Lynn R. Kahle

• Ph.D.
• Professor Emeritus at University of Oregon

Includes 33 chapters describing current issues in consumer psychology.

This article presents, through a series of studies conducted in six countries, the development, psychometric testing, and cross‐cultural validation of an independent measure of materialism motives involving three dimensions: needs for happiness, social recognition, and distinctiveness. We demonstrate that materialism (beliefs about the importance o...

Happiness is a cumulative process that involves several sources of non-linearities and complex interactions among factors, which are hard to account for with the regression analysis. Moreover, the existence of happy individuals having radically different backgrounds and circumstances hints that there may exist no unique recipe for happiness but a v...

Waterfields uses hydroponic farming entrepreneurially to create fresh produce and jobs in an economically challenged region.

Although prior research has explored religion, sustainable consumption, and subjective well‐being as isolated constructs, research has yet to explore the relations among these constructs. With religion as an enduring, wide‐reaching consumer value system, this research investigates how religious values inform attitudes toward and behaviors associate...

In recent years, it has become increasingly accepted that brands possess the capacity to convey different sets of benefits to different consumers and that these benefits can be functional, experiential, and/or symbolic in nature. While our understanding of functional and experiential branding has grown considerably over the past quarter of a centur...

The proliferation of social media has spawned new lifestyles that guide consumer behavior. Understanding the connection between lifestyles and consumer behavior has become much more important in a world with social media because businesses can more easily provide the right information to the right people, as well as identify who the right people ar...

Promoting healthy food choice is a central issue for public welfare and a continuous challenge for marketers and policy makers. This research examines how marketing communication elements, such as visuals and text, can be used to encourage healthy food choices. Extending previous research in automatic process mental simulation, this research examin...

Primes are pervasive in marketing. Despite frequent use in practice, there has yet to be a framework to categorize priming techniques that is inclusive of measurement challenges and methods for administering primes as well as provides insight for researchers on how to think about and construct research using priming. Prior researchers have provided...

Religion is a key source of core values and one of the most deeply psychological experiences; however, prior research has often inadequately measured religion's influence on consumption behaviors. Our research addresses criticisms of prior research by (1) reducing cultural bias by conducting research within one country, (2) examining both religious...

Religion is a key source of core values that influence consumer attitudes and behaviors; however, limited research has explored religion’s influence on consumer behavior. Therefore, we take a broad-based approach to show that religion acts as an individual difference variable to influence a variety of consumer behaviors, and, in doing so, we addres...

Recent research in marketing has identified the importance of flattery (e.g., Chan and Sengupta 2010, 2013), as has research in other areas of social science (e.g., Gordon 1996; Vonk 2002). For example, dual attitudes theory implies that “even when ulterior flattery by marketing agents is accompanied by an obvious ulterior motive that leads targets...

Effective sports marketing must convey information to fans. The marketer has only some control over events, and the manager must work with each day’s developments, but subtle cues in the marketing message may result in different interpretations and have strong ties to psychological processes. Social media share characteristics such as instantaneous...

Many studies have assessed the relationship among basic demographics and psychographics and sustainable purchase behaviors (e.g., McDonald et al. 2006; Tanner and Wölfing Kast 2003), but research has not adequately investigated the potential influence of core religious values on sustainable purchase and non-purchase related behaviors. Therefore, th...

This article looks at the ability of a rank-then-rate measurement procedure to increase discrimination in value ratings. We examine this procedure in two different population segments (college students and their parents) across four Western countries. Findings suggest this procedure is effective with college students, but not their parents.

Clearly, many marketing efforts are meant to portray a “good life” that is attainable through the acquisition and ownership of advertised goods (Belk and Pollay 1985). However, there is evidence that materialism is connected with feelings of unhappiness (Belk 1985) and dissatisfaction with life (Richins 1987). This evidence seems to suggest that ma...

Existing research supports the critical influence that consumer-brand relationships have on consumer attitudes toward the brand (Fournier 1998; McAlexander, Schouten and Koenig 2002); however, the rationale underlying this occurrence is not fully understood. A popular explanation for how consumer attitudes toward a brand are shaped focuses on the i...

Plog (1973) proposed the travel behavior inventory as an instrument for predicting travel destination choice on the basis of personality. Since that initial attempt to relate personality traits to travel preference, many studies have failed to confirm the relationship between the travel behavior inventory and destination choice. Smith (1990) sugges...

Foreign oil dependence and emissions of air pollutants could be decrease in oil-importing nations with increased sales and installations of residential solar panels. Solar energy can be captured in almost any climate, is not exhaustible and is relatively predictable (Johnson 2009). Germany has been using solar power for decades in spite of the rela...

This study examines the compatibility of televised sports programs and integrated advertising based on audience attention, attitude toward commercials, and awareness of sponsorships. A 2003 national survey suggests that sports fans tend to be more susceptible toward the marketing messages than non-fans watching either continuous or discontinuous sp...

