Journal of consumer Reserch

1) Resistance to Medical Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing healthcare, but little is known about consumer
receptivity to AI in medicine. Consumers are reluctant to utilize healthcare provided by AI in real
and hypothetical choices, separate and joint evaluations. Consumers are less likely to utilize
healthcare (study 1), exhibit lower reservation prices for healthcare (study 2), are less sensitive to
differences in provider performance (studies 3A–3C), and derive negative utility if a provider is
automated rather than human (study 4). Uniqueness neglect, a concern that AI providers are less
able than human providers to account for consumers’ unique characteristics and circumstances,
drives consumer resistance to medical AI. Indeed, resistance to medical AI is stronger for
consumers who perceive themselves to be more unique (study 5). Uniqueness neglect mediates
resistance to medical AI (study 6), and is eliminated when AI provides care (a) that is framed as
personalized (study 7), (b) to consumers other than the self (study 8), or (c) that only supports,
rather than replaces, a decision made by a human healthcare provider (study 9). These findings
make contributions to the psychology of automation and medical decision making, and suggest
interventions to increase consumer acceptance of AI in medicine.

2) In Brands We Trust? A Multicategory, Multicountry Investigation of Sensitivity

of Consumers’ Trust in Brands to Marketing-Mix Activities

Abstract

The essence of a brand is that it delivers on its promises. However, consumers’ trust in brands
(CTB) has declined around the world in recent decades. As a result, CTB has become a major
concern for managers. The authors examine whether CTB is influenced by marketing-mix
activities (i.e., advertising, new product introduction, distribution, price, and price promotion)
implemented by brands. The authors propose and show that the sensitivity of CTB to marketing-
mix activities is moderated by consumer, category, and country characteristics, using a multisource
data set consisting of a survey of 15,073 respondents and scanner panel data on 589 brands in 46
CPG categories across 13 countries (including the four largest emerging markets), which
collectively account for half of the world’s population. The authors find strong positive effects for
advertising and new product introduction intensity, weak positive effects for price and distribution
intensity, and a minor negative effect for price promotion intensity on CTB. Furthermore, the
authors find that the effect of marketing-mix activities on CTB is moderated by consumers’
personality traits, consumers’ reliance on brands in a category, and countries’ secular-rational and
self-expression cultural values.

3) The Material-Experiential Asymmetry in Discounting: When Experiential

Purchases Lead to More Impatience

Abstract

Consumers routinely make decisions about the timing of their consumption, making tradeoffs
between consuming now or later. Most of the literature examining impatience considers monetary
outcomes (i.e., delaying dollars), implicitly assuming that how the money is spent does not
systematically alter impatience levels and patterns. The authors propose an impatience asymmetry
for material and experiential purchases based on utility duration. Five studies provide evidence
that consumers are more impatient toward experiential purchases compared to material purchases
and that this increased impatience is driven by whether the value is extracted over a shorter utility
duration (often associated with experiential purchases) or a longer utility duration (often associated
with material purchases). Thus, when an experience is consumed over a longer period of time, the
results show that impatience can be diminished. Additional results show that the effect holds in
both delay and expedite frames and suggest that the results cannot be explained by differences in
scheduling, time sensitivity, affect, ownership, future time perspective, or future connectedness.

4) Was Television Responsible for a New Generation of Smokers?

Abstract

Consumers’ response to mass media can be difficult to assess because individuals choose for
themselves the amount of media they consume, and that choice may be correlated with their other
consumption decisions. To avoid this selection problem, this article examines the introduction of
television to the US, during which some cities gained access to television years before others. This
natural experiment makes it possible to estimate the causal impact of television on the decision to
start smoking, a consumer behavior with important public health implications. Difference-in-
differences analyses of television’s introduction indicate that (1) television did cause people to
start smoking, (2) 16- to 21-year-olds were particularly affected by television, and (3) much of the
response to television occurred within a couple of years of its introduction. Our preferred estimates
suggest that television increased the share of smokers in the population by 5–15 percentage points,
generating roughly 11 million additional smokers between 1946 and 1970. More broadly, these
results offer causal evidence that (1) mass media can have a large influence on consumers,
potentially affecting their health, (2) media exerts an especially strong influence on teens, and (3)
mass media can influence consumers more than typical changes in prices.

5) Extending the Boundaries of Sensory Marketing and Examining the Sixth Sensory
System: Effects of Vestibular Sensations for Sitting versus Standing Postures on
Food Taste Perception

Abstract

Prior research has examined the role of the traditional five sensory systems (visual, olfactory,
haptic, auditory, and gustatory) and how they influence food evaluations. This research extends
the boundaries of sensory marketing by examining the effects of the vestibular system, often
referred to as the “sixth sensory system,” which is responsible for balance and posture. The results
of six experiments show that vestibular sensations related to posture (i.e., sitting vs. standing)
influence food taste perceptions. Specifically, standing (vs. sitting) postures induce greater
physical stress on the body, which in turn decreases sensory sensitivity. As a result, when eating
in a standing (vs. sitting) posture, consumers rate the taste of pleasant-tasting foods and beverages
as less favorable, the temperature as less intense, and they consume smaller amounts. The effects
of posture on taste perception are reversed for unpleasant-tasting foods. These findings have
conceptual implications for broadening the frontiers of sensory marketing and for the effects of
sensory systems on food taste perceptions. Given the increasing trend toward eating while
standing, the findings also have practical implications for restaurant, retail, and other food-service
environment designs.

