Leonard Lee

National University of Singapore | NUS · Department of Marketing

For several decades, the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing has stimulated and led debates with far-reaching implications for consumer well-being, global relationships and, ultimately, human survival. The challenges we face have not disappeared but intensified. Today, we must respond to climate change, manage a global pandemic, and address dispar...

Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) is based on the notion that consumers and transport providers access a centralized platform for the planning, payment, and management of trips and combines multiple modes of transportation designed to increase the efficiency of the system. MaaS offers substantial societal benefits, including the reduction of emissions,...

Changes in the way customers shop accompanied by an explosion of customer touchpoints and fast-changing competitive and technological dynamics, have led to an increased emphasis on agile marketing. The objective of this paper is to conceptualize and investigate the emerging practice of marketing agility. Toward this end, the authors synthesize the...

In this research, the authors propose that incidental exposure to price promotions can cause downstream impatience in an unrelated domain. Specifically, price promotions trigger reward seeking—a general motivational state—and reward seeking, in turn, yields impatience. Seven experiments (N = 1,795) demonstrate how incidental exposure to price promo...

Four online grocery‐shopping experiments and one field study using video‐tracking technology at a grocery store document how shoppers' motivation evolves from the beginning to the end of their shopping trips. We uncover unique motivational patterns as shoppers achieve multiple sub‐goals (i.e., choose multiple grocery items) to complete their trips:...

This research examines how upward social comparison affects consumers’ propensity to adopt innovation. While one may predict that the symbolic benefits of innovation adoption may be appealing to consumers after they engage in upward social comparison, we argue that some of these consumers may, in fact, resist innovation. The degree to which these c...

The objective of this paper is to introduce the emergent concept of marketing agility and develop an organizing framework that systematically captures the antecedents and consequences of marketing agility. Given the sparse literature on the topic, we use a grounded theory approach to tap into the mental models of managers. Synthesizing insights fro...

We propose a theory-based model of the shopper journey, incorporating the rich literature in consumer and marketing research and taking into account the evolving retailing landscape characterized by significant knowledge, lifestyle, technological, and structural changes. With consumer well-being at its core and shopper needs and motivations as the...

In this article, we consider why employing realistic experimental designs and measuring actual behavior is important and beneficial for consumer research. More specifically, we discuss when, where, and how researchers might go about doing this in order to increase the veracity and believability of their work. We analyze the choice of independent va...

This research investigates how the fundamental desire for control affects product acquisition. The authors propose that consumers compensate for a loss of perceived control by buying utilitarian products (e.g., household cleaning agents) because of these products' association with problem solving, a quality that promotes a sense of control. Study 1...

Consumers often make product choices that involve the consideration of money and time. Building on dual-process models, we propose that these two basic resources activate qualitatively different modes of processing: while money is processed analytically, time is processed more affectively. Importantly, this distinction then influences the stability...

Shopping is an integral part of our everyday lives. Common wisdom suggests that many consumers engage in shopping and buying as a means to repair their negative feelings - a notion commonly referred to as retail therapy. However, does retail therapy really work? The present monograph seeks to address this question by proposing a tripartite approach...

Using an extensive field study in furniture retailing, we compare the effectiveness of abstract and concrete messages for active and passive personalization in stimulating consumer response. Results suggest that abstract messages are more effective for active than passive personalization. This effect is qualified by the message’s fit to consumers’...

We propose a framework for the joint study of the consumer’s decision of where to buy and what to buy. The framework is rooted in utility theory where the utility is for a particular channel/brand combination. The framework contains firm actions, the consumer search process, the choice process, and consumer learning. We develop research questions w...

Consumer research has documented dozens of instances in which the introduction of an “irrelevant” third option affects preferences between the remaining two. In nearly all such cases, the unattractive dominated option enhances the attractiveness of the option it most resembles – a phenomenon known as the "attraction effect." In the studies presente...

The current research examines how price promotions influence postpurchase hedonic consumption experience. On the one hand, getting a good deal can elevate moods and dampen the “pain of payment,” thus enhancing consumption enjoyment. On the other hand, discounts also reduce sunk-cost considerations and the need to recover one’s spending. As a result...

