Mauricio Palmeira

• University of South Florida St. Petersburg

People often consult experts to provide solutions to their problems. Oftentimes, an initial attempt to solve a problem fails, and these experts (e.g., advisors, consultants, specialists, and service providers) will resort to a backup plan. A backup plan can be presented when it is needed (i.e., after an initial failure) or in advance (i.e., before...

Consulting multiple advisors tends to improve decision quality; however, limited understanding exists regarding how advisors respond to the presence of co‐advisors. Previous research has cautioned about the potential interpersonal costs of seeking advice from multiple sources. It suggests that advisors may perceive their advice as less likely to be...

This research takes the first step in exploring how the emotions of choice recipients influence the riskiness of decisions made for them by others. In particular, we focus on the role of sadness—an emotion that has been shown to prompt risk‐seeking in choices for self. Across five studies, in monetary and social decisions, participants prefer safer...

We examine the impact of advice use on perceptions of competence. We propose that advice use sends opposing signals to an advisor regarding the advisee's competence. Greater advice use signals respect for the advisor, which is reciprocated by enhancing competence perceptions. However, greater advice use also indicates a lack of independence in judg...

Giving help is a generous act, but it can cause psychological distress for the recipients by inducing feelings of dependency, incompetence, or indebtedness. The current research identifies a novel factor-the timing of help in the course of an activity-that modulates the negative effect of help on the recipient's subjective well-being. Across nine s...

Many activities in organizations benefit from informal networks, in which individuals help each other without an obligation to do so. Helping can take time and effort and expert helpers may find themselves in high demand not being able to help every requester. In this research, we examine the impact of prior help in the decision to help the same pe...

In today’s advanced economies, consumers are constantly exposed to an increasing number of upgraded products. This research examines consumer response to a brand’s launching of an upgraded product and identifies the consumer’s ownership status of a previous version of the product as a key dimension that can influence their reaction. Contrary to com...

Purpose This paper aims to examine how observers evaluate a company that provides service failure (or excellence) to an immoral versus a moral customer. This study introduces the concept of deservingness to the service literature and suggests that observers appreciate when a company delivers “justice” – either bad service to an immoral customer or...

Many firms unfortunately experience data breaches in which personal records information are accessed by external agents without firms’ and consumers’ consent. To improve customer relationships and re-build equity, it is important for brands to apologize, and many do. In the current inquiry, we study how consumers’ political ideology moderates their...

I examine how the possibility of acquiring different features through in-game purchases (micro-transactions) affect intentions to play and recommend a game. I propose that individuals react more negatively to micro-transactions involving functional rather than aesthetic features. This is because functional, but not aesthetic features, alter the gam...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate consumer reactions to minority retail employees. The paper argues that despite the persistence of racism and homophobia in society, the vast majority of the population is strongly against these forms of discrimination. Because of the profound negativity of such behavior, the study hypothesizes that consumers w...

Consumers often wonder about the product’s maximum output: the highest rotation speed of a blender or the best printing quality of a printer. We examine how the number of levels (e.g., a blender with 3 vs. 7 speeds) influences judgments of maximum product output. Objectively speaking, the number of levels is no more than a set of breakpoints in an...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore whether people’s intuitions regarding the social consequences of word of mouth (WOM) match the actual consequences. The authors investigate the expectations people have about how sharing WOM (positive or negative) will change others’ perceptions of them and then compare these expectations to the actua...

Past studies on advice-taking have typically not given decision makers a way to evaluate the quality of the advice, other than by comparing it to their own judgment. In reality, decision makers are often aware of cues that suggest which estimates or options are better. I consider this common, but neglected context, and examine how the relationship...

We propose a “ratings pattern heuristic” in judgments of expertise—that is, people’s tendency to undervalue critics who assign the same rating to multiple options, overlooking diagnostic information which would clearly justify the uniform ratings. The heuristic is driven by a strong association between discrimination and expertise and a focus on su...

This research investigates customers’ reactions to technological products and argues that due to different perspectives on implicit theories of intelligence, people would have different reactions to these products framed as complex versus simple. In two experiments, product complexity is manipulated by including some steps or processes to use a pro...

This research investigates how target and observing customers react to service failure and recovery. Previous research has focused on the effect of service recovery on target customers. It has been assumed that the reactions of those customers observing the recovery efforts would mirror those of target customers, or perhaps be even more favorable,...

Purpose A fundamental aspect of hierarchical loyalty programs is that some consumers get rewards that others do not. Despite the widespread use of such programs, academics have long debated whether these benefits are outweighed by the potential negative impact of the differential treatment of customers. This study aims to extend our understanding,...

This research investigates how consumers evaluate expert advice in the presence of little diagnostic information. Consumers often seek recommendations from a range of sources, referred to as consumer agents (Solomon 1986; West 1996). Such advice represents an important component of the decision-making process and the offering (Beatty and Smith 1987...

Previous research on mixed choice has focused on attractive options and suggested a conservative bias. The current study investigates the role of attribute valence and shows in three experiments that consumers tend to prefer the stimulus option when the options are described by attractive attributes and the memory option when they are described by...