Consumers can choose to purchase more or less varied product assortments. The present research demonstrates that the payment method used for purchase affects the variety of options selected. Using a mix of secondary data analysis and lab experiments, we show that payment methods that elicit a higher pain of payment, such as cash, decrease variety seeking. We also elucidate the process underlying this choice outcome: as the pain of payment increases, consumers experience a higher need to justify choice, increasing the share of options that are easier to justify (e.g., one’s favorites). Our findings offer a useful tool for managers to influence the composition of multi-item purchases and for policymakers to affect well-being via variety seeking.

Previous articleNext article FreeThank You to Our ReviewersPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThe editors wish to thank the following reviewers who gave so generously of their time to assist in the publication of this issue of the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.Melanie Brucks, Stanford UniversityChristopher Cannon, Northwestern UniversityElise Chandon Ince, University of South CarolinaLan Nguyen Chaplin, University of Illinois, ChicagoKristina Durante, Rutgers UniversityGavan Fitzsimons, Duke UniversityChelsea Galoni, Northwestern UniversityJessica Gamlin, University of OregonSzu-Chi Huang, Stanford UniversityJoel Huber, Duke UniversityDeborah John, University of MinnesotaPunam Keller, Dartmouth CollegeUzma Khan, University of MiamiSara Kim, University of Hong KongMinjung Koo, Sungkyunkwan UniversityMichal Maimaran, Northwestern UniversityKatherine Milkman, Pennsylvania State UniversityChiraag Mittal, Texas A&M University, College StationSarah Moore, University of AlbertaAnastasiya Pocheptsova Ghosh, University of ArizonaEleanor Putnam-Farr, Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyRaj Raghunathan, University of TexasDerek Rucker, Northwestern UniversityRima Toure-Tillery, Northwestern UniversityGulden Ulkumen, University of Southern CaliforniaOleg Urminsky, University of ChicagoStacy Wood, North Carolina State UniversityAlison Xu, University of Minnesota Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of the Association for Consumer Research Volume 5, Number 3July 2020Longitudinal Effects and Consumption Guest Editors: Pradeep Chintagunta and Aparna A. Labroo Sponsored by the Association for Consumer Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/709467 © 2020 the Association for Consumer Research. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Consumers believe that attractive women are less intelligent. We theorize feeling attractive can cue such beliefs and women treat these beliefs as self-diagnostic, becoming less motivated to pursue cognitive tasks. We first establish that adults, but not children, hold such beliefs. Then across four studies we show feeling attractive reduces motivation to work on cognitive tasks among women (for whom accessible beliefs are self-diagnostic), but not men (for whom accessible beliefs are non-diagnostic) or preschoolers (among whom such beliefs are not accessible). Women (but not men) feeling attractive after trying on attractive clothes, or thinking about an attractive selfie, are less motivated to pursue a cognitive task. Further, women (but not men) feeling unattractive after viewing a body-shaming advertisement are more motivated to pursue a cognitive task. Finally, preschoolers, feeling attractive after being complimented are more motivated to pursue a cognitive task. We discuss implications for consumer welfare. (148 words)

Helping consumers make better nutritional choices is an important issue for policy makers and marketers. We examine the role of front-of-package (FOP) labels in guiding consumer preferences toward making healthier choices. We propose that, when consumers have a prior belief that a product/brand is healthy, reading an FOP label on product packaging thus increases consumer trust, as a result of the agentic role companies play in displaying voluntary FOP labels. This enhanced trust has a downstream positive effect on healthiness perceptions and preferences for foods displaying FOP labels. However, because consumers may be suspicious that an unhealthy brand or product displays an FOP label as an attempt to persuade consumers to buy unhealthy products, no comparable positive effects are found when consumers hold a prior belief that a product/brand is unhealthy.

