Blogs

People who read vivid print advertisements for fictitious products actually come to believe they've tried those products, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. "Exposing consumers to imagery-evoking advertising increases the likelihood that a consumer mistakenly believes he/she has experienced the advertised product, and subsequently produces attitudes that are as strong as attitudes based on genuine product experience," write authors Priyali Rajagopal (Southern Methodist...

Every time consumers spend money on a purchase, they are giving up other consumption down the road. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research looks at the factors that lead consumers to consider these "opportunity costs." "Rather than viewing a decision as 'Do I buy or do I not buy?' consumers feeling constrained view the decision as 'Do I buy or do I use my money on something else instead?'" writes author Stephen Spiller (UCLA). Feeling constrained is one major factor that leads consumers...

Consumers who set conservative goals have a harder time achieving satisfaction than those who set ambitious goals. When cautious consumers meet their goals, they tend to raise the bar and compare themselves to the highest possible standards. Researchers Cecile K Cho (University of California, Riverside) and Venkataramani Johar (Columbia University) compared people who set conservative goals with people who set ambitious goals. They focused on situations in which goals were achieved, and measured...

I was idling away a lazy winter afternoon at office, most probably nine years ago, when I got a frantic call from a friend. Her youngest sister’s husband had been diagnosed with dengue. There was reason to be worried. They needed blood, latest by nightfall. There was only this one sureshot place in Delhi where you could get the blood you wanted, even if it wasn’t available elsewhere in town. We had to act, fast. I rushed out of my Kasturba Gandhi Road office and picked up my friend. We made for...

Happy people are more likely to eat candy bars, whereas hopeful people choose fruit, according to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research. That's because when people feel hope, they're thinking about the future. "Most of us are aware that we often fall victim to emotional eating, but how is it that we might choose unhealthy or healthy snacks when we're feeling good?" write authors Karen Page Winterich (Pennsylvania State University) and Kelly L Haws (Texas A&M University). Because...

US consumers are increasingly interested in "fast fashion" — more frequent replacement of inexpensive clothes that become obsolete several weeks after they're purchased. And the US apparel industry has responded in kind with its product lines. But according to a new study that Elena Karpova (left), an ISU assistant professor apparel, educational studies and hospitality management (AESHM), collaborated on with ISU graduate student Juyoung (Jill) Lee, the US industry's fast fashion focus has...

Someone is more likely to predict the quality of a product by its price if someone else is buying it. But when consumers buy products themselves, they are more likely to judge quality by a product's attributes. Researchers found that the way people assess quality based on price or attributes has to do with distance—both temporal and psychological. "Consider the following scenario: you observe that a friend has bought a well-designed attractive handbag for a surprisingly low price. What inference...

If it is the Indian mainstream media which has been keeping you informed about Kashmir, trust me, you have been in the wrong hands. Lies are peddled by the government, and in turn faithfully disseminated by the Indian media. This is a brief attempt at dispelling those lies-turned-myths. Kashmir is militant-infested Who told you so? Watching too many Bollywood films, or what? If the official admission is anything to go by, there are not more than 500 militants operating today in Kashmir. And all...

Verses. Poems. Limericks. Whatever they were, I never liked reading them, studying them at school. But sometime in the 1980s I had this friend called Amit. He wrote his self-indulgent poems and implored me to write too; the contagious habit rubbed on to me for a while. Those were frivolous, pretentious verses. Streams of the subconsciousness. Words flowed as they came out, we did not damn them. They created, ostentatiously, meanings as they crystallised on paper. The papers made their way to the...

It's just like a bad breakup: People get emotional when they end a relationship with a brand. A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research examines what happens when people turn their backs on the brands they once loved. Online forums are overloaded with customer complaints from people who once loved or were loyal to particular brands but now strongly oppose them. "I used to love (name of store), let me tell you all why I plan to never go back there again; I hate them with a passion now,"...