Kathrynn Pounders

Insight into the motivation of selfie postings: impression management and self-esteem

Purpose Social media enables consumers to regularly express themselves in a variety of ways. Selfie-postings are the new tool for self-presentation, particularly among millennials. The purpose of this paper is to identify the motivations associated with selfie-postings among female millennials. Design/methodology/approach The exploratory study consisted of 15 in-depth interviews with women who were 19-30 years of age. The analysis of data was facilitated by an iterative constant comparison method between data, emerging concepts and extant literature. Findings Textual analysis reveals impression management to be pivotal in understanding the consumer selfie-posting process. Other sub-themes include happiness and physical appearance. In addition, self-esteem was revealed as a motivator and an outcome. Research limitations/implications The study was limited to females who were 19-30 years of age. Future research should include males and a wider age group and focus on empirical testing of the identified themes. Practical implications This research sheds light on the motivation and outcomes associated with selfie-postings. Implications for marketers and advertisers include a better understanding of how to engage consumers to post content in the form of selfies with brands and products. Originality/value This paper fulfils an identified need to explore the growing trend of selfie-postings and contributes to academic literature in consumer behavior by identifying the motivations of selfie-postings.

Exploring gender and identity issues among female adolescent and young adults who connect in an anonymous platform.

There has been an increased usage of online cancer support groups as a resource for health-related information and social support. This work analyzes message blog posts from an anonymous online support community to better understand issues related to gender and identity among female adolescent and young adults. This work sheds further light into the nuances of gender and identity issues including motherhood and reproductive issues, physical appearance, and romantic relationships. Specifically, findings reveal that female adolescent and young adults experience issues pertaining to infertility, feeling like a bad mom, hair loss, scarring, dating, and intimacy. These findings of this work offer further guidance about how healthcare providers and caregivers can attempt to meet the needs of female adolescent and young adults.

The Effectiveness of Guilt and Shame Ad Appeals in Social Marketing: The Role of Regulatory Focus

ABSTRACT This work examines the interplay of emotional appeal (guilt versus shame) and regulatory focus of the message (promotion versus prevention) on consumer response to a social marketing campaign. Specifically, we suggest that a match between emotional appeal and regulatory focus of the message results in more favorable consumer response in the form of behavioral intention. This work also examines message acceptance and self-efficacy as mediators to the moderated effects of emotional appeal and regulatory focus of the message. Results suggest that both message acceptance and self-efficacy mediate the interaction effects. Findings offer implications to advertisers and social marketers.

Consumer response to gay and lesbian imagery: How product type and stereotypes affect consumers’ perceptions

ABSTRACT Gay and lesbian consumers increasingly are recognized as a lucrative target market. Advertisements more frequently incorporate images of gay and lesbian people; however, more research is needed to understand mainstream (heterosexual) consumer response to these advertisements. The current authors conducted three studies to explore how sexual orientation, product type, and model–product fit influence consumer reactions to advertisements with gay and lesbian imagery. Findings suggest product type moderates the effect of sexual orientation on attitude toward the advertisement and word of mouth, and that positive evaluations of an advertisement may occur when gay and lesbian imagery “fits” within consumers9 existing schemas. This work offers implications for advertisers and brand managers.

Cause-Related Marketing: Factors Promoting Campaign Evaluations

Advertisers have long been interested in the persuasiveness of cause-related marketing (CRM) campaigns, and the authors extend this stream of research using two separate experiments that considers the effectiveness of the companys product versus cash donations. Findings from Study 1 indicate consumers perceive sponsoring companies of CRM campaigns less favorably when these companies make product rather than cash donations to their nonprofit CRM partners, and the level of consumer participation effort required in these campaigns does not moderate this effect. However, Study 2 introduces congruency as a potential explanation for these adverse effects and extends Study 1 by demonstrating that more (as compared to less) congruent product donations can eliminate the negative effects of product donations. Further, it confirms prior findings concerning the importance of sponsoring company–cause congruency. Campaigns designed with higher levels of both types of congruency (product donation–cause and company–cause) promote favorable campaign outcomes. Further, both studies demonstrate that the effects of product donations on campaign outcomes are mediated by company motive. Implications for advertising theorists and practitioners are offered.