The use of novel forms of payment, such as peer-to-peer (P2P) payment methods, has exploded in the marketplace. While businesses are adopting these payment methods, little is known about how consumers perceive service providers that adopted them. Service providers believe that adopting P2P payment methods makes them more appealing to consumers and increases the likelihood of transactions. Contrary to this view, in a series of studies, we demonstrate that consumers associate P2P payment methods more with social transactions than with business transactions. This leads consumers to rate service providers as warmer, and correspondingly less competent, and decreases the likelihood of transactions. Consumer judgments based on offered payment methods are enduring: consumers only adjust their evaluations of service providers over time if they had several unambiguous positive experiences that highlight business competence, but not when experiences are mixed (both positive and negative) or highlight warmth aspects of the business.

When purchasing indulgent products, the characteristics of the purchase, such as price discounts and redemption windows (the amount of time available to consume the product), can affect the likelihood of purchase. We show how these characteristics jointly influence consumers' likelihood of purchasing indulgent products and identify the consumer lay theories that drive this effect. Although price discounts can alleviate the anticipated guilt associated with indulgent consumption, we propose that consumers believe the guilt-reducing effects of discounts fade over time. In four experiments, we show that, based on this belief, consumers strategically protect their enjoyment of indulgent products by choosing shorter time periods to consume discounted indulgent purchases, and by preferring discounted indulgent products offered with shorter (vs. longer) redemption windows. We find convergent evidence in sales data from a large discount offers website, observing higher purchase rates for discounted products with shorter redemption windows compared with those for longer ones.

Prior research has shown the independent effects of average product ratings and number of reviews for online purchases, but the relative influence of these aggregate review attributes is still debated in the literature. In this research, the authors demonstrate the conditional influences of these two attributes as a function of the valence of average product ratings and the level of review numbers in a choice set. Specifically, they argue that the diagnosticity of the number of reviews, relative to average product ratings, increases when average product ratings are negative or neutral (vs. positive) and when the level of review numbers in a choice set is low (vs. high). As a result, when consumers choose among the best options on one of the review attributes (average product ratings or the number of reviews), their preference shifts from the higher-rated option with fewer reviews toward the lower-rated option with more reviews. The authors demonstrate this preference shift in seven studies, elucidate the underlying process by which this occurs, and conclude with a discussion of the implications for retailers and brands.

Three studies supported the hypothesis that people can become mentally and physically passive when resources are depleted by prior acts of self-control. Feeling depleted and recent self-regulatory exertion were associated with preferences for passive behaviors like resting and watching TV. Participants who had to maintain attention in the face of distractions preferred to avoid making consumer decisions as compared with participants who did not. Breaking a habit caused hungry participants to eat more peanuts when doing so was easy (the peanuts lacked shells) and to eat less when eating required minor preparatory action (the peanuts had shells). Mental passivity induced by depletion of self-control causes both passive behavior and impulsive behavior, depending on the situation.

Consumers' choices are often accompanied by unrelated incidental moods. The positive mood caused by receiving a compliment, for example, may persist when one is choosing what service to book or which product to buy. How might being in a positive mood affect consumers' subsequent, unrelated choices? The present research demonstrates that being in a positive mood can make consumers more likely to defer choice. Four studies show that when choosing requires trade-offs between important choice attributes, being in a positive (vs. neutral) mood makes choosing more difficult and therefore increases the likelihood of deferring choice altogether. The findings further understanding of how incidental factors shape choice processes and outcomes and the role of emotions in decision making.

Individuals often signal group affiliations to others, and the display of such identity signals is frequently rather subtle. While prior work has focused on understanding an individual's choices of subtle versus prominent signals, in this work, we look at the downstream consequences of such choices. Specifically, we explore how the prominence of identity signals may affect one's behavior in intergroup interactions. Drawing from literature on processing fluency, we propose that the use of difficult to process (subtle) identity signals in intergroup interactions leads signalers to experience identity threat, lowering confidence in their identity and leading them to engage in behaviors to recover from this experience. Across three different identity domains (college affiliation, political affiliation, and brand loyalty), we show that when individuals use difficult to process identity signals, they derogate out-group members in communication and behave less cooperatively in intergroup interactions. We find that these effects depend upon the observability of the signals by out-group members and only occur for individuals who are highly identified with the in-group. We also find that the effects are attenuated when behavior towards members of the out-group is made public. Copyright (c) 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.