The effect of start/end temporal landmarks on consumers' visual attention and judgments

A particular point in time can be framed as either the start or end of a given time period. However, limited research is available on how such temporal landmarks influence consumers' judgments. This research addresses this issue by investigating how start vs. end temporal landmarks influence consumers' attentional focus and subsequent judgments. Six studies demonstrate that framing a temporal landmark as the start of a time period shifts visual attention to the left, while framing a temporal landmark as the end of a time period shifts visual attention to the right. By changing attentional focus within the visual-spatial environment, a temporal-spatial congruity between a temporal landmark (start vs. end) and the location of a target object (left vs. right) increases people's preference for that target object. Overall, these findings provide valuable implications for marketing theory and practice.     

The influence of consumer mood state as a contextual factor on imagery-inducing advertisements and brand attitude

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of consumer preexisting mood as a contextual factor on consumers' response to imagery-inducing advertisements. The results showed that positive mood seemed to be the most productive context for an imagery ad. Positive mood increased consumers' positive affective state and increased their subsequent brand attitudes. In addition, the results showed that consumers' mood state can also affect the processing mode consumers actually adopt while viewing an ad, and thus indirectly affect brand attitude. Positive mood state was shown to facilitate the induction of mental imagery processing, and at the same time distract detail-oriented analytical processing. As a result, evaluation of the ad was enhanced. On the other hand, negative mood was shown to reduce the intended mental imagery processing, but it appeared to encourage a detail-oriented analytical processing. As a result, consumers remembered more accurately the specific ad claims, but were not affected as much by the imagery-inducing appeals.     

The sound of silence: Why music in supermarkets is just a distraction

Retailers use music in the service environment to try to change consumer behaviour with a view to increasing spend, or improving consumer mood. Previous research has largely focused on music but ignored the effects of other noises within a servicescape: yet all noises can impact consumers' affective states, and their behaviour.This study examines the role of both planned and other sounds within the supermarket environment. In particular, this study investigates the cognizant and emotional reactions of supermarket customers, and explores their shopping intentions in the context of shoppers' understanding of and reaction to the sounds they perceive.     

I guess that is fair: How the efforts of other customers influence buyer price fairness perceptions

Past research has demonstrated that consumers' price fairness judgments are influenced by comparisons between the offer price they receive and the prices paid by other consumers for the same product offering. In today's digital age, reference points for purchases are more prevalent than ever. However, investigations on how certain inputs of the transaction affect these judgments is lacking. Specifically, extant research has failed to account for how the purchase efforts of other consumers can influence one's own price fairness evaluations. Moreover, relatively little empirical research has endeavored to understand the simultaneous cognitive and affective processes that explain how consumers arrive at price fairness judgments. To address these gaps in the literature, we introduce two studies aimed at understanding the process through which the salient efforts of referent consumers serve to mitigate perceptions of price unfairness when two customers pay different prices for the same product. The findings support a dual‐process model whereby the efforts of other (referent) customers serve to simultaneously reduce buyer anger and increase buyer understanding of the price disparity, ultimately mitigating perceptions of price unfairness.     

Sustainability seen from the perspective of consumers

An important step in promoting sustainable consumption is to find out how consumers understand the concept of sustainability. In this paper, we report on a study among Norwegian consumers in which we explored their understanding of sustainability at two levels. First, we investigated consumers' understanding of the general sustainability concept; specifically, we studied how important the following five sustainability dimensions are in consumers' conception of sustainability: the environmental, social, economic, temporal and the developmental dimension. Second, we investigated how consumers' understanding of sustainability manifests itself in consumption decisions: We studied consumers' opinions about how important various attributes are for sustainable products and which product labels they consider indicative of sustainable products. We found that all five sustainability dimensions occurred as elements of consumers' understanding of the sustainability concept. The environmental dimension, the social dimension and the developmental dimension were particularly outstanding. With regard to attributes that are important for sustainable products, consumers placed high emphasis on recyclability of the packaging, fair payment of producers, low energy use and low carbon dioxide emissions during production and shipping. Humane animal treatment was also considered an important attribute of sustainable products. The product labels that were considered most indicative of sustainable products were the Nordic Swan and the Norwegian Debio label. Consumers' judgments of how indicative the labels are of sustainable products were related positively to familiarity with the labels.     

