Matching Items (41)
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- All Subjects: Marketing
- Creators: Department of Finance
- Creators: Mandel, Naomi
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
- Status: Published
Description
When consumers fail in their environmental, dieting, or budgeting goals, they may engage in a consumer confession about their goal-inconsistent behavior. This dissertation seeks to understand how confessions about consumer goal transgressions affect subsequent consumer motivation and behaviors. Results from a series of five experiments reveal that after reflecting about a past transgression, Catholics who confess (vs. do not confess) about the focal transgression are more motivated to engage in subsequent goal-consistent consumer behaviors. However, results reveal no such effects for Non-Catholics; Non-Catholics are equally motivated to engage in goal-consistent consumer behaviors regardless of whether or not they confessed. Catholics and Non-Catholics differ on the extent to which they believe that acts of penance are required to make amends and achieve forgiveness after confession. For Catholics, confessing motivates restorative, penance-like behaviors even in the consumer domain. Thus, when Catholics achieve forgiveness through the act of confession itself (vs. a traditional confession requiring penance), they reduce their need to engage in restorative consumer behaviors. Importantly, results find that confession (vs. reflecting only) does not provide a general self-regulatory boost to all participants, but rather that confession is motivating only for Catholics due to their beliefs about penance. Together, results suggest that for consumers with strong penance beliefs, confession can be an effective strategy for getting back on track with their consumption goals.
ContributorsMathras, Daniele (Author) / Mandel, Naomi (Thesis advisor) / Cohen, Adam B. (Thesis advisor) / Morales, Andrea C (Committee member) / Samper, Adriana (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
When consumers make experiential purchases, they often have to decide between experiences that contain many or few features. Contrary to prior research demonstrating that consumers prefer feature-rich products before consumption but feature-poor products after consumption, the author reveals a reversal of this effect for experiences. Specifically, the author hypothesizes and finds that consumers prefer feature-poor experiences before consumption (a phenomenon denoted as `feature apprehension') but prefer feature-rich experiences after consumption. This feature apprehension occurs before consumption because consumers are concerned with the uncertainty associated with attaining a satisfying outcome from the experience. Manipulating the temporal distance with which consumers view the experience can attenuate this effect. Additionally, locus of control and social signaling moderate consumers' post-consumption preference for feature-rich experiences. The author proposes several recommendations for consumers and providers of experiences.
ContributorsMiller, Chadwick Justin (Author) / Samper, Adriana (Thesis advisor) / Mandel, Naomi (Thesis advisor) / Sinha, Rajiv K (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This research examines the effects of using similar vs. dissimilar models in health messages on message compliance. I find that level of self-awareness moderates the effect of model similarity on message compliance. Across three studies, I demonstrate that when self-awareness is high, a health message that contains a similar model leads to higher compliance than the same message containing a dissimilar model. On the other hand, when self-awareness is low, a health message that contains a similar model leads to lower message compliance than the same message containing a dissimilar model. Additionally, I demonstrate that the increased compliance observed when self-awareness is high and a similar model is used is associated with self-enhancing behavior and increased engagement with the ad, while the decreased compliance observed when self-awareness is low and a similar model is used is associated with disregarding the ad.
