This article examines how consumer decision making is influenced by automatically evoked task-induced affect and by cognitions that are generated in a more controlled manner on exposure to alternatives in a choice task. Across two experiments respondents chose between two alternatives: one (chocolate cake) associated with more intense positive affect but less favorable cognitions, compared to a second (fruit salad) associated with less favorable affect but more favorable cognitions. Findings from the two experiments suggest that if processing resources are limited, spontaneously evoked affective reactions rather than cognitions tend to have a greater impact on choice. As a result, the consumer is more likely to choose the alternative that is superior on the affective dimension but inferior on the cognitive dimension (e.g., chocolate cake). In contrast, when the availability of processing resources is high, cognitions related to the consequences of choosing the alternatives tend to have a bigger impact on choice compared to when the availability of these resources is low. As a result, the consumer is more likely to choose the alternative that is inferior on the affective dimension but superior on the cognitive dimension (e.g., fruit salad). The moderating roles of the mode of presentation of the alternatives and of a personality variable related to impulsivity are also reported.Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings. (LORD CHESTERFIELD) With all its cleverness, however, decision theory is somewhat crippled emotionally, and thus detached from the emotional and visceral richness of life. (GEORGE LOEWENSTEIN 1996, p. 289)

In two studies employing fictitious and real brands, this paper shows that brand attachment goes beyond attitude and fit in determining consumers' behavioral reactions to brand extensions such as purchase intentions, willingness to pay, word-of-mouth, and forgiveness. The effect is pronounced at high and moderate, but not low levels of fit. The paper also shows that attachment has an impact on the extent to which the extension is categorized as a member of the parent brand family, which partially mediates attachment's effects.

Negative publicity has the potential to create negative corporate associations. However, consumers' identification with a company might moderate the extent of this effect. This article examines the impact of consumer-company identification on reactions to variable levels of negative publicity about a company. Exposing consumers who had strong identification with a company to moderately negative publicity was found to result in less negative corporate associations than for consumers who had relatively weak identification. In contrast, consumers'levels of identification did not affect reactions to extremely negative information, resulting in equally negative corporate associations for those with strong versus weak consumer-company identification. Thus, strong identification mitigates the effects of moderately negative publicity but does not attenuate the effects of extremely negative publicity. Consumers' perceptions of and thoughts regarding negative information about a company partially mediated the effect of identification on attitudes and behavioral intentions.

We investigate the interfering influence of elevated arousal on the impact of positive mood on resistance to temptation. Three studies demonstrate that when a temptation activates long-term health goals, baseline positive mood facilitates resistance to temptation in (1) the choice between two snack items, one of which is more unhealthy, sinful, and hard to resist (M&Ms) than the other (grapes) and (2) the monitoring of consumption when the sinful option is chosen. However, this influence is attenuated when positive mood is accompanied by elevated arousal. We demonstrate that the cognitive depletion that accompanies elevated arousal interferes with the self-regulatory focus of positive mood, decreasing resistance to temptation. (c) 2010 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

The universality of design perception and response is tested using data collected from 10 countries: Argentina, Australia, China, Germany, Great Britain, India, The Netherlands, Russia, Singapore, and the United States. A Bayesian, finite-mixture, structural equation model is developed that identifies latent logo clusters while accounting for heterogeneity in evaluations. The concomitant variable approach allows cluster probabilities to be country specific. Rather than a priori defined clusters, our procedure provides a posteriori cross-national logo clusters based on consumer response similarity. Our model reduces the 10 countries to three cross-national clusters that respond differently to logo design dimensions: the West, Asia, and Russia. The dimensions underlying design are found to be similar across countries, suggesting that elaborateness, naturalness, and harmony are universal design dimensions. Responses (affect, shared meaning, subjective familiarity, and true and false recognition) to logo design dimensions (elaborateness, naturalness, and harmony) and elements (repetition, proportion, and parallelism) are also relatively consistent, although we find minor differences across clusters. Our results suggest that managers can implement a global logo strategy, but they also can optimize logos for specific countries if desired.design, logos, international marketing, standardization, adaptation, structural equation models, Gibbs sampling, concomitant variable, Bayesian, mixture models

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Three experiments examined consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for products bundled together in a promotion. Describing one of the disparate products in the bundle as "free" decreased WTP for each product when sold individually. However, a "freebie" offer did not influence the overall price for the bundle of disparate products, a finding robust across different settings and populations. The differential effect of freebies is explained by varying judgment difficulty, with the price being easier to arrive at for just a single product than for the combination. Consistent with this explanation factors influencing judgment difficulty moderated the freebie devaluation effect.

Although previous research has demonstrated the importance of emotions in ultimatum bargaining, this research provides a more direct, convergent test of the role of anger in explaining rejections of unfair offers in ultimatum bargaining. First, using appraisal theory of emotions, this research examines the extent to which the cognitive appraisal of unfairness leads to the emotion of anger, which in turn, drives punitive behavior (i.e., rejection of offers). Second, this research explores the possibility of decoupling the emotion of anger from its antecedent appraisal of unfairness in order to attenuate responders' inclination to reject unfair offers. Third, following the current research tradition that goes beyond a valence-based approach, we differentiate between the negative emotions of anger and sadness and examine whether it is the specific emotion of anger that is relevant to the cognitive appraisal of unfairness or the general negative valence of the emotion.