Marsha L. Richins

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Missouri

Although product desire is a central force driving consumption, much remains unknown about the internal processes that contribute to consumers' desires to purchase a product. This study focuses on these internal processes and draws on elaborated intrusion theory to understand how product desire develops and is reinforced by mental elaborations. Ext...

Children attach to objects for many reasons. Early research on object attachment focused primarily on infants and toddlers and their attachment to soft objects as a source of security, but this review reveals that children of all ages attach to a variety of objects and with a variety of motivations. This review also introduces the concept of transi...

Materialism has been examined in many social science disciplines from multiple perspectives. This review synthesizes this extensive literature into two organizing frameworks that describe how materialism develops in children and how materialism is reinforced and perpetuated in adulthood. The major components of the developmental model are the daily...

Materialists believe that acquiring products will make them happier, but the validity of this premise has not been examined empirically. In this research, two cross-sectional and one longitudinal studies examine the emotions evoked by products before and after purchase. High-materialism consumers consistently showed hedonic elevation in product-evo...

Materialism has often been blamed for consumers' overspending and excessive debt levels, but there is little understanding of how materialism influences these practices. This research introduces the concept of transformation expectations as an important explanatory variable for the relationship between materialism and credit overuse. Qualitative re...

Consumer materialism is a personal value that reflects the importance a consumer places on the acquisition and possession of material objects. In the consumer‐behavior literature, three elements are typically recognized as constituting materialism: the belief that acquisition is necessary for happiness, the tendency to judge the success of one's se...

This research examines consumer replacement decisions and the ambivalence that may accompany such decisions. Durable goods replacement decisions are complex in that they involve two interconnected but distinct subdecisions: whether to replace the good, and what to do with the incumbent possession. This research proposes and tests a decision model t...

Consumption emotions add color and texture to humans' daily lives. Consumption emotions are clearly important to consumers, who purchase products to meet their needs and achieve goals. These emotions constitute a signaling system that tells consumers whether they've achieved their goals. In addition, certain kinds of emotions, particularly positive...

In recent years, a number of studies have used the material values scale (MVS) developed by Richins and Dawson (1992) to examine materialism as a facet of consumer behavior. This research examines the MVS in light of the accumulated evidence concerning this measure. A review of published studies reportinginformation about the scale and analysis of...

Taking an example from the field of zoology, this article describes the importance of observation in the development of consumer theory and the training of doctoral students.

An analysis of the factors that encourage and discourage continued research productivity among consumer behavior scholars.

A discussion of the nature of consumer behavior research, some trends, and suggestions for future disciplinary direction.

Although consumption-related emotions have been studied with increasing frequency in consumer behavior, issues concerning the appropriate way to measure these emotions remain unresolved This article reviews the emotion measures currently used in consumer research and the theories on which they are based; it concludes that the existing measures are...

Consumers encounter countless advertising images during the course of everyday life. Many of these images are idealized, representing life more as it is imagined than as it actually exists. This article uses theories originating in social psychology to examine the impact these idealized advertising images have on consumers' perceptions of their liv...

This paper examines how social capital and organizational innovativeness influence business performance through their separate, indirect, or interactive effects, and how these effects differ across the institutional contexts of a transition economy and a market economy. In line with institutional theory, our findings show that the effects of social...

This article argues that materialism is a variable relevant to many aspects of economic psychology. The definition and measurement of materialism are briefly reviewed, followed by a discussion of the potential relationships between materialism and several economic variables, including use of money, work motivation, giving, and material satisfaction...

Consumers own objects for the value they provide. This article argues that the value of possessions resides in their meanings and further makes a distinction between the public and private meanings of possessions. The nature of these meanings is elaborated, and three studies are described that assess the public and private meanings of the possessio...

Self-gifts have recently emerged as a mode of purchasing for the self that may be linked to both cultural and personal values. This study examines the link between self-gifts and materialism as a personal value. In general, materialists seem to have a greater propensity to give self-gifts than non-materialists. This is especially true for occasions...

Although a two-component model of product involvement is widely accepted, research has not studied how enduring and situational involvement combine to affect consumer responses. This article investigates three combination models. In particular, an additive model is compared with two interaction models, and the three models are tested empirically us...

