Michael Robert Solomon

• Ph.D.
• Professor at Saint Joseph's University

The digital manifestation of viral propagation—the repeated peer-to-peer communication of a message and its attendant idea—represents a fundamental shift in the way ideas, meanings, and information flow. While digital channels help to multiply the impact of viral propagation, they also accentuate the fallout from poorly executed viral campaigns or...

Smart technologies, such as wearables, represent an attractive innovation that many companies still perceive as a way to build competitive advantage. This is exemplified by the recent launch of the Apple Watch Series 4 and the Gen 4 Smartwatch by Fossil, among others. However, due to the short product life cycle of such devices and weaker than anti...

For many years, this course was called Buyer Behavior rather than Consumer Behavior. What’s in a name? In this case, a lot—the word “buyer” reflected a singular focus on buyer/seller transactions. This book played a significant role in broadening that focus to the larger sphere of consumption. That includes what happens before, during, and after th...

Wearables are small computing devices that can be attached to different parts of the human body and offer varied functionality such as activity tracking, mobile phone connectivity, and medical monitoring (Jung et al., 2016). Among the most popular types of wearables are smartwatches, activity trackers, and health monitors. Demand for wearables is e...

Hybrid products, as exemplified by Apple or Fitbit wearables, claim features of different product categories (i.e., a technology and a fashion item). As these products develop, marketers find it challenging to position and market them because they transcend traditional categories. Using wearables as exemplars and utilizing the product design litera...

Google preview of the Book available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EOI2DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT260&lpg=PT260&dq=quantified+self+wolny+solomon&source=bl&ots=lferNjHZPB&sig=ACcn63dmtKL6Tf6Erj4BZ6pnmJw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjH2-v8pdLYAhXEIMAKHTOSAkoQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=quantified%20self%20wolny%20solomon&f=false

The undergraduate consumer behavior course is ideally suited to experiential learning. This presentation includes some suggestions that allow students to "get their hands dirty" by studying consumption firsthand. These ideas include a set of field projects encouraging students to apply course concepts (e.g., media logs to track product placement on...

This paper reports data from an ongoing program of research intended to explore the ways that beauty is represented in mass media. Building on prior research that identified a finite universe of “looks” used by industry experts to categorize fashion models, we present the results of a content analysis of major American fashion magazines that explor...

The adoption of social media marketing by organizations for branding, marketing communications, and customer relationship marketing creates a need for a new course in the marketing curriculum. For marketing faculty accepting the task of teaching a course on social media marketing, there is a learning curve based in part on the recency with which th...

The Engel, Kollatt, & Blackwell (EKB) decision-making model has long been a core theory of consumer behaviour. This paper conceptually unpicks it to explore if it can continue to be as relevant in today's participatory online culture, where shopping is increasingly a decision-making process that is driven by a powerful social collective. In order t...

Uncovering what drives the consumer to action is of interest to academia and industry alike, and the advent of social media has added a confounding layer to the consumer decision process. In some ways, it has changed nothing, and in other ways, it has changed everything. Information is at the heart of decision making, and blogs offer a plethora. A...

Russell Belk's 1988 seminal paper on the extended self in the Journal of Consumer Research highlighted the central role of material artifacts in defining self-identity. How might Belk's paper differ if he had published it in 2013? We extend Belk's original construct to encompass the digital extended self as we identify three crucial domains where t...

Social media allows users to interact and engage with corporations and brands in ways that would be unthinkable with any other communications platform. In a new environment of "media anarchy," it is difficult to control corporate identities and brands. Assumptions underlying current approaches to corporate communications, which fail to take account...

This paper proposes the Beauty Match-Up Hypothesis, which has two main components: 1) That perceivers distinguish multiple types of physical attractiveness; and 2) That these specific types are seen as more or less suitable (i.e., better match-ups) for certain products when paired in advertising. A set of editors at major women's magazines sorted p...

While the settings (e.g., furniture, props, clothing) employed in television commercials and other media are carefully selected by production personnel to convey desired imagery, little is known about the process whereby the surroundings so depicted are chosen over many other stylistic possibilities. The study investigates the degree to which the p...

Although it is clear that many products possess symbolic content, research on symbolic consumption tends to focus upon the meanings imparted by individual products in isolation. It is proposed that the meanings of many products are in part derived from their occurrence, or expected occurrence, with other products in the inventories of prototypical...

