Why do different people give to different causes? We show that the sympathy inherent to a close relationship with a victim extends to other victims suffering from the same misfortunes that have afflicted their friends and loved ones. Both sympathy and donations are greater among those related to...

The research presented in this article provides evidence that add-on features sold to enhance a product can be more than just discretionary benefits. We argue that consumers draw inferences from the mere availability of add-ons, which in turn lead to significant changes in the perceived utility...

Many individual decisions take place in a group context wherein group members voice their choices sequentially. In this article we examine the impact of this dynamic decision process on individuals' choices and satisfaction with their outcomes. We propose that choices reflect a balancing of two...

One of the main objectives facing marketers is to present consumers with information on which to base their decisions. In doing so, marketers have to select the type of information system they want to utilize in order to deliver the most appropriate information to their consumers. One of the...

We propose a two-stage model to describe the increasing concreteness of consumers' goals during the shopping process, testing the model with a series of field experiments at a convenience store. Using a number of different process measures (experiment 1), we first established that consumers are...

Understanding the role of emotion in forming preferences is critical in helping firms choose effective marketing strategies and consumers make appropriate consumption decisions. In five experiments, participants made a set of binary product choices under conditions designed to induce different...

Previous work on the endowment effect has demonstrated that current ownership status affects object valuation and that this effect occurs instantaneously on possession of an object. The current work presents findings from four studies which indicate that the history of past ownership can also...

The most recent wave of decision research goes beyond the usual critiques of linear probability weighting, exponential discounting, and other specialized assumptions, and challenges some of the most basic assumptions of the decision-making paradigm itself. In response to these challenges,...

Consumers often behave differently than they would ideally like to behave. We propose that an anticipatory pain of paying drives "tightwads" to spend less than they would ideally like to spend. "Spendthrifts," by contrast, experience too little pain of paying and typically spend more than they...