Marketing Seminars 2017-2018

 

Many organizations across a wide range of industries have sought to align their financial goals with environmental ones by identifying strategies that maximize profits while minimizing environmental impacts. Although such 'win-win' strategies are generally thought to reflect positively on companies employing them, here we find that people tend to respond negatively to the notion of profiting from environmental initiatives. In fact, observers may evaluate environmental win-wins less favorably than profit-seeking strategies that have no environmental benefits. In a series of studies, we provide evidence suggesting that the negative response to environmental win-wins results from a fundamental psychological divide between social relationships that are perceived as communally-oriented versus those that are perceived as market-oriented. The present studies demonstrate that how those initiatives are communicated may be of central importance for avoiding this type of backlash.

When people act prosocialy in public, they signal to society about the nature of their identity. One reflection of this signal is their willingness to sacrifices and help others. Using choice-based conjoint analysis, we evaluated the social evaluation emerging from prosocial behavior in the context of financial donations and volunteer work. The results reveal that people value volunteering more than monetary donations. We also found that the economic value is not the only factor associated with the evaluation given by society for prosocial behavior: the benefactor’s sacrifice has a great impact overall, although the sacrifice itself has no impact as far as the beneficiary is concerned. Moreover, the results suggest that heterogeneity in the evaluator’s social values and resources yield different social evaluations. Furthermore, although it seems that the social evaluation is mostly fixed, it can be manipulated by framing for the beneficiary’s needs.

Holding force constant, a snowball thrown from 10 feet away will hurt more than one thrown from 50 feet away; it will have more impact. I show that people expect charitable donations-much like snowballs-to have more impact on nearby (vs. faraway) targets. Therefore, because making an impact is a powerful motivator of prosocial behavior, people are more willing to take action to help nearby (vs. faraway) causes-independent of social distance. I then explore implications for other forms of metaphorical impact (e.g., when writing their donation with larger font, people feel they have more impact).

Automation is transforming many consumption domains, including everyday activities like cooking or driving, and recreational activities like fishing or cycling. Yet, little research in marketing has examined consumer preferences for automated products. Automation often provides obvious consumption benefits, but eight studies spanning a variety of product categories show that automation may not be desirable when identity motives are important drivers of consumption. Using both correlational and experimental designs, the findings demonstrate that individuals who strongly identify with a particular social category resist automated features when these features hinder the attribution of identity-relevant consumption outcomes to oneself. These findings have substantial theoretical implications for research on identity and on technology, as well as managerial implications for targeting, product innovation, and communication

Why are people often uncomfortable dealing with financial decisions? We propose that people perceive financial decisions – more so than decisions in many other equally complex and important domains – as compatible with a cold, analytical mode of thinking and as highly incompatible with feelings and emotions. Consequently, the more people perceive themselves as inclined to rely on affect in their decisions, the more they experience self-concept incongruity with financial decisions (i.e., feeling that financial decisions are “not them”), and consequently show an increased tendency to avoid such decisions. Five studies demonstrate this phenomenon using both consequential and hypothetical decisions, provide evidence for the proposed mechanism, and rule out alternative accounts, including perceived financial knowledge, expertise and self-efficacy perceptions, decision confidence, and preference for numerical information. The findings contribute to research on thinking styles and decision avoidance, and they underscore a unique characteristic of financial decisions that makes them stand out among many other decision types. In addition to their theoretical significance, the findings have practical implications for the communication of financial products and services.

We focus on public shaming in online social networks. public shaming entails two contradicory outcomes: informal enforcement against deviant behavior, and violation of privacy rights. A set of 4 studies shows the duality of public shaming and demonstrates the role of morality in driving participation in public shaming. The results highlight the moderating effects of high (vs. low) identification of the wrongdoer and the high (vs. low) perceived impact of the act of shaming.