Happiness, consumption and hedonic adaptation

textPrevious theories have suggested that consumers will be happier if they spend their money on experiences such as travel as opposed to material possessions such as automobiles. I test this experience recommendation and show that it may be misleading in its general form. Valence of the outcome significantly moderates differences in respondents' reported retrospective happiness with material versus experiential purchases. For purchases that turned out positively, experiential purchases lead to more happiness than do material purchases, as the experience recommendation suggests. However, for purchases that turned out negatively, experiences have no benefit over (and, for some types of consumers, induce significantly less happiness than) material possessions. I provide evidence that this purchase type by valence interaction is driven by the fact that consumers adapt more slowly to experiential purchases than to material purchases, leading to both greater happiness and greater unhappiness for experiential purchases. Moreover, I show that this difference in hedonic adaptation rates for material and experiential purchases is being, at least partially, driven by a difference in memory for those types of purchases. I also show that individuals mispredict hedonic adaptation rates for material and experiential purchases. Finally, I discuss implications for consumer choice.Marketin

An Abstract

Pinto, D. C., Herter, M. M., Nicolao, L., & Terres, M. (2019). The Benefits of Unrelated Brand Corporate Social Responsibility: An Abstract. In P. Rossi, & N. Krey (Eds.), Finding New Ways to Engage and Satisfy Global Customers: Proceedings of the 2018 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) World Marketing Congress (WMC) (pp. 367-368). (Finding New Ways to Engage and Satisfy Global Customers). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02568-7_97Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been a growing strategic trend among companies, in the hopes to improve their brand outcomes and performance. However, despite the growing investment in such strategies, relatively little is known about how consumers respond to corporate social responsibility activities. Recently consumers started questioning whether socially responsible actions are authentic—i.e., companies are legitimately concerned with the causes they advocate—and whether these same actions are in the core of what companies provide to the market. We are especially interested in the effect that corporate social responsibility actions exercise over brand symbolism (i.e., a brand’s potential to serve as a resource for identity construction by providing self-referential cues representing values, roles, and relationships), which, in turn, is related to a consumer’s emotional attachment to a brand. Not all CSR actions positively affect consumer behavior and brand performance. For instance, past research shows that CSR activities can have a negative or a positive impact on perceived performance, depending on company motivation. We unfold and expand on this last finding to show that CSR actions that are unrelated (vs. related) to a company’s core competence (e.g., helping the local community) increase perceived brand symbolism, which will, ultimately, influence behavioral intentions. This research analyzes how unrelated corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions influence brand symbolism. This research contributes to previous studies showing that CSR actions unrelated to the company’s core business (i.e., with a community focus) have a greater appeal than actions with a focus on company’s core competences (i.e., focus on the consumer). Results from four studies show that CSR actions unrelated to the company’s core business, counterintuitively, increase brand symbolism, which, in turn, influences consumers’ behavioral intentions. We propose that unrelated CSR actions can positively influence consumer perception of brand social responsibility and increase brand symbolism, generating positive behavioral outcomes. The findings have important implications for brands that wish to invest in corporate responsibility.authorsversionpublishe

An integrative model to predict product replacement using deep learning on longitudinal data

Past research on product upgrades has focused either on understanding who and when will upgrade or on figuring out why consumers will upgrade, but seldom on all. It has also neglected the interplay between these matters with decision context and timing. This manuscript depicts a comprehensive approach where, for the first time, product characteristics, individual differences, process, and contextual variables are analyzed on a predictive model of real product upgrades, identified through the systematic collection of primary data from a panel of smartphone consumers. We tested one traditional linear logistic regression model and two types of non-linear, state-of-the-art machine-learning models (extreme gradient boosting and deep learning) to explain upgrading behavior. Results provide an integrative, yet parsimonious, product-upgrade model showing the importance of resources; news about the smartphone brand; sentimental value; predicted, current, and remembered enjoyment; update capacity; and how much the smartphone meets the user’s current needs as the most relevant variables to determine which consumers are more prone to upgrade their smartphones. Our findings advance upgrade decision theory by taking a holistic approach to the phenomenon and bridging different theoretical accounts of the replacement decision literature

