Rajat Roy

• BE, MBA, PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Bond University

Marketers often offer equivalent pricing options by charging a base price and surcharges (partitioned pricing), or alternately offering a single price (combined pricing). The current study inquires into the systematic impact of a person's activated self-construal on the evaluation of product offers made under these alternate pricing frames. Finding...

Purpose-This paper examines how social comparison and belief in karma encourage materialism and promote consumers' life satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach-Two studies were conducted with Indian middle-class consumers to test the basic premises of the current research. The first one employed a survey (N=247), while the second one used an expe...

This paper explores the differences in the interactive effects of situational and enduring involvement with perceived crowding and time pressure on customers' PWYW pricing decisions. Two empirical studies, an online experiment about a hair salon using PWYW pricing and a fieldsurvey with customers of a real-life PWYW restaurant, are used to test all...

In this article we examine differences in the impact of message framing and scarcity appeal types in advertisements on consumers with varying levels of need for uniqueness (NFU). Results from two experimental studies support a two-way NFU × scarcity interaction, wherein participants with lower levels of NFU show a greater impact of demand (versus s...

We show that adding entrant brands to a choice set compr ising of a predominantly promotion brand and a predominantly prevention brand can make both promotion and prevention-oriented consumers susceptible to the attraction effect. If an entrant targets the brand possessing superior promotion (prevention) feature, the resulting dominance relationshi...

Purpose Past literature shows that resource scarcity can promote self-oriented behaviours while suppressing other-focused behaviours. This paper aims to study how nostalgia can encourage other-focused behaviours in the face of resource scarcity based on its restorative and social properties. Design/methodology/approach The authors test the hypothe...

This research makes a novel proposition that the haptic sensation of weight can moderate the effect of price framing on consumer decisions. Participants who experienced heaviness (lightness) preferred a target product presented in terms of combined (partitioned) versus partitioned (combined) pricing frames. This effect was further mediated by ease...

This study investigates how the psychological distance associated with innovation newness interacts with the construal level of advertisement (ad) appeal to influence consumer product evaluations. We conduct three studies to demonstrate how to optimize consumer evaluations of incrementally new products (INPs) vs. radically new products (RNPs) by ex...

Purpose This study aims to investigate the fit of a promotion (prevention) focus with malicious (benign) envy and how this fit influences positive and negative behaviours, depending on the context. Design/methodology/approach Four empirical studies (two laboratory and two online experiments) were used to test key hypotheses. Study 1 manipulated re...

The literature on ethics currently recommends more research on the emotional underpinnings of ethical decision-making. The current study takes up the challenge, addressing this research gap by theorising and empirically testing, through four studies (with different methodologies, e.g., survey design, lab experiment), the link between envy—malicious...

Purpose Digital self-expression, recently one of the most important research themes, is currently under-researched. In this context, this study aims to propose a parsimonious research model of self-extension tendency, its drivers and its outcomes. The model is tested in the context of social media engagement intentions (liking, sharing and commenti...

Although studies have shown that background ad imagery can communicate various concepts to consumers, no research has investigated its effects on perceived ambiguity and newness of the advertised product. Drawing on construal level theory, we address this gap by exploring the psychological mechanism of newness perception. Through four studies, it i...

We examine the association between corporate political donation (CPD) and the quality of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures by the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) listed firms. We also explore the effect of board members’ gender diversity on this association. Consistent with the neo-pluralist theory of the state, we report a negative...

Tuition fee (or price) setting drivers are still an under-researched area. We attempt to fill this gap using universities as the basis of analysis. Grounded in pricing contingency theory, specifically, pricing capability literature, a conceptual model is developed using qualitative data from eight annual pricing cycles (2009–2017). We test the mode...

This research explores the trade-offs that customers make between different economic, social, and psychological considerations to arrive at a pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing decision. Specifically, it examines the differences in the moderating effects of price consciousness and social desirability on customers' PWYW pricing decisions between priva...

Purpose This paper aims to examine the differences in the process by which three types of self-congruity (actual, ideal and social) interact with the need for uniqueness (NFU) to influence brand loyalty via brand experience and brand attachment. Design/methodology/approach An online survey with 428 members of an Australian consumer panel. The data...

In the real world, PWYW businesses can either engage supervised payments or honour boxes where consumers can drop their loose change to make payments. As consumers can pay any amount (including zero) for PWYW payments, the current work delineates conditions under which higher payments can be encouraged. Findings from a series of field experiments s...

