Make Consumption Decisions Research Articles

Ethical Consumption: A Review and Research Agenda

ABSTRACTEthical consumption is a domain of consumer research that focuses on individuals' ethical concerns when making consumption decisions. Owing to its enormous potential as a research domain, ethical consumption has gained increasing importance, especially in view of the impact of consumption choices on the environment and society as a whole. This study consolidates the existing body of information on ethical consumption through a systematic literature review (SLR) employing the SPAR‐4‐SLR methodology in conjunction with the ADO‐TCM framework. An extensive search was conducted using the Scopus and Web of Science databases, carefully selecting 125 publications related to ethical consumption from 2002 to 2023. Next, a comprehensive descriptive analysis was conducted to identify the most substantial gaps in the literature and propose concrete directions for future research. Scholars across academic fields can utilize these findings and guidelines to inform their research, while practitioners can implement ethical consumption behavioral philosophies in their sustainable business practices.

The Influence of Online Social and Physical Presence on User Consumption Decisions in TikTok Livestreaming: A Scoping Review.

This scoping review aimed to clarify and redefine the concepts of social and physical presence in the context of online livestreaming environments. Physical presence involves technical elements and nonhuman-to-human interaction, factors that inevitably influence social presence, which has human-to-human interactions at its core. Considering one type of presence to the exclusion of the other may not provide sufficiently informed decisions for user consumption. However, most previous studies have only studied either physical or social presence factors; few have systematically examined both to explain their influence. This review examined how the factors under these two presence influenced users' consumption decision-making process in TikTok live-stream retail purchases by synthesizing 60 studies conducted from 2019 to 2023 using Arksey and O'Malley's 5-step framework. Evidence of the specific attributes by which presence affects users' consumption decisions was elicited and reorganized. Using the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) framework for scoping review and guided by the joanna briggs institute (JBI) methodological guidelines, the results reveal that out of the 60 studies, 36 were influenced by social presence and 24 by physical presence. When livestreaming online, social presence tends to include the user and anchor perspectives, which prompts users to make consumption decisions. However, online physical presence includes products, technology, and scenes as its main dimensions, and users make consumption decisions through perceptual control. This review clarifies new media livestreaming communication and the key factors influencing users' consumption decision-making systems. It also suggests that integrating online social and physical presence in future research will yield a better understanding of livestreaming purchase decisions.

Applying Anchoring Effect in Catering Industry A Case Study of Cotti Coffee vs. Luckin Coffee

Behavioral economics is one of the hot topics in current research. Some researchers have found that the anchoring effect in behavioral economics theory generally appears in various markets in people's lives. This paper focuses on the anchoring effect in the catering industry, taking Luckin Coffee and Cotti Coffee as case studies on why and how anchoring has an effect on consumers' consumption decisions. This study conducted a questionnaire among Chinese high school students to show the existence of anchoring effect and explain how individuals make consumption decisions. Finally, this paper discusses the reasons why people are not affected by the anchoring effect, and gives corresponding suggestions from the perspectives of merchants and consumers, that is, how merchants can strengthen the anchoring effect on consumers to increase sales and how consumers can avoid falling into the consumption trap created by the anchoring effect.

The contagion effect on children's consumption decision

The inclusion of a positive contagious source can increase consumers' attitudes and purchase intention to a product. However, few studies investigated this effect when consumers have prior preferences. To bridge the literature gap, a field experience was conducted to examine the influence of positive contagion on children's food decision-making in a real-life scenario. Fifty-eight children between ages 7 and 12 were invited to make consumption decisions under either the control condition or the treatment condition where items were surrounded by contagion sources. The treatment condition partially optimized children's selections. Moreover, eye movement results showed that less visual attention was distributed to the items surrounded by contagion sources. Finally, the moderating role of consumer socialization and family communication patterns was examined.

Guardians of Trust: How Review Platforms Can Fight Fakery and Build Consumer Trust

As customers increasingly rely on online reviews for making consumption decisions, the dangers arising from misinformation and fakery have become an acute source of concern for consumers, firms, and society at large. Many online review platforms claim a role as guardians of trust in the information exchange process. Yet, little is known about the practices firms can utilize to design platforms that build and safeguard consumer trust. The authors draw on governance and identity disclosure literature streams to propose five practices that mitigate fakery and build trust in the platform: monitoring, exposure, community building, status endowment, and identity disclosure. Five studies (1) establish the individual and joint effects these practices have on platform trust, (2) identify the mediating processes by which the practices build trust, (3) verify the ecological value of the conceptual framework, (4) provide support of the salience of the practices, and (5) show how the practices build trust above and beyond review content–level characteristics. Interaction effects suggest that exposure, community building, and status endowment obviate the need for identity disclosure in building platform trust, a finding that mitigates related privacy concerns. Collectively, the findings can improve platform design, enabling review platforms to fulfill their promise of mitigating fakery and increasing trust.