The density–satisfaction relationship revisited: The role of scarcity and consumers affective reactions in a crowded retail situation

This article examines how individuals react in crowded utilitarian settings and investigates the specific role of scarcity in the density–dissatisfaction relationship. This paper also highlights the mediating role of affective states (i.e. positive and negative) in determining consumers' satisfaction or dissatisfaction in these contexts. The results suggest that the scarcity of the situation can reduce the extent to which consumers perceive negative experiences in a dense retail situation. In addition, it supports the critical role played by affective states in mediating the relationship between density perceptions and negative reactions. The article provides potential explanations and managerial insights on how managers can deal with crowding in diverse retail and services situations.     

Mood management through metaverse enhancing life satisfaction

This study aims to explore a social metaverse's positive effects as mood management on consumers' life satisfaction and usage intentions. A total of 304 survey responses from active users of a popular social metaverse platform, Zepeto, were collected with help from an online survey firm. Structural equation modeling analysis was conducted using AMOS 25.0. The direct paths from social metaverse consumption as positive mood enhancement and negative mood alleviation to consumers' life satisfaction were significant, which led to greater usage intentions. Positive mood enhancement influenced usage intentions both directly and indirectly through increased life satisfaction; however, the effect of negative mood alleviation on usage intentions was fully mediated by life satisfaction. Interestingly, for the players who spend money in the social metaverse, only the path from negative mood alleviation to usage intentions mediated by life satisfaction was significant.     

On being happy and possessive: The interactive effects of mood and personality on consumer judgments

Evaluations of consumer items may often be based on affective reactions, and many marketing strategies rely on affective manipulations to influence a desire of ownership. Surprisingly, there has been relatively little empirical work investigating the influence of short‐term mood states on how people evaluate their material possessions. In particular, the role of individual differences in mediating these effects received little attention. In these two experiments, participants who scored high or low on the Openness to Feelings scale were induced to feel good or bad and were then asked to estimate the subjective and objective value of a variety of consumer items they already owned or wanted to own. Results showed a mood‐congruent pattern. People who were feeling good valued both actual and potential possessions more highly than did people in a negative mood. However, individual differences significantly influenced these effects. People who scored high on the Openness to Feelings scale were most influenced by their moods. In contrast, people who scored low on this measure showed the reverse pattern. The findings are discussed in terms of the psychological mechanisms responsible for producing affect infusion into thinking and judgments, and the critical role of personality variables in mediating these effects is considered. The implications of the findings for contemporary affect‐cognition theories, and for understanding of the variables influencing consumer judgments are discussed. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Shopping centers revisited: The interplay between consumers’ spontaneous online communications and retail planning

This paper revisits shopping centers' characteristics in the light of consumers' choices of actual centers in spontaneous online communications. We argue that modes of shopping centers marketing, which comprise a certain set of attributes to ensure consumers' choice, need to be updated to relate to new specific consumers' needs and choices, taking into account the recent increasing role of technologies, leisure activities and changes in consumer behavior. To this end, the paper considers consumers' unsolicited communications on Twitter as an effective source of insights. Drawing upon 10,544 consumers' tweets relating to the 19 main shopping centers in UK posted in May 2019 analyzed through machine learning algorithms. Results report the interplay between consumers' unsolicited online judgments and retail planning, while suggesting new methods for understanding consumers’ insights.     