This article reviews the construct and measurement of materialism and concludes that materialism is appropriately conceptualized as a consumer value. The development of a values-oriented materialism scale with three components--acquisition centrality, acquisition as the pursuit of happiness, and possession-defined success--is described. In validati...

Research has repeatedly shown that substantial benefits accrue to those who are attractive. Knowledge of such benefits seems to be shared by the general public, and billions of dollars annually are spent on appearance-enhancing products. This article examines the functions of adornments and their linkage to attractiveness assessments. In addition,...

This study examines temporal changes in post-purchase product satisfaction for a durable goods purchase. Involvement and satisfaction variables were measured in a cross-sectional and a longitudinal study of car owners. Overall, consumers with high product involvement showed slightly greater satisfaction with their cars than low-involvement consumer...

This article reviews theories that might explain how advertising causes dissatisfaction with the self. It is hypothesized that consumers compare themselves with idealized advertising images. Exposure to such images may change consumers comparison standards for what they desire or lower perceptions of their own performance on relevant dimensions; th...

This paper focuses on consumer materialism within the American culture. It reviews some of the diverse conceptions of materialism in the contemporary social science literature and compares these theoretical notions with popular notions obtained from an exploratory survey of adult consumers. While popular notions tend to mirror theoretical conceptio...

Although consumer dissatisfaction is ubiquitous in the marketplace, empirical studies of dissatisfaction have been narrow in focus. This is especially true for studies of responses to dissatisfaction, for these investigations tend to ignore all dissatisfaction responses except complaint behavior. The study reported here replicates and extends an ea...

Assertive and aggressive behaviors may occur in marketplace exchanges, and measures of these behaviors have been developed in the United States. The appropriateness of these measures for use in other developed Western cultures was studied by examining functional/ conceptual and scalar equivalence of the measures in the Netherlands. An acceptable le...

This article analyzes marketing strategy concepts as they apply to real estate brokerage firms and reports an empirical investigation of marketing strategies of firms in a local market. Firms followed one of three strategic orientations with respect to revenue generation, depending on the extent to which they emphasized obtaining listings versus ma...

While product involvement has been identified as a significant variable in consumer behavior, the precise nature of such involvement is still not well understood. The study reported here utilizes a longitudinal design to provide evidence for the notion that there are two forms of product involvement. The study also documents the differing temporal...

While several authors have urged the tailoring of the marketing mix to cultures served by multinational organizations, no research has specifically addressed the need to handle product-related customer dissatisfaction differently in different countries. This article presents evidence documenting the need to make such culture-specific adjustments an...

The value of consumer complaints in consumer protection and in the effective management of the firm has been demonstrated. This paper reports a survey of Dutch consumers to determine the extent to which consumer attitudes toward seeking redress through complaints is correlated with actual complaint behavior. It concludes that situation-specific fac...

Product importance and related constructs have been inadequately defined and understood in the consumer behavior literature. This paper reviews and integrates these constructs and presents a framework for the analysis of product importance perceptions. Two forms of the construct are iden-tified, and the antecedents of and responses to product impor...

Product importance and related constructs have been inadequately defined and understood in the consumer behavior literature. This paper reviews and integrates these constructs and presents a framework for the analysis of product importance perceptions. Two forms of the construct are identified, and the antecedents of and responses to product import...

This study examines how consumers interact with representatives of marketing institutions by investigating the individual difference variables of consumer assertion and aggression. The development of scales to measure these variables is reported along with the validating analyses, which indicate that consumers may be divided into four groups based...

While marketing scholars have emphasized the importance of customer satisfaction, few studies have examined in detail consumers' responses to dissatisfaction. This study examines correlates of one possible response-telling others about the dissatisfaction-and identifies variables that distinguish this response from others. Variables investigated in...

While researchers in consumer behavior have begun to study cognitive structure as a consumer variable, no studies have investigated the relationship between cognitive structure and the presence or absence of strong brand preference in a shopping context. This study examines three forms of cognitive structure: differentiation, discrimination, and at...

While marketing scholars have emphasized the importance of customer satisfaction, few studies have examined in detail consumers’ responses to dissatisfaction. This study examines correlates of one possible response—telling others about the dissatisfaction—and identifies variables that distinguish this response from others. Variables investigated in...

Report (M.B.A.)--University of Texas at Austin. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 90-98).