Productive and repressive power: The influence of gender norms on parents' decisions on children's consumption

AbstractThis study examines how parents exert productive and repressive power in influencing their children's gender socialization through consumption. We interviewed 20 parents responsible for educating 36 children to investigate their challenges when confronted with their children's consumption demands that deviate from gender‐appropriate norms. Under a queer feminist poststructuralist perspective, our results reveal the conflicts between parents and their children and between mothers and fathers when making consumption decisions that affect gender socialization. Our findings contribute to the consumer socialization literature by recognizing how gender norms influence parents' decisions about their children's consumption. We also shed light on the deployment of productive and repressive power tactics by parents in shaping their children's gender identity toward an “ideal” norm.

The Uncanny Valley Effect and Induced Compensatory Consumption Behavior in Language Conditions

With the gradually widespread use of personification marketing, there is the phenomenon with extensive attention, the uncanny valley effect, that people ' s familiarity for robots decreases sharply with the increase of personification degree, further leading to compensatory consumption behavior based on the self-discrepancy theory and cause the illusion of 'marketing success'. This paper theoretically explores the essence of violation expectations as the uncanny valley effect, and designs a simulation scene experiment in which subjects make consumption decisions in different personification situations in the stimulation of language materials, so as to study the familiarity and compensatory consumption curves under different violation expectations. The results show that under the stimulation of language conditions, there is a familiarity curve similar to the uncanny valley effect and complementary compensatory consumption curve, and the threshold is calculated by fitting curve, within which the familiarity is the lowest and the compensatory consumption is the highest. The results provide empirical evidence to prove the violation of expectation hypothesis, and prove that there is also the uncanny valley effect in the language channel, and the threshold provides guidance for the development of artificial intelligence enterprises.

The Capacity Decision-Making of Omnichannel Catering Firms Based on Queueing System Considering Customer Reference Behavior

Omnichannel catering firms need to pay attention to the consumer behavior of customers in both online and offline channels to make the corresponding capacity decisions. However, customers’ consumption behavior is not only affected by base utility, but also by reference utility, which indicates that customers have reference dependence when making consumption decisions. In order to better help omnichannel catering firms to make capacity decisions more in line with customer consumption behavior in their actual operations, this paper adopts the queuing theory to construct an optimal capacity decision-making model for omnichannel catering firms. We also analyzed the impact of channel information availability on customer reference behavior and the subsequent impact on the firm’s optimal decision-making. The findings were as follows: when the channel information is unavailable, customers in each channel take their expectation of waiting time as the reference point. With the improvement of the sensitivity of customers in different channels to the reference point, firms should improve their safety capacity to meet customers’ needs. Moreover, at a higher reference point, the increase in customer sensitivity can make the firm obtain higher profits. When channel information is available, customers take the waiting time of customers in different channels as the reference point, and the increased sensitivity of online customers to the reference point will prompt firms to reduce safety capacity. Comparing the two scenarios, we also found that omnichannel catering firms could develop lower safety capacities and obtain higher profits more easily when channel information is available. This not only contributes to the development of omnichannel catering firms, but also expands the application scope of reference theory.

Adolescent Generation Z and sustainable and responsible fashion consumption: exploring the value-action gap

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to explore whether a “value-action gap” exists between what members of the adolescent Generation Z (Gen Z) cohort value and how they act by investigating their actions related to sustainable and responsible fashion consumption (SRFC). Specific focus was placed on understanding these actions across the apparel consumption cycle, ranging from the acquisition, to use and disposal stages.Design/methodology/approachForty-one members of Gen Z (20 males and 21 females) ranging in age from 15 to 18 participated in a total of seven focus groups.FindingsThree emergent themes were identified and used to structure the interpretation: unintentionally sustainable, a knowledge conundrum and perceived barriers.Research limitations/implicationsThe majority of focus group participants were Caucasian, and all were teenagers from a single geographical area in the Southeastern USA. Findings provided by this study offer insight regarding the SRFC habits of Gen Z relative to their concerns regarding sustainability and social and environmental responsibility.Practical implicationsFindings offer practitioners an opportunity to better understand how to address the needs of this generational cohort as they progress through adulthood.Originality/valueFindings of this study investigate the value-action gap to offer insight into how adolescent members of Gen Z make consumption decisions, and specifically within a framework of the apparel consumption cycle as a whole, including acquisition, use and disposal. Findings also reveal some of their more general views on SRFC.