Purpose When a product fails out of negligence on the seller’s part, consumers can either retaliate against the seller, more so if a third party encourages them to do so, or forgive the seller should the seller express remorse. This paper aims to examine how the fit between the consumer’s promotion/prevention regulatory orientation and the promotio...

This paper investigates social influences on Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) pricing decisions by combining a socio-psychological phenomenon, called 'spotlight effect' (defined as an egocentric bias while estimating the salience of one's own behavior and external appearance), with the well-established 'anchoring and adjustment' perspective. We test our hy...

The current research extends the application of implicit theories to consumer behavior. We engage the search, experience, credence (SEC) framework to study the impact of consumer lay belief on attribute types and time orientation on the choice of a product/service. We conduct one pre-test, and three experiments to explore the key hypotheses. Our f...

Chatbots are increasingly engaged in retail settings, although research shows that consumers typically prefer engaging with humans over chatbots. Past literature has argued that anthropomorphising chatbots can lead to more effective consumer interactions. The current work further enhances this literature by showing that chatbots can be given human...

Objectives We examined the effect of ‘labels’ versus ‘descriptions’ across four asymptomatic health conditions: pre-diabetes, pre-hypertension, mild hyperlipidaemia, and chronic kidney disease stage 3A, on participants’ intentions to pursue further tests. There were four secondary objectives: 1) assessing confidence and satisfaction in their intent...

Service failures are pivotal touchpoints that can reduce customer satisfaction, encourage negative word-of-mouth, and ultimately impact a firm's market share. We advance a novel perspective that after a service failure occurs, matching incidental arousal inducing stimuli to one's regulatory orientation can make the negative experience stemming from...

Social media facilitates more frequent, immediate, and larger-scale exposures of people affiliated with a group than was previously possible. However, little is known about how this occurs in the case of institutions’ brand pages and about its impact on existing member relationships. In examining the role perception about other users of a brand pag...

Through three laboratory experiments and a study conducted in a natural setting, this research investigates the unexplored area of the role of mood (positive versus negative), pricing frame (partitioned versus combined), and pricing tactic persuasion knowledge (PTPK = low versus high) on product attractiveness and purchase intention. Study 1 explor...

Purpose – This paper examines a chain of relationships running from self-congruity with a brand—that can stem from the actual, ideal or social self—>to brand attachment, and from there to consumer engagement on social networking sites, specifically liking, sharing, and commenting. It further advances self-extension tendency as a moderator affecting...

Purpose: This study examines how abstract versus concrete mindsets impact consumers' post-purchase affective states. Drawing on construal level theory, the study examines when consumers experience 'pleasure' or 'guilt' after impulse buying. Design/methodology/approach: The basic premises of this research was tested using multiple studies. Study 1...

Purpose This paper aims to examine how social comparison (SC) and belief in karma (KA) encourage materialism (MAT) and promote consumers’ life satisfaction (LS). Design/methodology/approach Two studies were conducted with Indian middle class consumers to test the basic premises of the current research. The first one used a survey ( N = 247), while...

Purpose – The purpose of this editorial is to present the contemporary thinking on deliberate lookalikes and to provide a better understanding of its key forms (counterfeits, copycats, and no-name imitations) and markets (deceptive and non-deceptive). Methodology – This editorial contains a review of current and past literature on deliberate lookal...

Drawing on the construal level theory, we replicated and extended Krishna and Morrin's (2008) finding that consumers evaluate water quality to be higher when they drink from a hard cup. The results of our two experiments showed that when they touched a hard object, consumers tended to judge a product as of higher quality when they imagined a near f...

Objectives Negative consequences of medical labelling have been reported in research literature¹ and differences in an individual’s intention to undertake further testing have been shown in studies that randomly assigned participants to labelled and unlabeled hypothetical medical scenarios.² When given information about overdiagnosis of polycystic...

Special issue call for papers Deliberate Lookalikes: Past, Present and Future Research in the JPBM. Deadline is 30 June 2018

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the direct and interactive effects of regulatory focus (promotion versus prevention), attribute type (search versus experience) and word of mouth valence (positive versus negative) on consumption decision for a service and a product. Design/methodology/approach Three empirical studies (two laboratories and...

