Master BA: Change Management (RUG)
Summary Consumer Psychology (2016/2017)
Exam grade: 8.9
This summary includes:
- A summary of the (guest) lectures, including the lecture slides
- A summary of the TED talks
- A summary of the book Consumer Behavior (Szmigin & Piacentini, 2015)
- Summary of the following literature:
Arnold, M.J. & Reynolds, K.E. (2003). Hedonic shopping motivations. Journal of Retailing, 79.
pp 77-95.
Aronson, E, T.D. Wilson and M. B. Brewer (1998). “Experimentation in Social Psychology”
The Handbook of Social Psychology 1:99-142.
Argo, Jennifer J., Darren W. Dahl, & Rajesh V. Manchanda (2005), “The Influence of a Mere
Social Presence in a Retail Context,” Journal of Consumer Research, 32, 207-12.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2000). The costs and benefits of consuming. Journal of Consumer
Research, 27(2), 267-272.
Cialdini, Robert B. & Noah J. Goldstein (2004), “Social Influence: Compliance and
Conformity,” Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 591-621.
Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J. M., & Van en Berg, B. (2010). “Going green to be seen: Status,
reputation, and conspicuous conservation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98(3),
392-404
Iyengar, Sheena S. & Mark R. Lepper (2000), “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire
Too Much of a Good Thing?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79 (6), 995-1006.
Lyubomirsky, S., Sheldon, K. M., & Schkade, D. (2005). Pursuing happiness: The architecture
of sustainable change. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 111-131.
Petty, R. E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Schumann, D. (1983). “Central and peripheral routes to
advertising effectiveness: The moderating role of involvement,” Journal of Consumer
Research, 10(2), 135.
Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). “Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness
for dynamic events,” Perception, 28(9), 1059-1074.
Van Ittersum, Koert, & Brian Wansink (2012), “Plate Size and Color Suggestibility: The
Delboeuf Illusion’s Bias on Serving and Eating Behavior,” Journal of Consumer Research, 39
(2), 215-228.
Vohs, K. D., & Faber, R. J. (2007). “Spent resources: Self-regulatory resource availability affects
impulse buying,” Journal of Consumer Research, 33(4), 537-547
Consumer Behavior (2015). Szmigin, I & Piacentini, M. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Chapters: 1-8 & 11
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,Argo, Dahl & Manchanda (2005): The influence of mere social presence in a retail context
Noninteractive social presence that differs in size and proximity impacts consumers’
emotions and self-presentation behaviors
Social influence
- Interactive social influence: e.g. being greeted by salespeople impacts consumers
- Noninteractive social situations: occur without interaction: events where a social
entity is physically present during consumption but is not involved nor attempts to
engage the consumer in any way
o e.g. other shoppers in a grocery aisle or a fellow audience member at the
theater
This study looks at noninteractive social situations.
Social Impact Theory (SIT)
People are impacted by the real, implied, or imagined presence or action of a social presence
(i.e., another person or group of people). This impact results from three “social forces”:
- number (i.e., social size—how many people are present),
- immediacy (i.e., proximity),
- social source strength (i.e., importance)
This study investigates social size and proximity on consumer’s emotions and self-
presentation behaviors.
In two studies we find that SIT does not predict the impact of a change in social size on
consumers’ emotions and produces mixed results for impression management tendencies.
Three principles of Social Impact Theory (the impact of a social presence’s social forces)
- Power function: the greatest influence will arise when
o social presence is large (vs. small),
o is in close (vs. far) proximity,
o or is high (vs. low) in source strength.
- Multiplicative function: the greatest impact occurring when
o there is a combination of two social forces; that produces a greater impact on a
target than each of the forces independently.
o there are several people in close proximity and in high source strength.
- Inverse function: the impact of the social forces will be divided between the targets.
This study only looks at the power function and multiplicative function.
Social Impact Theory proposes that as the size of a social presence increases, it should have
an increasing impact on one’s emotions and behaviors.
- As the size of a noninteractive social presence increases, a consumer will be more
likely to experience negative (and less positive) emotions and manage self-
presentation behaviors (increased tendency for consumers to manage their
impressions).
o Unexpected finding: When social size increased from no one to one person,
negative emotions decreased (positive emotions increased)
Thus, the presence of another person in the shopping aisle may have
satisfied participants’ need for association and caused the decrease in
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, negative (increase in positive) emotions between the no one and one
person conditions.
o But consistent with SIT: when the social size increased from one to three
people (so beyond one), the consumer experienced more negative (less
positive) emotions.
