The Impact of Death-Related Media Information on Consumer Value Orientation and Scope Sensitivity

Abstract

This research examines how incidental exposure to death-related information in the media affects consumers’ value orientation and scope sensitivity to marketing stimuli. Five studies demonstrate that, in contrast to thoughts about one's own mortality, exposure to death-related information in the media can shift consumers’ focus from extrinsic to intrinsic values. This leads them to pay less attention to the marketing stimuli, which are generally associated with extrinsic values, and consequently results in lower sensitivity to the magnitude of products and services. These effects are reversed when the marketing stimuli are associated with intrinsic values. Moreover, we found that exposure to death-related media information will generate effects similar to those of mortality salience when the information is perceived to be self-relevant and thus could induce death anxiety. The authors discuss implications and possible extensions.

Frozen by stress: Stress increases scope insensitivity

“…Consistent with previous literature [30], repeated measures ANOVA was applied. Since the perceived chronic stress measure is a continuous variable, we performed a median split on stress scores and treated the expensiveness ratings for the prices $138 and $344 as repeated measures.…”

“…Unlike the expensiveness ratings in Study 1, the actual selling price for ten Beatles CDs is not always higher than that of five CDs in the marketplace. Therefore, repeated measures analysis [30] was adopted, with dichotomous stress levels as a between-subjects factor and the indicated WTP for five CDs and ten CDs as repeated measures. Neither the main effect of presentation order ( F (1, 246) = 1.108, p = .294) nor the interaction with WTP was significant ( F (1, 246) = 0.641, p = .424), thus they were omitted in the analysis.…”

“…For example, Pickett, Gardner, and Knowles showed that when the desire to belong was enhanced, individuals were more sensitive to human cues, such as facial expressions and vocal tones [29]. Moreover, Huang, Huang, and Jiang demonstrated that individuals became scope insensitive after exposure to death-related cues because death-related cues shifted individuals’ value focus from extrinsic to intrinsic [30].…”

“…Negative emotions have been found to narrow attention scope [31] and lead to more self-focused attention [32] in existing literature. Thus, it is reasonable to infer that individuals in negative emotions allocate less attention to external stimuli and thus less sensitive to external stimuli, leading to scope insensitivity [25, 26, 30].…”

Visualizing Sustainability Research in Business and Management (1990–2019) and Emerging Topics: A Large-Scale Bibliometric Analysis

“…Mortality ratio ICU admission control [74]; Death related media information [75] • • Health workforce management considering stress, efficiency and productivity; Health risks management Health information technology [75] • Health risk management with IT; emergency management;…”