Assessing the Impact of Consumers’ Brand-Related Facebook Activities on Brand Attitude and Consumer Happiness

University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2015. Major: Design. Advisor: Kim Johnson. 1 computer file (PDF); viii, 175 pages.The research purpose was to examine the impact of consumers’ active brand-related Facebook activities (e.g., posting on walls, participating in promotions) on both consumer-brand relationships and on consumer well-being. A between-subject experiment with a fictitious brand revealed that active brand-related Facebook activity (i.e., writing on a Facebook page) resulted in more positive brand attitude as compared to passive brand-related Facebook activity (i.e., reading a Facebook page). Participants in the active condition reported experiencing more positive emotion than those assigned to the passive condition during the experiment. Furthermore, autonomy support mediated relationships between 1) active participation and brand attitude and 2) active participation and positive emotion

Co-Design, Merchandising, Virtual, Store

In today’s technologically advanced, networked world, the popularity and criticality of user participation in various aspects of our lives calls for a redefinition of the boundaries between designers and users, sellers and buyers, and visual merchandisers and shoppers. Co-design is defined in the design discipline as a process that involves consumers in co-creating a product (Piller, Moeslein & Stotko, 2004), thus transforming ordinary consumers into co-designers. Traditionally, retailers primarily rely on their internal expertise for visual merchandising directives and innovations. However, exploitation of internal expertise can result in both decreased output in innovation (Katila and Ahuja, 2002) and less innovative outcomes (Kristensson, Gustafsson, & Archer, 2004)

Use of Undergraduates as Participants in Clothing and Textiles Research

Social science researchers (e.g., psychology, marketing) have questioned the practice of using undergraduates (UGs) as research participants; by the end of the 20th century, the use of UGs in consumer behavior research was trending upward. Peterson (2001, p. 451) reported that for the Journal of Consumer Research, “the percentage using college students has steadily increased, from 23% in the first volume to 89% in the most recent volume.” Further, he noted that “86% of the empirically based articles appearing in the Journal of Consumer Psychology since its inception in 1992 have employed college students as subjects” (p. 451). Similar figures have been reported in psychology journals (Sherman, Buddie, Dragan, End, & Finney, 1999)

Dress and Sex: A Review of Empirical Research Involving Human Participants and Published in Refereed Journals

Our research purpose was to assess research addressing relationships between dress and sex. Our review was focused on a 25 years span (i.e., 1990–2015) and on empirical research utilizing human participants published in refereed journals. Three main areas of research emerged: (1) dress used as cue to sexual information, (2) dress and sexual violence, and (3) dress, sex, and objectification. Our analyses revealed parents do invest their young children with sex-typed dress however sometimes children demand to wear such dress. Some women intentionally use dress to communicate sexual information but inferences about women who wear sexy dress can be misinterpreted and are sometimes negative. Observers link wearing sexy dress to violence including sexual coercion, sexual harassment, sexual assault, and unwelcome groping, touching, and grabbing. Certain items of sexy dress that reveal the body have been linked to self objectification. The fit of the items may also contribute to the body revealing nature of clothing styles that elicit self-objectification. The use of sexual images of women and children has increased over time and viewing such images is also linked to self- and other-objectification. Suggestions are provided for future research

Happiness, Power, and Conspicuous Consumption: Do You Want Louis Vuitton More When You Are Happy or Unhappy?

Luxury market has been growing steadily as consumers’ demand for luxury is increasing. Particularly, luxury consumption market has been expanding from high-status, wealthy population to a broad population. Status or power is considered to be one of the most important drivers of luxury or conspicuous consumption and consumers with less status and power than the traditional target market of luxury brands purchase luxury goods to gain status and power. The problem is that this tendency will deteriorate their financial state of low social status consumers. Therefore, the purpose of current research is to test the hypothesis that happiness can act as a psychological buffer to intervene the vicious circle of deprived power and pursuit of conspicuous consumption.</p

Effect of Time Horizon Perspective on Apparel Liking

Recent studies revealed the importance of time horizon perspectives in understanding happiness derived from consumption (i.e., post-purchase consumption evaluation) (Bhattacharjee & Mogilner, 2014; Carter & Gilovich, 2012). Most studies advocate the increased importance of experience consumption (e.g., travel) over material consumption (e.g., apparel) to consumers with limited time horizon. Although these studies have deepened our understanding of consumers’ motivation, prior research does not provide informative implication to apparel retailers. The current study aims to fill this gap and investigate the role of time horizon in consumers’ apparel pre-purchase evaluation.</p