and improve these important customer‐related outcomes (study 1). Results of study 2 extend our findings, demonstrating that rapport can serve as a mediating mechanism explaining the relationship between incidental similarities and these key service outcomes. Study 2 also reveals that FLE authenticity acts as a boundary condition of this relationship, accentuating the indirect, conditional relationships between incidental similarities, and satisfaction and repatronage intentions. Critically, we demonstrate that an incidental similarity can be even more effective when there is no recovery. By pointing out the role of incidental similarities in service encounters, our research makes significant contributions to aiding understanding of how rapport can be developed during the relatively brief time customers interact with service employees.

Consumers are increasingly concerned about how their interactions with the natural world affect both the health of that environment, and their own well‐being and enjoyment of life. More aware consumers seek to make sense of the natural world around them and consider how their consumer behavior impacts this environment. How actors notice and bracket ecologically material cues from a stream of experience and build connections and causal networks between these has been referred to as ecological sensemaking. This research examines ecological sensemaking in a specific context, that being in the experience of catch‐and‐release fishing. Data were gathered through a process of autoethnographic inquiry obtained over the course of four fishing trips. The results reflect the process of ecological sensemaking pertaining to the experience. Through the findings, we propose a new concept, ecological reasoning, which seeks to provide a critical link between ecological sensemaking and ecological embeddedness. Using this new concept, the research contributes to extant understanding of how consumers think about and interact with the natural world. Apart from constructing an overarching narrative of the experience, four subnarratives are also identified, in a chronological sequence that comprises the entire experience of catch‐and‐release fishing. The findings have implications for the broader management and marketing disciplines seeking to establish better ways of interacting with the natural world, both for themselves and their consumers.

Overcrowding in healthcare environments (e.g., hospitals) has become a widely identified problem in today's healthcare. This research documents whether and how social crowding affects consumers' self‐perceived health risks in healthcare environments and its downstream effect. One pilot study (secondary data analysis), seven laboratory experiments, and a field survey (Study 6) demonstrated that social crowding increased individuals' self‐perceived health risks through a lack of control (Studies 1–6), thereby leading to overspending on the healthcare products (Study 5). Furthermore, the mediating process was moderated by choice and disease symptom severity (Studies 3 and 4). The findings of this research theoretically enrich our understanding of how social crowding interacts with individual disease symptoms and the services provided in the healthcare environment, and practically provide important implications for healthcare practitioners in managing consumers' health risks and consumption behavior.

There is a consensus to promote green consumption to drive sustainable human development and high‐quality economic development. It is therefore essential for academics, policymakers, and marketers to understand the factors that influence green consumption. Through four experiments, this study examines the effect of financial scarcity—a feeling commonly experienced by consumers—on green consumption. These experiments show that financial scarcity can hinder consumers' choice of green products. The above process occurs because the scarcity of monetary resources induces anxiety, which in turn reduces self‐efficacy. We further find that the observed effect will be attenuated when consumers' social support level is high (vs. low). These findings demonstrate that the impact of financial scarcity on green consumption is mediated by anxiety and self‐efficacy perception and moderated by social support. Our results provide recommendations for developing marketing strategies for green products.

Consumer surveys are integral to marketers' understanding of consumers' judgments, preferences, and choices. However, consumers often respond in socially desirable ways, making it difficult to accurately ascertain their true preferences and reactions. In this regard, research has produced conflicting findings on who engages more in socially desirable responding: men or women. Our research is at the intersection of psychology and marketing to understand the effect of gender differences on socially desirable responding. We tested hypotheses regarding the types of socially desirable responding of men versus women and the underlying motivations. Across three studies, we show that men (compared to women) have a greater tendency to engage in self‐deceptive enhancement—the tendency to provide inflated and honestly held self‐descriptions in response to questions—and a promotion focus mediates this relationship. In contrast, women (compared to men) have a greater tendency to engage in impression management—the tendency to distort responses to present themselves most positively to maintain a favorable image—and a prevention focus mediates this relationship. Consequently, gender differences in promotion versus prevention focus are likely to have important theoretical implications for a gender‐based explanation of different behaviors associated with regulatory focus. From a practical standpoint, marketers can utilize priming techniques to temporarily heighten gender identity and influence preferences for products that provide self‐enhancement or image‐protection benefits.

Previous research has extensively investigated the relationships that consumers create and maintain with their possessions. However, little is known about why material objects (compared to immaterial ones) may be particularly relevant for consumers' self‐definition. In this research, we argue that being physically close to objects helps consumers to feel psychologically close to the more abstract meaning of these objects. Four experimental studies provide converging support for this reasoning. Specifically, these studies indicate that being proximal to an object reduces the psychological distance to the object's meaning and enhances the benefits that consumers associate with the object. Moreover, the effect of bodily proximity on perceived benefits is moderated by separation anxiety, such that consumers that are highly anxious about being separated from the object's meaning derive higher benefits from being proximal to it. The findings contribute to research on the extended self and highlight the potential importance of physical proximity as a motivational driver of consumer behavior.