In his article “Benign Envy,” Russ Belk addresses the human tendency to covet others’ possessions. He argues that while the phenomnon continues to be pervasive, current cultural conditions temper the extent to which envy has morphed from a malicious equation of “if you win, I lose” to a more benign calculus of “I want to win like you have.” In this...

Fashion and identity are inextricably linked. Consumers throughout the ages have strategically deployed apparel and other self-expressive products to signal real and aspirational personas and to pursue hedonic exploration and fantasy. Often these transformations are entrusted to aesthetic professionals such as clothing designers, cosmeticians and p...

A virtual world is an online representation of real world people, products, and brands in a computer-mediated environment (CME). Within the next few years CMEs are likely to emerge as the dominant internet interface. In addition to corporate websites, companies will operate virtual stores where customers can browse and interact with assistants. How...

Eighty million members of the Millennial Generation are knocking at the door of Corporate America. Can traditional “chalk and talk” corporate training techniques adequately address the needs of a generation that views the world through a digital lens? In this chapter, the authors will explore the learning styles of Millennials and how virtual world...

Knowledge theories have developed over the past 30 years (Polanyi, 1966). However, it is only recently that knowledge has become regarded valuable asset in corporate boardrooms. Knowledge acquisition has become a critical resource for creating and sustaining competitive advantage as the competitive environment continues to intensify (Hitt, Ireland,...

Recent research has suggested that the personality trait of self-monitoring affects how people perceive the symbolic meanings of such products as clothes, furni ture, and other self-presentational props or possessions. In particular, Thompson and Davis (1988) found that high versus low self-monitors judged traditional fur niture styles as more aest...

To date more than 100 schools and educational institutions from more than 20 countries are teaching in a virtual world (Rzewnicki 2007). For those who are new to virtual worlds understanding how to incorporate this technology to provide a meaningful contribution can be overwhelming. The purpose of this article is to conceptually explore the use of...

Many social roles are associated with and identified by product symbols. Yet, frequently, there is much ambiguity among consumers regarding which products denote a given role, and the specific products which communicate desired role attributes. The study examines factors influencing the diversity of clothing symbols associated with the female execu...

In recent years, themed Irish pubs have grown in popularity. Marketers often strive to create the perception of authenticity when creating these themed environments. This study seeks to understand the importance of authenticity, tangible and intangible elements that constitute authenticity, and consumers' ability to delineate the ‘real’ from simula...

An experiment was conducted in which information regarding a target persons evaluation of a target object was presented either in written form or via video tape, and information regarding the evaluations of four other people was also presented either in written form or via video tape. The results indicated that the effect of consensus on both perso...

Much has been written on the role of the message source as a vehicle for persuasion in traditional print and broadcast media, but little from an online perspective. In the virtual world, the opportunity now exists to incorporate a wide variety of message spokespersons in the form of avatars. These figures can range from fanciful, animated character...

Management researchers have proposed that our future lies in building sustainable enterprises that connect industry, society and environment (Senge and Carstedt, 2001). The firm's ultimate goal should not be just profitability (creating economic value for its shareholders). Instead, its goals should be three-fold: creating economic, social, and env...

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Purpose The purpose of this research is to investigate knowledge management in the textile industry specifically through the relationships and interconnections of knowledge management systems, strategy and firm performance across the value chain. Design/methodology/approach This research examines the process of acquisition, retention, maintenance,...

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...

In traditional media, the selection of an appropriate source for communication (such as a celebrity) is left in the hands of the advertiser who generally adopts a standardised spokesperson for an entire target market. Online, the opportunity now exists for this spokesperson to be personalised to suit individual consumers, through the use of avatars...

A service is an interactive experience very similar to a theatrical performance complete with actors, props and costumes. And, this is a show that often demands proactive participation by the audience. These performances occur in a marketspace where managers must pay close attention to contextual cues to insure that the meanings they convey are con...

The restaurant industry is experiencing a trend toward “authentic” ethnic restaurants that promise not only authentic food from a specific culture, but also an authentic dining experience and decor. For many consumers, these ethnic dining experiences constitute their sole contact with foreign cultures. This paper explores the importance of authenti...

