Rebecca Walker Naylor

The Unhealthy = Tasty Intuition and Its Effects on Taste Inferences, Enjoyment, and Choice of Food Products

Across four experiments, the authors find that when information pertaining to the assessment of the healthiness of food items is provided, the less healthy the item is portrayed to be, (1) the better is its inferred taste, (2) the more it is enjoyed during actual consumption, and (3) the greater is the preference for it in choice tasks when a hedonic goal is more (versus less) salient. The authors obtain these effects both among consumers who report that they believe that healthiness and tastiness are negatively correlated and, to a lesser degree, among those who do not report such a belief. The authors also provide evidence that the association between the concepts of “unhealthy” and “tasty” operates at an implicit level. The authors discuss possibilities for controlling the effect of the unhealthy = tasty intuition (and its potential for causing negative health consequences), including controlling the volume of unhealthy but tasty food eaten, changing unhealthy foods to make them less unhealthy but still tasty, and providing consumers with better information about what constitutes “healthy.”

Beyond the "Like" Button: The Impact of Mere Virtual Presence on Brand Evaluations and Purchase Intentions in Social Media Settings

By 2011, approximately 83% of Fortune 500 companies were using some form of social media to connect with consumers. Furthermore, surveys suggest that consumers are increasingly relying on social media to learn about unfamiliar brands. However, best practices regarding the use of social media to bolster brand evaluations in such situations remain undefined. This research focuses on one practice in this domain: the decision to hide or reveal the demographic characteristics of a brands online supporters. The results from four studies indicate that even when the presence of these supporters is only passively experienced and virtual (a situation the authors term “mere virtual presence”), their demographic characteristics can influence a target consumers brand evaluations and purchase intentions. The findings suggest a framework for brand managers to use when deciding whether to reveal the identities of their online supporters or to retain ambiguity according to (1) the composition of existing supporters relative to targeted new supporters and (2) whether the brand is likely to be evaluated singly or in combination with competing brands.

Eating with a Purpose: Consumer Response to Functional Food Health Claims in Conflicting Versus Complementary Information Environments

Marketers of food products have recently introduced a variety of “functional foods” that promise consumers improvements in targeted physiological functions. However, despite the proliferation of functional food health claims promising more than basic nutrition, little is known about consumer responses to these claims, particularly in information environments in which inconsistent information may be available about the efficacy of a particular functional ingredient. Across two studies, the authors demonstrate that consumers with lower health consciousness are particularly sensitive to conflicting information about the validity of a functional food health claim; specifically, the presentation of conflicting (versus complementary) information significantly lowers their likelihood of choosing a functional over a nonfunctional food. In contrast, consumers with higher health consciousness do not reduce their likelihood of choosing a functional food when confronted with conflicting information. The authors demonstrate that this effect is driven by a confirmatory bias to believe the functional food health claim on the part of more health conscious consumers. The authors discuss implications for the successful marketing of functional foods and for public policy makers and consumers.

Ethical Decisions and Response Mode Compatibility: Weighting of Ethical Attributes in Consideration Sets Formed by Excluding versus Including Product Alternatives

Across four studies, including one involving an actual monetary decision, the authors demonstrate that forming a product consideration set by excluding versus including alternatives induces consumers to place more weight on ethical attributes, such as company labor practices and animal testing. This nonnormative difference reflects a compatibility between exclusion and ethics, and it holds regardless of attribute framing or consumer emotion. The authors also find that consumers judge others’ behavior more negatively for excluding ethical products than for including ethical products. These results have implications for the marketing of ethical products, both specifically (e.g., it is important to encourage exclusion modes) and generally (e.g., the failure to consider ethical products may reflect seemingly minor contextual issues guiding the decision process and not consumer disinterest in ethical issues).

Nonverbal cues-based first impressions: Impression formation through exposure to static images

Consumers often make judgments about service providers based solely on their photograph (e.g., on a billboard, on the Internet) before interacting with them face-to-face. This first impression is important for marketers to understand because it influences service provider selection and evaluation. This research explores the nature and subsequent influence of initial judgments made from static images. The results of two studies indicate that (1) judgments based on nonverbal cues can be surprisingly accurate, particularly of personality traits relevant to the domain in which the target is being judged, and (2) initial nonverbal cues-based judgments influence subsequent judgments of a target’s actions.

The Devil You (Don't) Know: Interpersonal Ambiguity and Inference Making in Competitive Contexts

Past research has shown the robustness of egocentric anchoring or false consensus effects (e.g., Naylor, Lamberton, and Norton; Ross, Greene, and House) primarily in situations where consumers adopt a cooperative or neutral stance toward one another. However, competition among consumers is a ubiquitous part of Western culture. Across five experiments in competitive contexts (either a dictator game or an online auction), interpersonal ambiguity leads to an inference of dissimilarity, rather than similarity. As a result, consumers compete as aggressively against ambiguous others as they do against dissimilar others. This effect occurs regardless of brand quality, seller reputation, or number of other competitors in the auction. A final study demonstrates that aggressiveness may be directed toward the seller rather than other bidders when sellers are ambiguous or dissimilar. This work therefore offers an important boundary condition for the operation of egocentric tendencies, highlighting the pervasive effect of competitive contexts on consumer behavior.