David Mazursky’s research while affiliated with Hebrew University of Jerusalem and other places

Consumers tend to have negative perceptions of service providers that limit their freedom. People might therefore be expected to respond particularly negatively to service providers that physically limit their freedom of movement. Yet, we suggest that physical constraints that a service provider unapologetically imposes with no obvious logical justification (e.g., closing a door and restricting consumers to stay inside a room) may, in fact, boost consumers’ evaluations of the service provider. We propose that this effect occurs because consumers perceive such constraints as creating a structured environment, which they inherently value. Six studies lend converging support to these propositions, while ruling out alternative accounts (cognitive dissonance, self-attribution theory). We further show that the positive effect of physical constraints on evaluations is reversed when consumers perceive the constraints as excessively restrictive (rather than mild). These findings suggest that service providers may benefit from creating consumption conditions that mildly restrict consumers’ freedom of movement.

Works dealing with the Attentional White-Bear theory show that people allocate attention to a location they were told to ignore. However, studies have not examine whether the content presented in the ignored location had an impact on participants’ attitudes. To explore this question we provide a novel demonstration of the joint effects of the Attentional White-Bear and the Sleeper effect, and show that an instruction to ignore a specific predefined location in the visual field generates attention to the content in that location which influences attitudes. In four longitudinal experiments, a Sleeper effect was revealed. However this effect was eliminated when participants were requested to ignore the predefined location of the discounting cue (Experiments 1 and 3), the persuasive message (Experiment 2) and the incongruent background (Experiment 4). The comparative findings for the parallel groups exposed to the same information (both persuasive and discounting) without the ignoring instruction point to the critical role of this instruction as the source of the difference in attitude change. The discussion centers on the implications regarding the strategic buildup of communicating information that can attract audience’s attention in novel unexpected ways. These counterintuitive effects provide an uncommon strategic perspective: paradoxically, in order to generate attention to a message, the target audience should be instructed to ignore its location.

Bricolage is about making do with what is at hand (as opposed to procuring the material and resources which seem to be needed to perform a certain task). Sustainability, in a nutshell, is about using only what is really needed now to leave enough for further generations to continue. With this in mind, we explore the role of bricolage in sustainability, and in particular in teaching sustainability. The main departure from existing work on sustainability is that using less resources by re-using existing ones is not just an end in itself but can actually make us more creative (necessity is the mother of invention, after all). We illustrate creative applications of this thinking from product innovation and creativity research, as analogies to innovating your teaching methods ‘on a shoestring’ and stimulating new ideas on how to teach sustainability creatively and with the most modest of budgets.

In online auctions, as well as in other purchase settings, there are conditions when consumers embrace uncertainty instead of avoiding it. In these cases, consumers prefer not to know the true value of a product they are purchasing, thereby enjoying the “benefit of the doubt” that they may have come across an incredible buy. We demonstrate in a field study on eBay and in lab experiments that consumers are more likely to prefer a state of uncertainty regarding the likelihood of knowing an item’s true value (the Benefit-of-the-Doubt effect) when the seller has low rather than high categorical expertise and when it is more difficult to determine the item’s true value. We show that optimism about the true value of the item drives the Benefit-of-the-Doubt effect.

Perceived similarity is influenced by both taxonomic and thematic relations. Assessing taxonomic relations requires comparing individual features of objects whereas assessing thematic relations requires exploring how objects functionally interact. These processes appear to relate to different thinking styles: abstract thinking and a global focus may be required to explore functional interactions whereas attention to detail and a local focus may be required to compare specific features. In four experiments we explored this idea by assessing whether a preference for taxonomic or thematic relations could be created by inducing a local or global perceptual processing style. Experiments 1–3 primed processing style via a perceptual task and used a choice task to examine preference for taxonomic (versus thematic) relations. Experiment 4 induced processing style and examined the effect on similarity ratings for pairs of taxonomic and thematically related items. In all cases processing style influenced preference for taxonomic/thematic relations.

Experiment 3 Raw Data. (XLSX)

Negative brand names are surprisingly common in the marketplace (e.g., Poison perfume; Hell pizza, and Monster energy drink), yet their effects on consumer behavior are currently unknown. Three studies investigated the effects of negative brand name valence on brand name memory and liking of a branded product. Study 1 demonstrates that relative to non-negative brand names, negative brand names and their associated logos are better recognised. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrate that negative valence of a brand name tends to have a detrimental influence on product evaluation with evaluations worsening as negative valence increases. However, evaluation is also dependent on brand name arousal, with high arousal brand names resulting in more positive evaluations, such that moderately negative brand names are equally as attractive as some non-negative brand names. Study 3 shows evidence for affective habituation, whereby the effects of negative valence reduce with repeated exposures to some classes of negative brand name.

Experiment 1 Raw Data. (XLSX)

Experiment 2 Raw Data. (XLSX)

Innovations are vital for business health, survival, and success. All innovations start with an idea. Understanding the origin of ideas for innovations is critical to firms that are striving to come up with the next big idea before competitors do. This study seeks to understand the origins of innovative ideas. In particular, to what extent do ideas originate with the customer, inventor, or user? What role does technology play in the origin of ideas? We offer a framework with three agents – customer, inventor, and user – and three technologies – novel, imitative, and exaptive – that affect the origin of ideas for innovations. Using the historical method, they collect data on and analyze 180 innovations, commercialized between 1900 and 1999, and recreate their early history, especially during the stage of ideation. The historical approach enables a longitudinal perspective that is missing in innovation studies. The study yields three main findings, the first two of which run contrary to prevalent thinking in the marketing literature. First, inventors play a significantly bigger role than customers in the origin of ideas for innovations. Second, benefits of the innovation to customers increase as the role of customers in the origin of the idea decreases. Third, superior benefits also increase as the role of exaptive technology increases. These findings provide important managerial implications. First, managers can learn which agent and which technology in the origin of the idea contribute to superior benefits of the innovation and allocate their resources accordingly. Second, managers can identify novel technology solutions for their firm’s internal problems, and convert those to serve external customers. Third, exaptive technology seems to possess an unfulfilled potential for firms’ managers seeking ideas for innovation: in their quest for ideas for new ideas, managers should actively rethink how their technology can serve customers in domains different than the ones they currently serve. Managers should also canvass other product domains and identify plausible technology shifts to their own product domain.