consumer behavior

Note on Faraji-Rad and Pham (2017) – Uncertainty Increases the Reliance on Affect in Decisions
Main Topic or Phenomenon Addressed The paper investigates how psychological states of uncertainty influence decision-making, specifically by increasing reliance on affective inputs in judgments and decisions. It explores how uncertainty, as a mental state, amplifies the impact of emotions, moods, and other hedonic feelings on consumer behavior, compared to states of certainty.
Jun 18, 2025 consumer behavior, Affect
Notes on (Luce 1998) – Choosing to Avoid
Summary This paper says that when people face tough consumer choices (like safety vs. cost in a car purchase), they feel stressed because they can’t have everything they want. To cope, they might think harder (taking more time) or avoid the choice by sticking with what they have or delaying.
Jun 18, 2025 consumer behavior, Affect
Notes on Ariely and Levav (2000) – Sequential Choice in Group Settings
Main Topic or Phenomenon Addressed This paper examines how individual decision-making changes when choices are made sequentially in group settings, specifically focusing on the phenomenon of group-level variety seeking in restaurant ordering contexts.
Jun 18, 2025 consumer behavior, Consumer Decision Making
Notes on Botti et al (2009) – Tragic Choices
Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper examines how making highly consequential, highly undesirable decisions (termed “tragic choices”) affects individuals’ emotions and their preference for autonomy. The specific context focuses on medical decisions, particularly parents’ decisions about withdrawing life support for their critically ill infants.
Jun 18, 2025 consumer behavior, Consumer Decision Making
Notes on Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) – The Experiential Aspects of Consumption
Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper addresses the experiential aspects of consumption that had been largely neglected by the dominant information processing paradigm in consumer behavior research. The authors argue for recognizing consumption as involving “fantasies, feelings, and fun” - subjective experiences that go beyond rational decision-making processes.
Jun 18, 2025 consumer behavior, Affect
Notes on Nicolao et al (2009) – Happiness for Sale
Main Topic or Phenomenon Addressed This paper examines whether the widely accepted “experience recommendation” - that consumers should spend money on experiences rather than material possessions to maximize happiness - holds universally across different purchase outcomes.
Jun 18, 2025 consumer behavior, Affect
Notes on Ratner et al (1999) – Choosing Less-Preferred Experiences for the Sake of Variety
Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper examines the counterintuitive behavior where individuals deliberately choose less-preferred experiences when seeking variety, even though they derive less enjoyment from these choices than they would from repeating their favorites.
Jun 17, 2025 consumer behavior, Consumer Decision Making
Notes on (Bettman, Luce, and Payne 1998) – Constructive Consumer Choice Processes
Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper addresses the constructive nature of consumer decision making. The central phenomenon is that consumers often do not have well-defined, stable preferences stored in memory, but instead construct them “on the fly” during the decision-making process.
Jun 12, 2025 Consumer Choice, consumer behavior
Notes on (Dhar and Wertenbroch 2000) – Consumer Choice Between Hedonic and Utilitarian Goods
Main Topic or Phenomenon Addressed This paper examines how consumer choice between hedonic and utilitarian goods is influenced by the nature of the decision task - specifically whether consumers are deciding which item to acquire versus which item to give up (forfeit).
Jun 12, 2025 Consumer Choice, consumer behavior
Notes on (Shiv and Fedorikhin 1999) – Heart and Mind in Conflict
Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper examines how consumer decision making is influenced by the conflict between automatically evoked positive affect and more controlled cognitive processing when consumers face choices between alternatives that differ on affective versus cognitive dimensions.
Jun 12, 2025 consumer behavior, Consumer Decision Making
Notes on (Huber et al. 1982) – Adding Asymmetrically Dominated Alternatives
Main Topic or Phenomenon Addressed This paper examines how adding an asymmetrically dominated alternative (a “decoy”) to a choice set can systematically alter consumer preferences, specifically increasing the probability of choosing the item that dominates the decoy.
Jun 11, 2025 consumer behavior, Consumer Choice
Notes on (Tversky and Kahneman 1974) – Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper examines how people make probability judgments and predictions under uncertainty, focusing on the systematic errors that occur when individuals rely on intuitive heuristic principles rather than normative statistical reasoning.
Jun 11, 2025 consumer behavior, Consumer Choice
Notes on Humphreys and Wang (2018) – Automated Text Analysis for Consumer Research
Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper addresses the growing availability of digital text data generated by consumers and provides a comprehensive methodology for incorporating automated text analysis into consumer research. The authors focus on developing systematic approaches to analyze consumer-generated content like reviews, social media posts, blogs, and online discussions to understand consumer attitudes, interactions, and culture.
Jun 9, 2025 consumer behavior, Social Influence II
Notes on Ordabayeva and Chandon (2011) – Getting Ahead of the Joneses
Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper examines the counterintuitive effects of increasing material equality on conspicuous consumption among bottom-tier consumers. The research challenges the conventional wisdom that greater equality in income or possessions necessarily reduces consumption among those at the bottom of the distribution.
Jun 9, 2025 consumer behavior, Social Influence II
Notes on Vieites et al (2022) – Social Class Shapes Donation Allocation Preferences
Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper examines how social class influences donation allocation preferences when consumers must choose between multiple charitable causes. Specifically, it investigates whether and why lower-class and higher-class consumers differ in their preferences for donating to “urgent” causes (addressing basic survival needs like food, shelter, safety) versus “non-urgent” causes (addressing development needs like cultural activities, sports).
Jun 9, 2025 consumer behavior, Social Influence II
Notes on Villarroel Ordenes et al. (2017) – Consumer Sentiment Analysis in Social Media
Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper addresses the limitations of traditional sentiment analysis in consumer research, which typically relies on simple positive/negative word counts. The authors argue that consumers use a much richer array of explicit and implicit linguistic features to express sentiment in online reviews and social media, and that understanding these nuances is crucial for predicting consumer behavior and sales outcomes.
Jun 9, 2025 consumer behavior, Social Influence II
Note on Escalas and Bettman (2003) – The Influence of Reference Groups on Consumers' Connections to Brands
Paper: “You Are What They Eat: The Influence of Reference Groups on Consumers’ Connections to Brands,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 13 (3), 339–48. Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper examines how reference group brand usage influences consumers’ self-brand connections - the psychological bonds consumers form with brands as they incorporate them into their self-concept.
Jun 5, 2025 consumer behavior, Social Influence I
Note on Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) – Brand Community
Paper: “Brand Community,” Journal of Consumer Research, 27 (4), 412–32. Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper introduces and explores the concept of “brand community” - specialized, non-geographically bound communities that form around brands, based on structured social relationships among brand admirers.
Jun 5, 2025 consumer behavior, Social Influence I
Note on Nardini et al. (2021) – How Social Movements Succeed
Paper: “Together We Rise: How Social Movements Succeed,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 31 (1), 112–45. Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper examines how social movements succeed in creating social change, with a specific focus on understanding the psychological processes that motivate people to transform from bystanders to “upstanders” - those who provide grassroots momentum for successful social movements.
Jun 5, 2025 consumer behavior, Social Influence I
Notes on Bearden and Etzel (1982)– Reference Group Influence on Product and Brand Purchase Decisions
Paper: “Reference Group Influence on Product and Brand Purchase Decisions,” Journal of Consumer Research, 9 (2), 183–94. Main Topic or Phenomenon This paper examines how reference groups influence consumer purchase decisions, specifically investigating whether the type of influence varies systematically across different product categories based on two key dimensions of product conspicuousness: public vs.
Jun 5, 2025 consumer behavior, Social Influence I