The emphasis on business size has become more overt in recent years. However, it is not clear how company size influences consumers' evaluations. Five experiments investigate the effect of size on consumers' expectations and evaluations of company behaviors. Consumers expect higher communion from small compared to large companies, and consequently, small relative to large companies garner lower evaluations when they exhibit low communion behaviors. These high communion expectations are driven by the relatively lower marketplace power of small companies. While study 1 provides real-world evidence for the effect of company size on evaluations of company behaviors, studies 2A and 2B demonstrate that perceptions of power underlie the effect of company size on expectations for communion. Studies 3A and 3B indicate that when a company engages in low communion behavior, small relative to large companies garner lower evaluations and this effect is driven by consumers' perceived violation of expectations. Incorporating additional studies, two meta-analyses conducted with four studies for consumer expectations and six studies for consumer evaluations provide confirmatory evidence in support of our hypotheses. This research demonstrates that how companies are perceived in terms of size and power creates meaning for consumers that drives their expectations and subsequent evaluations.

Anthropomorphism, or imbuing nonhuman entities with human traits, is widely prevalent in the marketplace. The last decade of consumer research demonstrates that when imbued with human characteristics, anthropomorphized brands and products become active participants in the consumption experience and are viewed and treated fundamentally differently than those viewed simply as objects. We identify three dimensions around how consumers relate to anthropomorphized entities: connection, comprehension, and competition. The first two C's highlight how anthropomorphized brands and products benefit consumers by fulfilling belongingness needs (connection) and helping consumers understand unfamiliar situations and products (comprehension). In contrast, the competition dimension highlights how anthropomorphized brands and products are perceived as adversaries or potential threats to consumers’ individual goals. By identifying competition as the third C, we illuminate self‐protection as an additional motivation that shapes consumers’ responses to anthropomorphized entities—a motivation that has not been directly accounted for in previous theorizing.

Women engage in a variety of beauty practices, or “beauty work,” to enhance their physical appearance, such as applying cosmetics, tanning, or exercising. Although the rewards of physical attractiveness are well documented, perceptions of both the women who engage in efforts to enhance their appearance and the high-effort beauty products marketed to them are not well understood. Across seven studies, we demonstrate that consumers judge women who engage in certain types of extensive beauty work as possessing poorer moral character. These judgments occur only for effortful beauty work perceived as transformative (significantly altering appearance) and transient (lasting a relatively short time), such that they emerge within cosmetics and tanning, yet not skincare or exercise. This effect is mediated by the perception that putting high effort into one’s appearance signals a willingness to misrepresent one’s true self, and translates into lower purchase intentions for higher-effort cosmetics. We identify several boundary conditions, including the attractiveness of the woman performing the beauty work and whether the effort is attributed to external norms or causes. In examining how beauty work elicits moral judgments, we also shed light on why effortful cosmetic use is viewed negatively, yet effortful products continue to be commercially successful.

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This study adds theoretical and managerial insights to the sales literature regarding the unfortunate but prevalent issue of stereotyping in sales by supervisors toward underrepresented groups of sales employees. Specifically, we examine (1) the self-evaluative, social, and emotional consequences of being stereotyped by a supervisor, and (2) the moderating role of employees' self-construal (i.e., the employee's level of independence versus interdependence) as it relates to their responses toward a supervisor who holds stereotypical expectations. The results suggest that when a sales supervisor endorses stereotypical views, more interdependent (versus independent) sales employees will likely affiliate more with, and experience fewer negative emotions toward, the supervisor. The results also suggest that sales employees' self-construal moderates the impact of intentions to affiliate with the supervisor on positive stereotypical traits (that are valued in the sales context) but not negative stereotypical traits. While not every sales employee comes from an underrepresented background, every company is interested in the success of their underrepresented sales employees. And, simply being interested in hiring underrepresented employees is not enough. Rather, firms need to understand how to effectively manage diversity and facilitate strong sales supervisor-employee relationships. This research provides such understanding. linyun W. yang