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

Code for: Unlocking the Potential of Web Data for Retailing Research

Data and code for: Unlocking the Potential of Web Data for Retailing Researc

Unlocking the Potential of Web Data for Retailing Research

Web data collected via web scraping and application programming interfaces (APIs) has opened many new avenues for retail innovations and research opportunities. Yet, despite the abundance of online data on retailers, brands, products, and consumers, its use in retailing research remains limited. To spur the increased use of web data, we aim to achieve three goals. First, we review existing retailing applications using web data. Second, we demystify the use of web data by discussing its value in the context of existing retail data sets and to-be-constructed primary web datasets. Third, we provide a hands-on guide to help retailing researchers incorporate web data collection into their research routines. Our paper is accompanied by a mock-up digital retail store (music-to-scrape.org) that researchers and students can use to learn to collect web data using web scraping and APIs

Unlocking the Potential of Web Data for Retailing Research

Web data collected via web scraping and application programming interfaces (APIs) has opened many new avenues for retail innovations and research opportunities. Yet, despite the abundance of online data on retailers, brands, products, and consumers, its use in retailing research remains limited. To spur the increased use of web data, we aim to achieve three goals. First, we review existing retailing applications using web data. Second, we demystify the use of web data by discussing its value in the context of existing retail data sets and to-be-constructed primary web datasets. Third, we provide a hands-on guide to help retailing researchers incorporate web data collection into their research routines. Our paper is accompanied by a mock-up digital retail store (music-to-scrape.org) that researchers and students can use to learn to collect web data using web scraping and APIs

A blind spot for attractiveness discrimination: Why some types of discrimination go undetected

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 six high-powered studies (N = 3,269, five preregistered) and two supplemental studies with American and Dutch participants, we find that attractiveness discrimination often goes undetected compared to more prototypical types of discrimination (i.e., gender and race discrimination). This was observed for hiring and sentencing decisions, different measures of discrimination perceptions (open-ended descriptions, fairness ratings, explicit attributions to discrimination), and different manifestations of discrimination (favoring vs. disfavoring individuals). This blind spot does not emerge because people perceive attractiveness discrimination to be less problematic. Rather, our findings suggest that people’s ability to detect discrimination is bounded. When scrutinizing decision outcomes (e.g., hiring or sentencing decisions) for bias, people tend to focus on a few salient dimensions, such as gender and race. Consistent with this account, interventions that drew attention to attractiveness discrimination increased its subsequent detection, but also decreased the detection of other types of discrimination

Unlocking the potential of web data for retailing research

Web data collected via web scraping and application programming interfaces (APIs) has opened many new avenues for retail innovations and research opportunities. Yet, despite the abundance of online data on retailers, brands, products, and consumers, its use in retailing research remains limited. To spur the increased use of web data, we aim to achieve three goals. First, we review existing retailing applications using web data. Second, we demystify the use of web data by discussing its value in the context of existing retail data sets and to-be-constructed primary web datasets. Third, we provide a hands-on guide to help retailing researchers incorporate web data collection into their research routines. Our paper is accompanied by a mock-up digital retail store (music-to-scrape.org) that researchers and students can use to learn to collect web data using web scraping and APIs.</p

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