Customers have since long received service from various machines, and this development is expected to accelerate when AI‐powered synthetic agents—such as chatbots and embodied service robots—become more common. Existing research on customers' interactions with service machines is typically focused on perceptions of machine attributes when the machine is busy. However, many machines are idle for a considerable time (i.e., they are not used), and little is known about consumer perceptions of machine idleness—despite the fact that idle machine behavior can contribute to the user experience, too. In the present study, it is assumed that (a) idleness and busyness represent differently valenced states in a human‐to‐human context (i.e., idleness is more negatively charged than busyness for most humans). It is also assumed that (b) anthropomorphism can occur in relation to a service machine, and that (c) beliefs about idleness and busyness from a human‐to‐human context can carry over and inform views of machines' minds. Three experiments were conducted to explore these assumptions, and they show that an idle service machine is attributed less positively charged mind states than a busy service machine. The results also show that such attribution activities affect the overall evaluation of the service machine.

Online donation platforms often present information regarding disseminators' donations to stimulate donations, but it is unclear how it affects potential donors' behavior. This paper examines how disseminators' donation amounts impact potential donors' donation likelihood. The findings of six studies show that potential donors are less (vs. more) likely to contribute to unfamiliar initiators when disseminators contribute large (vs. small) amounts. The following psychological response drives the effect: when potential donors observe disseminators contribute more, they infer that disseminators have assumed greater responsibility and thus reduce their perceived responsibility to the unfamiliar initiator. We also confirm the boundary conditions of tie strength and empathy. This effect is significant when donors have low levels of empathy or strong ties with the disseminator. In contrast, this effect is reversed when tie strength is high and attenuated when potential donors have high levels of empathy. Our research enriches the literature concerning the effects of others' donations and online donation and provides managerial guidance to enable the success of online donation projects.

Price and quality are positively related in people's minds. Saying a product costs more ought to lead to higher expectations of quality and liking. Importantly, this price‐quality heuristic is argued to affect perceived quality and liking—known as the marketing placebo effect. To investigate the robustness of this effect, we conducted six studies (total N = 2842; with students from an international Dutch university and US participants from Prolific and MTurk)—expanding on previous methodological approaches with larger samples and using products not commonly investigated in previous research. In all our studies, higher prices led to higher quality and liking expectations as suggested by the price‐quality heuristic. However, we did not find a consistent effect on perceived quality and liking once people experienced the product. Our data imply that the marketing placebo effect may be less robust or generalizable as previously assumed. This (in)efficacy should bring marketers to pause on when and whether to rely on it at all.

This research examines the influence of brand community identification (BCI) on three measures of sponsorship effectiveness—brand advocacy, purchase intention, and sponsor‐brand choice. Additionally, we investigate the psychological mechanism and the moderators between BCI and sponsorship outcomes. We collected data from members of two brand communities, across four experiments (2 × 2 between‐subject designs), during soccer league events. Our findings demonstrate that BCI increased brand advocacy and purchase intention. It shows a novel psychological mechanism (brand community engagement) between BCI and brand advocacy; both brand authenticity and sponsor–club congruence serve as boundary conditions. Counter‐intuitively, our study revealed that both high‐congruent and low‐congruent sponsor brands could be effective, depending on consumers' identification with the brand community. Our research makes several meaningful theoretical and practical contributions. Sports clubs and sponsors must cultivate consumers' identification with the club's brand community, which offers two‐fold benefits; it leads to greater effectiveness, measured in terms of club brand engagement and sponsor‐brand advocacy. Moreover, our research demonstrates that consumers, regardless of their identification with the brand community, will stop supporting a sponsor brand if they perceive it as less authentic.

Previous literature has shown that consumers often see themselves as possessing the characteristics of products they own, referring to product‐to‐self judgment effect. For example, consumers perceive themselves as more innovative after owning an innovative product. The current research identifies and demonstrates a boundary condition for this effect, showing that product anthropomorphism lowers the tendency for consumers to judge themselves in assimilation with the traits and abilities of the product. We further demonstrate that this moderating effect arises because consumers are less likely to classify anthropomorphized product into the “Self” category, for they see the product as an entity like other people. Three experiments provide supportive evidence for this moderating effect and the underlying mechanism. Overall, our research contributes to the literature by uncovering the process of how product anthropomorphism may hinder consumers from using products to express themselves, thus providing implications for promoting products that focus on enhancing consumer self‐expression.

