Blair Kidwell

Getting Liberals and Conservatives to Go Green: Political Ideology and Congruent Appeals

The authors develop a conceptual model of how the congruence of political ideology and persuasive appeals enhances sustainable behaviors. In study 1, persuasive appeals consistent with individualizing and binding moral foundations were developed to enhance liberal and conservative recycling. In study 2, individualizing and binding appeals were tested on actual recycling behavior using a longitudinal field study to demonstrate the effectiveness of messages congruent with the moral foundations of liberals and conservatives. Study 3 demonstrated that enhanced fluency represents the underlying psychological process that mediates the relationship between message congruence and intentions. Moreover, study 3 established that spillover effects resulting from increased intentions to engage in sustainable disposition behavior enhance intentions to engage in sustainable acquisition and consumption behaviors. Finally, study 4 ruled out potential message confounds to demonstrate the robustness of the findings. Practical implications for marketers and public policy officials interested in increasing sustainable behaviors are offered.

Perceiving Emotion in the Buyer–Seller Interchange: The Moderated Impact on Performance

This research focuses on the salesperson’s ability to perceive emotions in the buyer–seller interaction. Drawing on the emotional ability literature, the authors develop hypotheses within a conceptual framework of salespeople’s ability to perceive the emotions of customers, and examine how this ability influences the relationships between selling behaviors and performance. Findings indicated that the ability to accurately appraise the emotions of others moderated the practice of adaptive selling and customer-oriented selling on performance. Further analyses revealed that while high perceiving ability has beneficial effects on selling, low perceiving ability not only limits the use of customer-oriented selling but also has a negative impact on sales performance. Both self-reported and supervisor-reported measures of selling performance were used, along with a performance-based measure of emotional perceiving ability. Implications are discussed along with directions for future research.

An examination of college student money management tendencies

Determinants of college student money management decision-making were examined. A multi-variate model is hypothesized and tested that implicates attitude, affect, past behavior, and perceived control as predictors of intention to maintain a financial budget. Perceived control was also found to moderate budgeting intention, eliciting a shift from negative affect to subjective norm at high to low levels of perceived control. Further examination of an attitudinal model revealed positive expectancies toward budgeting utility and negative expectancies toward financial debt. Findings are discussed relative to debt prevention.

The Moderated Influence of Internal Control: An Examination Across Health-Related Behaviors

An extension of the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991) was used to identify whether moderated relationships exist between perceived behavioral control and theoretical constructs within the model. Study 1 examined influences of perceived internal control relative to behavioral category; for a utilitarian behavior (e.g., using sunscreen, donating blood), the moderating relation was of a cognitive nature (i.e., attitude, subjective norm), whereas for hedonic behaviors (e.g., drinking and driving, fast food consumption), the moderating relation was of a noncognitive nature (i.e., affect, past behavior). These relations were manipulated in Study 2 via the framing of neutral behaviors (i.e., chocolate and fat consumption) to explicate the hypothesized patterns of interactions. Theoretical implications of findings are discussed.

An Examination of Instrumental and Expressive Traits on Performance: The Mediating Role of Learning, Prove, and Avoid Goal Orientations

Instrumental and expressive (I/E) traits represent stereotypical masculine and feminine personality characteristics that are exhibited at varying levels in both genders, with instrumentality representing masculine traits and expressiveness representing feminine traits (Jolson and Comer 1997). The authors propose and empirically test a theoretical model that identifies salesperson learning, prove, and avoid goal orientations as mediators of I/E traits and performance. Findings indicated that goal orientation fully mediated the instrumental to performance relationship and partially mediated the expressiveness to performance relationship. It was also found that salespeople who have high levels of both instrumental and expressive traits (termed androgynous) were high in learning and prove orientations and low in avoid orientation. In turn, learning and prove orientations had a positive influence on performance, while avoid orientation was not significantly related to performance. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Emotional Ability Training and Mindful Eating

Consumers are often mindless eaters. This research provides a framework for how consumers can become more mindful of their food choices. To do so, the authors develop an ability-based training program to strengthen peoples ability to focus on goal-relevant emotional information. They demonstrate not only that emotional ability (EA) is trainable and that food choices can be enhanced (Study 1) but also that EA training improves food choices beyond a nutrition knowledge training program (Study 2). In Study 3, the authors test a conceptual model and find that EA training increases goal-relevant emotional thoughts and reduces reliance on the unhealthy = tasty intuition. Both factors mediate mindful eating effects. Last, Study 4 demonstrates the long-term benefits of EA training by showing that emotionally trained people lose more weight in a three-month period than a control group and a nutrition knowledge training group. Together, these findings suggest that consumers can gain control of their food choices through the enhancement of EA. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for policy officials, health care professionals, and marketers.

More Than a Feeling: Emotional Contagion Effects in Persuasive Communication

The authors develop an affect-as-information model to explain how targeted emotions used in persuasion can influence unrelated products and brands that are presented nearby. In Study 1, the presence of an emotion-eliciting image affected consumer spending on unrelated products in a simulated retail environment. In Study 2, emotional processing ability and whether consumers monitored their feelings moderated emotional transfers between unrelated advertisements, providing support for an affect-as-information model. In Studies 3 and 4, the authors use the context of evaluative conditioning to generalize the incidence of emotional contagion in persuasive communication. They manipulate salience of affect and whether brand attitudes were measured or primed to provide additional evidence for and extend affect-as-information theory.

A Closer Look at Emotional Intelligence in Marketing Exchange

Abstract Emotional intelligence (EI) is important in many business contexts. Knowing how sales professionals use emotions to facilitate positive outcomes for their firms, themselves and their customers is particularly important for managing marketing exchanges. To leverage EI it is necessary to accurately measure it. Existing scales are of limited value and therefore a new scale to measure EI in marketing exchange is presented here. It focuses on EI related abilities in the specific context of marketing exchange and effectively demonstrates how EI interacts with sales, customer orientation, the extent of influence of a sales rep in an encounter, customer retention and cognitive ability. The new tool helps to diagnose individual levels of marketing exchange EI. It can be very useful for employee selection and designing specific sales training in order to improve exchange relationships and interactions between buyers and sellers, in particular.