- Immediacy is a social force that refers to the closeness or proximity of a social entity
to a target. We expect that proximity will moderate the impact of social size on
emotions and self-presentation behaviors.
o A consumer will experience more negative (less positive) emotions and will be
more likely to manage self-presentation behaviors
when a close noninteractive social presence increases in size,
but when the social presence is further away, social size will no longer
matter.
- More negative (less positive) emotions were felt when a close noninteractive social
presence was comprised of three people versus only one person,
o But when the social presence was further away, social size did not influence
emotions differently.
o An increase in social size only influenced consumers when a
noninteractive social presence was in close proximity.
- Contradicting SIT, we again found that in experimental conditions with no one or a
social presence comprised of three people, targets experienced more negative (less
positive) emotions as compared to those in a one person social presence condition.
o Thus when one person social presence, negative emotions decreased (positive
emotions increased)
Cialdini and Goldstein (2004)
Why do we conform to others? Three underlying motives of social influence:
- Accuracy motive (motivation to be correct)
o To form accurate perceptions of reality and react accordingly
- Affiliation motive (motivation to create and maintain meaningful relations with
others)
o To develop and preserve meaningful social relationships
The accuracy motive and affiliation motive may act in the service of:
- Positive self-concept motive (motivation to enhance, protect, or repair self-
esteem)
o To maintain a favorable self-concept
Above three motives drive targets’ cognitions and behaviors in the areas of compliance and
conformity.
- Compliance: a particular kind of response—acquiescence—to a particular kind of
communication—a request.
- Conformity: the act of changing one’s behavior to match the responses of others.
Compliance
Goal of accuracy: Person’s desire to respond appropriately and correctly interpret and react
to a dynamic social situation needs an accurate perception of reality. Influence techniques:
- Affect and arousal:
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, o After receiving a request, targets use their feelings as cues for effective
responding.
o A target’s mood will permeate (doordringen) the processing of a request to the
extent that the processing is effortful and exhaustive
- That’s-not-all technique:
o Targets in compliance situations often need to respond quickly to a requests
and therefore lack the luxury of entirely deliberate and rational decision-
making.
o That’s-not-all technique: sales professionals take advantage of people’s limited
abilities to make well-reasoned judgments by presenting a target with an initial
request, followed by an almost immediate sweetening of the deal (less costs or
more benefits) before the message recipient has an opportunity to respond.
- Resistance:
o Disrupt-then-reframe (DTR) technique: disrupting an individual’s
understanding of and resistance to an influence attempt and reframing the
persuasive message or request so that the individual is left more vulnerable to
the proposition.
- Authority and obedience:
o Individuals are frequently rewarded for behaving in accordance with the
opinions, advice, and directives of authority figures.
o Supervisors’ usage of primarily soft strategies has been found to correlate
positively with subordinates’ job satisfaction ratings, whereas there are
indications that the reverse may be true when predominantly harsh tactics are
employed.
o Authorities who demonstrate consideration for their subordinates’ needs—as
opposed to those who exploit power differences—are also likely to engender a
more favorable compliance rate.
o Supervisors whose compliance-gaining repertoires included the use of both
forceful and nonforceful techniques were most likely to elicit compliance with
their requests.
- Social norms:
o Individuals often look to social norms to gain an accurate understanding of and
effectively respond to social situations, especially during times of uncertainty.
o Distinction between norms:
Injunctive norms: what is typically approved/disapproved
Descriptive norms: those that inform us about what is typically
done.
o Taken together, the results suggest that one’s actions are relatively
unaffected by normative information—even one’s own—unless the
information is highlighted prominently in consciousness.
Goal of affiliation: Humans are fundamentally motivated to create and maintain meaningful
social relationships with others.
- Liking:
o The more we like and approve of people, the more likely we are to take actions
to cultivate close relationships with them.
