The Role of Authentic (vs. Hubristic) Pride in Leveraging the Effectiveness of Cost Transparency

Journal of Business Ethics - In the era of consumer distrust of corporations, transparency is becoming a must rather than an option. While prior research has explored why businesses should disclose...     

Sad but smiling? How the combination of happy victim images and sad message appeals increase prosocial behavior

Marketing Letters - The present research examines how a combination of a happy (vs. sad) victim image and a strong sad message appeal can promote prosocial behavior. The underlying reason is that...     

The moderating role of construal level on the evaluation of emotional appeal vs. cognitive appeal advertisements

This article proposes that construal level moderates consumer evaluation of different appeals (emotional vs. cognitive appeals) in advertisements. Low-level construal is associated with close psychological distance; this condition implies that people with low-level construal can feel an emotion more intensely than those with high-level construal. Consequently, consumers with low-level construal could positively relate with the emotional appeal ad, and they would evaluate an ad with emotional appeal more favorably than an ad with cognitive appeal. However, this effect does not occur among consumers who construe information at high-level, due to the fact that they are able to focus on the central and positive features of different appeals.     

Proud volunteers: the role of self- and vicarious-pride in promoting volunteering

This research examines the role of self- and vicarious-pride in eliciting divergent mindsets and behaviors toward volunteering. We propose that the congruent matching of self-pride (vicarious-pride) emotions with promotion (prevention) focus-framed messages increases the effectiveness of promoting volunteering behaviors. The positive “match-up” effects arise because self-pride elicits a competitive mindset, whereas vicarious-pride elicits a collaborative mindset toward volunteering. We test our predictions across three experimental studies using behavioral measures in different non-profit organizational settings. The findings contribute to research on the role of pride in prosocial consumer behavior by providing empirical evidence that self-pride and vicarious-pride lead to different mindsets and behavioral outcomes.