An examination of consumers' use of heuristic cues in making satisfaction judgments

This study was undertaken to investigate the propensity of consumers to rely on heuristic cues when making satisfaction judgments in a repeat-purchase context. The objective of this investigation was twofold: first, to investigate the impact of mood states at the information-encoding stage for both on-line and memory-based judgments, and second, to examine whether information-processing efficiency can provide new insight into the initial-judgment effect in a consumer-behavior context. The results of this experiment indicate that inefficient information processors may be subject to biased satisfaction evaluations caused by their mood states at the information-encoding stage. Efficient information processors, on the other hand, tend to partial out the impact of mood in their postpurchase evaluations. Despite this fact, high-capacity information processors are not free from bias; they seem to be heavily guided by prior judgments in subsequent evaluations of the same consumption object. In sum, motivation rather than ability to process information may be the key factor in a consumer's propensity to use heuristics during the postpurchase evaluation process. The marketing implications of these findings are briefly discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Disentangling the impact of temperature on consumers' attitudes toward nostalgic advertising

Although the effect of temperature on consumers is ubiquitous, little is known about how temperature affects consumers' attitudes toward nostalgic advertising. Drawing on embodied cognition theory, this study explores the effect of temperature on consumers' attitudes toward nostalgic advertising through the mediator of the affective system. Based on two experiments involving personal and historical nostalgic advertising, our results show that when exposed to comfortable temperature, consumers follow the “assimilative effect” of temperature; warm temperatures trigger more positive attitudes toward nostalgic advertising when compared with cool temperatures. However, when exposed to uncomfortable temperatures, consumers follow the “complementary effect” of temperatures; cold temperatures lead to more positive attitudes toward nostalgic advertising than hot temperatures. Furthermore, the affective system plays a mediating role between temperature and consumers' attitudes toward nostalgic advertising. This study contributes to the literature on temperature in marketing and provides a practical guide for companies to implement nostalgic advertising strategies.     

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.     

Do promotion and prevention focus influence impulse buying: The role of mood regulation,shopping values,and impulse buying tendency

Earlier researchers have observed that an individual consumer's mood plays a significant role in increasing the impulsiveness, which leads to impulsive buying. The literature on shoppers' motivational traits has profoundly acknowledged the impact of these traits and mood regulation constructs on individual shopping values. The present study is a pioneer attempt proposing a comprehensive model, which incorporates three main antecedents (motivation, mood and value) of buying behaviour that influence the consumer purchasing decision. The paper empirically explores the liaison between the regulatory focus (promotion-focused and prevention-focused motivations), mood regulation (mood monitoring, mood clarity and mood repair), shopping values (hedonic and utilitarian), and impulsive buying behaviour. The outcomes suggest that two regulatory focus motives influence mood clarity. Mood repairing and mood monitoring impact hedonic shopping values, which has a substantial impact on consumers' impulsive buying tendency. The paper closes with theoretical and practical inferences, limitations, and discussion on the potential scope for future research.     

Age-related effects on environmentally sustainable purchases at the time of COVID-19: Evidence from Italy

The present research investigates whether the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has modified consumers' spending on environmentally sustainable products by focusing on the role of age. An empirical study conducted in Italy during the first wave of the pandemic finds that consumers' age affected their reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak, and such age-related effects may have led to an increased propensity to spend on sustainable products. Indeed, the results show that consumers' age is inversely related to their negative affective reaction to the rise of contagion, which, in turn, is inversely related to their level of optimism experienced when the contagion slowed down due to public health interventions. Furthermore, this level of optimism is positively related to consumers’ pro-environmental attitude and, thus, to their tendency to increase sustainable purchases.     

Stereotyping human-like virtual influencers in retailing: Does warmth prevail over competence?

Building upon the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), the current research provides insights into how virtual influencers (VIs) influence consumer responses. More specifically, it investigates the associations between the VI's anthropomorphism and stereotypical judgments of the VI's warmth and competence as well as the differential and mediating roles of these stereotypes in influencing consumers' willingness to follow the VI's recommendations and purchase intentions. The results support the idea that anthropomorphizing VIs has a direct bearing on stereotyping VIs along the competence and warmth dimensions of the SCM. Consistent with the “Primacy-of-Warmth Effect” hypothesis, the study's findings show that perceived warmth, compared to perceived competence, is positively more associated with consumers' willingness to follow the VI's recommendations. Furthermore, the findings reveal that perceived warmth mediates the association between the VI's anthropomorphism and consumers' willingness to follow the VI's recommendations. However, the findings lend partial support to the mediating role of competence. The willingness to follow the VI's recommendations, in turn, is positively associated with purchase intention. The paper wraps up with some implications for research and practice.     