Impact of review narrativity on sales in a competitive environment

Online user‐generated reviews have received significant importance in the literature as they help consumers make consumption decisions. However, despite significant developments in this domain in the past decade, little attention has been paid to how narrative aspects of reviews affect consumers’ consumption decisions and, consequently, influence sales. A narrative can be defined as a sequentially structured discourse that provides an understanding of the events that unfold around the narrator. Relying on the literature on narrative transportation, we examine the role of review narrativity in determining firm sales, the contingency effect of the competitive environment, and review polarity. Specifically, we propose that review narrativity has an asymmetric U‐shaped (or, J‐shaped) relationship with sales; the impact of review narrativity on sales would have significant positive interaction with the polarity of the review text; and that under high (low) competitive agglomeration, review narrativity would have a significant (insignificant) positive impact on sales. Operationalizing review narrativity using three different measures from a unique and rich dataset collected from OpenTable and using a Bayesian framework, consistent with our hypotheses, we find that the narrativity of textual reviews exerts a significant nonlinear impact on sales contingent on their polarity. Enriching the relatively nascent empirical literature on the effects of competitive context on eWOM, the current paper further offers clear empirical evidence that the impact of review narrativity on sales is significantly higher (lower) under a high (low) competitive agglomeration. The paper makes a methodological contribution by developing a flexible framework to identify the proposed relationships better while accounting for heterogeneity, endogeneity, and temporal patterns in the context of dynamic panels.

Information Nudges and Self-Control

We study the optimal design of information nudges directed to present-biased consumers who make consumption decisions over time without exact prior knowledge of their long-term consequences. For any distribution of risks, there exists a consumer-optimal information nudge that is of cutoff type, recommending abstinence if the risk is high enough. Depending on the distribution of risks, more or fewer consumers have to be sacrificed, as they cannot be credibly warned even though they would like to be. Under a stronger present bias, the target group receiving a credible warning to abstain must be tightened, but this need not increase the probability of harmful consumption. If some consumers have a stronger present bias than others, traffic-light nudges turn out to be optimal and, when subgroups of consumers differ sufficiently, the optimal traffic-light nudge is also subgroup optimal. We finally compare the consumer-optimal nudge with those that a health authority or a lobbyist would favor.This paper was accepted by Manel Baucells, behavioral economics and decision analysis.Funding: This research benefited from the financial support of the Agence Nationale de la Recherche [Programme d’Investissements d’Avenir Grant ANR-17-EURE-0010], the German Research Foundation [Grants Collaborative Research Center Transregio 190 and 224 Project B03], and the research foundation Toulouse School of Economics-Partnership.Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4428 .

Semi-Supervised Fake Reviews Detection based on AspamGAN

With the popularization of social software and e-business in recent years, more and more consumers like to share their consumption experiences on social networks and refer to other consumers' reviews and opinions when making consumption decisions. Online reviews have become an essential part of browsing on websites such as shopping, and people's reliance on informative reviews have contributed to the rise of fake reviews. The traditional classification method is affected by the label dataset, which is not only time-consuming, laborious, and subjective, but also the extraction of artificial features also affects the classification accuracy. Due to the relative length of the online text, the possibility of the classifier losing important information increases, this weakens the model’s detection capability. To solve this aforementioned problem, a semi-supervised Generative Adversarial Network (AspamGAN) fake reviews detection method incorporating an attention mechanism is proposed. Using labeled and unlabeled data to correctly learn input distributions, the features required for classification are automatically discovered using deep neural networks, providing better prediction accuracy for online reviews. The approach includes attention mechanisms in the classifier to obtain an adequate semantic representation and relies on a limited dataset of labeled data to detect false reviews, and is applied on the TripAdvisor dataset. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art semi-supervised fake review detection techniques when the label dataset is limited.

Sociability and interdependent self‐construal on consumer choice for group: A moderated mediation model

AbstractIn joint consumptions, people often make consumption decisions for their respective groups, where chosen products or services are jointly shared by the members of their groups. Although the phenomena of joint consumptions appear commonly in real life, the literature of consumer behaviors has mainly focused on choices for the self instead of choices for others. This paper focuses on identifying the influence of personality on consumer choices for others. Specifically, it studies the relationship between sociability and consumption choice for a group by examining the mediation role of sensemaking process (i.e., information and feedback seeking) and the moderated mediation role of interdependent self‐construal. Our results show that individuals high on sociability are more likely to engage in group‐oriented consumption decision making, while obtaining social satisfaction; such effects tend to be achieved via information and feedback seeking, as a channel of sensemaking. And, the influence of sensemaking is stronger for individuals who are low in interdependent self‐construal. This research contributes to the consumer‐behavior literature by examining individual differences and provides practical insights for managers, decision makers and marketers.