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, o Because we so often rely on the heuristic rule that the more we like someone
with whom we have an existing relationship, the greater should be our
willingness to comply with the request, we tend to use the rule automatically
and unwittingly when the request comes from strangers, as well.
o In addition greater perceived similarity has been demonstrated to lead to
enhanced compliance
- Reciprocation: The norm of reciprocation—the rule that obliges us to repay others for
what we have received from them—is one of the strongest and most pervasive social
forces in all human cultures.
- Door-in-the-face technique:
o Preceding the request for a truly desired action with a more extreme request
that is likely to get rejected. Thus, the requester is perceived to make legitimate
concessions.
o Target feels a normative obligation to reciprocate the influence agent’s
concession with a concession of his or her own: this is accomplished by
moving from a position of noncompliance to one of compliance.
Goal of maintaining a positive self-concept: People have a strong need to enhance their
self-concepts by behaving consistently with their actions, statements, commitments, beliefs,
and self-ascribed traits.
- Foot-in-the-door technique:
o The procedure involves first asking a target individual to comply with a small
request, typically one that is minimally invasive so that the target is almost
certain to respond affirmatively.
o After securing compliance, either the initial requester or an associate of the
requester makes a larger, often related request.
o After agreeing to the initial request, targets ascribe traits to themselves
reflecting their recent actions, and this change in self-view helps direct future
compliance.
o One must also have the motivation to be consistent with this self-view.
- Consistency and commitment:
o Individuals are driven to be consistent not only with their trait self-attributions,
but with their previous behaviors and commitments as well. The extent to
which one’s commitments are made actively is one powerful determinant of
the likelihood of request compliance.
o Public commitments also tend to be more persistent than private commitments.
o A core assumption regarding the success of consistency-based compliance
techniques is that targets act consistently with their self-views and prior
commitments in order to serve the ultimate motivation of maintaining or
enhancing their self-esteem.
Conformity
Conformity refers to the act of changing one’s behavior to match the responses of
others.
- Informational conformity motivations
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, o the desire to form an accurate interpretation of reality and behave
correctly.
o Is the same as accuracy motive
- Normative conformity motivations
o the goal of obtaining social approval from others.
o Is the same as affiliation motive
Accuracy- and affiliation-oriented goals act in service of motive to maintain one’s self-
concept (both via self-esteem protection as well as self-categorization processes).
Goal of accuracy: Accuracy as a central motivation for conformity.
- Perceived consensus:
o How we react to beliefs held by others is often contingent on our perceptions
of the level of consensus for those beliefs (majority vs. minority).
- Dynamical systems:
o Social Impact Theory (SIT): an individual occupying a given social space will
be more likely to conform to the attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral propensities
exhibited by the local numerical majority than by either the local numerical
minority or less proximate persons. Influence at the local levels may be
informational, normative, or both.
- Automatic activation:
o Conformity may also be the product of the less mindful activation of
accuracy- or affiliation-oriented goals, providing an adaptive shortcut that
maximizes the likelihood of effective action with minimal expense to one’s
cognitive resources.
Goal of affiliation:
- Behavioral mimicry:
o Appears to operate completely outside of conscious awareness.
o The term describes behavior matching of postures, facial expressions, vocal
characteristics, and mannerisms that occurs between two or more individuals.
o Also dubbed the chameleon effect.
- Gaining social approval:
o Individuals often engage in more conscious and deliberate attempts to gain the
social approval of others, to build rewarding relationships with them, and in
the process, to enhance their self-esteem.
Goal of Maintaining a Positive Self-Concept: People are frequently motivated to conform
to others’ beliefs and behaviors in order to enhance, protect, or repair their self-esteems.
- Majority and minority influence:
o The extent to which one identifies with a message source—be it a majority or a
minority—is a significant factor in determining the information processing
strategies one employs as well as the outcome of an influence attempt.
o Self-categorization theory holds that the conventional distinction between
informational and normative influence creates a false dichotomy because the
two processes are interrelated in most cases; normativeness implies accuracy,
and vice versa.
- Deindividuation effects:
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, o Responsiveness to a group norm is not a mindless or irrational process
reflecting a reduced sense of self, but may be a conscious and rational
process relating to a meaningful sense of identity.
o Rather than engage in antinormative activities, individuals subjected to
deindividuation procedures instead conformed their behaviors to local,
situation-specific norms defined by the group identity.
Iyengar and Lepper (2000): When choice is demotivating: can one desire too much of a
good thing?
