Shopping, Gambling or Shambling? Penny Auctions

On penny auction websites, consumers participate in a game where the winner receives the opportunity to purchase a product for pennies on the dollar and discounts of over 90% are often advertised and recorded. Losers, on the other hand, may easily spend hundreds of dollars and walk away with nothing. For penny auction websites, profit margins over 300% on a single auction are not uncommon. Critics call penny auctions gambling. Proponents call penny auctions entertainment shopping. Either way, this emerging form of ecommerce represents a fascinating area for academic research

Our journal, our intellectual home

The Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) is not only the premier outlet for the best scholarship in consumer research. It is also the intellectual home of the global consumer research community. In sustaining that home, the ideals of the journal include publishing insights gained from a variety of perspectives on critical consumer-relevant issues, from diverse theories and methodologies to substantive domains. As a team of editors, we see our role as nurturing, building, protecting, and further strengthening our intellectual home. And we want to build up JCR as a platform of insights to the world by better translating our research and showing how it is important to others; we want to invite the broader world into our home, to share the insights created within our walls. To become the stewards of JCR during a pandemic unlike any we’ve known in our lifetime demands that we think about how community is fostered, even in a socially distanced world. Does JCR—as our intellectual home—connect us? Is our digital space compelling enough? Do community members find it easy and exciting to stay connected to the new ideas we work hard to develop? Does our intellectual home feel equally welcoming and transparent to all members of our community? COVID-19 has shown us the power and importance of home. In 2020, home renovation has been popular, and we, too, have been thinking it might be the ideal time for a little updating. So what efforts, in addition to the traditional work of editors, will we be tackling? Four things. Four guiding principles. (1) Transparency, fairness, and trust; (2) timeliness and speed; (3) diversity, equity, and inclusion; and (4) community building

Consumer Segmentation in Forecasting Movie Box-Office Performance Based on Dynamic Awareness and Preference (Ap) Measures

Forecasting consumers' new product adoption has been investigated by numerous innovation and marketing researchers primarily targeting durables and repeatedly purchased products. By comparison, forecasting consumers' adoption of entertainment products such as movies and books has been scarce because of those products' properties of one-time purchase and hedonic experience consumption. The unique properties make it ineffective applying common adoption models developed for durables or repeatedly purchased products. Based on the industry practice that movie studios use weekly survey data containing consumers' awareness and preference (AP) measures of new upcoming movies to forecast their box-office performance, we develop a theory-driven forecasting model based on the AP measures of such entertainment products. Specifically, our forecasting model captures four distinct AP-based consumer segments that can influence the new product sales performance in different manners. In other words, our forecasting model is based on our assumption that not only the nature of preference (positive vs. negative preference) but also new product awareness timing (early vs. late awareness) influences the sales differently. Since awareness and preference take place in two successive steps before new product adoption, this two (early vs. late awareness) by two (positive and negative preference) classification results in four distinct consumer groups in sales forecasting. Our movie-level forecasting model reveals that these four groups have distinctively different impacts on new product sales. In our empirical application, we demonstrate the distinct existence of the four consumer segments using recent data from the Korean movie market

The Impact of Cognitive and Affective Country Image on Consumers' Rational and Experiential Purchases

Drawing on a sample of over 1,200 consumers throughout Mainland China, this research examines how cognitive and affective country image influence consumer judgment of and purchase intention toward rational and experiential products. The findings demonstrate that the impact of country image on consumer purchase intention is mediated by general and category product image. Particularly, the impact of cognitive country image on category product image is fully mediated by general product image in both rational and experiential purchases. However, affective country image has a direct impact on category product image in experiential purchases but not in rational purchases

Deciding what to do: A behavioral framework for leisure consumption decisions

In this dissertation I study what people do in leisure, and why; what motivates individuals to prefer certain leisure-time pursuits over others, and what factors might influence leisure consumption.^ I propose that leisure consumption and consumer decisions regarding leisure time are fundamentally connected to an individual\u27s tempocognitive style, i.e., how a person perceives, thinks about, and copes with time. My research presents a multidimensional view of tempocognitive style, the construct includes the dimensions of: social emphasis (time alone vs. time with others), temporal emphasis (to the past, present, or future), planning style (analytic vs. holistic), and behavioral style (monochronic vs. polychronic).^ Further, I argue that it is important to understand the interactions between social and cognitive processes in how people perceive and approach leisure time. Specifically, I posit that ethnicity (e.g., Anglos vs. Latinos), family influence, and an individual\u27s life themes and projects play key roles in shaping a person\u27s tempocognitive style and his or her leisure goals and motives. Thus, my approach seeks to integrate the study of leisure-time perception and consumption with research on sociocognitive influences on consumption.^ I explore, test, and refine my conceptual framework in a series of three empirical studies. Studies 1 and 2 involve qualitative data and I employ interpretive research techniques. I explore how people subjectively define and approach leisure time. I also examine the links between ethnicity, family, and life themes and projects and an individual\u27s tempocognitive style and leisure goals.^ Study 3 involves quantitative data from a survey of 30 pairs of sisters. The main objective of this study is to examine family influence in leisure consumption using the coorientation approach. I assess the extent of family influence in tempocognitive style, leisure goals, and leisure activities. I also examine the relationship between life projects and tempocognitive style, and whether life projects and tempocognitive style together influence leisure goals.

Multiple Ps′ effects on gambling, drinking and smoking: Advancing theory and evidence

This special issue is dedicated to providing insights into research on problem gambling, drinking and smoking. Drawing on compulsive consumption literature, the issue approaches from business management perspectives and examines various external factors with a focus on marketing effects on gambling, drinking and smoking behaviors. In particular, the papers in this issue are categorized on the basis of marketing mix into promotion, place, people, peer-culture, psychological and policy effects. A mix of methods including qualitative, quantitative and meta-analysis appears in this issue with a diversified sampling cohort. Highlights of each paper are summarized in this editorial

Blackjack in the Kitchen: Understanding Online versus Casino Gambling

About $10 billion a year is spent by consumers worldwide on online gambling, and that number continues to grow. We present a qualitative, image-based study of 30 Las Vegas online and casino gamblers. By examining online gambling as a consumption experience, we examine what happens to consumption meaning as gambling moves away from a regulated physical space to an unregulated online space, one accessed from home. We explore the meaning of online gambling consumption to consumers and flesh out the social welfare implications of our findings. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..