Caglar Irmak

• PhD
• Professor at University of Miami

Many studies document the benefits of presenting smaller quantities of products, particularly when differences in quantity relate to availability or popularity. However, we know less about the effects of quantity differences in contexts unrelated to scarcity, such as when products are depicted in ads, special displays, or online retailing settings....

The authors investigate the role of political ideology in consumer reactions to consumption regulations. First, they demonstrate via a natural experiment that conservatives (but not liberals) increase usage of mobile phones in cars after a law was enacted prohibiting that activity (Study 1). Then, through three lab experiments the authors illustrat...

Both the total amount to be donated and the way it is communicated can influence consumer reactions to cause-related marketing (CM) campaigns. While companies often choose not to explicate any donation limit, this study argues that donation frames (e.g., minimum or maximum total donation) can enhance the likelihood of consumer purchases associated...

Although much research has investigated why and how impulsive individuals indulge, little research has explored the conditions under which non-impulsive consumers do. This research examines the effects of the salience of the notion "rare," or low frequency, on the tendency to indulge. The authors find that when the notion of rarity is salient, non-...

Consumers often encounter information about new brands that is not available for their preliminary or prior choices. For example, continued browsing might expose consumers to information that is unknown for an option they already placed in their shopping cart. How might preference strength affect their reactions to such missing information on their...

In the face of an opportunity to indulge, individuals may consult their memories in order to ascertain whether enough progress has been made toward a self-regulatory goal in order to justify indulgence. This research demonstrates that in such situations, impulsive individuals who possess a regulatory goal are likely to distort memories of past beha...

Pharmaceutical non-adherence is a major issue in both the United States and worldwide. In fact, lack of medication adherence has been called “America’s other drug problem.” It is estimated that globally only about 50 % of patients take their medicines as prescribed, and in the United States the annual cost of poor adherence has been estimated to be...

The discrepancy between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept (WTA) for a product, referred to as the endowment effect, has been investigated and replicated across various domains because of its implications for rational decision making. The authors assume that implicit processes operate in the endowment effect and propose an explanati...

Four studies demonstrate that selling and buying prices are differentially influenced by the value of products’ low- and high-level construal features. The study shows that sellers construe products at a higher level than do buyers and owners. Based on this, this study predicts and demonstrates that selling prices exceed buying prices when (1) the...

We investigate the effect of increased company involvement on consumer reactions to companies and nonprofits in business–nonprofit alliances to show that consumer reactions to the two parties in such alliances can, under certain conditions, diverge from each other. Specifically, we show that increased company involvement results in more positive co...

The authors investigate whether consumers systematically consider feature usage before making multifunctional product purchase decisions. Across five studies and four product domains, the article shows that consumers fail to estimate their feature usage rate before purchasing multifunctional products, negatively affecting product satisfaction. The...

We document the existence of an inference strategy based on a no-pain, no-gain lay theory, showing that consumers infer pharmaceutical products to be more efficacious when they are associated with a detrimental side effect or attribute. Study 1 finds that consumers high in need for cognition infer a bad-tasting cough syrup to be more effective than...

Spurred by the consumer demand for companies to be socially responsible, cause-related marketing (CM), in which fund raising for a cause is tied to purchase of a firm's products, has become popular in recent years. The authors demonstrate the conditions in which CM campaigns that allow consumers to choose the cause that receives the donation lead t...

This research explores the impact of merely altering the name of a food on dieters’ and nondieters’ evaluations of the food’s healthfulness and taste, as well as consumption. Four studies demonstrate that when a food is identified by a relatively unhealthy name (e.g., pasta), dieters perceive the item to be less healthful and less tasty than do non...

This research addresses estimations of distance, an important factor in numerous consumer decisions (e.g., store choice, willingness to pay for travel). Our central hypothesis is that when two places are located in the same geographic category, individuals estimate them to be closer to each other than when they are located in different categories,...

Consumers often gauge their own and others' preferences for products through social comparisons. This research examines the role of consumers' need for uniqueness (CNFU) in two common social comparisons: projection and introjection. Consumers project (i.e., rely on their own preferences to estimate those of others), regardless of their CNFU. Howeve...

This article takes a historical perspective to examine technological convergences that occurred throughout the twentieth century in an attempt to gain insights that may be helpful today. It analyzes five case histories where experts predicted that two or more existing technologies would converge to create an entirely new product and market. The cas...

In their article, Shiv, Carmon, and Ariely (2005, here-inafter SCA) document for the first time that nonconscious expectations about the relationship between price and qual-ity can influence consumers in a placebo-like manner. Even when the price paid for a good has absolutely no relation-ship to its actual quality, consumers' nonconscious beliefs...