Laurence Ashworth

The Importance and Functional Significance of Affective Cues in Consumer Choice

Existing evidence for affects influence on information processing and choice under high elaboration is mixed. In addition, affective choice is often viewed as erroneous in that it is assumed to lead to regret. We show that affect has a reliable impact on choice under high elaboration, which occurs through a combination of heuristic and systematic processing. Furthermore, consumers were able to correct for the impact irrelevant affect had on systematic processing but not for its impact on less conscious heuristic processing. Finally, affective purchases led to greater long-term satisfaction for important purchases, suggesting that affective choice can be functional. (c) 2006 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

The Role of Dominance in the Appeal of Violent Media Depictions

Research related to violent media has overwhelmingly focused on the consequences of exposure, typically with a view to informing its regulation. Such media is extremely popular, yet little research has examined why it should be appealing to consumers. The current work examines violent consumption in the context of advertisements for violent video games. We argue that it is not the violence endemic to many of these games, and indeed other media, that is rewarding, but rather the domination that often accompanies such depictions. We test this basic proposition by manipulating the dominative content of a violent depiction. We also examine conditions that moderate the scope of this effect.

Expressions of (Dis)Respect: Understanding Respect in a Consumer Context

What (dis)satisfies consumers is a central question in marketing research (Luo and Homburg 2007). Existing work has largely focused on the role of judgments of product or service performance (e.g., Falk et al. 2010), complaint handling (e.g., Zheng et al. 2013), and equity perceptions (e.g., Oliver and Swan 1989) as antecedents of satisfaction. The current work suggests that satisfaction is also likely to be strongly influenced by the inferences that consumers draw about the extent to which the firm showed them respect. We expect that such inferences can be drawn from a wide variety of firm actions. As such, respect may account for some of the impact of a variety of known antecedents of satisfaction, but it might also be capable of explaining additional variance in the satisfaction response.

Consumer Schadenfreude: Deservingness of Product Ownership Impacts Affect Following Another’s Product Failure

This paper examines perceptions of fairness in product ownership as an antecedent to the experience of schadenfreude—taking pleasure in the suffering of another consumer’s product failure. Prior research has found that consumers will experience more schadenfreude when they are envious of the target, particularly the social attention received from the use of a status product (Sundie et al., 2009). Alternatively, we focus on the perceived deservingness of the initial product ownership (e.g. did they earn the product?). These findings suggest that schadenfreude can stem from the removal (via product downfall) of an unfair situation.