Mathew S. Isaac

Finding a Home for Products We Love: How Buyer Usage Intent Affects the Pricing of Used Goods

Consumers often dispose of used products by selling them in a secondary market (e.g., classified advertisements, Craigslist, eBay). When consumers must dispose of products to which they feel emotionally attached, they often expect to sell the product at a price in excess of its market value. However, the authors identify a condition in which product attachment can decrease rather than increase the minimum price sellers are willing to accept. Specifically, they propose that due to concern for how products are used following a transaction, strongly attached sellers may be more willing than weakly attached sellers to provide discounts to potential buyers whose usage intentions are deemed appropriate. Whereas prior research has focused primarily on one particular consequence of attachment, namely, the intensified reluctance of consumers to part with their possessions, this research identifies a novel consequence of attachment: a heightened sensitivity to the manner in which the product will be used following a transaction. Four empirical studies provide converging evidence that sellers’ product attachment determines the extent to which their minimum acceptable sales price is influenced by buyer usage intent.

The Top-Ten Effect: Consumers' Subjective Categorization of Ranked Lists

Long lists of ranked items, such as Bloomberg Businessweeks rankings of MBA programs, are ubiquitous in Western culture, and they are often used in consumer decision making. Six studies show that consumers mentally subdivide ranked lists into a smaller set of categories and exaggerate differences between consecutive items adjacent to category boundaries. Further, despite prior work suggesting that people might subjectively produce place-value categories (e.g., single digits, the twenties), this research shows that consumers interpret ranked lists by generating round-number categories ending in zero or five (e.g., top 10, top 25). Thus, for example, consumers will more favorably evaluate improvements in rank that cross round-number-category boundaries (e.g., shifting from rank 11 to rank 10) than improvements in rank that cross place-value-category boundaries (e.g., shifting from rank 10 to rank 9). This phenomenon, labeled the top-ten effect, occurs because round numbers are cognitively accessible to consumers due to their prevalent use in everyday communication.

How to Capture Consumer Experiences: A Context-Specific Approach To Measuring Engagement

ABSTRACT Although academics and practitioners have embraced customer engagement as a major objective of marketing, the conceptualization and measurement of engagement is challenging. Prior research largely has relied on conventional “one-size-fits-all” measures with a fixed set of scale items. The current, more flexible approach measures engagement based on context-specific experiences that can vary across brands and products. Three studies examining engagement when consuming (a) live jazz music, (b) newspapers, and (c) television programming provided evidence that a flexible approach to measuring engagement can help predict consumer behavior. The third of these studies also provided new evidence that engagement with television programming increases advertising effectiveness.

How to Capture Consumer Experiences: A Context-Specific Approach To Measuring Engagement: Predicting Consumer Behavior Across Qualitatively Different Experiences

ABSTRACT Although academics and practitioners have embraced customer engagement as a major objective of marketing, the conceptualization and measurement of engagement is challenging. Prior research largely has relied on conventional “one-size-fits-all” measures with a fixed set of scale items. The current, more flexible approach measures engagement based on context-specific experiences that can vary across brands and products. Three studies examining engagement when consuming (a) live jazz music, (b) newspapers, and (c) television programming provided evidence that a flexible approach to measuring engagement can help predict consumer behavior. The third of these studies also provided new evidence that engagement with television programming increases advertising effectiveness.

Is Top 10 Better than Top 9? The Role of Expectations in Consumer Response to Imprecise Rank Claims

Many marketing communications are carefully designed to cast a brand in its most favorable light. For example, marketers may prefer to highlight a brands membership in the top 10 tier of a third-party list instead of disclosing the brands exact rank. The authors propose that when marketers use these types of imprecise advertising claims, subtle differences in the selection of a tier boundary (e.g., top 9 vs. top 10) can influence consumers’ evaluations and willingness to pay. Specifically, the authors find a comfort tier effect in which a weaker claim that references a less exclusive but commonly used tier boundary can actually lead to higher brand evaluations than a stronger claim that references a more exclusive but less common tier boundary. This effect is attributed to a two-stage process by which consumers evaluate imprecise rank claims. The results demonstrate that consumers have specific expectations for how messages are constructed in marketing communications and may make negative inferences about a brand when these expectations are violated, thus attenuating the positive effect such claims might otherwise have on consumer responses.

Format Neglect: How the Use of Numerical Versus Percentage Rank Claims Influences Consumer Judgments

Marketers often claim to be part of an exclusive tier (e.g., “top 10”) within their competitive set. Although recent behavioral research has investigated how consumers respond to rank claims, prior work has focused exclusively on claims having a numerical format. But marketers often communicate rankings using percentages (e.g., “top 20%”). The present research explores how using a numerical format claim (e.g., “top 10” out of 50 products) versus an equivalent percentage format claim (e.g., “top 20%” out of 50 products) influences consumer judgments. Across five experiments, the authors find robust evidence of a shift in evaluations whereby consumers respond more favorably to numerical rank claims when set sizes are smaller (i.e., <100) but more favorably to percentage rank claims when set sizes are larger (i.e., >100), even when the claims are mathematically equivalent. They further show that this change in evaluations occurs because consumers commit format neglect when making their evaluations by relying predominantly on the nominal value conveyed in a rank claim and insufficiently accounting for set size.

How to capture consumer experiences

ABSTRACT Although academics and practitioners have embraced customer engagement as a major objective of marketing, the conceptualization and measurement of engagement is challenging. Prior research largely has relied on conventional “one-size-fits-all” measures with a fixed set of scale items. The current, more flexible approach measures engagement based on context-specific experiences that can vary across brands and products. Three studies examining engagement when consuming (a) live jazz music, (b) newspapers, and (c) television programming provided evidence that a flexible approach to measuring engagement can help predict consumer behavior. The third of these studies also provided new evidence that engagement with television programming increases advertising effectiveness.