A blind spot for attractiveness discrimination

Discrimination remains a key challenge for social equity. There is widespread agreement that discrimination is unfair and should be punished. A prerequisite for this is that instances of discrimination are detected. Yet, some types of discrimination may be less apparent than others. Across seven studies (N = 3,486, five preregistered), we find that attractiveness discrimination often goes undetected compared to more prototypical types of discrimination (i.e., gender and race discrimination). This blind spot does not emerge because people perceive attractiveness discrimination to be unproblematic or desirable. Rather, our findings suggest that people’s ability to detect discrimination is bounded. People only focus on a few salient dimensions, such as gender and race, when scrutinizing decision outcomes (e.g., hiring or sentencing decisions) for bias. Consistent with this account, two interventions that increased the salience of attractiveness increased the detection of attractiveness discrimination, but also decreased the detection of gender and race discrimination

How brand hatred shapes consumer perceptions and preferences

Consumers frequently experience negative feelings toward brands; yet existing research has predominantly focused on positive engagements with brands. The current dissertation examines one of the most extreme negative feelings—hatred—and explores how hatred for one brand affects competing brands. Many managers seem to believe that consumers’ hatred for a close competitor would not be harmful or might even be beneficial for their brand. Nine studies using qualitative, experimental, and field data demonstrate that in contrast to managers’ beliefs, hatred for a brand leads consumers to eschew close competitors from the same subcategory. Importantly, such preference shifts do not emerge when consumers are indifferent or dissatisfied. As feeling mistreated and exploited is central to hatred, it triggers concerns about self-protection, which results in avoiding close competitors. Several moderators (i.e., greater variance in consumer ratings and the usage of safety-inducing marketing cues) supporting the self-protection based account are identified. Taken together, this dissertation emphasizes that consumer relationships with brands do not operate in a vacuum. Documenting predictable shifts in preferences for competitors as a consequence of hatred for a brand underscores the importance of extending frameworks of consumer-brand connections to incorporate negative connections and account for effects beyond a focal brand. The findings of this dissertation also suggest that hatred – at least in a consumption context – tends to prompt individuals to be primarily concerned about protecting the self rather than annihilating the hated object (i.e., brand). When consumers experience hatred, self-protection concerns appear to be pivotal in shaping their preferences for subsequent consumption unless alternative motives might interfere and produce different preferences.Business, Sauder School ofGraduat

A blind spot for attractiveness discrimination

Discrimination remains a key challenge for social equity. There is widespread agreement that discrimination is unfair and should be punished. A prerequisite for this is that instances of discrimination are detected. Yet, some types of discrimination may be less apparent than others. Across seven studies (N = 3,486, five preregistered), we find that attractiveness discrimination often goes undetected compared to more prototypical types of discrimination (i.e., gender and race discrimination). This blind spot does not emerge because people perceive attractiveness discrimination to be unproblematic or desirable. Rather, our findings suggest that people’s ability to detect discrimination is bounded. People only focus on a few salient dimensions, such as gender and race, when scrutinizing decision outcomes (e.g., hiring or sentencing decisions) for bias. Consistent with this account, two interventions that increased the salience of attractiveness increased the detection of attractiveness discrimination, but also decreased the detection of gender and race discrimination

Fields of gold: Scraping web data for marketing insights

Marketing scholars increasingly use web scraping and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to collect data from the internet. Yet, despite the widespread use of such web data, the idiosyncratic and sometimes insidious challenges in its collection have received limited attention. How can researchers ensure that the datasets generated via web scraping and APIs are valid? While existing resources emphasize technical details of extracting web data, the authors propose a novel methodological framework focused on enhancing its validity. In particular, the framework highlights how addressing validity concerns requires the joint consideration of idiosyncratic technical and legal/ethical questions along the three stages of collecting web data: selecting data sources, designing the data collection, and extracting the data. The authors further review more than 300 articles using web data published in the top five marketing journals and offer a typology of how web data has advanced marketing thought. The article concludes with directions for future research to identify promising web data sources and to embrace novel approaches for using web data to capture and describe evolving marketplace realities

The Social Dimension of Service Interactions: Observer Reactions to Customer Incivility

Service interactions run a gamut from an instrumental self-focus to full social appreciation. Observing another customer’s incivility toward a frontline employee can emphasize social concerns as guiding principles for the observer’s own service interaction. Five studies test these dynamics; the results reveal that an incivility incident leads observers to prioritize social over market concerns. This reprioritization becomes manifest in a subsequent service interaction through increased feelings of warmth toward the employee who experienced incivility. In turn, feelings of warmth prompt observers to provide emotional support to the affected employee. Yet such prosocial inclinations are less likely when an employee is held responsible for or reciprocates incivility. Finally, this article also examines the effects of different employee reaction strategies on observers’ inferences about the employee and the service firm, showing that observers are most positively disposed toward the employee and the firm when the former reacts to incivility with a polite reprimand. Together, the results suggest that, contrary to past theorizing, observing customers may contribute to employee well-being, contingent on appropriate employee responses. Notably, the commonly prescribed polite, submissive employee reaction that requires emotional labor may not be the most desirable reaction—neither for the employee nor for the firm

Understanding and Improving Consumer Reactions to Service Bots

Many firms are beginning to replace customer service employees with bots, from humanoid service robots to digital chatbots. Using real human-bot interactions in lab and field settings, we study consumers’ evaluations of bot-provided service. We find that service evaluations are more negative when the service provider is a bot versus a human—even when the provided service is identical. This effect is explained by consumers’ belief that service automation is motivated by firm benefits (i.e., cutting costs) at the expense of customer benefits (such as service quality). The effect is eliminated when firms share the economic surplus derived from automation with consumers through price discounts. The effect is reversed when service bots provide unambiguously superior service to human employees—a scenario that may soon become reality. Consumers’ default reactions to service bots are therefore largely negative but can be equal to or better than reactions to human service providers if firms can demonstrate how automation benefits consumers

Storm after the Quiet:how Marketplace Interactions Shape Consumer Resources in Collective Goal Pursuits

Raising a child is a life project that involves setting goals, making plans, and acquiring the means to execute the plans. This article examines how families modify their goals, plans, and means after learning a child is disabled. An inductive investigation of nine families who have a child with hearing loss emphasizes the pivotal role of individual and collective consumer resources in attaining central well-being goals (e.g., social inclusion). Results show that consumer resources are partly endowed, yet dynamically shaped by marketplace interactions. These resource dynamics unfold in both positive (e.g., creating family routines) and negative (e.g., losing trust in service providers) ways. Typically, goal pursuit determines resource acquisition; however, in certain conditions, resource availability also can influence goal pursuit, with potentially detrimental outcomes. Fully appreciating consumer resource dynamics is crucial for understanding how consumers pursue life themes and projects for significant others and for the family as a collective