Means–end analysis: Does the affective state influence information processing style?

Means–end theory aims at explaining how consumers evaluate products by linking relevant attributes to perceived consequences to desired ends in a hierarchical way, based on core assumptions of cognitive psychology about human information processing. This study investigates the influence of affective states on information processing styles in a means–end measurement situation, thus taking into account an important antecedent and correlate of human decision making and behavior that has received scarce attention so far in the methodological literature on means–end chains. The results reveal that a person's affective state indeed influences the style of information processing. Respondents in a positive mood used more general knowledge structures and processed the laddering questionnaire faster than respondents in a negative or neutral mood. The laddering technique, which measures means–end chains, thus seems to be sensitive to situational effects, and this finding indicates that affective states then also might have an influence on product knowledge and the decision‐making process in a purchase situation. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Shape congruence in product design: Impacts on automatically activated attitudes

Scientific studies have strongly emphasized the importance of automatic (unconscious) processes underlying consumers’ behavior. However, research is missing on automatically activated attitudes resulting from product design. This study aimed at examining such attitudes by relying primarily on evaluative priming methods (i.e., affective priming task, and lexical decision task combined with a semantic priming procedure). In line with a processing fluency framework, it provides evidence that shape-congruent (vs. shape-incongruent) product designs may be associated with a more positive affective response and a greater activation of trust-related perceptions. Important implications are involved for retailing and professionals in charge of product management.     

Positive Affect and Malleable Mental Accounting: An Investigation of the Role of Positive Affect in Flexible Expense Categorization and Spending

The present research examines the impact of positive affect on mental accounting and the underlying mechanisms. The authors find that individuals in a positive (vs. neutral) affective state are less likely to exploit ambiguity in mental accounts and justify spending, but only when processing resources are unconstrained. In contrast, when processing resources are limited (high cognitive load), those in a positive (vs. neutral) affective state are more likely to spend. These findings offer new insights into the interplay between affect and cognition in decision making, the use of mental accounting strategies, and the role of affect in spending and self‐control.     

The role of affective and cognitive decision-making processes during questionnaire completion

The use of affective and cognitive decision-making processes during questionnaire completion is examined through protocol analysis. Characteristics of the questionnaire, such as length and extremity of the scale anchor cues, resulted in more affective processing. Respondent-related variables, such as product familiarity, attitude toward survey research, and sex, had little influence on decision making. Finally, affective decision making influenced the outcomes of the questionnaire response analysis by being associated with more within-item variance, less decision time, and lower ratings. The implications of the results to applied and theoretical research are discussed. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Customer Experience Management in Retailing: Understanding the Buying Process

Retailers recognize that greater understanding of customers can enhance customer satisfaction and retail performance. This article seeks to enrich this understanding by providing an overview of existing consumer behavior literature and suggesting that specific elements of consumer behavior—goals, schema, information processing, memory, involvement, attitudes, affective processing, atmospherics, and consumer attributions and choices—play important roles during various stages of the consumer decision process. The authors suggest ways in which retailers can leverage this understanding of consumer behavior. Each of these conceptual areas also offers avenues for further research.     

Warmer or cooler: the influence of ambient temperature on complex choices

Temperature affects human cognition, emotion, and behavior in important ways, yet exactly how ambient temperature exerts its influences on complex product choices remains largely unknown. In this research, we examine how relatively warm versus cool temperatures, both within a comfortable range and commonly experienced, can affect people’s decision quality in complex choices. In a series of three experiments, we demonstrate that warm (vs. cool) temperatures prompt affective processing, which then leads to better performance in complex choices. Consumers and companies need to take ambient temperature into account to create optimal environments for complex decision-making.     