ContributorsLoveland, Katherine (Author) / Mandel, Naomi (Thesis advisor) / Miller, Elizabeth G. (Committee member) / Morales, Andrea C. (Committee member) / Smeesters, Dirk (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This dissertation offers three essays that investigate consumers’ health-related food choices and behaviors from three different, yet complementary, angles. The first essay uses an eye-tracking experiment to examine consumers’ visual attention to the Nutrition Facts Panels for healthy and unhealthy products. In this essay, I focus on how involvement and familiarity affect consumers’ attention toward the Nutrition Facts panel and how these two psychological factors interact with new label format changes in attracting consumers’ attention. In the second essay, I demonstrate using individual-level scanner data that nutritional attributes interact with marketing mix elements to affect consumers’ nutrition intake profiles and their intra-category substitution patterns. My findings suggest that marketing-mix sensitivities are correlated with consumers’ preferences for nutrient attributes in ways that depend on the “healthiness” of the nutrient. For instance, featuring promotes is positively correlated with “healthy” nutritional characteristics such as high-protein, low-fat, or low-carbohydrates, whereas promotion and display are positively correlated with preferences for “unhealthy” characteristics such as high-fat, or high-carbohydrates. I use model simulations to show that some marketing-mix elements are able to induce consumers to purchase items with higher maximum-content levels than others. The fourth chapter shows that dieters are not all the same. I develop and validate a new scale that measures lay theories about abstinence vs. moderation. My findings from a series of experiments indicate that dieters’ recovery from recalled vs. actual indulgences depend on whether they favor abstinence or moderation. However, compensatory coping strategies provide paths for people with both lay theories to recover after an indulgence, in their own ways. The three essays provide insights into individual differences that determine approaches of purchase behaviors, and consumption patterns, and life style that people choose, and these insights have potential policy implications to aid in designing the food-related interventions and policies to improve the healthiness of consumers’ consumption profiles and more general food well-being.
ContributorsXie, Yi (Author) / Richards, Timothy (Thesis advisor) / Mandel, Naomi (Committee member) / Grebitus, Carola (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This dissertation uncovers the negative aspects of aesthetics by examining when and how enhanced product and payment aesthetics can backfire and lead to unfavorable consumer responses. The first essay examines the downstream effects of nondurable product aesthetics on usage behavior and consumption enjoyment. Across a series of field and lab experiments, I document an inhibiting effect of aesthetics on consumption. I find that highly aesthetic products elicit greater inferences of effort in their creation, and that people have an intrinsic appreciation for such effort. Because the consumption process indirectly destroys the effort originally invested to make the product beautiful, people reduce consumption of such products because usage would involve destroying something they naturally appreciate. Further, I show that in cases where individuals do consume a beautiful product, they exhibit lower consumption enjoyment. These negative post-consumption outcomes are driven in parallel by concerns over having actually destroyed the effort that made the product beautiful as well as the decrements in beauty that become visible when aesthetic products are made less attractive through consumption. The second essay investigates how the aesthetics and design of a payment (e.g., beautiful gift card packaging) can influence the purchase experience. Three field and lab experiments reveal the negative impact of beautified payments on spending and purchase satisfaction, particularly in situations where usage involves compromising its aesthetic appeal. Specifically, when consumers must damage a payment’s appearance before using it (e.g., ripping gift card packaging), they are less likely to use that payment, and experience lower purchase satisfaction when they do, an effect driven by the pain of payment. In doing so, I identify aesthetics as a novel antecedent to the pain of payment that carries important consequences for spending behavior, purchase satisfaction, and the overall customer experience. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
ContributorsWu, Freeman (Author) / Morales, Andrea C. (Thesis advisor) / Samper, Adriana (Thesis advisor) / Dahl, Darren W. (Committee member) / Fitzsimons, Gavan J. (Committee member) / Mandel, Naomi (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This study was designed to discover any relationship between waiting and purchasing impulse goods. I distributed a survey with three conditions: a control with no wait, a wait with information explaining the wait, and a wait with no information. After the wait, participants saw a group of impulse goods and indicated how much they were willing to spend for each item, and how much they desired to buy each item. Results showed that participants in the treatment condition with information for the wait desired the impulse goods the least, and were willing to spend the least to purchase them. However, there was no significant difference between the participants given no information explaining the wait, and the control group in either desire or the price they were willing to pay. This is possibly explained by the apology in the message read by participants in the condition with information. They felt more valued and were less likely to feel the need to spend money on impulse goods that are often purchased to make the participant feel better about their wait.