Valuation and devaluation effects in a context of social need

O efeito de devaluation, proposto por Brendl et al. (2003), foi encontrado apenas diante de um contexto de necessidade fisiológica, e o efeito de valuation não foi encontrado por esses autores. No presente estudo, por meio do método experimental, tem-se os seguintes objetivos: (1) estender as condições nas quais o efeito de devaluation por ser observado por meio da aplicação em um contexto de necessidade de pertencimento a um grupo; (2) investigar a existência do efeito de valuation nesse mesmo contexto; (3) investigar a existência de assimetria entre os efeitos de valuation (menor) e devaluation (maior). Os resultados evidenciam a existência dos efeitos de devaluation e de valuation em um contexto de necessidade social. Em relação à assimetria entre esses efeitos, o resultado não comprovou a existência de diferença estatisticamente significante.The devaluation effect proposed by Brendl et al. (2003), was found only in the context of physiological need and the effect of valuation was not found by these authors. In the present study, using the experimental method, we have the following objectives: (1) extend the conditions under which the effect of devaluation may be observed by applying it in a context of need to belong to a group; (2) to investigate the existence of the valuation effect in that context; (3) to investigate the existence of asymmetry between the effects of valuation (lower) and devaluation (higher). The results show the existence of the effects of both devaluation and valuation in a context of social need. Regarding the asymmetry between these effects, the results failed to demonstrate a statistically significant difference

Proposição de uma escala de arrependimento no processo de tomada de decisão do consumidor

Com um volume considerável de publicações nacionais e internacionais sobre a satisfação de clientes, uma ênfase cada vez maior tem sido dada para o processo de avaliação pós-compra do consumidor. Porém, o processo de satisfação é insuficiente para explicar muitos dos comportamentos que o consumidor manifesta após o consumo. Além de confrontar o recebido com o esperado, gerando julgamentos de satisfação ou insatisfação, o consumidor confronta o recebido com o que teria acontecido se outra opção tivesse sido feita. É justamente nesta confrontação entre o recebido e o que poderia ter sido recebido que surge o arrependimento. O arrependimento é pouco abordado na literatura brasileira de comportamento do consumidor. Além disso, as escalas que o medem são escassas e o fazem de forma incompleta. Posto isso, o principal objetivo dessa dissertação é o de propor uma escala que meça o arrependimento no processo de tomada de decisão do consumidor, considerando aspectos afetivos e cognitivos desse construto. Para tanto, procedeu-se a uma análise de validação de construto para a escala proposta em duas amostras distintas: consumidores de automóveis e de calçados femininos. Os resultados apontam para a existência de validade de conteúdo, unidimensionalidade, confiabilidade e validade convergente para as dimensões hipotetizadas. A validade divergente não foi evidenciada e é um ponto de discussão. As implicações desse estudo e sugestões para estudos futuros são apresentadas

Happiness For Sale: Do Experiential Or Material Purchases Lead to More Consumer Happiness?

Researchers have suggested that consumers would be happier if they spent their money on experiences as opposed to material possessions. In four experiments, we test this experience recommendation, and show that it may be misleading in its general form. We find that valence of the outcome significantly moderates differences in respondents' reported retrospective happiness with material versus experiential purchases. This valence by purchase type interaction is especially strong for consumers who are not materialistic. These results have implications for consumers attempting to maximize their happiness, and for marketers and public policymakers who have an interest in consumer welfare

Improving consumer decisions : the conscious use of primes as performance enhancers

Through this article we examine ways through which consumers can take advantage of marketers’ priming attempts and make better decisions. Specifically, we investigate what happens when individuals are made aware of primes that may potentially improve their performance. Using an Embedded Figures Test, we demonstrate that individuals can be consciously primed into an analytic thinking mindset and perform better when they believe that the prime will enhance performance. Individuals are able to successfully ignore the prime when they believe that the prime hinders performance. Utilizing both holistic and analytic primes and by alternating the valence of the prime’s potential outcome, we are able to disentangle the conscious effects of primes from demand effects. We discuss how these findings may lead to and suggest avenues for future research