Online personalized recommended product quality and e-impulse buying: A conditional mediation analysis

Consumer lifestyle and purchasing behavior have been significantly transformed over the past few years. At present, internet technologies make it possible for consumers to order goods and services on a go or in real-time without physically visiting traditional store outlets. This phenomenon calls for a change in marketing strategy to be able to reach consumers wherever they are. Accordingly, online marketing techniques such as personalized product/service recommendation, which makes products available to consumers, optimizing their interests and buying experience, are primal to market development.Therefore, this study examines whether or not online consumers' (1) E-impulse buying (EIB) behavior is influenced by personalized recommended product quality (RPQ), (2) affective image (IMAGE) of, and satisfaction (SAT) with recommended products mediate the RPQ-EIB link, and (3) online review stimulus (ORS) moderated the direct RPQ-EIB and indirect PRQ-EIB through affective image and satisfaction. Data was collected from consumers on five (5) online shops in China (N = 947). The Results showed that (i) RPQ had significant positive influence on EIB, (ii) the RPQ-EIB relation was partly explained by consumers' affective image of, and satisfaction with recommended products, and (iii) the direct and indirect relations between RPQ and EIB were sensitive to consumers’ ORS. Theoretical and practical implications, limitations and direction for future studies were also discussed in this study.     

Misleading Consumers with Green Advertising? An Affect–Reason–Involvement Account of Greenwashing Effects in Environmental Advertising

Drawing from the affect–reason–involvement model, we examine how misleading advertising about the environmental features of products, or greenwashing, affects how consumers perceive ads and brands. Using data from two experimental studies with quota-based samples in the United States (N = 486) and Germany (N = 300), we compare nondeceptive claims with two types of claims often used in greenwashing: vague claims and false claims. We also identify the presence of pleasant nature-evoking images and test for interaction effects with two types of environmental involvement: environmental concern and environmental knowledge. Results indicate that while vague claims do not enhance consumers' perceived greenwashing regardless of their environmental knowledge or concern, false claims do, which consequently harms consumers' attitudes toward those ads and brands. In the United States, consumers' environmental knowledge moderates that effect, whereas all consumers in Germany could identify false claims as attempts at greenwashing. Moreover, associating greenwashing claims with nature-evoking images activates an affective persuasive mechanism that appeals to consumers' affinity for nature, which not only positively influences their evaluations of ads and brands but also influences their attitudes toward ads and brands more strongly than perceived greenwashing. In closing, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.     

Antecedents of consumers' time perceptions in a hypermarket retailer

This study examines the effects of five antecedents on consumers' time perceptions in a hypermarket environment. Findings indicate that the actual shopping time spent in the store and planned shopping activities significantly influence consumers' shopping time perceptions, while consumers' waiting time perceptions are driven by both actual checkout waiting time and actual shopping time. The article examines time gaps, i.e. consumers' errors in time estimation, as related to store loyalty intention and finds that past consumer purchases moderate the relationship between both time gaps and store loyalty intention. Managerial implications are discussed in the article.     

Having less: A personal project taxonomy of consumers' decluttering orientations,motives and emotions

This study examines consumers' orientations toward decluttering and what differentiates consumers' engagement with decluttering as a routine social practice. An internet survey was conducted with a convenience sample of 172 adult consumers who recently engaged in home decluttering projects. Cluster analysis used appraisals of personal project dimensions to create a taxonomy in which we identified three orientations toward decluttering: disengaged, enthusiastic, and challenged. Subsequent analyses compared appraisals of success and affective and motivational differences across the three orientations. Findings reveal that decluttering is enjoyable, easy, and most successful for consumers with an enthusiastic orientation who intrinsically value decluttering and link it to self-identify. Those who lack time or adequate control experience more stress and less success. Circumstances, and especially normative pressures, seemed to drive these orientations. All orientations experienced relatively high positive emotions after decluttering, which substantiates the positive influence of decluttering on emotional well-being.