Multiple scales measuring a customer’s, or consumer’s, engagement (CE) with a brand or specific brand elements (e.g., advertising/social media content) have been proposed in the literature, offering researchers different options to gauge CE. However, the myriad proposed operationalizations can yield confusion among scholars regarding how to best capture CE, exposing a growing issue for CE research. Addressing this issue, we take stock of major scales measuring a customer’s, or consumer’s, engagement with a brand or specific brand elements. To achieve this objective, we performed a systematic review of major CE scale development articles (2005-January 2023) using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach. We systematically evaluated these scales in terms of their respective CE conceptualization, dimensionality, itemization, and underlying theoretical perspective. We also identify potential scale-related risks, or pitfalls, exposing important insight for CE researchers. Overall, the results suggest the existence of theoretical contamination in specific CE measures (e.g., through the inclusion of related concepts in the proposed CE definition), compromising their theoretical rigor and raising a need for scholars to verify the theoretical underpinnings of their adopted CE scales.

Tactile experiences are a pivotal part of consumer behavior and choice. However, very little is known about why consumers esthetically appreciate touching products. The principle of Unity‐in‐Variety, stating that consumers like to perceive variety but only when this variety is presented as a coherent whole, has been shown to partly explain consumers' esthetic appreciation in the visual domain. We theorize that the psychological mechanisms underlying the esthetic principle of Unity‐in‐Variety are modality‐independent, and therefore that this principle also applies to consumers' tactile esthetic appreciation. Across three studies, using existing products and novel 3D printed product designs systematically manipulated along the perceptual dimensions of unity and variety, we show that both unity and variety independently contribute to tactile esthetic appreciation. Furthermore, because unity and variety are inherently partial opposites, esthetic appreciation of products is highest when both unity and variety are simultaneously maximized.

This research investigates the effect of using relationship (breakup) reminders in advertising on click‐through rates. While previous research has found that relationship reminders may backfire when consumers lack or no longer have certain social relationships (e.g., close friends, family, or a romantic partner), the authors propose that ad messages encouraging consumers after a relationship breakup, as compared with simply reminding them of a current relationship, will increase consumer perceptions of social support from a brand. This is because consumers may find readily available social support from a brand when coping with a relationship breakup. This, in turn, will pique their interest in the brand and prompt them to seek more information. Across two experimental studies, the results show that consumers who are exposed to ad messages encouraging them after a relationship breakup (vs. reminding them of a current relationship) feel greater social support, leading to higher click‐through rates. Furthermore, this effect is moderated by destiny beliefs. These findings contribute to the implicit theories of relationships and the consumer–brand relationship literature by demonstrating how destiny beliefs are important to understanding consumer responses to advertisements utilizing relationship (breakup) messages. Furthermore, the findings can benefit marketers when designing relationship reminders in online advertising.

Conversational agents are increasingly used to substitute or augment human service employees. Due to their ability to use human‐like communicative behaviors, these agents are theorized to establish social connections with customers. However, the existing literature is ambiguous on how conversational agents should verbally communicate with customers and whether they should be adaptive to customers' verbal behavior. The current study aims to address these gaps, by focusing on the effects of the conversational agent's communication style on the perceived social connection. Two experiments were conducted in which a virtual agent in a hedonic service (Experiment 1) or a utilitarian service (Experiment 2) was manipulated to adapt either a static task‐ or a social‐oriented communication style or mimic the communication style used by the customer in the previous turn. Guided by marketing and human–computer interaction literature, measures for engagement and rapport were used to reveal customers' perceived social connection. Results show that for the hedonic service, rapport was significantly affected by the presence of social cues in the agent's communication style (whether statically or mimicked), while engagement was significantly affected by mimicry. For the utilitarian service, only social cues significantly affected rapport. These findings enrich the Computers As Social Actors paradigm and provide clear guidelines for practitioners.

Space tourism, a niche segment of the aviation industry, has radically altered the private sector. A noticeable trend in this market has been the development of commercial space with numerous start‐ups and ventures underway. Adopting a concept‐driven approach, we conduct a hybrid review to sketch the emerging market areas in space tourism and provided insights into tourists' behavioral responses. Our results are supplemented by an analysis of public viewpoints on space‐faring to gauge their alignment with academic views on space tourism. We also develop an integrative framework to elucidate how personality interacts with scenario to influence the feelings, thoughts, and behaviors of space tourists and their responses toward space tourism. We recognize critical gaps in previous literature and propose the following recommendations to guide future research: 1) Conceptualization of travel services and tourism typology in the new space market; 2) theoretical contribution on pragmatic and semantic levels; 3) need for empirical and multi‐disciplinary studies; 4) investigating the role of ethical issues on bilateral arguments toward commercialized space tourism; 5) integrating stakeholders' perspectives to maximize the socioeconomic impacts of space tourism and environmental sustainability; 6) media platforms and application of new technologies; and 7) role of scientific journals in knowledge enhancement.

