A Framework for Understanding Consumer Choices for Others

Abstract

Although most research on consumers’ choices, and resulting insights, have focused on choices that consumers make solely for themselves, consumers often make choices for others, and there is a growing literature examining such choices. Theoretically, how can this growing literature be integrated, and what gaps remain? Practically, why should marketers, consumers, and policy makers care when choices are made for others, and what should they do differently? A 2 × 2 framework of consumers’ choices for others addresses these questions. This framework has two fundamental dimensions: the chooser’s social focus (relationship vs. recipient oriented) and the chooser’s consideration of consumption preferences (highlight the recipient’s preferences vs. balance the recipient’s preferences with the chooser’s preferences). These dimensions generate four cells that represent prototypical choosing-for-others contexts: gift-giving (relationship focus, highlighting recipient’s preferences), joint consumption (relationship focus, balancing recipient’s and chooser’s preferences), everyday favors/pick-ups (recipient focus, highlighting recipient’s preferences), and caregiving (recipient focus, balancing recipient’s and chooser’s preferences). This framework captures most choosing-for-others situations, and each cell involves a distinct profile of motives, ultimately affecting choices. This framework integrates the choosing-for-others literature, which we hope will guide future research, and it also offers practical implications for marketers, consumers, and policy makers.

In Times of Trouble: A Framework for Understanding Consumers’ Responses to Threats

“…Although these may be temporary shifts primed by the pandemic, they may also have long-term effects on consumer behavior. Future research can lead to better understanding of how making choices for the self extends to different choosing-for-others contexts and how to prompt consumers to make choices that are good for others ( Liu, Dallas, and Fitzsimons 2019 ).…”

An agenda for psychological distance apart from construal level

“…Insights from spatial distance may need to be linked to the other distances in a scattershot fashion insofar as space includes a variety of effects, with landmarks and speed being just two. Social distance, on the other hand, has witnessed the articulation of several clear frameworks explicating how choices for the self differ from choices for others (Liu, Dallas, & Fitzsimons, 2019; Polman & Wu, 2020; Tajfel, 1982), and these models offer a king's ransom of insights readily applicable to other dimensions of distance. In light of the tendency for people to treat their future selves like distinctly other persons (Pronin et al, 2008), would heightened loss aversion in choices for the self (vs. others; Polman, 2012) be mirrored in heightened loss aversion for choices made manifest in the present (vs. the future)?…”

Self–other differences in change predictions

“…In everyday life, consumers make decisions not only for themselves but also for others (Laren, ; Steffel & Williams, ). Gift‐giving, joint consumption, everyday pick‐ups, and caregiving are four prototypical choosing‐for‐others contexts (Liu et al, forthcoming). Self–other is a dimension of psychological distance (Liberman, Trope, & Stephan, ).…”

“…For example, consumers engage in financial markets where they make predictions about the price of the stock they or their friends have bought. Self–other differences in decision making have attracted much attention in recent years (Liu, Dallas, & Fitzsimons, forthcoming). However, in most extant studies, participants made predictions about self‐regarding events.…”