Yeosun Yoon

Drawing Inferences About Others on the Basis of Corporate Associations

This research examined how observers use corporate associations (e.g., environmental responsibility) in drawing inferences about a target consumers’ dispositions (e.g., whether the target person really cares about the environment). Respondents read a scenario describing a target consumer purchasing a certain brand of pens, whose maker had recently teamed up with an environmental organization. It was found that target-related factors (e.g., impression motivation, the consistency of behavior) and company-related factors (e.g., the congruity of the supported cause with the companys’ reputation) systematically influenced the dispositional inferences made by the observers.

Effect of Regulatory Focus on Selective Information Processing

Individuals tend to selectively rely on information consistent with their attitudes or decisions. In this research, we examine the possibility that regulatory focus influences selective information processing. We find that individuals selectively rely on information consistent with their regulatory orientation under high (vs. low) information load. Specifically, under high information load, relative reliance on positive (vs. negative) information is greater for promotion-focused (vs. prevention-focused) individuals. Consequently, when information load is high, promotion-focused (vs. prevention-focused) individuals have higher brand evaluations. Under low information load, individuals also rely on information inconsistent with their regulatory orientation. Specifically, under low information load, relative reliance on positive (vs. negative) information is greater for prevention-focused (vs. promotion-focused) individuals. As a result, when information load is low, prevention-focused (vs. promotion-focused) individuals have higher brand evaluations.

The Effects of Regulatory Focus and Past Performance Information on Temporal Bias of Future Optimism

Individuals tend to become more optimistically biased about the future as temporal distance increases. This study presents that such tendency will be moderated by individuals’ regulatory focus orientation. We show that prediction on future optimism bias does not hold for prevention-focused individuals. Furthermore, we propose that prevention-focused individuals will begin to exhibit future optimism when they are presented with an option that has been showing a decreasing performance trend in the past. These effects are mediated by individuals’ degree of elaboration about the potential outcome.

Fluently Processed Offers Must Have Greater Value: How Metacognitive Experience of Fluency Affects Deal Evaluations

In this article, we investigate how effects of credit card reward programs differ as a function of the partner brand of a cobranded credit card. Building on theories of processing fluency, we propose that the accessibility of the partner brand interacts with the categories of credit card rewards to affect evaluation of the credit card.When the accessibility of the partner brand is high, the congruency between the partner brand and categories of credit card rewards affects conceptual fluency of the rewards, which in turn has a positive influence on evaluation of the credit card. In contrast, when the accessibility of the partner brand is low, the congruency between the partner brand and credit card rewards does not have a significant influence on evaluation of the credit card because conceptual fluency of the rewards does not vary as a function of congruency. Further, we show that deal evaluation of credit card rewards mediates the effect of conceptual fluency on credit card evaluation. Finally, we discuss theoretical and managerial implications of this study.