Popular notion: the more choice, the better–that the human ability to manage, and the human
desire for, choice is unlimited. The more choice is more intrinsically motivating.
There may be differential motivational consequences of encountering contexts that offer a
limited (i.e., psychologically manageable), versus an extensive (i.e., psychologically
excessive), number of choices.
- Specifically, the choice overload hypothesis underlying these studies is that, although
the provision of extensive choices may sometimes still be seen as initially desirable, it
may also prove unexpectedly demotivating in the end.
This study challenges the popular notion. People are more likely to purchase gourmet jams or
chocolates or to undertake optional class essay assignments when offered a limited array of
choices rather than a more extensive array of choices. Moreover, participants actually
reported greater subsequent satisfaction with their selections and wrote better essays when
their original set of options had been limited.
Having a limited and more manageable set of choices may be more intrinsically
motivating than having an overly extensive set of choices.
Extensive array of options can at first seem highly appealing to consumers, yet can
reduce their subsequent motivation to purchase the product. Extensive-choice contexts
may be initially more appealing but are subsequently more likely to hamper people's
intrinsic motivation.
Choosers in extensive-choice contexts may actually feel more committed to the choice-
making process; that is, that they may feel more responsible for the choices they make
because of the multitude of options available.
- If so, choosers in extensive-choice contexts should perceive the choice-making
process to be more enjoyable given all the possibilities available. They should at the
same time, however, find it more difficult and frustrating given the potentially
overwhelming and confusing amount of information to be considered.
- Indeed, participants in the extensive-choice condition reported experiencing the
decision-making process as being simultaneously more enjoyable, more difficult, and
more frustrating.
Although having more choices might appear desirable, it may sometimes have detrimental
consequences for human motivation. Studies 1, 2, and 3 provide compelling empirical
evidence that the provision of extensive choices, though initially appealing to choice-makers,
may nonetheless undermine choosers' subsequent satisfaction and motivation.
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, - Study 1 showed that although more consumers were attracted to a tasting booth when
the display included 24 flavors of jam rather than 6, consumers were subsequently
much more likely to purchase jam if they had encountered the display of only 6 jams.
- Study 2 revealed that students in an introductory college level course were more likely
to write an essay for extra credit when they were provided a list of only 6, rather than
30, potential essay topics. Moreover, even after having chosen to write an essay,
students wrote higher quality essays if their essay topic had been picked from a
smaller rather than a larger choice set.
- Finally, Study 3 demonstrated that people reported enjoying the process of choosing a
chocolate more from a display of 30 than from a display of 6. However, despite their
greater initial enjoyment in the extensive-display condition, participants proved more
dissatisfied and regretful of the choices they made and were subsequently considerably
less likely to choose chocolates rather than money as compensation for their
participation.
Arnold & Reynold (2003): Hedonic shopping motivations
Utilitarian aspects of the shopping experience:
- Task-related, rational, to accomplish a product acquisition ‘mission’.
Focus of this study is on hedonic motivations
Hedonic aspects; Hedonic consumption:
- Those facets of behavior that relate to the multisensory, fantasy, and emotive aspects
of consumption.
- Consumption is driven by the fun a consumer has in using the product
Hedonic shopping motives are similar to
- the task orientation of utilitarian shopping motives, only the “task” is concerned with
hedonic fulfillment, such as experiencing fun, amusement, fantasy, and sensory
stimulation.
Shoppers are motivated by psychosocial needs:
- Personal needs: Shopping occurs when a consumer’s need for a particular good is
sufficient for allocating time and money to travel to a store to go shopping.
- Social needs: Shopping occurs when a consumer “needs attention, wants to be with
peers, desires to meet people with similar interests, feels a need to exercise, or simply
has leisure time”.
Consumers hedonic shopping motivations:
- Adventure shopping motivation
o Shopping for stimulation, adventure, and the feeling of being in another world.
o Flow: a cognitive state that is characterized as an optimal experience that is
intrinsically enjoyable. Those experiencing flow are deeply involved in the
focal activity where time may seem to stand still.
The correlation between flow and adventure shopping is positive and
higher than the correlations between flow and other hedonic
motivations.
o Time distortion describes a psychological state where shoppers become
relatively isolated from the cues regarding the passage of time.
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