How to manage consumers’ packaging perceptions

__Abstract__ Marketers are constantly confronted with new complexities in consumer markets. Withstanding significant changes in the economy, as well as growing competition from private labels, is a major challenge. In today’s turbulent environment, packaging has emerged as a tool to help marketers preserve profitability

How political identity shapes customer satisfaction

This article examines the effect of political identity on customers' satisfaction with the products and services they consume. Recent work suggests that conservatives are less likely to complain than liberals. Building on that work, the present research examines how political identity shapes customer satisfaction, which has broad implications for customers and firms. Nine studies combine different methodologies, primary and secondary data, real and hypothetical behavior, different product categories, and diverse participant populations to show that conservatives (vs. liberals) are more satisfied with the products and services they consume. This happens because conservatives (vs. liberals) are more likely to believe in free will (i.e., that people have agency over their decisions) and, therefore, to trust their own decisions. The authors document the broad and tangible downstream consequences of this effect for customers' repurchase and recommendation intentions and firms' sales. The association of political identity and customer satisfaction is attenuated when belief in free will is externally weakened, choice is limited, or the consumption experience is overwhelmingly positive.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Determining systematic differences in human graders for machine learning-based automated hiring

Firms routinely utilize natural language processing combined with other machine learning (ML) tools to assess prospective employees through automated resume classification based on pre-codified skill databases. The rush to automation can however backfire by encoding unintentional bias against groups of candidates. We run two experiments with human evaluators from two different countries to determine how cultural differences may affect hiring decisions. We use hiring materials provided by an international skill testing firm which runs hiring assessments for Fortune 500 companies. The company conducts a video-based interview assessment using machine learning, which grades job applicants automatically based on verbal and visual cues. Our study has three objectives: to compare the automatic assessments of the video interviews to assessments of the same interviews by human graders in order to assess how they differ; to examine which characteristics of human graders may lead to systematic differences in their assessments; and to propose a method to correct human evaluations using automation. We find that systematic differences can exist across human graders and that some of these differences can be accounted for by an ML tool if measured at the time of training

Getting Ahead of the Joneses: When Equality Increases Conspicuous Consumption among Bottom-Tier Consumers

It is widely believed that increasing the equality of material possessions or income in a social group should lead people at the bottom of the distribution to consume less and save more. However, this prediction and its causal mechanism have never been studied experimentally. Five studies show that greater equality increases the satisfaction of those in the lowest tier of the distribution because it reduces the possession gap between what they have and what others have. However, greater equality also increases the position gains derived from status-enhancing consumption, since it allows low-tier consumers to get ahead of the higher proportion of consumers clustered in the middle tiers. As a result, greater equality reduces consumption when consumers focus on the narrower possession gap, but it increases consumption when they focus on the greater position gains (i.e., when consumption is conspicuous, social competition goals are primed, and the environment is competitive).

Predicting and Managing Consumers' Package Size Impressions

With rising public concerns about waste and overconsumption, predicting and effectively managing consumers' package size impressions have become critical for both marketers and public health advocates. The AddChange heuristic model of size impression assumes that people add (rather than multiply) the percentage changes in the height, width, and length of objects to compute their volume. This simple deterministic model does not require any data to accurately predict consumers' perceptions of product downsizing and supersizing when one, two, or all three dimensions change proportionately. It also explains why consumers perceive size reductions accurately when only one dimension of the package is reduced but completely fail to notice up to a 24% downsizing when the product is elongated in the manner specified by the model, even when they pay close attention or weigh the product by hand. The model can be used to determine the dimensions of packages that create accurate size perceptions or that increase consumers' acceptance of downsizing

"Effects of the Density of Status Distribution on Conspicuous and Inconspicuous Consumption By Low-Status Consumers"

In five studies, we demonstrate that a dense distribution of status in society, in which most people have similar status, increases the happiness and decreases the envy of people who are least well-off, but nevertheless increases their conspicuous consumption. This happens because conspicuous consumption enables people at the bottom of the pyramid to "leapfrog" ahead of more people (hence gain more status) when most people have an average status than when the distribution of status is wide. This effect disappears when consumption is inconspicuous; when non-positional (vs. positional) utility is primed; and when one is compared to friends (vs. rivals)

Using motivation theory to develop a transformative consumer research agenda for reducing materialism in society

Materialism represents a pervasive value in contemporary society and one that is associated with multiple negative consequences. Although a considerable amount of research has documented these consequences, little research has examined how materialism levels might be reduced. This article presents a research agenda for reducing materialism. The authors begin with an overview of the motivation theory of materialism, a humanistic perspective that holds that materialism is often an outward manifestation of deeper unmet psychological needs and insecurities. Thus, research that contributes to reducing materialism should do so by addressing these more fundamental inadequacies. To this end, the authors outline three emergent research areas that have potential to reduce materialism by enhancing self-esteem-namely, experiential consumption, prosocial giving, and healthy social development in children. The authors review research in each area, consider its relevance to the materialism question, and propose future research directions. They also present the public policy implications of these discussions