Embodiment, Illness, and Gender: The Intersected and Disrupted Identities of Young Women with Breast Cancer

Abstract Purpose: This study examines the experiences and struggles of young women with breast cancer as they navigate the intersectionality of their illness and gender identity. Specifically, the research explores the construction and expression of gender identity as a core part of who they were prior to diagnosis and who they desire to be in the future. Design and methodology: A phenomenological approach was used to investigate how women with breast cancer experience changes related to gender identity. Eighteen in-depth interviews were conducted with young women who have been diagnosed within the last five years. Findings: Young women undergo gender identity disruptions and shifts as the result of breast cancer diagnosis and treatment. Informants expressed feelings that their resultant identities do not conform to cultural normative representations of gender, which profoundly impact their perceptions of the physical self, gender roles, and intimate relationships. At this acute stage, they struggled with the loss of important body markers of femininity (breasts, hair, etc.) and attempted through consumption to find alternative ways to enact gender expressions. Originality and value: This research explores consumer experiences when bodies do not conform to idealized body images and cultural representations of gender. Informants revealed a complex portrait of women who experience the early, invasive stages of illness and body transformation.

The Influence of Temporal Frame on Guilt and Shame Appeals

Abstract This work examines guilt and shame appeals through the lens of construal level theory in health messaging. An experiment was conducted to examine the interplay between emotional appeal and temporal frame used to convey risk. Results reveal that temporal frame moderates emotional appeal such that guilt appeals are more persuasive when paired with a proximal frame, and shame appeals are more persuasive when paired with a distal frame. Processing fluency mediates these effects. Implications for health communication practitioners and social marketers are offered.

Examining Service Provider Response to Guilty Customers: An Abstract

Previous research in service contexts finds customers feel guilty after they violate a social norm. Such contexts may include the customer not leaving a tip, being late, or trying a different service provider (i.e., cheating). Interestingly, despite being a negative emotion, prior research shows customer-induced guilt leads to increased repatronage intention (Dahl et al. 2003, 2005). Guilt is associated with the action tendency of feeling like undoing what one has done (Swartz 1994). Accordingly, guilt can motivate positive change (Tangney and Dearing 2002), such as apologizing or engaging in other reparative actions (Tangney and Dearing 2002).

Examining Process and Moderating Effects of Customer-Created Guilt in a Service Context: An Abstract

Guilt has been identified as a key consumption emotion and is often experienced in interpersonal interactions, making it an interesting emotion to examine in a service context. This work examines customer-created guilt in the context of a service experience. Service scripts offer a set of norms or expectations for routine service encounters between customers and service providers. Consistent with the notion that a violation of social norms induces guilt, a customer’s negative deviation from the service script can induce customer-created guilt.

For Shame! How Goal Attainability, Goal Orientation, Model Size, and Emotions Shape Female Consumers’ Self-Perceptions: An Extended Abstract

Advertisements for beauty-enhancement products commonly feature unrealistically thin models as the ideal point for which female consumers should strive. Unfortunately, many of these campaigns negatively impact the self-perceptions of the consumers that they are purportedly able to aid in achieving their goals. Some brands (e.g., Dove) have responded to this issue by using heavier models in their ads. However, the brands and advertisements are generally better received with thin models, making this a difficult path to follow for many marketers. This paper further develops our understanding of consumer response to such advertisements by integrating goal-striving and social comparison theories to explain how goal attainability may diminish the negative impacts of the thin ideal on female consumers. The paper further explores the mechanism through which the advertisements affect consumers by proposing shame as an emotional mediator and promotional focus as moderator of the effects. The results of two experimental studies provide evidence that support these propositions.