Consumer Behavior

This article presents a consumer-psychology model of brands that integrates empirical studies and individual constructs (such as brand categorization, brand affect, brand personality, brand symbolism and brand attachment, among others) into a comprehensive framework. The model distinguishes three levels of consumer engagement (object-centered, self-centered and social) and five processes (identifying, experiencing, integrating, signifying and connecting). Pertinent psychological constructs and empirical findings are presented for the constructs within each process.

Every business knows that the best customer is a happy customer. They return again and again, bring their friends and family, and deliver tons of free advertising via word of mouth and social media. But in order to grow that loyal base, you must be keenly aware of your customers' needs and preferences. Drawing on the latest research in the exploding field of positive psychology, Columbia Business School professor Bernd Schmitt offers three unique approaches any business can use to turning a casual customer into a committed fan:

Examining theory and practice, Advertising and Anthropology is a lively and important contribution to the study of organizational culture, consumption practices, marketing to consumers and the production of creativity in corporate settings. The chapters reflect the authors' extensive lived experience as professionals in the advertising business and marketing research industry. Essays analyze internal agency and client meetings, competitive pressures and professional relationships and include multiple case studies.

We develop and test an incentive-compatible Conjoint Poker (CP) game. The preference data collected in the context of this game are comparable to incentive-compatible choice-based conjoint (CBC) analysis data. We develop a statistical efficiency measure and an algorithm to construct efficient CP designs. We compare incentive-compatible CP to incentive-compatible CBC in a series of three experiments (one online study and two eye-tracking studies). Our results suggest that CP induces respondents to consider more of the profile-related information presented to them compared with CBC.

A series of laboratory and field experiments test the effect of considering options sequentially (one at a time) versus simultaneously (all at once) on an individual's satisfaction with and commitment to their chosen option. The results converge to reveal a detrimental effect of choosing from sequentially presented options. Unlike simultaneously presented options, the sequential presentation of options evokes hope for a better option to become available in the future and regret from potentially passing one up.

This research documents an intriguing empirical phenomenon whereby states of relaxation increase the monetary valuation of products. This phenomenon is demonstrated in six experiments involving two different methods of inducing relaxation, a large number of products of different types, and various methods of assessing monetary valuation. In all six experiments participants who were put into a relaxed affective state reported higher monetary valuations than participants who were put into an equally pleasant but less relaxed state.

Over the years, the level of analytical rigor has risen in articles published in marketing academic journals. While, ceteris paribus, rigor is desirable, there is a growing sense that rigor has become a, if not the, goal for research in marketing. Consequently, other desirable characteristics, such as relevance, communicability, and simplicity, have been downplayed, to the detriment of the field of marketing.

Scarcity has long been known to impact consumers' choices. Yet, the impact of shelf-based scarcity in retail environments, created by stocking level depletion, has received almost no attention in the literature. Indeed, little research to date has even examined if consumers will attend to shelf-based scarcity in retail environments, much less how this cue can impact choice. A priori, given the inherently noisy and cue-filled nature of retail environments, it is quite reasonable to expect that shelf-based scarcity would play little to no role in consumers' choices.