Olfactory priming on consumer categorization,recall, and choice

Consumer choices are mostly regulated by pleasurable experiences that arise outside of the individuals' awareness in response to sensory attributes. This research examines the unconscious mechanism underlying consumers' behavior in response to odors applying the priming approach. Five experiments show that individuals' responses to odors involve two mechanisms, one affective (affective priming) and one associative (semantic priming) that impact consumers' categorization, recall, and choice. We found that when individuals perceive an odor as pleasant, their memory for odor-congruent brand logos (Experiment 1), and categorization of odor-congruent visual objects (Experiment 2) is improved. Unpleasant odors, instead, improve the categorization of odor-congruent visual objects only when they are made salient (Experiments 3 and 4). A pleasant odor diffused in the environment also drives consumers toward odor-congruent choices (Experiment 5), providing evidence that the incidental exposure to odors may induce affective and semantic associations with unrelated objects and behaviors. We also demonstrate that olfactory cues might be more effective than other modality (visual) stimuli to drive consumer responses. An implication for marketing is that odors employed in retail settings not only may induce an experience of pleasure but also promote specific consumer responses, such as categorization, recall, and choice.     

Sequential Betting Behavior: A Test of Asymmetric Inconsistencies in Group Decision Making

Previous research has shown that individual decision makers tend to bet more than initially planned after experiencing a loss but not after a gain. This research tests whether groups in consensus decision‐making contexts also demonstrate similar asymmetric inconsistencies. Two experiments, one at the individual level and one with three‐person groups, were carried out based on a gambling‐type betting task. Although individuals planned more conservatively than groups regarding their betting behavior after the first outcome, both individuals and groups misestimated their own betting behavior after losses but not after gains. Negative, but not positive, emotional reactions to previous decision outcomes were also misestimated, leading to incorrect predictions of future behavior. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.     

Affective and Cognitive Components of Attitudes in High‐Stakes Decisions: An Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior to Hormone Replacement Therapy Use

Consumers are increasingly encouraged to take charge of high‐stakes decisions such as those regarding medical treatments. However, the important inputs into overall evaluations of risky and important behaviors, such as undergoing medical therapy, are not well understood. The purpose of this research is to study the interplay of cognitive and affective factors in determining consumer attitudes and intentions toward high‐stakes decision behaviors. This is done in the context of consumer choices regarding medical treatments, and specifically, the decision to use (or not to use) hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Overall, both affective and cognitive responses are found to be independent significant predictors of attitude toward HRT use. Moreover, the results support an extended version of the theory of planned behavior model that is useful in predicting consumer's intentions to engage in high‐stakes decision behaviors, such as using HRT. These findings have implications for the design of decision support systems and behavioral change interventions.     

Consumer socialization,social structural factors and decision‐making styles: a case study of adolescents in Malaysia

The purpose of this study is to investigate how the process of consumer socialization will determine adolescents’ decision‐making styles. Eight decision‐making styles were conceptualized as outcomes of the socialization process, which is acquired via interaction with socialization agents, namely parents, peers, printed media, television commercials and in‐school education. The study also proposed five social structural variables (social class, gender, ethnicity, residence and religion) as being associated with the socialization agents and decision‐making styles. The study sample consisted of 934 adolescents between the ages of 16 and 19 years. The data were collected using a self‐administered questionnaire and analysed with the SPSS computer program. As a result of regression analyses, significant relationships were found between social structural factors and socialization processes, suggesting that the influence of socialization agents on adolescents may vary according to certain demographic characteristics. Significant relationships were also found between social structural factors and socialization processes. Peers appeared to be the most important agents of consumer socialization, contributing to a variety of desirable as well as undesirable consumer decision styles. Printed media and television commercials were also found to be significant sources of the acquisition of both desirable and undesirable decision‐making styles. Parents and in‐school education, however, were insignificant in the acquisition of any decision‐making styles among adolescents. Information obtained from this study could be useful to government agencies and consumer educators. The most revealing finding of this study is that parents did not contribute to the formulation of decision‐making orientation for adolescents. This points to the need for consumer educators to take steps in designing programmes that will involve parents as primary socialization agents at home; this may be facilitated via printed materials. Apart from this, the information can also be helpful in enabling marketers to be more effective in targeting various adolescent markets by formulating marketing strategies according to demographic factors, socialization process and decision‐making styles.     

