Circles, Squares, and Choice: The Effect of Shape Arrays on Uniqueness and Variety Seeking

Maimaran, Michal; Wheeler, S. Christian

doi:10.1509/jmkr.45.6.731

Cited by 80 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Next, we primed half the participants with uniqueness (adapted from Maimaran and Wheeler 2008). These individuals were asked to look at eight pictures and identify the number of circles and squares in each image.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Each picture contained an array of shapes in which all the shapes were the same except one (e.g., ⅪyⅪⅪⅪⅪⅪⅪⅪⅪ). Exposure to such figures has been shown to increase uniqueness seeking behavior by making uniqueness motives more accessible (Maimaran and Wheeler 2008). Control participants did not complete the priming task.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People with higher needs for uniqueness prefer products that are more scarce or differentiated (Lynn and Harris 1997;Tian et al 2001). And situational factors can activate people's desires to make different choices or distinguish themselves from those around them (Ariely and Levav 2000;Fishbach, Ratner, and Zhang 2011;Maimaran and Wheeler 2008). Differentiation may also be driven by the symbolic meaning of consumption; consumers often diverge from the behavior of out-group members to avoid communicating undesired identities Heath 2007, 2008;Berger and Rand 2008;White andDahl 2006, 2007).…”

Section: Assimilation and Differentiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Identifiable but Not Identical: Combining Social Identity and Uniqueness Motives in Choice

Chan¹,

Berger²,

Boven³

2012

Journal of Consumer Research

273

210

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Assimilation and Differentiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Identifiable but Not Identical: Combining Social Identity and Uniqueness Motives in Choice

Chan¹,

Berger²,

Boven³

2012

Journal of Consumer Research

273

210

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Our experimental approach, using a web-based simulated shopping environment (Lo, 2009;Lo & Harvey, 2011;Maimaran & Wheeler, 2008), 2 enabled us to investigate the decision processes underlying compulsive buying.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of shopping addiction on consumer decision-making: Web-based studies in real time

Lo¹,

Harvey²

2012

Journal of Behavioral Addictions

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Background and aims: Most research into compulsive buying has focused on its causes: questionnaires have been used to study its association with various factors assumed to be important in its etiology. Few studies have dealt with the effects of being a compulsive buyer on shopping decisions. Also, processes underlying compulsive buying are dynamic but questionnaires give access only to a retrospective view of them from the standpoint of the participant. The aim of the current study was to investigate the decision processes underlying compulsive buying. Methods: Two simulated shopping experiments, each with over 100 participants, were used to compare the decision processes of compulsive shoppers with those of non-compulsive shoppers. This approach allowed us to measure many features of consumer decision-making that are relevant to compulsive shopping. Results: Compulsive shoppers differed from general shoppers in six ways: choice characteristics, searching behavior, overspending, budget-consciousness, effects of credit card availability, and emotional responses to overspending. Conclusions: Results are consistent with the view that compulsive buying, like other behavioral addictions, develops because the cognitive system under-predicts the extent of post-addiction craving produced by emotional and visceral processes.

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“…On the other hand, consistency should result in familiarity. In line with this, Maimaran and Wheeler (2008) demonstrated that simply exposing consumers to novel geometric shapes could evoke variety seeking, whereas a homogenous array of shapes prompts consistency seeking. Thus, consumers may seek consistency for liking while they also seek variety for interest.…”

Section: Consumers As Consistency Seekers and Variety Seekersmentioning

confidence: 56%

The neglected emotion of interest and its relevance to consumer psychology

Sung¹

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A main goal of marketing is to evoke a sense of familiarity that enhance consumers' psychological and behavioural responses. Yet, little is known about why consumers sometimes respond negatively toward familiarity and respond positively toward novelty. Specifically, the question of how affective motivation drives consumers to favor novelty is important in achieving enhanced marketing. Interest or curiosity is an emotion related to a strong approach motivation and exploratory behavior toward novelty. This thesis explores the relevance and implications of interest to consumer psychology and behavior. The investigation is grounded in emotion differentiation, appraisal theories of interest, and a functional account of emotion. It draws from literature on the exposure effect, differentiation of positive emotions, the emotion of interest, metacognitive experience of fluency, new product and innovation management, and advertising.The thesis begins with a review of the relevant literature that shows how consumers tend to paradoxically favor both familiarity and novelty (Chapter 1). In this conceptual review, I propose that the differentiation between liking and interest can explain this previously unresolved paradox.Specifically, familiarity appears to evoke liking, whereas novelty elicits interest. This chapter contributes to our understanding of how and why consumers gravitate toward novelty by providing an explanation: consumers' have dualistic tendency to favor familiarity and novelty simultaneously.The remaining chapters present three streams of research which show that consumers tend to favor novelty because it generates the emotion of interest. Chapter 2 contributes to the innovation management literature by showing that consumers' subjective perceptions of novelty toward a product design, instead of the deviation of design itself, can enhance product evaluation and behavior toward the product. Chapter 3 contributes to the advertising literature by applying appraisal theories to the elicitation of consumer interest and demonstrates that the simple advertising cue of novelty can evoke the emotion of interest. Chapter 4 contributes to the literature on consumer research by showing that disfluency (i.e., metacognitive difficulty) can serve as a cue for novelty -one that evokes interest and enhances product evaluation. This provides a potential explanation to the conflicting findings between the positive effects of fluency (through familiarity) and disfluency (through novelty) on product evaluation.Taken together, this set of studies is the first to demonstrate the relevance and implication of interest to consumer psychology and behavior. I show that product design can benefit from considering the appraisal structure of interest and, specifically, it accounts for consumers' subjective perception and affective response toward design newness. I also find that a consumer's novelty appraisal is a significant determinant of perceived interestingness of an advertisement and this can be evoked by simple advertising ...

show abstract

Circles, Squares, and Choice: The Effect of Shape Arrays on Uniqueness and Variety Seeking

Cited by 80 publications

References 27 publications

Identifiable but Not Identical: Combining Social Identity and Uniqueness Motives in Choice

Identifiable but Not Identical: Combining Social Identity and Uniqueness Motives in Choice

Effects of shopping addiction on consumer decision-making: Web-based studies in real time

The neglected emotion of interest and its relevance to consumer psychology

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