Idea contests are well-accepted and cost-efficient approaches to tap the creativity of customers. At the same time, idea contests enable customer engagement, defined as voluntary resource provision beyond financial patronage. However, although much research has been devoted to the factors that motivate consumers to participate in such contests, research that investigates how idea rejection as a stressor affects future engagement behavior is comparatively rare. This research draws on cognitive dissonance literature combined with stress appraisal theory to explain rejection-induced emotional and behavioral consequences. Study 1 assesses the different effects of company appreciation of customer engagement (i.e., idea acceptance vs. rejection) in an experimental setting and tests emotional reactions to rejection as a stressor, as well as the moderating effects of firm acknowledgement. Study 2, which was organized as a randomized field experiment, is devoted to assessing differences in firm acknowledgment versus individualized firm feedback in a real-world setting. Taken together, the studies show that the way rejection is communicated is important. The findings have important theoretical and managerial implications for service management and for stimulating customer engagement through idea contest initiatives.

While recent research indicates that experiential purchases lead to greater happiness than material purchases (i.e., experiential advantage), we have a limited understanding of when and why consumers prefer experiential purchases. In this paper, we address this topic and find that consumers' feelings of power play a significant role in their preference for experiential purchases. Across four experimental studies, using multiple manipulations and stimuli, we demonstrate that feelings of high (vs. low) power lead to increased consumer preference for experiential, but not material, purchases. Mediation (Study 3) and moderation (Study 4) analyses revealed that this phenomenon is driven by greater expected happiness from experiential purchases for consumers feeling high (vs. low) power. We contribute to the experiential purchase literature by identifying consumer power as an important antecedent of consumers' preference for experiences and also add to the consumer power literature by documenting how perceived power affects consumer evaluations and decision‐making. Furthermore, our paper suggests that managers should target people in powerful positions or seek to facilitate feelings of greater power in potential customers when marketing experiential products.

Consumers' feelings of being excluded—which indicate a deficit in important social resources such as connection, acceptance, and support—have increased over the last 50 years. In this research, by adopting a resource‐based view of brands, we examine how and why brands play a role in socially excluded consumers' lives. Across a series of studies, we find that excluded consumers perceive warm (vs. less warm) brands as better relationship partners. Because of this, excluded consumers choose warm (vs. less warm) brands more often, and they feel less lonely as a result. We also test the role of brand warmth relative to brand competence and to individual differences in self‐acceptance. We find that excluded consumers' preferences for warm brands persist even when the warm brands are low in competence and even when consumers possess high self‐acceptance. This research reveals the relational, resource‐restorative role of warm brands and provides implications for consumers' coping and emotional well‐being in our increasingly isolated society.

Since observing customers outnumber focal customers in most service interactions, service managers aim to engage them despite triggers, such as service incivility. This research contributes to the understanding of the role of stress in observing customers' engagement (CE). It answers two RQs: (1) What is the relationship between their stress and engagement?; (2) What are the triggers of stress? Since ethnically different people pay different levels of attention to contextual and social factors, two sequential scenario‐based experiments are adopted to study two triggers of stress (i.e., availability of information about an incivility incident, and ethnic similarity between the observing customer and the mistreated employee), which impacts CE in an intercultural service encounter. Study 1 compares being exposed to full versus partial information and demonstrates that full information about the incivility incident increases observers' psychological stress, which reduces their behavioral and emotional engagement. Study 2 compares how white and black observers react to ethnic similarity between the observing customer and the mistreated employee. Results show that incivility triggers outward psychological stress in white and black observers. In turn, black observers' outward stress reduces their behavioral engagement, while white observers' behavioral engagement is reduced by both their inward and outward stress.

We explore the psychology involved with giving and receiving gift cards by studying givers' and recipients' preferences for digital versus physical gift cards. Across five studies, we demonstrate that givers are less likely to choose digital (vs. physical) gift cards than recipients are to prefer to receive them. The data suggest that this asymmetry occurs, in part, because givers overestimate the extent to which recipients see digital (vs. physical) gift cards as violating the social norms of gift‐giving. Indeed, givers' aversion to digital gift cards attenuates when they are less likely to perceive digital (vs. physical) gift cards as violating gift‐giving norms and when they are less attentive to such norms. This research adds to the gift‐giving literature by offering an initial foray into the tradeoff between digital and physical gifts, demonstrating a new instance in which givers' and recipients' preferences diverge, and documenting an underlying cause and boundary conditions of this asymmetry.