The effect of decision makers’ time perspective on intention–behavior consistency

This research demonstrates that decision makers?? time perspective??a cognitive, temporal bias that leads people to overemphasize the past, present, or future in their decision making??systematically influences self-reported behavioral intentions and thus intention?Cbehavior consistency for distant-future behaviors. Whereas present-hedonistic individuals overstate their intentions, present-fatalistic individuals understate theirs, so both types exhibit low intention?Cbehavior consistency. Future time-oriented individuals instead exhibit high intention?Cbehavior consistency because they are less likely to overstate their intentions. The findings are contributed to decision makers?? time perspective influencing the construal of distant-future behavior when reporting behavioral intentions. Accounting for decision makers?? time perspectives helps improve predictive accuracy and may change insights obtained from causal models that use self-reported intentions as a proxy for actual, distant-future behavior.     

Storytelling,the scale of persuasion and retention: A neuromarketing approach

Persuasive storytelling is an essential tool for propagandists, publicists, and corporations. In this research, storytelling styles have been examined for their effectiveness in terms of attitude change and retention. Two groups of respondents were asked to read two short, fictional texts about a chosen corporation’s positive action toward the environment. One story was written using words from the Micro-WNOp corpus to elicit positive emotions (Story 1), while the other was written with a more cognitive approach (Story 2). Biometrics data, eye tracking, facial expression analysis, and galvanic skin responses (GSR) were recorded while respondents read the texts. Heat maps and area of interest analysis show that although the affective story was faster and more effective at changing respondents’ attitudes, the cognitive approach resulted in longer-lasting attitudinal change. As such, affective stories may lead to more immediate shifts in attitude, but cognitive stories result in deeper elaboration and subsequently better retention.     

Ethical standards,attitudes toward risk,and intentional noncompliance: An experimental investigation

Prior research has investigated the influence of decision maker characteristics on decision choice. This research examines the effect two personality traits of taxpayers, attitude towards risk and ethical standards, on intentional noncompliance. A taxpayer who is more (less) ethical will have lower (greater) intentional noncompliance, while a taxpayer who is more (less) risk averse will have lower (greater) intentional noncompliance. However, this study also found significant correlation between risk attitudes and ethical standards. This is because tax evasion is not just a gamble which can be explained by merely considering the risk variable. To understand tax evasive behavior better requires incorporation of noneconomic factors in the analysis, such as ethical standards, although risk attitudes may be an important explanatory factor. The current research suggests that individuals with lower ethical standards will have more intentional noncompliance. However, since ethical standards are correlated with attitude toward risk, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can partially overcome the influence of ethics by making the tax audit environment more uncertain. Thus, the research results justify the decision of the IRS not to release all its audit parameters because it makes the audit environment less uncertain.Dipankar Ghosh's research interests are in judgment and decision making, transfer pricing, and negotiation. He has published inDecision Science, Journal of Conflict Management, International Journal of Accounting, andJournal of Management Accounting Research.Terry L. Crain's research interests are in tax policy, tax equity, and the effects of taxation on taxpayer decision. He has published inDecision Science, International Journal of Accounting, andJournal of the American Taxation Association.     

Effects of Lightness‐Location Congruency on Consumers’ Purchase Decision‐Making

A considerable body of psychological and neuroscientific research has demonstrated the existence of robust sensory correspondences between various features, attributes, or dimensions of experience in different sensory modalities. Despite findings indicating the importance of sensory correspondences to human information processing, research on purchase decision‐making has not to date focused sufficiently on this phenomenon. The present study examines how the lightness of packaging colors, and the location of products on a display shelf interact to affect consumers’ purchase decision‐making via perceived visual heaviness. As predicted, a display with light (dark) colored products positioned in the upper (lower) shelf positions increases shoppers’ perceptual fluency and facilitates their visual search, thus leading to the suggestion that “light” (heavy) locations are most appropriate for light (dark) colored products. Moreover, the lightness‐location congruent display is shown to influence people's choice behavior positively as well. This research also demonstrates that when consumers consider the lightness (in terms of their weight) of the products, they are more likely to choose light (vs. dark) colored products located in the upper shelf positions. These results therefore demonstrate that consumers’ purchase decision‐making may be promoted by in‐store environments designed to be congruent with their sensory correspondences.     

