Retailers often organize at least part of their assortment by displaying complementary products from different product categories together (e.g., a pair of pants with a shirt) rather than grouping items by product type (e.g., a pair of pants with other pants). However, little is known about how...

This article explores the effects of two distinct retail choice architectures — those that organize assortments by attributes and those that organize items by benefits. Relative to attribute-based organizations, benefit-based organizations lead to more abstract construal and heighten...

We show that formats used by retailers to organize assortments into subcategories can enhance or encumber consumers’ learning and satisfaction. For more knowledgeable consumers, unexpected subcategory formats provide a newness cue, thereby increasing effort, learning and satisfaction with the...

In many social experiences (e.g., parties, book clubs, vacations), some consumers contribute more to the event compared to the rest of the group. In this paper, we investigate how such asymmetric contributions influence the utility obtained from group experiences. We find that consumers...

Considerable research demonstrates a “compromise effect” showing preference for “middle” options. Yet, in the context of bundles, the “middle” option in a choice set can be composed in multiple ways. First, a bundle may include only purely moderate options (e.g., individual stocks...

Collaborative consumption takes many forms, including car sharing, community gardens, credit unions and toy libraries. While these phenomena are arguably reshaping the marketplace, to this point, we lack a way to harmonize these diverse systems under a single umbrella or to connect them to prior...

In the present paper, we conceptualize and investigate customers' preference for and responses to surprise offerings – products and services for which one or more core attributes are uncertain and unknown to the buyer at the time of purchase. We propose that an important motivation that...

Every day people engage in numerous shared experiences – from having lunch with colleagues to going on a vacation with family. Despite the ubiquity of such experiences, little is known about how consumers organize and manage such experiences. In this chapter we review past literature as well...

This article explores the phenomenon of “hyperopia,” or an aversion to indulgence, as introduced by Kivetz and Simonson (2002) and Kivetz and Keinan (2006). We first develop a measure to capture hyperopia as an individual difference. Three empirical studies use this measure to demonstrate...

By 2011, approximately 83% of Fortune 500 companies were using some form of social media to connect with consumers (Hameed 2011). Further, surveys suggest that consumers are increasingly relying on social media to learn about unfamiliar brands. However, best practices regarding the use of social...