Consumer research has documented dozens of instances in which the introduction of an "irrelevant" third option affects preferences between the remaining two. In nearly all such cases, the unattractive dominated option enhances the attractiveness of the option it most resembles—a phenomenon known as the "attraction effect." In the studies presented...

A series of five field and laboratory studies reveal a temperature-premium effect: warm temperatures increase individuals' valuation of products. We demonstrate the effect across a variety of products using different approaches to measure or manipulate physical warmth and different assessments of product valuation. The studies suggest that exposure...

Eight studies reveal an intriguing phenomenon: individuals who have higher trust in their feelings can predict the outcomes of future events better than individuals with lower trust in their feelings. This emotional oracle effect was found across a variety of prediction domains, including (a) the 2008 US Democratic presidential nomination, (b) movi...

We propose that the consideration of monetary worth in everyday purchase decisions, expressed as a price, impairs preference consistency. Fueling this effect are two problems inherent in mapping between monetary worth and utility. First, the concept of opportunity cost is ambiguous. Second, price conveys more information than simply foregone consum...

Task-oriented activities often involve a certain degree of waiting before the actual activities commence. We suggest that seemingly irrelevant situational cues in the task environment, such as queue guides, area carpets, or the location of another person, can serve as virtual boundaries that divide the task system into two categories: inside the sy...

This research investigates a new type of team that is becoming prevalent in global work settings, namely self-managing multicultural teams. We argue that challenges that arise from cultural diversity in teams are exacerbated when teams are leaderless, undermining performance. A longitudinal study of multicultural master of business administration s...

Understanding the role of emotion in forming preferences is critical in helping firms choose effective marketing strategies and consumers make appropriate consumption decisions. In five experiments, participants made a set of binary product choices under conditions designed to induce different degrees of emotional decision processing. The results c...

Prior research has established that people's own physical attractiveness affects their selection of romantic partners. This article provides further support for this effect and also examines a different, yet related, question: When less attractive people accept less attractive dates, do they persuade themselves that the people they choose to date a...

Many consumers have had the experience of entering discount membership clubs to make a few purchases, only to leave with enough pasta to outlast a nuclear winter. We suggest that the presence of membership fees can lead consumers to infer a "fees -> savings" link, spurring them to increase their spending independent of the actual savings afforded b...

Essay 1: Shopping Goals, Goal Concreteness, and Conditional Promotions. We propose a two-stage model to describe the increasing concreteness of consumers' goals during the shopping process, testing the model through a series of field experiments at a convenience store. Using a number of different process measures (experiment 1), we first establishe...

Patrons of a pub evaluated regular beer and "MIT brew" (regular beer plus a few drops of balsamic vinegar) in one of three conditions. One group tasted the samples blind (the secret ingredient was never disclosed). A second group was informed of the contents before tasting. A third group learned of the secret ingredient immediately after tasting, b...

Understanding the roles of emotion and cognition in forming preferences is critical in helping firms choose effective marketing strategies and consumers make appropriate consumption decisions. In this work, we investigate the role of the emotional and cognitive systems in preference consistency (transitivity). Participants were asked to make a set...

We propose a two-stage model to describe the increasing concreteness of consumers' goals during the shopping process, testing the model with a series of field experiments at a convenience store. Using a number of different process measures (experiment 1), we first established that consumers are less certain of their shopping goals and construe prod...

ABSTRACT—Patrons of a pub evaluated,regular beer and ‘‘MIT brew’’ (regular beer plus a few drops of balsamic vinegar) in one of three conditions. One group,tasted the samples,blind (the secret ingredient was,never dis- closed). A second group was informed of the contents before tasting. A third group learned of the secret ingredient im- mediately a...

Consistency is believed to be the foundation of understanding, predicting, and influencing human behavior (Lee, Amir, & Ariely, 2009). However, inconsistency in decision making does exist and could be influenced by a variety of factors such as culture. The present research investigates how culture may influence consistency in decision making. With...

This research examines the relative stability of consumer valuations of two fundamental economic resources—time and money—in product decisions. A series of six experiments demonstrates that, in general, money-based valuations (e.g., air fare) lead to more intransitive choices and less consistent preferences than time-based valuations (e.g., flight...