Taking a psychological approach to the area of consumer behaviour, this exciting new Australian text presents a contemporary framework based around a buying, having and being model. Consumer behaviour is more than buying things; it also embraces the study of how having (or not having) things affects our lives and how possessions influence the way w...

Consumers are assumed to organize information about lifestyle groups much like they organize other category knowledge, in that features of the object are used by the consumer to assign it to a category. Knowledge about the complementary consumption choices—consumption constellations—associated with different lifestyles is hypothesized to be organiz...

This paper describes a web-based data collection technique called Life/Style OnLineR that is suitable for a broad variety of consumer research applications. Unlike the majority of online research techniques now in use, respondents provide rapid-response feedback to stimuli presented primarily on the visual rather than the verbal channel. Following...

A functional framework for the perception of female physical attractiveness suggests that, at the least, perceivers should differentiate sexual (sexy), youthful, nonsexual (cute), and up-to-date clothed and groomed (trendy) dimensions. Further, it was hypothesized that these content-specific varieties of good looks would covary with physical featur...

We advocate a holistic perspective on both communications and consumption processes. Much of the current emphasis in the area of integrated marketing communications is on the effective coordination of activities among different communications media. In contrast, our perspective emphasizes the content of the message and the notion that to create eff...

Advertising often seeks to portray products in the context of idealized and desirable lifestyles. Similarly, consumers' product choices are often motivated by their desire to identify with or to avoid particular idealized lifestyles. In the present paper, we focus on the degree to which consumers' judgments of the consumption patterns associated wi...

In this paper we consider the hybridization of commercial communications and mass media vehicles of popular culture, and the potential effects of such hybrids on consumers. This hybridization results in a media environment in which the audience is confronted with a blurring of boundaries between the two domains—commercial signification and popular...

Although researchers have conceptualized beauty as unidimensional, modern-day cultural definitions of beauty are multidimensional. This paper focuses on two forms of mass media that play an important role in transmitting information about multiple and diverse cultural ideals of beauty—fashion magazine advertising and music videos shown on music tel...

Although much has been written concerning music television in the popular press and in academic publications, there has been little empirical research addressing the consumption imagery that accompanies the aesthetic elements of music videos. Given the potentially important role played by this medium in adolescent consumer socialization, this may b...

This paper presents a study of financial surrogate usage among adult consumers. A scale to discriminate between heavy users and non-users the Desire for Financial Surrogacy Scale (DFSS) is developed and tested in a mail survey. Financial surrogacy usage is found significantly associated with biological sex, income, degree of financial opinion leade...

Argues that all service encounters can be thought of as sharing common elements and common problems. Considers some common issues faced by a variety of personal service providers, maintaining that researchers and managers can understand consumer classification and evaluation of services by comparing functionally dissimilar services. Analyses data f...

This paper presents results from a study of consumers' use of surrogates (professional advisors) for financial decision- making. In a national survey of executives, male and female usage patterns were found to differ, with women the heavier users of financial planners. Psychographic differences in orientation toward surrogate usage, such as financi...

The relationship between sets of products and social roles has long been discussed by researchers. In this paper, a construct termed the consumption constellation is proposed to formalize this discussion. The properties of consumption constellations are mathematically operationalized, and their interrelationships are discussed. These measures are u...

Examined the function of personality and Gestalt-like ensemble effects in the explanation of taste-based preferences for product styles. 227 graduate students rated photographs of 5 types of furniture in terms of perceived unity, aesthetic response, social impression, general liking, and intention to own. Results show that general liking (which det...

This article considers the overlooked role of consumer surrogates in the marketing process. While it is commonly assumed that consumers are actively involved in important purchase decisions, it is proposed that in fact they often relinquish control to external surrogate services, which may collect market data, evaluate competitive alternatives, and...

Service marketers are confronted with two conflicting goals when designing service delivery systems, efficiency and personalization. The relative importance of each factor is determined by the nature of the specific service to be rendered, and by participants' expectations about degree of personalization. A study was conducted to test two assertion...

Service marketers are confronted with two conflicting goals when designing service delivery systems, efficiency and personalization. The relative importance of each factor is determined by the nature of the specific service to be rendered, and by participants’ expectations about degree of personalization. A study was conducted to test two assertion...

Examined factors related to consumers' use of a wardrobe consultant when evaluating and purchasing clothing by surveying 245 US women who were consultants' clients. Psychological and demographic variables were examined to assess their relation to wardrobe consultant usage and benefits sought by the Ss. Two dominant factors emerged, one correspondin...