A well‐established research area is service failure and recovery. Nevertheless, the considerable service failures generated by customers, or customer failures, surprisingly remain relatively underexplored. Specifically, customer failures have a detrimental effect on frontline service employee well‐being, which has not been investigated. We advance that a customer apology can alleviate this by customers taking the blame for their failures. We present three studies that investigate this phenomenon. In Study 1, applying the critical incident technique, we develop a taxonomy of customer failures and find evidence of their negative influence on (frontline) service employee well‐being, which can be offset by customer apologies and perceived supervisor support. In Studies 2 and 3, using a scenario‐based experiment, we triangulate the Study 1 results by testing the relationship between customer apology (Study 2) and its interacting relationship with perceived supervisor support (Study 3) on service employee well‐being following a customer failure. While customer apologies have a positive impact on well‐being, interestingly, when perceived supervisor support is lacking, this washes out the positive effect of a customer apology and similarly, perceived supervisor support nullifies the negative effect of the customer not apologizing for their failure. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Even though researchers are increasingly acknowledging the dark side of customer participation (i.e., behavioral customer engagement), particularly in professional services with high cognitive demands that cause customer participation stress (i.e., negative psychological state resulting from the customer's overextension by required customer participation efforts), insights on how firms can effectively mitigate customer participation stress remains limited. Building on transactional stress theory, we investigate whether customers can effectively cope with the expected cognitive demands of professional services. Moreover, by introducing an adapted coping construct (i.e., coping support), we examine whether employees can provide coping support to help decrease customer participation stress. The findings of a time‐lagged field study with customers of a large German bank (N = 117) suggest that customer coping before the encounter cannot mitigate the effect of anticipated cognitive demands on customer participation stress. Instead, the results of both the field study and a follow‐up experimental study (N = 218) show that a certain set of employee coping support during service encounters is crucial. While focusing on action coping support is not ideal in situations with high cognitive demands, firms should advise their professional service employees to offer emotional coping support to attenuate the unfavorable effect of cognitive demands on customer participation stress.

Consumers often experience negative emotions when confronted with a product defect. This is especially true when the product is integrated into many aspects of the consumer's life, such as the case with automotive vehicles. In this research, we draw on the consumer expectations and attachment literature to explore the impact of defect severity and product attachment, operationalized via both ownership length/usage (mileage) and the psychological construct of object attachment, on the negative emotions consumers experience. Using sentiment analysis of archived data of consumers' complaints from the Defective Product Administrative Center in China and a controlled experiment among US consumers, we find that defect severity and mileage/attachment interact in a novel curvilinear manner to influence the amount of negative emotion consumers experience. When defect severity is low, our results indicate a U‐shape relationship between mileage/attachment and negative emotions. However, when defect severity is high, an inverted U‐shaped relationship emerges. Furthermore, we link the specific emotion of anger to consumers' downstream perceptions (loyalty, quality, satisfaction, and more) of their vehicle, manufacturer, and retailer.

Consumer‐brand relationships vary with regard to their degree of psychological connection to the brand. Some individuals may have a weak connection to the brand (e.g., general consumers), while others may possess a strong connection to the brand (e.g., brand community members). Marketers have yet to distinguish between the types of advertising appeals that are most effective for these different individuals. Hence, this research utilizes construal level theory to posit that consumers with a stronger [weaker] psychological sense of brand community will think about the brand more concretely [abstractly] and be more persuaded by utilitarian [symbolic] advertising appeals. Three original experiments reveal that a match between the degree of psychological sense of brand community and the type of advertising appeal directly influences favorable consumer attitudes, and subsequently consumer cognitions and behaviors. Furthermore, message elaboration is the process mechanism driving the effect of the match on favorable consumer attitudes, while relationship‐oriented cultural values attenuate this effect. This research contributes to both theory and practice by providing new knowledge regarding which advertising appeals are the most effective for consumers with strong versus weak consumer‐brand relationships.

This research examines the influence of donation collection methods on the amounts of donation, focusing on donations for the cause and overhead. This research examines the effects of the three donation collection methods (allocation, cause‐first addition, and overhead‐first addition) that vary in terms of the procedure through which the donation amount is decided. The results of three empirical studies indicate that the donation collection method affects the amounts donated for the cause and overhead, in addition to the total donation amount. Study 1 shows that donors tend to donate more for the cause when the collection method asks them to add an extra amount for overhead to the amount donated for the cause (i.e., cause‐first addition) than when the collection method asks donors to allocate their total donation amounts to the cause and overhead (i.e., allocation), which also affects the total donation amount. Studies 2 and 3 test the effects of the donation collection order by comparing between the cause‐first and the overhead‐first addition methods. Results show that donors tend to donate more to the cause and overhead when the donation amount for overhead is asked first (i.e., overhead‐first) than when the donation amount for the cause is asked first (i.e., cause‐first). Furthermore, in all three studies, donors' satisfaction with the donation is not affected by the collection methods.

