Matching Items (3)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: compensatory consumption
- Resource Type: Text
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
In this paper I seek to understand how consumers value music today by investigating what consumers are willing to pay for digitally downloaded songs (such as the ones available on the iTunes or Amazon music stores) and the variety of factors that influence their willingness to pay. I conducted a survey and received over 500 responses regarding willingness to pay for single-song downloads, consumer sentiment on whether music should be free, streaming service use, and other information pertaining to music consumption behavior. Through this research I found that paid-streamers are willing to pay more for songs than those who do not pay to stream, all else being equal. Further, Free-streamers are not willing to pay significantly more or less than non-streamers. This finding is additional information to other research that suggests streaming acts as a substitute for sales. I also found that most consumers are in the middle when it comes to the debate for whether music should always be free or always be purchased. Where someone aligns on the spectrum is a statistically significant contributing factor to what that person is willing to pay for a song. My findings also suggest that consumer preferences distinguish between benefit derived from music ownership and benefit derived from the ability to listen to music. This information sheds more light on the reason behind the declining digital download market.
ContributorsRodriguez, Stefan Daniel (Author) / Mandel, Naomi (Thesis director) / Veramendi, Gregory (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Self-discrepancies motivate consumers to reduce the discrepancy’s negative effects by seeking products that make them feel better. Consumers use various strategies to mitigate these effects through within-domain purchases, across-domain purchases, or purchases designed to distract. Currently, there is a gap in the literature regarding how consumers trade off various compensatory consumption strategies when they face the option to evaluate different strategy at the same time. Through the current research presented here, as well as two proposed studies, I aim to find that people prefer escapism products and services (versus direct resolution and fluid consumption) when faced with a self-discrepancy. I address the literature gap by proposing studies for a mediator (working memory capacity) and a moderator (ease of the solution) on this relationship. This phenomenon occurs because self-discrepancies decrease working memory capacity (cognition): when cognitive resources are low, people will tend to prefer affective stimuli (escapism products). Finally, I plan an experiment to show that difficulty moderates this relationship. When the relative difficulty of the escapism solution is high, participants may be more likely to choose a different, relatively easier strategy. The current findings and suggested future studies contribute to the literature on compensatory consumption, escapism, and working memory capacity.
ContributorsForman, Jacob Reuben (Author) / Mandel, Naomi (Thesis director) / Lisjak, Monika (Committee member) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05