JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Quantitative information can appear in different units (e.g., 7-year warranty p 84-month warranty). This article demonstrates that attribute differences appear larger on scales with a higher number of units; expressing quality information on such an expanded scale makes consumers switch to a higher-quality option. Testifying to its practical importance, expressing the energy content of snacks in kilojoules rather than kilocalories increases the choice of a healthy snack. The unit effect occurs because consumers focus on the number rather than the type of units in which information is expressed (numerosity effect). Therefore, reminding consumers of alternative units in which information can be expressed eliminates the unit effect. Finally, the unit effect moderates relative thinking: consumers are more sensitive to relative attribute differences when the attribute is expressed on expanded scales. The relation with anchoring and implications for temporal discounting and loyalty programs are discussed. The University of Chicago Press

This report attempts to provide an evolutionary explanation for humans' motivation to strive for money in present-day societies. We propose that people's desire for money is a modern derivate of their desire for food. In three studies, we show the reciprocal association between the incentive value of food and of money. In Study 1, hungry participants were less likely than satiated participants to donate to charity. In Study 2, participants in a room with an olfactory food cue, known to increase the desire to eat, offered less money in a give-some game compared with participants in a room free of scent. In Study 3, participants' desire for money affected the amount of M&M's they ate in a subsequent taste test, but only among participants who were not restricting their food intake in order to manage their weight.

This study shows that people experiencing financial dissatisfaction may choose and consume food for its energy value. Because money and food are closely related, exchangeable resources, financially dissatisfied people may be motivated to replenish their need for financial resources by consuming caloric resources or food energy. Five experiments provide support for this hypothesis across various measures of caloric desire and actual eating behavior. The findings have notable implications for marketing and public policy. Whereas marketing researchers have increasingly investigated the interplay of taste and health considerations in food consumption, this research demonstrates the importance of investigating food energy considerations.

No abstract

The authors thank Tom Meyvis and Sabrina Bruyneel for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript and the marketing groups of the K.U.Leuven, Erasmus University and Tilburg University for their useful comments on the corresponding presentation. The authors also thank Ineke Thiry and Alan McCormack for their help with the data collection. Financial support by the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO), the competitive research fund of the KULeuven, and Censydiam are gratefully acknowledged.