Remi Trudel

Looks Interesting, but What Does It Do? Evaluation of Incongruent Product Form Depends on Positioning

Marketers struggle with how best to position innovative products that are incongruent with consumer expectations. Compounding the issue, many incongruent products are the result of innovative changes in product form intended to increase hedonic appeal. Crossing various product categories with various positioning tactics in a single meta-analytic framework, the authors find that positioning plays an important role in how consumers evaluate incongruent form. The results demonstrate that when a product is positioned on functional dimensions, consumers show more preferential evaluations for moderately incongruent form than for congruent form. However, when a product is positioned on experiential dimensions, consumers show more preferential evaluations for congruent form than for moderately incongruent form. Importantly, an increase in perceived hedonic benefits mediates the former, whereas a decrease in perceived utilitarian benefits mediates the latter. The mediation effects are consistent with the view that consumers must first understand a products functionality before engaging in hedonic consumption.

The Effect of Product Size and Form Distortion on Consumer Recycling Behavior

The present research examines conditions under which consumers dispose of recyclable products in the garbage. Results from a field study and four laboratory studies demonstrate that a consumers decision to recycle a product or throw it in the trash can be determined by the extent to which the product has been distorted during the consumption process. Specifically, if the consumption process distorts a product sufficiently from its original form (i.e., changes in size or form), consumers perceive it as less useful and in turn are more likely to throw it in the garbage (as opposed to recycle it). These findings point to important outcomes of the consumption process that have largely been ignored and provide initial insight into the psychological processes influencing recycling behavior.

Why Didn't I Think of that? Self-Regulation through Selective Information Processing

In this article, the authors present an information-processing model of self-regulation. The model predicts that consumers with an active self-regulatory goal will tend to focus on the cost (rather than the pleasure) of consumption, and as a result, they are better able to control their behavior. In contrast to prior research, the authors find that consumers with an active goal are most vulnerable to self-regulatory failure when the object of desire is farther away from them (in either time or space) because as the distance increases they focus less on the costs of consumption. Finally, results indicate that if product information is not externally available (i.e., it must be recalled from memory), people are more likely to focus on pleasure and fail at self-regulation. The results are robust across four experiments using a variety of stimuli, goal primes, and information-processing measures.

Trash or Recycle? How Product Distortion Leads to Categorization Error During Disposal

Much of what ends up in our landfills is recyclable material, exposing the urgent need to understand the psychological processes behind recycling behavior. Results from four studies suggest that consumers often trash well-known recyclable products due to the product being erroneously categorized as trash after it has been distorted (e.g., paper after it has been cut, torn, or crumpled). However, this categorization error can be somewhat mitigated by the presence of signage depicting the different distorted forms the recyclable product can take. Through prompting, consumers are able to correctly categorize a recyclable product when disposing of it, regardless of the level of distortion. These results provide an explanation for, and potential solution to, the issue of recyclable materials making their way into our landfills every day.

The Effect of Recycling Versus Trashing on Consumption: Theory and Experimental Evidence

This article proposes a utilitarian model in which recycling could reduce consumers’ negative emotions from wasting resources (i.e., taking more resources than what is being consumed) and increase consumers’ positive emotions from disposing of consumed resources. The authors provide evidence for each component of the utility function using a series of choice problems and formulate hypotheses on the basis of a parsimonious utilitarian model. Experiments with real disposal behavior support the model hypotheses. The findings suggest that the positive emotions associated with recycling can overpower the negative emotions associated with wasting. As a result, consumers could use a larger amount of resources when recycling is an option, and more strikingly, this amount could go beyond the point at which their marginal consumption utility becomes zero. The authors extend the theoretical model and introduce acquisition utility and the moderating effect of the costs of recycling (financial, physical, and mental). From a policy perspective, this research argues for a better understanding of consumers’ disposal behavior to increase the effectiveness of environmental policies and campaigns.

Using Emoticons to Encourage Students to Recycle.

ABSTRACT Uncovering inexpensive, simple techniques to encourage students to act in a pro-environmental manner is of critical importance. Through a four-week field study at a large, environmentally focused elementary school, it was found that placing negatively valenced emoticons (i.e., red frowny faces) on trash cans increased the proportion of recycled material from 22% to 44%. Subsequently, through a controlled laboratory study at a recognized “green” university, it was found that the negatively valenced emoticon increased the percentage of students who recycled their provided paper from 46% to 62%. Therefore, using emoticons as a complement to existing environmental education may be an easily implementable technique to positively change the recycling behavior of both older and younger students.