We investigate the apparent rarity of contrast effects in diverse-category contextual and target product settings. Three studies show that the direction of context effects depends on (a) whether target product positioning is abstract or concrete, (b) consumers' adoption of an item-specific,...

Two studies demonstrate that strong brand relationship quality (BRQ) enhances consumer judgments about brand extensions. Different methods (survey vs. experiment), participants (real consumers vs. college students), and cultural contexts (Korea vs. Canada) demonstrate that this effect...

This article investigates how two dimensions of psychological distance (i.e., temporal distance and social distance) jointly affect consumers' evaluations of products. Drawing on the properties of psychological distance and diminishing sensitivity to the increase in distance, we show an...

Existing inquiry on self-control reveals an inconsistency. The mainstream research on myopic behavior suggests that consumers’ use of a high versus low construal level should lead them to exhibit less indulgence. However, more recent work on hyperopia implies the opposite. This research...

The impact of presenting full-color, black-and-white, and color-highlighted ad photos is examined under different processing resource conditions. When viewers devote few resources to processing, ads with some color outperform black-and-white ads. However, when viewers engage in more effortful ad...

Many researchers claim that pictures can impart descriptive concepts through their choice of stylistic properties, such as the orientation of depicted objects or the camera angle used. Yet little empirical research has explored if this is so, how readily or when such concepts are discerned,...

Research in both the consumer and aesthetics literatures suggests that the ambiguity created by a cropped or incomplete object may prompt people to seek closure by supplying the missing part. In turn, this process of resolving the ambiguity can enhance affect. Applying this notion to...

Existing research suggests that, relative to males, females often are more concerned with the particulars of message claims when processing advertising messages. This research examines how males process messages, when gender differences in processing are likely to occur, and whether variance In...