Gavan J. Fitzsimons

Spotlights, Floodlights, and the Magic Number Zero: Simple Effects Tests in Moderated Regression

It is common for researchers discovering a significant interaction of a measured variable X with a manipulated variable Z to examine simple effects of Z at different levels of X. These “spotlight” tests are often misunderstood even in the simplest cases, and it appears that consumer researchers are unsure how to extend them to more complex designs. The authors explain the general principles of spotlight tests, show that they rely on familiar regression techniques, and provide a tutorial demonstrating how to apply these tests across an array of experimental designs. Rather than following the common practice of reporting spotlight tests at one standard deviation above and below the mean of X, it is recommended that when X has focal values, researchers should report spotlight tests at those focal values. When X does not have focal values, it is recommended that researchers report ranges of significance using a version of Johnson and Neymans test the authors term a “floodlight.”

Consumer Response to Stockouts

Consumer responses to stockouts, both in terms of consumer satisfaction with the decision process and in terms of subsequent store choice behavior, are explored. Four laboratory experiments involving stockouts in a consumer choice context are run. The results suggest that consumer response to stockouts is driven in large part by two factors: the effect of a stockout on the difficulty of making a choice from the set and the degree of personal commitment to the out-of-stock alternative. The results show that personal commitment to an out-of-stock choice option is a function of preference for the option, whether the option is included in the consumers consideration set, and the degree to which the stockout announcement is personally directed. As personal commitment to the out-of-stock option increases, consumers react substantially and negatively to the stockout they report lower satisfaction with the decision process and show a higher likelihood of switching stores on subsequent shopping trips. However, under conditions in which personal commitment to the out-of-stock option is low and the stockout leads to a decrease in the difficulty of making a product selection, consumer response to the stockout can actually be positive. Copyright 2000 by the University of Chicago.

Death to Dichotomizing

Why call for a death to dichotomizing? The Journal of Consumer Research receives manuscripts on an almost daily basis in which researchers have dichotomized (often referred to as median splitting) a continuous independent variable. There are two principal problems with this approach to data analysis, each of which is very well documented in the literature. The first is that by dichotomizing continuous independent variables researchers are quite likely reducing the statistical power available to test their hypotheses (Irwin and McClelland 2003). The second, potentially more troubling, problem is that inappropriate dichotomizing of continuous data can at times create spurious significant results if the independent variables are correlated (Maxwell and Delaney 1993). And yet, despite these well-known problems, dichotomizing is an extremely frequent activity for experimental consumer researchers. The goal of this editorial is not to write an in-depth methodological piece on this subject but rather to briefly outline why all consumer researchers should be concerned about this topic. I also hope to illustrate how we can easily write up appropriately conducted analyses when our research designs include continuous independent variables. (For more thorough, methodological pieces on this topic I suggest an excellent and concise article in the Journal of Marketing Research [Irwin and McClelland 2001] or a truly comprehensive guide to performing analysis including continuous independent variables and interactions [Aiken and West 1991].) Likely the most common research design utilized by experimental consumer researchers is a very straightforward manipulation of one or more independent variables that the researcher believes will affect a dependent variable. Virtually all consumer researchers learn at one point how to describe and analyze such designs and are typically quite adept at it. For example, a researcher manipulates two independent variables between subjects and performs a two-by-two ANOVA examining their impact on a dependent variable …

Automatic Effects of Brand Exposure on Motivated Behavior: How Apple Makes You “Think Different”

This article first examines whether brand exposure elicits automatic behavioral effects as does exposure to social primes. Results support the translation of these effects: participants primed with Apple logos behave more creatively than IBM primed and controls; Disney-primed participants behave more honestly than E!primed participants and controls. Second, this article investigates the hypothesis that exposure to goal-relevant brands (i.e., those that represent a positively valenced characteristic) elicits behavior that is goal directed in nature. Three experiments demonstrate that theprimedbehaviorshowedtypicalgoal-directedqualities, including increased performance postdelay, decreased performancepostprogress, and moderation by motivation.

An individual level analysis of the mutual fund investment decision

This study investigates the manner in which consumers make investment decisions for mutual funds. Investors report that they consider many nonperformance related variables. When investors are grouped by similarity of investment decision process, a single small group appears to be highly knowledgeable about its investments. However, most investors appear to be naive, having little knowledge of the investment strategies or financial details of their investments. Implications for mutual fund companies are discussed.

I’ll Have What She’s Having: Effects of Social Influence and Body Type on the Food Choices of Others

This research examines how the body type of consumers affects the food consumption of other consumers around them. We find that consumers anchor on the quantities others around them select but that these portions are adjusted according to the body type of the other consumer. We find that people choose a larger portion following another consumer who first selects a large quantity but that this portion is significantly smaller if the other is obese than if she is thin. We also find that the adjustment is more pronounced for consumers who are low in appearance self-esteem and that it is attenuated under cognitive load.

Non-Conscious Influences on Consumer Choice

While consumer choice research has dedicated considerable research attention to aspects of choice that are deliberative and conscious, only limited attention has been paid to aspects of choice that occur outside of conscious awareness. We review relevant research that suggests that consumer choice is a mix of conscious and nonconscious influences, and argue that the degree to which nonconscious influences affect choice is much greater than many choice researchers believe. Across a series of research domains, these influences are found to include stimulus that are not consciously perceived by the consumer, nonconscious downstream effects of a consciously perceived stimuli or thought process, and decision processes that occur entirely outside of awareness.

Measuring and Mitigating the Costs of Stockouts

There is now an extensive theoretical literature investigating optimal inventory policies for retailers. Yet several recent reviews have recognized that these models are rarely applied in practice. One explanation for the paucity of practical applications is the difficulty of measuring how stockouts affect both current and future demand. In this paper, we report the findings of a large-scale field test that measures the short- and long-run opportunity cost of a stockout. The findings confirm that the adverse impact of a stockout extends to both other items in the current order as well as future orders. We show how the findings can be used to provide input to inventory planning models and illustrate how failing to account for the long-run effects of a stockout will lead to suboptimal inventory decisions. We also demonstrate how the findings can be used in a customer lifetime value model. Finally, the study investigates the effectiveness of different responses that firms can offer to mitigate the cost of stockouts. There is considerable variation in the effectiveness of these responses. Offering discounts to encourage customers to backorder rather than cancel their orders is widely used in practice, but that was the least profitable of the responses that we evaluated. The findings have important implications for retailers considering the use of discounts as a response to stockouts.

Product Contagion: Changing Consumer Evaluations Through Physical Contact with "Disgusting" Products

This research demonstrates the strong influence of disgust in a consumer context. Specifically, it shows how consumer evaluations may change in response to physical contact with products that elicit only moderate levels of disgust. Using evidence from six studies, the authors develop a theory of product contagion, in which disgusting products are believed to transfer offensive properties through physical contact to other products they touch, thus influencing evaluations.

When Consumers Do Not Recognize "Benign" Intention Questions as Persuasion Attempts

We demonstrate that the mere-measurement effect occurs because asking an intention question is not perceived as a persuasion attempt. In experiments 1 and 2, we show that when persuasive intent is attributed to an intention question, consumers adjust their behavior as long as they have sufficient cognitive capacity to permit conscious correction. In experiment 3 we demonstrate that this finding holds with product choice and consumption, and we find that persuasion knowledge mediates the effects. In experiment 4, we show that when respondents are educated that an intention question is a persuasive attempt, the behavioral impact of those questions is attenuated.