Robert H. Smith School of Business

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    When the Future Comes: Essays on Consumer Attitude toward Artificial Products
    (2023) Chen, Qihui; Kirmani, Amna; Wang, Yajin; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation consists of two essays that investigate how consumers react to artificial products. Specifically, each essay focuses on one type of artificial product: robots and lab-grown meat, respectively. The first essay investigates the interaction effect of personal control and the potential for negative judgment on consumers’ robot preferences. Across five studies, I find that when the consumption context enables the high potential for negative judgment, consumers with low (vs. high) personal control have stronger preferences for service robots because they are less confident in leaving a positive impression on others and thereby experience stronger social anxiety. However, when the consumption context enables the low potential for negative judgment, consumers feel confident in leaving a positive impression on others, so personal control affects neither social anxiety nor robot preference. The second essay studies why consumers resist lab-grown meat and proposes a novel theory to explain it: the life-creation perception theory. Across six studies, I demonstrate that consumers have more negative attitudes toward lab-grown meat than lab-grown dairy products because they associate lab-grown meat (vs. dairy products) with artificially creating life and thereby violating the laws of nature to a greater degree. In addition, theory-based interventions are shown to increase consumer acceptance of lab-grown meat by disassociating lab-grown meat from creating life. Across these two essays, I intend to provide insights into how consumers interact with artificial products in the marketplace and how marketers can increase consumers’ adoption of these innovations accordingly.
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    Aspects of Online Reviews and their Effects on Consumer Decisions
    (2018) Watson, Jared Joseph; Kirmani, Amna; Pocheptsova Ghosh, Anastasiya; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation examines different aspects of online reviews and their effects in consumer decisions. Online reviews are proliferating at a tremendous rate, with most consumers now stating that online reviews are the most important product attribute in online purchase decisions (BrightLocal 2017). As such, it is important to understand how various aspects of reviews affect consumers’ decisions, and outline the conditions by which some of these attributes may have conditional influences. To that end, we begin this dissertation by first investigating two numerical attributes of online reviews, average product ratings and review volumes. Furthermore, because online reviews are becoming such an influential tool, firms have begun to attempt exploiting consumers via fake reviews (Mayzlin, Dover, and Chevalier 2014; Luca and Zervas 2016). Thus, the second essay in this dissertation investigates how consumers respond when a website discloses that they have caught fake reviews being written for a specific brand. In Essay I, we investigate how average product ratings and review volumes influence consumers’ decisions when faced with a choice set in which there is no dominant option (i.e., when one option has a higher rating, but fewer reviews relative to another option). We argue that the diagnosticity (i.e., influence) of both average product ratings and review volumes are conditionally influenced by the other attribute, and as such, the choice between the higher-rated, fewer reviews option and lower-rated, more reviews option is dependent on the specific values of each attribute. While prior research has demonstrated the relative influence of both attributes, the findings are still debated (Floyd et al. 2014; You, Vadakkepatt, and Joshi 2015). By investigating the conditional effects of these attributes on choice, we help to rectify the divergent findings. We argue that average product ratings are inherently more diagnostic than review volumes due to the bound versus unbound nature of their scales, respectively. Whereas average product ratings have stable scale boundaries (e.g., one to five stars), review volumes do not (e.g., zero to infinity). As such, review volumes are more susceptible to relative comparisons made within the choice set. We demonstrate how the relative diagnosticity of these attributes are a function of the review volumes contained within the choice set, and how this ultimately governs choice. We conclude Essay I with the theoretical implications as well as a series of simulations demonstrating the practical implications for managers. In Essay II, we demonstrate the consequence of websites informing consumers that they have identified fake reviews for brands featured on their website. While a growing body of literature has investigated the characteristics of fake reviews (Mukherjee et al. 2013; Ott et al. 2013), as well as the firms which are likely to solicit them (Mayzlin, Dover, and Chevalier 2014; Luca and Zervas 2016), to the best of our knowledge, this is the first investigation into the effect of disclosing this information to consumers. While fake review alerts inform consumers that websites are monitoring the reviews for fraudulent information, we argue that the alerts also activate consumers’ persuasion knowledge (Friestad and Wright 1994), leading to attempts to correct for perceived biased information, as well as justice against the brand when it is the source of the fake reviews. We demonstrate that fake reviews lead consumers to not only attempt correction in their perception of the brand, but also in the information that they acquire (i.e., the reviews they read). Furthermore, we show that reducing consumers’ perceptions of inaccurate information attenuates their corrections. As such, this research holds relevance for website managers which provide reviews for their consumers. In both essays, we demonstrate the consequences of review information in consumers’ judgments and decisions. We argue that managers must carefully consider what information to provide consumers, and how to present it, in order to avoid biasing their consumers’ decisions.