Though consumers commonly are assumed to be actively involved in important purchase decisions, the author proposes that consumers in fact often relinquish control to external experts, or surrogates, in such situations. As a result, the purchase decision is often a joint process over which the end consumer does not necessarily retain primary control...

Though consumers commonly are assumed to be actively involved in important purchase decisions, the author proposes that consumers in fact often relinquish control to external experts, or surrogates, in such situations. As a result, the purchase decision is often a joint process over which the end consumer does not necessarily retain primary control...

This article proposes that the dyadic interaction between a service provider and a customer is an important determinant of the customer's global satisfaction with the service. Based on role theory, a theoretical framework is presented which abstracts some of the critical components of service encounters across industries.

Major service businesses are beginning to resemble regional or national product brands. Packaging will thus become a more crucial aspect of the service mix. Unlike products, however, the actual service rendered is intangible; its attributes are embodied in the person delivering the service. This person is the focal point which must be correctly pac...

This article proposes that the dyadic interaction between a service provider and a customer is an important determinant of the customer's global satisfaction with the service. Based on role theory, a theoretical framework is presented which abstracts some of the critical components of service encounters across industries.

Three studies investigated the degree to which explanations by 108 undergraduates for a target person's reactions to tasks involving color evaluations were influenced by knowledge of others' choices in the same situation (consensus information). It was hypothesized that the assumed objectivity or subjectivity of a judgment is related to the utiliza...

Most empirical work on product symbolism has paid relatively little attention to how products are used by consumers in everyday social life. This paper argues that the subjective experience imparted by the consumption of many products substantially contributes to the consumer's structuring of social reality, self-concept, and behavior. Moreover, th...

Insko, Sedlak, and Lipsitz (European Journal of Social Psychology, 1982, 13, 143–167) have presented evidence that agreement effects in p−o−x triads, or semicycles, are at least partially a function of the consistency of positive self-evaluation with being liked and the consistency of positive self-evaluation with being right. Consistent with the I...

A questionnaire study was undertaken to investigate if different aspects of self-consciousness related to clothing attitudes and strategic use of clothing. The major purpose was to determine if the trait of public self-consciousness, as delineated by Buss, would be systematically related to clothing measures. A secondary goal was to investigate sex...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1981. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-57). Microfiche of typescript. s

Two studies were conducted to investigate weight differences in emotional responsiveness to proprioceptive and pictorial stimuli. Contrary to past evidence that overweight persons are more emotional than normals, the emotional state of normal-weight subjects fluctuated with manipulations of their facial expression, whereas that of overweight subjec...

Used a cross-generational procedure to examine E. R. Service's (1975) redistribution theory of social evolution. 432 university students participated. The procedure involved 3 4-person groups that produced different products that could be retained or traded and that could be eventually exchanged for money. One group was advantaged in the diversity...

Two studies were conducted to investigate weight differences in emotional responsiveness to proprioceptiv e and pictorial stimuli. Contrary to past evidence that overweight persons are more emotional than normals, the emotional state of normal-weight subjects fluctuated with manipulations of their facial expression, whereas that of overweight subje...

Three levels of physical attractiveness were manipulated in order to: (1) replicate the finding that an attractive defendant receives less punishment than an unattractive defendant and (2) demonstrate that attractiveness and punitiveness are curvilinearily related. Results supported both aims and are discussed in terms of information search.

Argues that product assortments "make sense" to consumers due to a perceived complementarity among constituent elements. Consumers' choices are often guided by the positive or negative valuation of groupings of symbolically related activities. Advertisers are reminded of the strategic importance of combining holistic views of both communications an...

While most industry research is product-specific, consumers integrate information about many different items (slacks, tops, shoes, or rugs, couches, wallpaper) when choosing design options. Linkages are likely to be particularly robust between apparel and home furnishings products since both types of choices are intimately related to self- concept...

Despite the fact that slightly more than one third of U.S. apparel purchases are in the

We will develop a visual lexicon of brand personality that links apparel brands with the meanings a standardized set of images evoke. This methodology will allow us to generate a visual meaning map for each apparel brand we study. We will analyze these meaning maps to gauge the consistency of meanings among consumers, identify opportunities for mar...