We propose a multi-dimensional model of consumer coping behaviors with interpersonal marketing persuasion by integrating meta-cognition and regulatory-focus theories with the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad and Wright 1994). In three studies, we identify “control-assess-discount” aspects of the coping behaviors that enrich the established “Sen...

This session deals with innovative strategies in new product development. The first paper presents a program of research on strategies for utilizing anthropomorphization in creating acceptance of uncertain products, such as innovative high-technology products. The results show increased acceptance of anthropomorphized products, such as ones with su...

While salespeople use adaptive influence tactics in interactions with consumers, consumers can act as goal-oriented individuals attempting to manage those interactions. Prior research has documented a repertoire of consumer response behaviours, but little is known about the motivational forces. The present research examines the effects of regulator...

Unlabelled: BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: The "age stability" hypothesis suggests that adults have significant continuities in values over time, whereas the "situational influence" hypothesis suggests that change continues, especially in response to new events and experiences. Deeply ingrained, terminal values may be more stable than other, more instr...

Previous research has found the proportion of time spent with customers is not related to several objective measures of concurrent performance. This article focuses on the results that emerged from a field study that investigated potential associations between time spent calling on accounts and annual sales and subjective sales performance. While t...

The global children's market holds tremendous potential, yet little research has been conducted on international attitudes toward advertising and family communication patterns. Using consumer socialization as a theoretical foundation, the authors examine family communication patterns and general attitudes toward television advertising among mothers...

Examined the effects of surrealistic design and priming on the effectiveness of a print advertisement, using 94 undergraduates. Ss read a booklet containing a surrealistic or nonsurrealistic illustration and completed a 2nd booklet containing a priming or nonpriming message. Results support the social adaptation theory: Ss presented with priming st...

The interactive role of source expertise, time of source identification, and involvement was examined in an experiment on advertising effectiveness. In general, findings support an elaborative processing explanation. A three-way interaction among the manipulated variables emerged in the study, which utilized print advertisement stimuli. The finding...

The boundaries that traditionally delineated the roles of consumers and firms are being blurred as users take on creative tasks that were previously managed solely by commercial firms. This paper argues that the user-generated content (UGC) created by these consumers represents a profound shift of power from firms to consumers. In order to better u...

Increased spending and demand for sustainable advertising necessitates research to understand better how to encourage sustainable thought and behavior effectively, especially in the understudied areas of social media and cross-cultural research. This study, which includes respondents from the United States, Germany, and South Korea (total n = 1,018...

Be prepared for the future of international marketing! The future of your business depends on your ability to anticipate changes and developments in consumer behavior. Euromarketing and the Future helps you chart a course for success through the diverse and challenging European markets, presenting research and theory on where they've been, where th...

Increased spending and demand for sustainable advertising necessitates research to understand better how to encourage sustainable thought and behavior effectively, especially in the understudied areas of social media and cross-cultural research. This study, which includes respondents from the United States, Germany, and South Korea (total n = 1,018...

This study uses the List of Values (LOV) (Kahle, 1983) approach to investigate the differences in social values of amateur basketball tournament participants and spectators. The data from the survey of tournament attendees (N = 399) were utilised to demonstrate that social values can be used to predict the likelihood of a person becoming either a p...

The list of values (LOV) was administered in a national survey in 2007 to monitor social values across key demographic variables in the United States (Kahle, 1983). The results were compared and contrasted with those in two previous national surveys in 1976 and 1986. This study provides a rare glimpse into the changes in social values in America fo...

Social value monitors which offer longitudinal data on a birth cohort's shifting value orientations can be used in long-term forecasts of that cohort's demand for broad product categories. This empirical study focuses on the values of Canada's eight million Baby Boomers. It analyzes U.S. data on Baby Boomers' value changes in tandem with data from...

Following a strategic approach, the authors test a universal model across cultural groups. They propose that consumers infer brand values (i.e., internal, external, and fun and enjoyment values) from packages and form their purchase intentions on the basis of those values. The authors test this proposition on three culturally diverse subsamples who...

Firms engage in environmental marketing in order to appeal to environmentally conscious consumers. Within the context of the forest product industry, this research uses data from two studies to empirically test whether a relationship exists between demographic/psychographic characteristics and reported environmentally conscious intentions. In both...

The authors examined intrapersonal variation in consumer susceptibility to normative influence as a key mediator of wine brand choice. On the basis of a consumer sample, the authors found that individual values and social identity complexity affect consumer susceptibility to normative influence with downstream effects on (a) which brand benefits co...

Two methods of measuring consumer values, the List of Values and the Rokeach Value Survey, are compared. Both involve some social desirability responding but both have convergent, discriminant, and empirical validity for consumer research. The List of Values may be preferable for some types of research because it detects more daily influence in peo...

This study examined the influence of social values on the importance of various clothing features. A model is hypothesized in which social values lead to differing needs for group identification, affiliation, and conformity, which influence clothing feature importance. In general, social values are associated with a high need for affiliation and gr...

