We propose a methodology to study the effects of physical ad properties on consumers' visual attention to advertising that accounts for heterogeneity in these effects across consumers. In an illustrative experiment, we monitor consumers' eye movements during naturalistic exposure to a consumer...

An eye-tracking experiment with four processing goals and a free-viewing condition reveals goal control of attention even during a few seconds of self-paced ad exposure. An ad-memorization goal enhanced attention to the body text, pictorial, and brand design objects. A brand-learning goal...

Consumers believe that small package formats of hedonic, but not of utilitarian, products help to regulate consumption-especially when their self-regulatory concerns are activated. These beliefs may backfire and increase consumption of hedonic products. Specifically, activating self-regulatory...

Contrary to the common assumption that positive emotions generally lead to favorable behavioral intentions, feelings of pride can decrease consumers' repurchase intentions. Results from three experimental studies demonstrate that the impact of pride on repurchase intentions is contingent on...

Consumers are willing to pay a premium for products that elicit their envy. The more people compared themselves to a superior other, the higher the envy premium was. Yet, the emotion envy and not the upward comparison drove the final effects. The envy premium only emerged for a desirable product...

People need to allocate their limited cognitive resources to current and future tasks. We provide evidence that anticipating the resource demands of a future task creates a "get ready mind-set" that mobilizes these resources. However, the mobilized resources for the future task can carry over to...

This research is the first to test the hypothesis that consumers face a “material trap” in which materialism fosters social isolation which in turn reinforces materialism. It provides evidence that materialism and loneliness are engaged in bidirectional relationships over time. Importantly,...

Neuroscientific studies demonstrate that erotic stimuli activate the reward circuitry processing monetary and drug rewards. Theoretically, a general reward system may give rise to nonspecific effects: exposure to "hot stimuli" from one domain may thus affect decisions in a different domain. We...

People are often exposed to actionable food temptations (i.e., an immediate opportunity to consume, like when friends offer cookies) and nonactionable food temptations (i.e., no immediate consumption opportunity, like ads for chocolate). The results of three experiments suggest that prior...

Three experiments are used to investigate the influence of conditioning procedures on attention to a conditioned stimulus. In experiment 1, scenes presented in a sequence that is consistent with prescribed conditioning procedures are shown to encourage attention to the advertised brands in...