Managing customer engagement behavior (CEB) is a strategic priority for firms to build and sustain long-term customer-firm relationships. This research examines the different types of customer engagement behavior (i.e. augmenting CEB, co-developing CEB, influencing CEB and mobilizing CEB). The study also examines the relationship between service fa...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of regulatory focus (promotion vs prevention) and mixed valence attributes (positive imagery and negative analytical vs negative imagery and positive analytical) on consumers’ evaluation and purchase intention for a product. Design/methodology/approach A pre-test followed by a singl...

Pay what you want (PWYW) is a unique participative pricing mechanism that has no minimum price set by the seller, and the buyers can pay whatever price they want (including a price of zero) that the seller has to accept without being able to withdraw the offer. Recent research on PWYW focuses only on the direct effects of variables, such as altruis...

Pay What You Want (PWYW) is a type of participative pricing mechanism where the buyer can offer any price including a price of zero; and the seller has to accept the price without withdrawing the product offer. Although existing research identified several variables such as altruism, price consciousness, reference price, income, and perceived fairn...

This chapter challenges the assumption that better ranked universities will always attract more international students. The evidence presented in this study is a strong departure from current educational discourse that focuses on how universities use academic rankings to promote their schools and programmes to prospective students, particularly tho...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the direct and indirect effects of social visibility (private vs public), purchase motivation (intrinsic vs extrinsic vs altruistic) and external reference price (ERP) (absent vs present) on consumers’ pricing decisions in pay-what-you-want (PWYW) context. Design/methodology/approach Two empirica...

Promotion focus in individuals encourages the use of imagery heuristics as compared to prevention focus. Promotion focused (prevention focused) people had a higher evaluation and purchase intention of a product when they used imagery heuristics (attribute importance) in evaluation in comparison to prevention (promotion) focused people.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediating role of internal reference price (IRP) in a pay-what-you-want (PWYW) price setting. Specifically, it examines the effects of altruism, social desirability and price consciousness as the antecedents of IRP and consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP), future purchase intention and attitude t...

In this article, we replicate and extend Eisend's (2008) pioneering work on first-person effects (FPEs) in the context of scarcity appeals in advertising, using “influence of presumed influence,” a broader and less restrictive theoretical perspective compared to FPEs, to develop a revised conceptual model. Specifically, we hypothesize that it is th...

Purpose – Extant literature on pricing posits that consumers’ internal reference price (IRP) drives willingness to pay (WTP), when external pricing cues are available. This positive IRP-WTP relationship is further moderated by involvement and price consciousness. The purpose of this paper is to test how the IRP-WTP relationship will be moderated by...

In the consumer subjective well-being arena, there is scarce work on understanding how unique cultural values and normative influence impact life satisfaction. We focus on India to study subjective well-being, materialism, social comparison and Karma doctrine. Results show consumers use value based justification to remain happy. Research implicatio...

Purpose – This study aims to propose and test a parsimonious framework for self-congruity, albeit in the context of luxury branding. This paper is the first to propose an integrated model focusing on the drivers and consequences of self-congruity. The model is further applied to explain how self-congruity may motivate future experiences with the lu...

The results of two experimental studies show that matching a promotion (prevention) focus with imagery (analytical) information in an advertisement results in higher advertising effectiveness, together with increased intention to purchase. Mediation analyses show that the impact of a regulatory focus—information matching in evaluation and purchase...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine if high versus low ethnocentric consumers differ in their attitudes toward buying domestic and foreign brands of underwear that are made domestically or in foreign countries. Design/methodology/approach Australian residents recruited through a mall intercept participated in this study through a sel...

This article explores the impact of consumers' regulatory goals on their relative focus on hedonic (versus utilitarian) benefits of products. Drawing from extant literature, we argue that promotion-focused consumers will exhibit more favorable attitude towards a product when its hedonic benefits are highlighted in comparison to its utilitarian bene...

This study investigates whether status- and non-status-seeking consumers differ in their attitudes toward buying foreign and domestic luxury brands of underwear with regard to their countries of manufacture. The findings indicate that while there is no significant difference for products made in Australia and the U.S. for both status- and non-statu...

Purpose The purpose of this research is to explore how a successful global and a local brand may compete side by side in an existing market place based on consumer‐based brand equity and consumers' status‐seeking motivation for purchasing a global versus local brand. Design/methodology/approach The data for this research were collected through a s...

This research examines how regulatory focus affects the evaluation of hedonic and utilitarian attributes of products. My research found that promotion- focused people have higher evaluation of hedonic attributes over utilitarian attributes. The reverse was found for prevention focused subjects. In addition, the author found evidence that “evaluatio...