A study was conducted to understand how bottle bills exert their effect. Legislation does apparently allow for a situation in which behaviors influence attitudes if subjective norms converge with the new position. Students tested longitudinally manifested significant (p < .1) differences in cross-lagged panel correlations implying that subjective n...

This paper examines how and why consumers devel- op, enter into, and maintain relationships in a sports marketing context. This paper presents a framework for understanding how and why consumers engage in relationship marketing. Based on Kelman's functional approach to attitude change, this framework presents three qualitatively different levels fo...

Online Consumer Psychology addresses many of the issues created by the Internet and goes beyond the topic of advertising and the Web to include topics such as customization, site design, word of mouth processes, and the study of consumer decision making while online. The theories and research methods help provide greater insight into the processes...

This paper maintains that marketers should take an expanded view of marketing research and practice to comprehend today's global political, economic, and social environments fully. Marketing is the central mediating variable in the attainment and consolidation of power by politicians, governments, and nations. Given marketing's pivotal role in the...

A model incorporating economic optimism, personal pessimism, and the related aspects of depression, and shopping indicators of conspicuous consumption, deal proneness, healthy shopping consciousness, and product trustworthiness is developed. Then, the model is tested empirically using structural equations on a sample of 667 consumers. It is conclud...

This article sheds light on how fans, as consumers of sports, perceive environmental factors at collegiate sporting events and how these consumer perceptions relate to positive affect toward the event for men's versus women's intercollegiate basketball customers in the USA. Gaining a deeper understanding of environmental factors and their relation...

Usenet groups, lifestyle portals, professional forums, and other online discussions allow consumers to communicate with each other in unprecedented ways. Negative online word of mouth may pose particular worries for marketing practitioners; but how can marketers tell whether there is a real problem? This paper discusses methods for evaluating negat...

A primary goal of sports marketers is to engender fan identification with a team and/or its athletes. Previous research has shown that identification appears most likely when fans perceive a personal sense of similarity with a team or its athletes. The present study investigates a unique attitudinal dimension along which fans identify with teams an...

It is argued that the construct of individual susceptibility to normative influence (SNI) needs to be put into a wider nomological framework, with antecedents and consequences. Based on prior literature, a causal sequence is hypothesized in which values are antecedent to SNI, which itself shapes the importance placed by the individual on different...

In this article, we examine the four processes of dialectical thinking: interconnection, development and change, transformation of quantitative into qualitative, and unity and struggle of opposites. We argue that the decisions of some consumers reflect dialectical thinking, at least some of the time.

The consumption of risky sports continues to grow. Risky sports include activities such as skydiving, deep-sea diving, and parachuting that entail a high level of physical risk. To date, most studies of risky sports have tended to be more qualitative than quantitative and were based on participant observation. The research described here builds on...

The consumption of risky sports continues to grow. Risky sports include activities such as skydiving, deep-sea diving, and parachuting that entail a high level of physical risk. To date, most studies of risky sports have tended to be more qualitative than quantitative and were based on participant observation. The research described here builds on...

Nike has received criticism regarding the ethics of its operations in Vietnam. We examine this criticism by ethical analysis and by on-site inspection of one of its factories. We conclude that ethical decision making in business is often complicated and multidimensional. Some criticisms of Nike have been unfair but have benefited Asian workers and...

This paper presents data from several applications around the world of the List of Values (LOV), considering the implications for understanding consumers cross-culturally. It shows how different countries and different individual consumers may be segmented based on their social values.

High-risk sports, such as skydiving, parachuting, and hang gliding, have become increasingly popular in recent years. This article uses expectancy-value theory to integrate previous research on risky behavior and risky sports. The model that is developed relates the expected benefits of risky sports to several antecedents; specifically, thrill and...

The real-time response survey can be viewed as a dialectic elaboration of the focus group and the sample survey, incorporating some of the advantages of each and producing a program of research quickly. An evaluation of the methodology shows its predictive utility from: real-time response purchase intentions to self-reported actual purchases of com...

Data from 2 national surveys were examined to determine whether the components of social status (education, income, occupation) as separate individual factors could explain more variance than social status composites (Coleman, Hollingshead, Census). In general the evidence implies that the components are better predictors than the composite score,...

Personal values have long been considered an important variable for market segmentation. Single values may be grouped on the basis of their importance ratings into higher-order value domains, and the differential weighting of these domains represents an individual's value system. Value systems serve to maintain an individual's self-esteem and consi...

The authors examine patterns of correlation among personality variables that may be related to trust in advertising and to trust in other sources of product information. Trust in sources of product information is positively related to consumer conformity and not related to general cynicism. In addition, trust in advertising decreases as education l...

The nature of gift giving and the linkage between gift giving behaviors and person values are investigated in this paper. Responses on the LOV value scale and to two gift giving scales are compared between U.S. and Japanese respondents.

The linkage between gift-giving behaviors and personal values was investigated in this study. Two hundred and forty students from the United States and 82 Oriental students were surveyed, utilizing the List of Values scale and two gift-giving scales (amount of gift giving and effort involved in gift selection). The two hypotheses assessed were conf...