The Effects of Escalating Commitment on Ethical Decision-Making

Although scholars have invoked the escalation framework as a means of explaining the occurrence of numerous organizationally undesirable behaviors on the part of decision makers, to date no empirical research on the potential influences of escalating commitment on the likelihood of unethical behavior at the individual level of analysis has been reported in either the escalation or the ethical decision-making literatures. Thus, the main purpose of this project is to provide a theoretical foundation and empirical support for the contention that escalating commitment situations can induce unethical behavior in decision makers. An experimental research design utilizing a computerized investment task was administered to 155 undergraduate business majors as a means of assessing the hypotheses presented here. Results from a hierarchical logistic regression analysis found strong support for the contention that exposure to an escalation situation increases the likelihood of unethical behavior on the part of decision makers. Further, results also supported previous ethical decision-making findings by confirming the effects of locus of control (LOC) on ethical behavior. Specifically, the data indicated that individuals with an external LOC orientation were significantly more likely to select the unethical option than were individuals with an internal LOC orientation. Interestingly, support was not found for the effects of Machiavellianism or gender on ethical decision-making.     

The role of numeracy and information load in the tourist decision-making process

The aim of the present study is to merge two strands of research that have evolved in tandem (a) the consequences of numeracy; and (b) the effect of information load on the consumer decision-making process. The study analyses the interaction effect between these two factors on decision accuracy and on a set of cognitive and affective variables of the decision-making process (namely, confusion, calibration, and emotion). We measured participants' numeracy and used an experimental design to manipulate the information load. The results showed that the effect of numeracy on decision accuracy was entirely mediated by cognitive and affective processes involved in decision-making. In particular, numeracy was found to have a negative relationship with the level of confusion, calibration, and emotions experienced during the decision-making process. The results also showed that information load interacted with numeracy, such that individuals with high numeracy maintained lower levels of emotion when placed under conditions of low information load. However, under these same conditions, individuals with low numeracy maintained positive emotions. The findings help to identify approaches that can contribute to reducing the negative effects of low numeracy among consumers, in a context where the online channel predominates (the tourism sector).     

A suggested approach to linking decision styles with business ethics

This essay seeks to link management action with business ethics. It utilizes two conceptual models of decision making (bounded rationality and preferred decision styles) to examine the important processes of information gathering and information processing. This analysis is then related to the ethical aspects of a business decision to help explain differences in the selection of ethical criteria.John E. Fleming is Professor of Management, School of Business Administration, University of Southern California. He worked in industry for fifteen years before joining the faculty at USC. His areas of academic research are business ethics, corporate strategy, and public policy.     

Decision-making patterns among international vacationers: A cross-cultural perspective

While there is a tendency to define world subcultures in terms of geographic or sociocultural criteria, the present research suggests that life styles may have become more homogeneous across geographic boundaries and could provide alternative ways of defining world subcultures. The study addresses the research question using international travel behavior. The results suggest that life style segmentation could be used to supplement geocultural criteria for defining world subcultures and formulating marketing strategy.     

Why so Serious? Theorising Playful Model-Driven Group Decision Support with Situated Affectivity

An integrative approach to theorising behavioural, affective and cognitive processes in model-driven group decision support (GDS) interventions is needed to gain insight into the (micro-)processes by which outcomes are accomplished. This paper proposes that the theoretical lens of situated affectivity, grounded in recent extensions of scaffolded mind models, is suitable to understand the performativity of affective micro-processes in model-driven GDS interventions. An illustrative vignette of a humorous micro-moment in a group decision workshop is presented to reveal the performativity of extended affective scaffolding processes for group decision development. The lens of situated affectivity constitutes a novel approach for the study of interventionist practice in the context of group decision making (and negotiation). An outlook with opportunities for future research is offered to facilitate an integrated approach to the study of cognitive–affective and behavioural micro-processes in model-driven GDS interventions.     

Age-related differences in responses to affective vs. rational ads for hedonic vs. utilitarian products

This research investigated the moderating role of product category type (hedonic vs. utilitarian) on age-related differences in responses to affective vs. rational ads. An experiment showed that elderly consumers (age 65 plus) had more favorable attitudes toward affective (vs. rational) ads, regardless of product category type. In contrast, young adult consumers (age 18–25) favored affective ads only for hedonic products. They favored rational ads for utilitarian products. Results of the experiment imply that, to explain age-related differences in decision making, researchers must take into account age-related differences in motivational states apart from apparent shortfalls in cognition.