Sustainable consumption helps solve today's critical environmental problems, but such behavior tends to be altruistic, mainly benefiting the environment and other people. Thus, understanding precursors that drive a consumer to engage in sustainable consumption is important for scholars and green product marketers. This study examines how perceived life control—a factor not directly related to environmental decisions—influences sustainable purchase. Data from two waves of the World Value Survey indicate that perceived life control is positively associated with pro‐environmental attitudes (which is a precondition for sustainable purchases). Five subsequent studies consistently show that perceived life control increases purchase intention for green products, and this happens because consumers with greater life control believe their purchases will be more effective in solving environmental problems (i.e., outcome efficacy). We further reveal that framing the benefits of a green product as temporally present (vs. future) attenuates the observed effect. These findings suggest that the practice of sustainable consumption may be explained by perceived life control in individuals and provide insights for environmental communication regarding the alignment between sustainable product appeals and individual differences.

Gift‐giving is a typical consumer behavior with important implications for consumers and marketers. Accordingly, consumer gift‐giving behavior has received much attention from marketing scholars. We conduct a bibliometric analysis of 237 articles on gift‐giving from the Web of Science database. This analysis identifies the bibliometric attributes of the gift‐giving literature, including its publication trend, influential outlets, impactful articles, prolific scholars, international scope, state of collaboration, and featured topics and themes. Using content analysis, we identify three themes that categorize the consumer gift‐giving literature's key segments: (1) broad and nuanced outlooks of the social side of gift‐giving, (2) the less pleasant side of gift‐giving, and (3) the foundational research on consumer gift‐giving. This paper provides readers with a state‐of‐the‐art overview of consumer gift‐giving literature and identifies opportunities for future gift‐giving research.

Based on previous research on blood donation incentives, we investigated the effectiveness of two incentives—eligibility for free blood transfusions and improving individual credit scores—and explored the psychological mechanisms underlying these effects. We conducted four studies to explore the relationship between incentives and blood donation intention. The results showed that eligibility for free blood transfusions was more effective than improving individual credit scores due to the mediating effect of perceived attractiveness. Meanwhile, improving individual credit scores failed to play an effective role and was significantly lower than eligibility for free blood transfusions due to the mediating effect of perceived threat to freedom. We further found that after adding the moderating variable of involvement, there was no difference between the two incentives due to the weakened mediating effects of perceived threat to freedom and perceived attractiveness in the high‐involvement group. This study establishes two effect paths from incentives to perceived threat to freedom/perceived attractiveness to blood donation intention, explaining the effectiveness of incentives.

Since the first paper on brand communities published in 2001, academic research on the area has accumulated substantially. To gain insight into the status and dynamics of this field, this study draws data from the Scopus database and uses bibliometrics and systematic review to analyse this body of knowledge and assess its stage of development. The results show that brand community research is rapidly growing and dynamic, attracting attention from an increasing number of scholars and journals. Most output originates from the United States and China, and adopts a survey approach. Prominent field topics include social media‐based brand community, the impact of brand community on brand relationship, consumer behavior and brand management, and brand engagement. This research concludes that brand community research is in the late growth or early maturity stage in most aspects, and discusses the future research directions that can benefit the area.

Humorous messages can influence consumers differently based on the type of product and context; this research seeks to determine how humorous versus informative messages differentially impact consumer's responses to embarrassing products versus nonembarrassing products in retail. This paper proposes that humorous messaging may be used to counteract negative responses to embarrassing products as opposed to much of the research on consumer embarrassment which focuses on coping mechanisms and reducing the noticeability of a product in retail settings. Specifically, marketers may use benign humor to increase excitement and ultimately increase purchase likelihood of a product. The researchers examine the process through which consumers view humorous marketing of embarrassing products. Three studies, including a behavioral lab experiment utilizing a 360° video choice experiment as well as a Facebook ads behavioral experiment, are used to assess the proposed relationship. The findings indicate that for embarrassing products, humorous messaging is more effective than informative messaging at increasing purchase likelihood due to an increase in excitement. These results hold across a variety of marketing mediums. This research suggests that practitioners should use humorous marketing communications rather than informative marketing communications for embarrassing products in retail.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has remained a focus in business and society for decades. Existing research, however, has only begun to examine moral violations, or incidences of corporate social irresponsibility (CSI). In this article, we identify perceptual fluency-the ease with which information is processed-as an influential factor. Through three experiments, we reveal that individuals view incidences of corporate social irresponsibility as less unethical when perceptual fluency is low (vs. high). This occurs because decreased perceptual fluency encourages deliberative processing, which impacts the perceived ethicality of corporate social irresponsibility incidences. These results replicate across different countries, product categories, and corporate social irresponsibility typologies. We also identify the type of corporate action as an important boundary condition; as perceptual fluency did not impact the perceived ethicality of analogous corporate social responsibility incidences. We also find that the effect is influenced by the individual moral philosophy of the consumer, with the effect occurring only for those higher in moral relativism. Overall, these results empirically disentangle competing theoretical accounts linking perceptual fluency with moral judgment and show that businesses and other parties should consider the fluency of corporate social irresponsibility communications along with the moral philosophy of their customers and other stakeholders.

