Consumer–brand relationship quality: When and how it helps brand extensions

Two studies demonstrate that strong brand relationship quality (BRQ) enhances consumer judgments about brand extensions. Different methods (survey vs. experiment), participants (real consumers vs. college students), and cultural contexts (Korea vs. Canada) demonstrate that this effect generalizes. Study results suggest that this effect only occurs for two moderately-low-fit extensions: the extension and the parent are similar product categories with inconsistent attributes, or dissimilar product categories with consistent attributes. Two different cognitive processes underlie the BRQ effects depending on these conditions.     

Artificial Intelligence and Declined Guilt: Retailing Morality Comparison Between Human and AI

Journal of Business Ethics - Several technological developments, such as self-service technologies and artificial intelligence (AI), are disrupting the retailing industry by changing consumption...     

Effects of physical cleansing on subsequent unhealthy eating

Over five experiments, we demonstrate that physical cleansing (e.g., handwashing) can reduce consumers’ unhealthy eating in subsequent unrelated contexts, by decreasing their choice of vice food (e.g., chocolate cake) versus virtue food (e.g., fruit salad) and their preferred amount vice food for consumption. This effect generalizes over different food stimuli and different operationalizations of physical cleansing (i.e., actual cleansing, visualized cleansing, and vicarious cleansing). Further, an analogous effect occurs for consumers’ unethical choice in a non-food domain, thus increasing the generalizability of the cleansing effect. Finally, one potential mechanism of the effect based on the metaphorical associations between physical cleanliness and moral purity and between vice food and immoral consumption is suggested.     

Cultural influences on brand extension judgments: Opposing effects of thinking style and regulatory focus

Asians are more likely than Westerners to have both a relational (vs. analytic) thinking style and a prevention (vs. promotion) focus. These two chronic dispositions can have opposite effects on their evaluations of brand extensions, the relative magnitude of which depends on whether the extensions are construed at a concrete or abstract level. Results of three experiments demonstrate that when an extension is psychologically close and construed at a concrete level, Asians' disposition to engage in relational thinking leads them to perceive the extension to be relatively more similar to the parent, leading them to evaluate the extension more favorably than do Westerners. On the other hand, when the extension is psychologically distant and construed at an abstract level and thus Asians are unlikely to engage in relational processing, their prevention focus leads them to perceive the extension to be riskier and evaluate it less favorably than do Westerners.     

Effects of cognitive resource availability on consumer decisions involving counterfeit products: The role of perceived justification

In four experiments, participants made a purchase decision about a counterfeit product under either constrained or unconstrained cognitive resource conditions. Participants were less likely to purchase the counterfeit when their cognitive resources were constrained than when they were not. However, this difference was evident only when individuals had strong (vs. weak) moral beliefs, or when they had low (vs. high) accountability for their decisions. These and other results suggest that the effect of cognitive resource availability on counterfeit purchase was mediated by participants’ perceptions of justification about the purchase.     

Effects of a regulatory match in sunk-cost effects: A mediating role of anticipated regret

People are more likely to invest their money, time, and efforts to attain a desired outcome if they have already devoted resources to its attainment than if they did not. This ??sunk cost effect?? is robust and has been demonstrated in a wide range of settings. Four experiments in the present research show that the effect is significantly smaller under regulatory mismatch, i.e., when there is a mismatch between the decision makers?? regulatory focus and the characteristics of the desired outcome, than under regulatory match. This difference is not attributable to the operation of value-from-fit but mediated by differences in future regret that people anticipate experiencing when they fail to devote additional resources to the attainment of the outcome, and consequently fail to realize it.