ContributorsThornton, Tiffany Lynn (Author) / Mandel, Naomi (Thesis director) / Lisjak, Monika (Committee member) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
E-commerce has rapidly become a mainstay in today's economy, and many websites have built themselves around providing a platform for independent sellers. Sites such as Etsy, Storenvy, Redbubble, and Society6 are increasingly popular options for anyone looking to open their own online store. With this project, I attempted to examine the effects of four different marketing techniques on sales in an online store. I opened a shop on Etsy and tracked sales in connection with promotion through social media, selling products in-person at a convention, holding a holiday tie-in sale, and using price anchoring. Social media accounts were opened on Facebook, Tumblr, and Instagram to promote the shop over the course of the project period, and Etsy's web analytics were used to track which sites directed the most traffic to the shop. I attended a convention in mid-January 2016 where I sold my products and distributed business cards with a discount code to track sales resulting from being at the convention. A holiday sale was held in conjunction with Valentine's Day to look at whether holidays influenced purchases. Lastly, a significantly more expensive product was temporarily put in the shop to see whether it produced a price anchoring effect \u2014 that is, encouraged sales of the less expensive products by making them seem affordable in comparison. While the volume of sales data was too small to draw statistically significant conclusions, the project was a highly instructive experience in the process of opening a small online store. The decision-making steps outlined may be helpful to other students looking to open their own online shop.
ContributorsChen, Candice Elizabeth (Author) / Moore, James (Thesis director) / Sanford, Adriana (Committee member) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
The Confessions of a College Entrepreneur is an honors project with the goal of revealing the business and marketing strategies that Charles Crawford used to create multiple successful companies. It's a collection of personal stories, book notes, millionaire interviews, and experiences that Charles had over the past 4 years of intense business experience and research across multiple industries. Charles wants college students and business owners to succeed in business ventures and life in general. This creative thesis project is the map for how to do just that.
ContributorsCrawford, Charles Joseph (Author) / Budolfson, Arthur (Thesis director) / Giles, Charles (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
Children today are being primed with technology at very young ages, leading to a more digitally focused lifestyle. Tangentially, today's digital culture has led to the increase of online shopping rather than in-store shopping. A group of students at Arizona State University's Innovation Space program, in partnership with Disney Consumer Products, set out to create a children's product that bridged the physical-digital gap, and encouraged outdoor activity. The result of their work was Blitz: a versatile, outdoor gaming console that brings traditional outdoor fun into the digital world. This thesis and paired creative project are an extension of the research and development done by the Blitz team. The purpose of this additional research is to discover how parents and children shop online in to design a website to market and sell the Blitz gaming system. Some of the topics covered include visual design, functionality, user interaction, and marketing tactics. The goal is not to develop advertising tactics to manipulate children, but to find the best ways to design for, and market children's products.
ContributorsPoindexter, Devin Alan (Author) / Fehler, Michelle (Thesis director) / Peck, Sidnee (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
The "Dutch Dukeout" is a memorial, community engagement venture founded by Scott Fitzgerald and Sam Minton. The event was also supported and facilitated through the help of a third party member, Dylan Bryant. The "Dutch Dukeout" will continue annually, as an opportunity for Brophy College Preparatory alumni and current students to come together and connect. This venture also exists to celebrate and honor the life and legacy of Fr. Harry "Dutch" Olivier, a former, prominent faculty member of Brophy. Additionally, the "Dutch Dukeout" aims to raise money to support the Brophy Scholarship Foundation, a resource for current Brophy students to offset the financial burden it costs to attend the prominent college preparatory. Foremost, the "Dutch Dukeout" flag football tournament provides a powerful way for Brophy Alumni to reconnect with their school. By communicating and participating with graduates from various classes, alumni have an opportunity to provide valuable life lessons and share personal stories with the youth, as well as bond over their shared experience at Brophy. For a school that is able to continually develop community leaders and social activists, the "Dutch Dukeout" provides a platform for collaboration and inspiration for everyone who participates. By raising money to support the Brophy Scholarship Foundation and providing an opportunity for alumni to engage in their community, the "Dutch Dukeout" is an event that truly embodies Fr. Olivier's values and beliefs. This thesis report documents the ideas, work and efforts that were completed to launch and then ensure the success and longevity of the venture. It also serves as an example for future social entrepreneurs who aim to make a difference in communities of their own.
ContributorsFitzgerald, Scott (Co-author) / Samuel, Minton (Co-author) / Mokwa, Michael (Thesis director) / Eaton, John (Committee member) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05