A major challenge in new product development is how to increase consumers' adoption of new offerings. Using the socio‐ecological perspective, we reveal a largely ignored but important social factor that alters consumers' new product adoption. Specifically, we propose that residential mobility—the frequency with which individuals change their residence—acts as an antecedent of new product adoption. Six studies—using different operationalizations of residential mobility—provide convergent evidence that residential mobility (vs. stability) augments new product adoption in both laboratory settings and real business settings. This effect is driven by openness to new experiences and moderated by the voluntariness of moving. Our findings add to the literature on new product adoption and residential mobility. Moreover, marketers should take residential mobility into full consideration when designing marketing strategies for new products and presenting contextual cues to activate consumers' residential mobility mindset to enhance their acceptance of new products.

Despite corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement, firms may be implicated in CSR transgressions. Research is equivocal on whether CSR buffers negative consumer responses to subsequent firm transgressions. This research extends the observer moral licensing framework to consumer‐firm contexts and examines under what conditions consumers license transgressions following firms' CSR engagement. Study 1 demonstrates that consumer responses to firm transgressions depend on whether the transgression occurs in the same (vs. different) domain relative to CSR engagement and on transgression ambiguity. Study 2 shows that consumer responses to transgressions are less negative when a firm has (vs. has not) previously engaged in CSR. It replicates a shielding effect of CSR that is contingent on transgression domain relative to prior CSR and transgression ambiguity, and finds that blatant same domain transgressions generate hypocrisy perceptions and mitigate licensing effects. Study 3 further extends the moral licensing framework and shows that firm communication that situates CSR efforts on a continuum (continuous CSR positioning) before a transgression moderates, and insincere firm motive attributions mediate, the detrimental effect of blatant same domain transgressions.

Marketers have long used celebrity endorsement to help viewers build strong brand‐product associations. Celebrity endorsements increase brand awareness and recall, but how celebrity endorsements shape the decision process remains unclear. A wealth of research indicates that people tend to follow someone else's gaze, yet its effects in advertisements have been largely unexplored. We recruited 77 participants to investigate the effect of celebrities and gaze‐cueing in advertisements on both gaze behavior and binary choices. We combined computational modeling with eye‐tracking and pupillometry to identify which internal components of processing are affected by celebrity endorsement. We found that gaze‐cueing and celebrity endorsement influence gaze allocation and option selection. Further, results from computational modeling, eye‐tracking, and pupillometry revealed that the effect of celebrity endorsement on decisions can be explained as an offset in the starting point of an evidence accumulation process as well as changes in the rate of accumulation, thereby biasing choice.

This research explores how families shape consumers' support-seeking from businesses' employees and other customers. Findings from a qualitative study of Weight Watchers uncover that some families trigger support-seeking focused on attenuating emotions arising from the source of stress (emotion-focused support-seeking), while other families foster support-seeking related to attenuating the cause(s) of stress itself (problem-focused support-seeking). Consumers' support-seeking reflects whether they experience their families' support as caring and responsive to their needs. As such, this research informs the substantive understanding of how consumers cope with consumption-induced stress. Theoretically, this research contributes to coping literature in marketing with its conceptualization of emotion-and problem-focused support-seeking. This work also contributes to marketing literature on social support, expanding and revising the literature's explanation about when and how support from primary sources (e.g., family) is related to consumers' support-seeking from businesses' employees and customers. Managerially, this work is relevant to businesses in consumer health domain. The key implication is that to enhance customer satisfaction and retention, businesses ought to improve the alignment between their services and consumers' support-seeking tendencies.

Consumers rely on physical touch in offline shopping and vicarious touch (i.e., imagining touch) in online shopping to develop their attitudes toward a product. The subject of how touching (versus not touching) affects consumer attitudes toward a product merits studying. However, past research has drawn controversial conclusions regarding the effect of product touch on consumer attitudes. This study conducted a meta‐analysis to resolve this inconsistency and explore the reasons for this inconsistency. It quantitatively analyzed 185 effect sizes in 42 empirical studies conducted between 2003 and 2022. In general, relative to not touching, touching had a positive effect on consumers' attitudes toward a product (ρ $\rho $ = 0.242, p < 0.001), and the effect size was moderate. Furthermore, the positive touch effect was mediated by consumers' cognitive experiences relating to the product and their affective experiences relating to the product. The cognitive path (total indirect effect = 0.068, p < 0.001) being stronger than the affective path (total indirect effect = 0.067, p < 0.001). Importantly, it showed that past inconsistency regarding the touch effect could be explained by moderators including product type (utilitarian versus hedonic), participants' uncertainty avoidance, and type of touch (physical touch versus vicarious touch). This study provides new insights into the product touch literature and offers valuable implications for online and offline retailing and consumer well‐being.

