Rebecca K. Ratner

The Impact of Private versus Public Consumption on Variety-Seeking Behavior

Three experiments demonstrate that people incorporate more variety into their consumption decisions when their behavior is subject to public scrutiny. Studies 1 and 2 indicate that consumers expect others to evaluate their decision more favorably if they choose variety and that this sometimes leads individuals to incorporate more variety into their public than private decisions. Results of study 2 confirm predictions that a relevant individual difference variable (self-monitoring) moderates the effects of expected evaluation on variety seeking. The final study demonstrates that pressure to choose variety in public is eliminated when a social cue signals the appropriateness of consuming ones favorites.

Choosing Less-Preferred Experiences for the Sake of Variety

Data from several experiments show that, contrary to traditional models of variety seeking, individuals choose to switch to less-preferred options even though they enjoy those items less than they would have enjoyed repeating a more-preferred option. Two explanations for this finding are tested. Results indicate no evidence of a benefit to more-preferred options due to the contrast to less-preferred alternatives. However, the results of three studies suggest that retrospective global evaluations favor varied sequences that also include less-preferred items as opposed to sequences that only include more-preferred items, even though these more varied sequences result in diminished enjoyment during consumption. Copyright 1999 by the University of Chicago.

Consumer Control and Empowerment: A Primer

This paper introduces consumer empowerment as a promising research area. Going beyond lay wisdom that more control is always better, we outline several hypotheses concerning (a) the factors that influence the perception of empowerment, and (b) the consequences of greater control and the subjective experience of empowerment on consumer satisfaction and confidence.

The norm of self-interest and its effects on social action.

Four studies investigated whether people feel inhibited from engaging in social action incongruent with their apparent self-interest. Participants in Study 1 predicted that they would be evaluated negatively were they to take action on behalf of a cause in which they had no stake or in which they had a stake but held stake-incongruent attitudes. Participants in Study 2 reported both surprise and anger when a target person took action on behalf of a cause in which he or she had no stake or in which he or she held stake-incongruent attitudes. In Study 3, individuals felt more comfortable engaging in social action and expected others to respond more favorably toward their actions if the issue was described as more relevant to their own sex than to the opposite sex. In Study 4, the authors found that providing nonvested individuals with psychological standing rendered them as likely as vested individuals to undertake social action. The authors discuss the implications of these results for the relationship between vested interest, social action, and attitude-behavior consistency.

Memories as Assets: Strategic Memory Protection in Choice over Time

We present five studies supporting our strategic memory protection theory. When people make decisions about experiences to consume over time, they treat their memories of previous experiences as assets to be protected. The first two studies demonstrate that people tend to avoid situations that they believe will threaten their ability to retrieve special (rather than merely pleasant) memories. The next three studies demonstrate that people seek to obtain memory pointers to help them cue special memories at a later time when they anticipate interference from subsequent events. These preferences are driven by peoples lay theories about the importance and difficulty of obtaining and retrieving special memories. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

The Time Course and Impact of Consumers' Erroneous Beliefs about Hedonic Contrast Effects

Results from four experiments indicate that people expect to enjoy an experience more when it will follow a worse experience. We find that consumers expect hedonic contrast effects even when they do not experience such effects. Whereas individuals remember the absence of contrast effects after a short delay (study 1), individuals reporting retrospective judgments after a long delay (study 2) recalled that they had experienced contrast effects. These biased memories about contrast effects are eliminated when individuals focus on enjoyment during the experience. The present experiments document the time course of erroneous beliefs about contrast effects, mechanisms underlying their resistance to change, and the impact of these expectations about contrast effects on consumer choice.

The Power of the Myth of Self-Interest

Self-interest is the cardinal human motive, or so many of the most influential theories of human behavior would have us believe. Theories as diverse as evolutionary biology, neo-classical economics, behaviorism, and psychoanalysis all assume that people actively and single-mindedly pursue their self-interest, whether it be embodied in reproductive fitness, utility maximization, reinforcement, or wish fulfillment (Schwartz, 1986). On the other hand, much of the most interesting social science research of the last twenty years points to inadequacy of self-interest models of behavior (for reviews, see Batson, 1991; Etzioni, 1988; Kohn, 1990; Lerner, 1980; Mansbridge, 1990; Sears & Funk, 1990; Sen, 1977; Tyler & Dawes, 1993). We now know that people often care more about the fairness of the procedures they are subjected to than about the material outcomes these procedures yield (Tyler, 1990), that they often care more about their group’s collective outcomes than about their personal outcomes (Dawes, van de Kragt & Orbell, 1988), and that their attitudes toward public policies are often shaped more by their values and ideologies than by the impact these policies have on their material well-being (Sears & Funk, 1990).

Why Don't We Learn to Accurately Forecast Feelings? How Misremembering Our Predictions Blinds Us to Past Forecasting Errors

Why do affective forecasting errors persist in the face of repeated disconfirming evidence? Five studies demonstrate that people misremember their forecasts as consistent with their experience and thus fail to perceive the extent of their forecasting error. As a result, people do not learn from past forecasting errors and fail to adjust subsequent forecasts. In the context of a Super Bowl loss (Study 1), a presidential election (Studies 2 and 3), an important purchase (Study 4), and the consumption of candies (Study 5), individuals mispredicted their affective reactions to these experiences and subsequently misremembered their predictions as more accurate than they actually had been. The findings indicate that this recall error results from peoples tendency to anchor on their current affective state when trying to recall their affective forecasts. Further, those who showed larger recall errors were less likely to learn to adjust their subsequent forecasts and reminding people of their actual forecasts enhanced learning. These results suggest that a failure to accurately recall ones past predictions contributes to the perpetuation of forecasting errors.

Outpacing Others: When Consumers Value Products Based on Relative Usage Frequency

When considering the purchase of a new product, will consumers be more likely to make the purchase if they think about using it every day or if they think about using it every week? From an economic perspective, using a durable product more frequently should increase its perceived value. However, we show that perceived usage frequency relative to other consumers can influence product interest more than absolute usage frequency. In five studies, we use scale labels, advertisements, and customer reviews to invoke either a high-frequency or low-frequency norm. We show that high-frequency cues create less product interest and lower willingness to pay than low-frequency cues because consumers infer that their relative usage frequency will be lower, reducing the products perceived fit. This effect is moderated by the consumers perceived similarity to the standard of comparison and the consumers own characteristics.

Goal Pursuit, Now and Later: Temporal Compatibility of Different versus Similar Means

Compatibility between the degree of similarity among means to goal attainment and the anticipated timing of goal pursuit increases goal-directed motivation. Six studies demonstrate that consumers are more motivated and willing to pay for means to goal attainment in the near term when they plan to use a set of different (vs. similar) means. In contrast, consumers are more motivated and willing to pay for means to goal attainment in the long term when they plan to use similar (vs. different) means. For example, consumers paid more for a personal training session when told it would include exercises for different (similar) muscle groups and would take place this week (next month). These effects are driven by the ease of processing differences (similarities) when considering the near (far) future. Similar results were obtained across various domains, including health and fitness, saving money, and academic performance.