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    A Multi-Method Examination of Partitioned Pricing
    (2015) Abraham, Ajay Thomas; Hamilton, Rebecca W; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation investigates the relationship between partitioned pricing (Morwitz, Greenleaf, and Johnson 1998) and dependent variables such as demand, preference, and attention. The first essay proposes a theoretical framework to examine extant and new moderators of partitioned pricing, classifying moderators based on the source of their impact as presentational, evaluative, or attentional. A meta-analysis of 17 years of research on partitioned pricing examines 149 observations from 43 studies in 27 papers (N = 12,878). The perceived benefit of the surcharge and the typicality of partitioning the surcharge in the category emerge as robust moderators of the effect of partitioned pricing on consumer demand. Surcharges for components perceived to provide high benefit and highly typical surcharges make partitioned prices more attractive. Replicating the meta-analytic effects of typicality, a follow-up experiment shows a more positive effect of partitioning on preference for typical surcharges than for atypical surcharges, and an eye-tracking experiment offers insight into the underlying mechanism by showing that people pay more attention to atypical surcharges than to typical surcharges. Different pricing strategies in the same market suggest different beliefs about the efficacy of partitioning prices on consumers' preferences. The second essay in this dissertation explores the impact of two countervailing theoretical influences that may predict how the numerical magnitude of surcharges can affect preferences. "Base price anchoring" suggests that as the magnitude of the surcharge increases (holding the total price constant), consumers may anchor on a lower base price, leading them to evaluate partitioned prices more favorably. In contrast, "surcharge salience" suggests that as the magnitude of the surcharge increases, attention to the surcharge increases, and evaluations of partitioned prices decrease. An analysis of eBay auction data reveals support for the influence of base price anchoring, and a follow-up experiment suggests that this mechanism dominates at lower levels of surcharge magnitude whereas surcharge salience dominates at higher levels of surcharge magnitude. Finally, an eye-tracking study demonstrates the influence of surcharge salience on preference and attention.
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    THE ROLE OF SELF-BRAND CONNECTION IN BRAND PRIMING AND BRAND CO-CREATION CONTEXTS
    (2014) Johnson, Heather Macrea; Kirmani, Amna; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation includes two essays that examine how self-brand connection influences brand-related behaviors in different contexts. Essay I investigates conditions under which brand primes can lead to decreased behavioral intentions toward the brand not shown in prior brand priming research (Berger and Fitzsimons 2008; Ferraro, Bettman, and Chartrand 2009). We identify the type of association primed (core vs. non-core) as an important factor in determining whether positive or negative brand priming effects will occur for consumers with low vs. high self-brand connection (SBC; Escalas and Bettman 2003). Studies 1 and 2 find support for the notion that high (vs. low) SBC consumers' brand associative networks have stronger links between core associations and brand and overlap between the self and core associations. Studies 3 and 4 show that when SBC is low, priming core and non-core associations leads to increased behavioral intentions found in prior work (Berger and Fitzsimons 2008). When SBC is high, however, priming a non-core association decreases behavioral intentions, while priming a core association does not affect behavioral intentions. Thus, contrary to prior research (Park et al. 2010), we show that higher SBC may result in lower behavioral intentions under certain conditions. Essay II explores the conditions under which brief brand co-creation activities are effective in enhancing high (vs. low) SBC consumers' subsequent brand engagement in social media, such as liking the brand on Facebook and sharing brand promotions with others. Many brand marketers offer interactive activities that enable consumers to participate in the ongoing development of the brand, such as telling their own stories about the brand or evaluating other consumers' stories. We offer evidence that these co-creation activities vary according to their potential to create brand knowledge. We then examine how consumers' self-brand connection and the co-creation activity's brand knowledge potential interact to affect brand engagement. Across three studies, we demonstrate that high SBC (i.e., loyal) consumers intend to engage more deeply with the brand after participating in high rather than low brand knowledge potential co-creation activities. We show that generation of original, personal brand meaning underlies the effect.
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    From One to Many: Toward an Understanding of Multiple Means and Multiple Goals
    (2013) Etkin, Jordan; Ratner, Rebecca K.; Pocheptsova, Anastasiya; Business and Management: Marketing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Consumers often use products, services, and behaviors to help them pursue their multiple goals. They eat fresh produce to be healthy, buy suits to look professional at work, and buy movie tickets to relax and have fun. These goal-related products and services are collectively referred to as "means" to goal attainment. Prior research to-date has primarily focused on the use of a single means to pursue a single goal. This one-to-one relationship between a single means and a single goal, however, is an overly simplistic perspective. Consumers typically utilize multiple means for goal pursuit, and have multiple goals they wish to pursue at the same time. My dissertation adopts this more realistic framework for understanding how consumers use means to pursue their goals. In three essays I explore how the relationships among multiple means and multiple goals, which I define in terms of variety, impact consumer motivation. The first two essays of my dissertation examine how the degree of variety among consumers' multiple means impacts goal-directed motivation. In Essay I, I consider how the motivational impact of having more (vs. less) varied means evolves over the course of goal pursuit, as consumers move from perceiving low to high progress towards goal attainment. Relatedly, in Essay II I consider how adopting a near versus far future time horizon for goal pursuit moderates the impact of variety among means on motivation. Finally, Essay III examines how perceived variety among consumers' multiple goals influences evaluations of means to goal attainment. I identify incidental mood as one factor spontaneously influencing consumers' perceptions of variety between goals. My research has a number of implications for marketers. Highly motivated consumers are more likely to make repeated purchases within goal-related product categories, and also tend to have higher willingness to pay. Thus, from the perspective of marketers, motivated consumers are desirable consumers. These findings suggest how marketers might strategically manage consumer motivation in order to achieve such desirable outcomes. Perceptions of variety, among means and among goals, are malleable. Marketers may thus encourage consumers to perceive their product offerings, or associated goals, as more or less varied depending on consumers' position relative to goal attainment, their adopted time horizon for goal pursuit, and presence use of incidental mood appeals.