Facing the fact of declining sales of firms, promotions serve as an important tool to facilitate short‐term sales. Yet, marketers still face the question of promotion effectiveness based on consumer self‐disclosure behavior. In this paper, we examine the effects of self‐relevant information disclosure on promotional response as well as the mechanism and boundary conditions associated with this effect. Four studies using both real and fictitious brands across a variety of contexts were conducted to test the hypotheses and show that self‐disclosure contributes to promotional response because of the enhanced feeling of deservingness. Moreover, this research also demonstrates that self‐disclosed consumers from a lower social class are more likely to respond to promotions. Taken together, these insights contribute to the research on promotions and self‐disclosure and can be helpful to marketers by suggesting some guidelines for developing cost‐effective promotion strategies, for example, identifying the target consumer segments for promotions.

The initial hype and fanfare from the Meta view of how the metaverse could be brought to life has evolved into an ongoing discussion of not only the metaverse’s impact on users and organisations but also the societal and cultural implications of widespread usage. The potential of consumer interaction with brands within the metaverse has engendered significant debate within the marketing-focused discourse on the key challenges and transformative opportunities for marketers. Drawing on insights from expert contributors, this study examines the marketing implications of the hypothetical widespread adoption of the metaverse. We identify new research directions and propose a new framework offering valuable contributions for academia, practice and policy makers. Our future research agenda culminates in a checklist for researchers which clarifies how the metaverse can be beneficial to digital marketing and advertising, branding, services, value creation and consumer wellbeing.

In the present research, we propose a new perspective on multifaceted pride based on merits of achievements. We define merited pride as the feeling of accomplishment resulting from achievements one believes primarily resulted from internal factors, and unmerited pride as a similar feeling resulting from achievements one believes primarily resulted from external factors. We examine how these newly proposed facets of pride differentially affect conspicuous consumption. We propose, and three studies confirm, that individuals with unmerited (vs. merited) pride show a higher propensity for conspicuous consumption. Furthermore, we identify the need for signaling status as a psychological mechanism underlying the effect of pride on conspicuous consumption. Finally, we find that the proposed effect is more pronounced when the achievements are framed as nonfailure rather than as success. The current research contributes to the literature by supporting our new perspective on multifaceted pride and demonstrating the link between the newly proposed facets of pride and conspicuous consumption. Our findings have practical implications with regard to the design of advertising messages for luxury products and consumer education programs for people who are addicted to conspicuous consumption.

Drawing on the coping and emotion regulation literature, we argue that when consumers feel sad after a failure, their relative preference for sad (vs. happy) esthetic stimuli is a function of controllability or the extent to which the responsible party have control over the cause of the failure. Specially, when feeling sad, consumers' preference for sad (vs. happy) esthetic stimuli will increase (decrease) with controllability because sad esthetic stimuli facilitate approach‐oriented coping by maintaining consumers' attention toward the failure that elicits their sadness while happy esthetic stimuli facilitate avoidance‐oriented coping by diverting their attention away from the failure. The findings of four experiments provide evidence supporting the hypothesized effect of controllability on consumers' preference for sad (vs. happy) esthetic stimuli, and the predicted mediating role of attention deployment (toward the failure vs. away from the failure) in explaining the effect.

Nowadays brands are using customization strategies to reach their consumers with experiences that perfectly fit their preferences. At the same time, with customization consumers could effectively dilute the impact of the company's brand. Despite the robust literature on customization, little attention has been paid to how the decision to customize is linked to the brand experience. This paper aims to better understand the mechanisms behind customization choice in terms of preferences and assess the role of brand experience in this decision. We hypothesize a positive relationship between customization and brand experience. Moreover, since customization has a strong emotional component, we also analyze the moderating role of cognitive and psychological factors in shifting consumer preferences—from technical performances to emotional and symbolic ones. Through a two‐equation model that encompasses a number of factors, we find strong support for the main effect of an improved brand experience when consumers are permitted to customize the offering.

Many service and retail facilities, such as hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and airports, are incorporating nature elements into their building design. Individuals' affinity for nature is called biophilia. The literature on biophilic design heavily focuses on the restorative effects of biophilic design on the facility users, leaving many other effects under‐investigated. In particular, biophilic design implementation requires significant financial investment, thus, whether biophilic design can bring financial returns from consumers would be of interest to practitioners. This study investigates whether biophilic design attributes are linked to consumers’ willingness to pay a price premium (WTPP). Two pretests show that when biophilic attributes are moderately implemented, they can elevate aesthetic and attractiveness perceptions, but this effect tapers off if the implementation is excessive. Through three between‐subjects main experiments, this study confirms that WTPP is enhanced via increased aesthetic value and luxury perceptions when biophilic attributes are present (vs. absent—Studies 1 and 2), but this serial mediation is moderated by biophilic scarcity (low vs. high—Study 3). An adequate level of nature elements, when implemented in biophilic‐scarce areas, can improve customers' perceptions of aesthetic value and luxury. This, in turn, improves customers' WTPP for the service.