6) Variety in Self-Expression Undermines Self-Continuity

Abstract
From dating profiles and social media accounts to online streaming services, consumers are often
asked to express who they are by constructing an assortment. Apple Music, for example, asks new
users to indicate “two or more” of their favorite types of music when they create an account. But
while consumers might create such self-expressive assortments to communicate who they are,
could the composition of these assortments also affect how people see themselves? Seven studies
demonstrate that perceiving greater variety in a self-expressive assortment undermines self-
continuity. This occurs because variety leads consumers to infer that their preferences are less
stable, thereby decreasing the belief that their identity stays the same over time. Variety’s effect
generalizes across multiple domains of self-expression (e.g., books, music, television) and has
downstream consequences for service evaluation and even unrelated decision-making (e.g.,
intertemporal tradeoffs). The findings advance understanding of how choice shapes identity, the
role of variety in consumers’ lives, and factors that affect self-continuity. The results also have
implications for the marketers who encourage (and the consumers who construct) self-expressive
assortments.

7) Lead by Example? Custom-Made Examples Created by Close Others Lead

Consumers to Make Dissimilar Choices
Abstract
Prior to customizing for themselves, consumers often encounter products customized by other
people within their social network. Our research suggests that when encountering a custom-made
example of an identity-related product created by an identified social other, consumers infer this
social other was motivated to express uniqueness. After making this inference, consumers are also
motivated to express uniqueness, particularly when the example was created by a close versus
distant social other. Consumers express uniqueness through their own customization choices,
choosing fewer options shown in the example or choosing fewer best-selling options. Consumers
sometimes even pay a monetary cost or sacrifice preferred choices in order to make their own
product unique. Further, this effect dissipates when motivations other than expressing uniqueness
are inferred about a social other (e.g., for functionally related products). Across eight studies that
span different product contexts, involve real choices, and isolate the underlying theoretical
mechanism (i.e., motivation to express uniqueness), our research documents the unique role of
custom-made examples, demonstrates the importance of social distance for customization choices,
and identifies a novel path explaining when and why individuals express uniqueness.
 8) Charities Can Increase the Effectiveness of Donation Appeals by Using a Morally
Congruent Positive Emotion
Abstract
Prosocial organizations have different moral objectives. Some seek to promote welfare (e.g., Red
Cross), but others seek to promote justice and equality (e.g., ACLU). Additionally, these
organizations can induce different positive emotions to motivate donations. If organizations are
seeking to promote different moral objectives using positive emotions, which positive emotion
will be the most effective for their respective campaigns? We demonstrate how the congruency
between the moral domain of an emotion and the moral objective of an organization plays a role
in influencing prosocial behaviors. Charities that seek to increase care in society (e.g., disaster-
relief charities) should utilize compassion in their promotion campaigns, but charities that seek to
promote fairness and equality in society (e.g., human rights charities) should utilize gratitude in
their promotion campaigns. One field study (N = 2,112) and four experiments (N = 2,100)
demonstrate that utilizing a positive emotion congruent with the charity’s moral objective
increases monetary donations and preferences. The preferences are driven by the moral concerns
made salient by the respective emotions. Further, the preferences attenuate when exchange norms
are made salient. Altogether, these results underscore the importance of considering moral
congruence in consumption contexts.

9) Ignored or Rejected: Retail Exclusion Effects on Construal Levels and Consumer Responses to
Compensation
Abstract
Among the top customer complaints regarding retailers are experiences of exclusionary treatment
in the form of explicit condescension or implicit disregard. However, little is known about how
consumers respond to different instances of exclusion in retail or service settings. This research
focuses on how customers respond cognitively and emotionally when frontline staff reject or
ignore them and on how retailers can recover from such service failures. Findings from six studies
using exclusion as a hypothetical scenario or a real experience demonstrate that direct negative
feedback leads customers to feel rejected and to form concrete low-level mental construals, while
a lack of attention leads customers to feel ignored and to form abstract high-level construals.
Explicit rejection (implicit ignoring) causes consumers to form more (less) vivid mental imagery
of the exclusionary experience and to activate a concrete (abstract) mindset, resulting in
preferences for tangible (intangible) and visual (textual) compensation options. Retailers are
advised to align their compensation with construal levels to increase post-recovery customer
satisfaction, customer reviews, intended loyalty, and brand referral behavior.

10) Filling an Empty Self: The Impact of Social Exclusion on Consumer Preference
for Visual Density
Abstract
This research examines the effect of social exclusion on consumers’ preferences for visual density.
Based on seven experimental studies, we reveal that consumers who perceive themselves as
socially excluded evaluate products with dense visual patterns more positively than their
nonexcluded peers. This effect occurs because social exclusion triggers a feeling of psychological
emptiness and dense patterns can provide a sense of being “filled,” which helps to alleviate this
feeling of emptiness. This effect is attenuated when consumers physically fill something or
experience a feeling of “temporal density” (i.e., imagining a busy schedule with many tasks packed
into a short time). These results shed light on consumers’ socially grounded product aesthetic
preferences and offer practical implications for marketers, designers, and policy makers.