Nailya Ordabayeva

Getting Ahead of the Joneses: When Equality Increases Conspicuous Consumption among Bottom-Tier Consumers

It is widely believed that increasing the equality of material possessions or income in a social group should lead people at the bottom of the distribution to consume less and save more. However, this prediction and its causal mechanism have never been studied experimentally. Five studies show that greater equality increases the satisfaction of those in the lowest tier of the distribution because it reduces the possession gap between what they have and what others have. However, greater equality also increases the position gains derived from status-enhancing consumption, since it allows low-tier consumers to get ahead of the higher proportion of consumers clustered in the middle tiers. As a result, greater equality reduces consumption when consumers focus on the narrower possession gap, but it increases consumption when they focus on the greater position gains (i.e., when consumption is conspicuous, social competition goals are primed, and the environment is competitive).

Moralities in food and health research

Abstract Society has imposed strict rules about what constitutes a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ food and ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ eating behaviour at least since antiquity. Today, the moral discourse of what we should and should not eat is perhaps stronger than ever, and it informs consumers, researchers and policy-makers about what we all should consume, research and regulate. We propose four types of moralities, underlying sets of moral assumptions, that orient the contemporary discourses of food and health: the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ nature of food items, the virtue of self-control and moderation, the management of body size and the actions of market agents. We demonstrate how these moralities influence consumer behaviour as well as transformative research of food and health and develop a critical discussion of the impact of the underlying morality in each domain. We conclude by providing a few guidelines for changes in research questions, designs and methodologies for future research and call for a general reflection on the consequences of the uncovered moralities in research on food and health towards an inclusive view of food well-being.

Using motivation theory to develop a transformative consumer research agenda for reducing materialism in society

Materialism represents a pervasive value in contemporary society and one that is associated with multiple negative consequences. Although a considerable amount of research has documented these consequences, little research has examined how materialism levels might be reduced. This article presents a research agenda for reducing materialism. The authors begin with an overview of the motivation theory of materialism, a humanistic perspective that holds that materialism is often an outward manifestation of deeper unmet psychological needs and insecurities. Thus, research that contributes to reducing materialism should do so by addressing these more fundamental inadequacies. To this end, the authors outline three emergent research areas that have potential to reduce materialism by enhancing self-esteem—namely, experiential consumption, prosocial giving, and healthy social development in children. The authors review research in each area, consider its relevance to the materialism question, and propose future research directions. They also present the public policy implications of these discussions.

Downsize in 3D, Supersize in 1D: Effects of the Dimensionality of Package and Portion Size Changes on Size Estimations, Consumption, and Quantity Discount Expectations

Understanding consumer response to product supersizing and downsizing is an important issue for policy makers, consumer researchers and marketers. In three laboratory experiments the authors found that changes in size appear smaller when products change in all three dimensions (height, width, and length) than when they change in only one dimension. Specifically, they showed that a) size estimations follow an inelastic power function of the actual size of the products; b) size estimations are even less elastic when size changes in 3D than when it changes in 1D; and c) the effect of dimensionality is not reduced by making size information available. As a result, consumers expect (and marketers offer) steeper quantity discounts when packages and portions are supersized in 3D than when they are supersized in 1D; consumers pour more product into and out of conical containers (in which volume changes in 3D) than cylindrical containers (in which volume changes in 1D); and consumers are more likely to supersize and less likely to downsize when package and portion sizes change in 1D than when they change in 3D.

The accuracy of less: Natural bounds explain why quantity decreases are estimated more accurately than quantity increases.

Five studies show that people, including experts such as professional chefs, estimate quantity decreases more accurately than quantity increases. We argue that this asymmetry occurs because physical quantities cannot be negative. Consequently, there is a natural lower bound (zero) when estimating decreasing quantities but no upper bound when estimating increasing quantities, which can theoretically grow to infinity. As a result, the “accuracy of less” disappears (a) when a numerical or a natural upper bound is present when estimating quantity increases, or (b) when people are asked to estimate the (unbounded) ratio of change from 1 size to another for both increasing and decreasing quantities. Ruling out explanations related to loss aversion, symbolic number mapping, and the visual arrangement of the stimuli, we show that the “accuracy of less” influences choice and demonstrate its robustness in a meta-analysis that includes previously published results. Finally, we discuss how the “accuracy of less” may explain asymmetric reactions to the supersizing and downsizing of food portions, some instances of the endowment effect, and asymmetries in the perception of increases and decreases in physical and psychological distance.

Judging the Size of Food Portions and Packages: Errors and Remedies

Because size information is often lacking or hard to find, people tend to visually estimate the size of food portions or packages. In this article, we review five systematic sources of bias and their remedies. These are (1) the tendency to underestimate size changes (underestimation bias), (2) the diminishing accuracy as portions or packages change along one, two, or in all three dimensions (dimensionality bias), (3) the higher accuracy for size decreases compared to size increases (directionality bias), (4) the tendency to believe the size impressions created by descriptive food labels (labeling bias), and (5) the lower accuracy when estimating the size of foods that are either desired or feared (affect bias).