Nancy M. Ridgway

Consumer Search: An Extended Framework

While consumer search behavior has been studied for many years, its treatment has been limited to purchase contexts. This article defines ongoing search as search occurring outside of the purchase process, and places it within an overall framework for consumer search. In addition, it presents results of an exploratory study of ongoing search indicating that recreational or hedonic motives for ongoing search are more significant than practical, informational motives. This study also shows that product involvement is strongly linked to ongoing search and that ongoing searchers appear to be important elements in the marketplace.

Thankfulness and Hope as the Driving Emotions in Mommy Blogs: An Abstract

Women, as a market, are larger than both India and China combined, and yet many companies are not adequately understanding women (Silverstein & Sayre, 2009). This is especially true for working women. Approximately 57% of American women worked outside of the home in 2015; 24 million were mothers to at least one child under the age of 18 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015, 2016). The idea that women who work outside the home face unique challenges compared to their male counterparts is frequently the subject of feminist theorizing. The concept of equality between the sexes is often cited in this context: from early movements to allow women into various professions to contemporary conceptions of breaking the glass ceiling and receiving equal pay for equal work (Evans, 1994; Hughes, 2002). Workplace gender equality has often been based on minimizing differences between the sexes by ensuring women are “equal” to men. As such it has been critiqued for denying women the space to express the unique challenges they often face that are different from men because this illuminates, rather than reduces, gendered differences (Smithson & Stokoe, 2005). It is crucial to understand their psychology.

How Vital Is Price to Compulsive Collectors

Collecting is a widespread consumer behavior, as an estimated third of all adults collects something. According to Belk, collecting is “the process of actively, selectively, and passionately acquiring and possessing things removed from ordinary use and perceived as part of a set of non-identical objects or experiences” (1995, p. 67). It is an intensely involving form of consumption that can become an addiction, obsession, and compulsion (Belk et al. 1991). Compulsive collecting can lead to a host of problems, including individual, family and societal. A scale measuring compulsive collecting has been recently developed and validated (Kukar-Kinney and Ridgway 2013). In this paper, we use that measure to examine the relationship between consumers’ reaction to price and compulsive collecting.