Keisha M. Cutright

The Beauty of Boundaries: When and Why We Seek Structure in Consumption

How do consumers cope when it seems that they have no control over their outcomes in life? This research posits that consumers will seek greater structure in consumption—or the sense that everything is in its designated place. Moreover, it suggests that very simple boundaries in the environment offer a means for attaining this sense of structure. Several experiments demonstrate that when personal control is threatened, consumers prefer logos, products, and environments that are tangibly or intangibly bounded over those that are unbounded. This research also explores the functional and symbolic benefits that boundaries provide as representations of order and structure.

Brands: The Opiate of the Nonreligious Masses?

Are brands the “new religion”? Practitioners and scholars have been intrigued by the possibility, but strong theory and empirical evidence supporting the existence of a relationship between brands and religion is scarce. In what follows, we argue and demonstrate that religiosity is indeed related to “brand reliance,” i.e., the degree to which consumers prefer branded goods over unbranded goods or goods without a well-known national brand. We theorize that brands and religiosity may serve as substitutes for one another because both allow individuals to express their feelings of self-worth. We provide support for this substitution hypothesis with U.S. state-level data (field study) as well as individual-level data where religiosity is experimentally primed (study 1) or measured as a chronic individual difference (study 2). Importantly, studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that the relationship between religiosity and brand reliance only exists in product categories in which brands enable consumers to express themselves (e.g., clothes). Moreover, studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that the expression of self-worth is an important factor underlying the negative relationship.

When Your World Must Be Defended: Choosing Products to Justify the System

Consumers are often strongly motivated to view themselves as part of a legitimate and fair external system. Our research focuses on how individuals adopt distinct ways of defending their system when it is threatened and, in particular, how this is revealed in their consumption choices. We find that although individuals differ in how confident they are in the legitimacy of their system, they do not differ in their motivation to defend the system when it is threatened. Instead, they simply adopt different methods of defense. Specifically, when an important system is (verbally) attacked, individuals who are the least confident in the legitimacy of the system seek and appreciate consumption choices that allow them to indirectly and subtly defend the system. Conversely, individuals who are highly confident in the system reject indirect opportunities of defense and seek consumption choices that allow them to defend the system in direct and explicit ways.

Putting Brands in Their Place: How a Lack of Control Keeps Brands Contained

New brand extensions can push a brand outside its typical boundaries. In this article, the authors argue that peoples acceptance of such extensions depends on their feelings of control. Across several studies, the authors demonstrate that when feelings of personal control are low, consumers and managers seek greater structure in brands and thus reject brand extensions that do not seem to fit well with the parent brand. The authors also identify important boundary conditions that illustrate when consumers are most likely to punish a brand for poor-fitting brand extensions and how the effect can be mitigated.

How Asking “Who Am I?” Affects What Consumers Buy: The Influence of Self-Discovery on Consumption

Are you type A or type B? An optimist or a pessimist? Intuitive or analytical? Consumers are motivated to learn about the self, but they may not always accept what they learn. This article explores how the desire for self-discovery leads people to seek but not necessarily accept the feedback they receive and the implications this has for consumption behavior. Specifically, this article examines the case of consumers who value being unconstrained: people with independent self-construals and those who have high levels of reactance motivation. The authors argue that these people often view self-knowledge as a constraint on the self and subsequently reject it—even when the self-knowledge has neutral or positive implications for self-esteem. Results across five studies demonstrate that independents and high reactants feel constrained by self-knowledge, and this causes them to reject and make consumption choices inconsistent with it even as they actively seek to learn about themselves. In contrast, interdependents and low reactants do not feel constrained by self-knowledge, and consequently, they accept and incorporate it into their consumption decisions.

In God’s Hands: How Reminders of God Dampen the Effectiveness of Fear Appeals

To begin building an understanding of how thoughts about God influence consumer persuasion processes and outcomes, the current research explores how reminders of God affect consumer compliance with fear-based advertising. Results across seven studies demonstrate that when the concept of God is salient, consumer compliance and persuasion in response to fear appeals is dampened. Importantly, the results suggest that one reason for this persuasion-dampening effect of God salience is the fact that consumers associate the concept of God with the idea of unlimited support. Consistent with this, the results reveal that when God is not associated with the idea of support, the dampening effect of God salience on fear appeal compliance is eliminated.