Exposure to unattainable luxury: effects on materialistic goal pursuit

This paper investigates the influence of exposure to (unattainable) luxury on consumers’ materialistic and extrinsic goal pursuit. We show that exposure to luxury may produce very different effects depending on whether a person feels that (s)he is able or unable to attain the depicted luxuries. Specifically, in three studies, we demonstrate that being able to attain the exposed luxuries increases levels of materialism. In contrast, viewing unattainable luxury may trigger self-protection mechanisms. In particular, after being exposed to unattainable luxuries, participants tended to devaluate the importance they attached to materialistic (extrinsic) goals, due to decreased levels of self-esteem

Prominence in queuing: queue length versus basket size

Choosing checkouts in a supermarket is a common consumer decision that has been largely overlooked in previous research. In this paper, we investigate the relative impact of queue length and average basket size on consumers’ waiting time expectations and checkout choice. Four studies highlight the importance of basket content, leading to a preference for longer queues where consumers have little loaded shopping baskets than shorter queues with fully loaded baskets. However, queuing perceptions change when focusing consumers’ attention on the time cost of payment at the checkout