This research examines how the concreteness of product presentations influences consumers' psychological ownership. Across seven studies, we demonstrate that concrete (vs. abstract) mental processing of products increases psychological ownership, with downstream effects including elevated product valuation. Conversely, abstract descriptions reduce psychological ownership and encourage sharing or trading. We identify several moderators and boundary conditions for the effect, which support that the nature of concrete thinking allows feelings of ownership as it processes a product as a specific instance related to the self. The effect is strongest in an egocentric (self) perspective (vs. allocentric or other based), when the product is attractive, not yet strongly connected to the self and for individuals who seek uniqueness. These findings offer actionable insights for marketers responding to trends favoring temporary access over permanent ownership, suggesting that concrete language can enhance psychological ownership (for temporary access and product care), while abstraction can temper it (to support return, trade, or resale in circular models). This research connects psychological ownership to construal level theory and literature on linguistic concreteness, underscoring how strategic shifts in product representation can foster desired ownership behaviors in a landscape increasingly defined by flexible consumption and sustainable practices. (c) 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

(Thomas and Morwitz Journal of Consumer Research, 32(1), 54–64, 2005) demonstrated the left-digit effect (LDE): nine-ending prices influence our perception of price magnitude, but only if they trigger a change of the leftmost digit. We present a replication and extension of the left-digit effect for content reductions in the context of shrinkflation or downsizing—manufacturers responding to inflation-driven increases of unit costs by reducing size, content, or quantity of an offer without proportionally decreasing the price. We also include a replication attempt of (Lin and Wang Marketing Letters, 28, 99–112, 2017) who find that the LDE is weaker for larger quantities. As a theoretical extension, we investigate a quantity property specific to product content. Content quantities are often anchored on fractions of higher order quantities (e.g., 750 ml as 3/4, 500 ml as 1/2, or 250 ml as 1/4 of a liter). We assess whether these standardized content quantities act as evaluation anchors for downsizing.

Car traffic and accidents involving cars create an enormous societal cost, particularly in terms of negative consequences for public health. Mitigating these effects is a daily concern for public and private institutions and people around the world. At least a subset of accidents is attributable to the amount of risk drivers allow in their driving and in related behaviour like mobile phone use or substance abuse. Our study looks at the effect of car size on risk taking. While literature highlights several behavioural effects of car size, the direction of causality of these effects is not always clear, and empirical evidence is lacking. Two behavioural and consequential studies support that car size affects risk taking in driving and that this increase in risk taking generalizes to other domains as well. Based on these results and in line with literature showing that social stability and security can affect financial risk taking, we propose the "car cushion hypothesis." This hypothesis suggests that bigger cars make people feel more secure, which affects their behaviour in terms of generalized risk taking. We discuss policy implications aimed at contributing to reducing the societal and public health cost of car traffic.

The sharing economy is an omnipresent topic, not just in academia but throughout public discourses. Key questions thus have been approached from various research perspectives. To gain a comprehensive view of these perspectives, this commentary features contributions from a group of respected scholars, sharing their research findings, personal observations, and informed interpretations of the sharing economy. Their individual commentaries reflect unique theoretical perspectives, and they include discussions of why the sharing economy makes service management research more relevant, implications for companies and consumers, and key research needs.

Ownership creates a special status for objects. Mere ownership of objects as common as pens and mugs almost instantaneously leads to increased liking (Beggan 1992; Huang et al. 2009), increased valuation (i.e. the endowment effect) (Kahneman et al. 1990; Thaler 1980) and enhanced memory for the object (Cunningham et al. 2008; van den Bos et al. 2010). Ownership to some extent seems to render objects more important, unique and irreplaceable in the eyes of their owners and thus seems to affect the way objects are mentally represented and processed. While extensive research has reported on effects of ownership—e.g. the endowment effect (Thaler 1980) and the mere ownership effect (Beggan 1992)—much of this literature takes a transactional perspective where ownership is acquired or lost in a “legal,” objective way. Recent research shows, however, that psychological ownership—the subjective feeling of being owner—is an important driver of ownership effects (Morewedge et al. 2009; Peck and Shu 2009). We aim to advance the understanding of understudied concept of psychological ownership by relating it to the framework of psychological distance and construal level theory (CLT) (Trope and Liberman 2010). Many authors discussed the importance of “an association” between a person and objects in the genesis and perception of ownership (Beggan and Brown 1994; Friedman 2008). We test the hypothesis that the “(strength of) association” underlying psychological ownership can be seen as psychological closeness, with effects as predicted by CLT. Psychological distance is egocentric; its reference point is the self, here and now (Amit et al. 2009). Given the strong relationship between the self and possessions (Belk 1988; Pierce et al. 2003), it makes sense to see possessions as psychologically close and therefore mentally represented at a low level of construal. High level of construal would highlight abstract properties like core features or the object’s main purpose, which would imply that objects are more readily substitutable with others of the same category. This is of course not the case, as endowment studies show that people are reluctant to trade in even easy-to-replace items like pens and coffee mugs (Kahneman et al. 1990). The studies reported below test the relationships between ownership, construal level and psychological distance.

Consumers recently organize themselves for sharing assets in what is being called the sharing or collaborative economy (Belk 2014; Lamberton and Rose 2012). Online platforms allow for sharing cars, tools, travel accommodation, and more. Some purchase with sharing in mind, while others pay to receive access (Bardhi and Eckhardt 2012). In line with work by Belk (2010, 2014) our discussion of shared ownership will include shared access to objects.

The present paper shows that when a person has the experience of giving advice but that advice is not acted upon, there is a reduced openness to external information. We call this the “referral backfire effect”. We argue that this referral backfire effect is due to the identity threatening nature of referral failure: the referral backfire effect is attenuated (1) when the sender perceives oneself as having low expertise in the particular domain of referral and (2) upon self-affirmation. Accordingly, implicit egotism is increased after referral failure, reflecting the need to bolster the self against threat. Because referral behavior is considered to be an important predictor of business success, we discuss the implications of our findings for both theory and practice and sketch future research opportunities.

We present the referral-backfire effect, reflecting the phenomenon that consumers become less susceptible to persuasive attempts when they experienced referral failure. In two lab studies and one field study, we provide evidence for the effect and for the hypothesis that the effect occurs because referral failure is interpreted as a sign that the sender's social relations are threatened.