Social Learning and Polarization on Content Platforms

This paper investigates the nature of social learning (SL) on content platforms and its impact on optimal content design. The content provider can choose low- or high-quality content and, in addition, may also polarize (as opposed to keeping it neutral) the content in favor of some consumers while opposing other consumers' opinions/preferences. On the content platform, SL manifests as consumers' inference about the unknown quality of content using the history of past consumption, based on which they make consumption decisions. We specify a behavioral model of SL that accounts for and illustrates the impact of false consensus effect (FCE)---a cognitive bias wherein consumers project their own preference onto others---on the SL outcome. In this environment, we find that whether the SL mechanism reveals the true quality of content depends largely on the interaction between content polarization and the degree of the FCE. Depending on the extent of the interaction, SL may be incomplete or even cursed in the sense that beliefs converge to a limit where history offers no information about quality. The optimal content design internalizes the SL dynamics and as a result, we find that quality and polarization can be used as substitutes by the content provider. In particular, content may be polarized to mask its low quality. Interestingly, we also find that SL increases the incentive for the content provider to increase quality compared to a benchmark without SL. Furthermore, we find parametric regimes in which SL may not be beneficial to consumers, but is in fact preferred by the content platform (and vice versa). In this sense, the value of SL may be misaligned between the platform and its consumers.

The role of novelty and fat and sugar concentration in food selection by captive tufted capuchins (Sapajus apella).

Capuchins, like other primates, use feedback from sensory cues and digestion to make decisions about which foods to consume and which to avoid. However, little is known about how capuchins make consumption decisions when simultaneously presented with novel and familiar foods, or how food familiarity and macronutrient concentration together influence food choice, topics with potential implications for developmental and health research. In this study, we evaluated the role of familiarity, as well as fat and sugar concentration, in the food selections of captive tufted capuchins (Sapajus apella). In the first experiment, over 10 sessions, subjects were assigned to either a group that chose between one familiar and one novel food item both high in fat or sugar (high condition), or to a group that chose between one familiar and one novel food item both low in fat or sugar (low condition). In the second experiment, subjects were divided into three groups, familiarized with food over five feeding sessions, and then offered the familiarized food and a novel food that varied in fat or sugar for 10 sessions. When offered foods high in fat, capuchins showed no clear signs of neophobia, forming an initial preference for the novel food, rejecting foods less frequently, and selecting foods faster than when offered foods low in fat. These trends were generally not observed in response to foods with sugar. When presented with options that varied in macronutrient concentration, subjects showed an initial interest in the novel food irrespective of whether it was high in fat or sugar, yet formed a final preference for the higher-concentration item. Findings suggest that the concentration of fat or sugar in novel foods may be an important mediator of exploratory behavior and that capuchins rely on immediate feedback from taste and other sensory cues to make consumption decisions.

Good and bad sugars: Australian adults’ perspectives on sugar in their diet

ABSTRACT This study analyses the relationship between food choices and morality by exploring how Australian adults conceptualise and negotiate their sugar intake. Fifteen in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with English speaking adults residing in South Australia. Participants were purposively sampled from a national survey based on their sugar consumption levels, age and gender. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Participants initially defined sugars as good or bad based on source, colour, texture, taste and impact of sugar on health. On being provided with evidence on amounts of sugar present in commonly consumed foods and drinks, participants redefined their perceptions to consider all sugars as bad sugars. This created moral challenges for the participants leading to two types of justifications for their own sugar consumption. One group of justifications drew on socially evaluative statements that participants used to present themselves as morally virtuous. Here sugar was considered as an essential source of energy and part of a balanced diet; limited to infrequent occasions such as celebrations, social gatherings and cultural practices; and as a cultural obligation. The second group of justifications located the source of morality within the individual and presented sugar intake as important for emotional and psychological wellbeing, and also as something that could be controlled by taking responsibility. There were no differences in discourses between low and high sugar consumers. This study provides new insights on how Australians conceptualise sugar in diet and make consumption decisions, which are important for influencing sugar consumption at a societal level.

Factors that affect scavengers Behavior in making consumption decisions in the City of Padang

Factors that affect scavengers Behavior in making consumption decisions in the City of Padang

Modeling demand response based on utility function considering wind profit maximization in the day-ahead market

In this paper, behavior of electricity customers is modeled using utility function. The utility function which measures customer’s preferences is an important concept in microeconomics. This function interprets how a rational consumer would make consumption decisions. Based on the utility function, an economic demand model is developed as a function of customer risk aversion behavior to consider the effect of incentive payment on electricity consumption. The proposed model is designed to maximize the individual customer’s welfare under incentive-based demand response (DR) programs. Then, the DR is used to maximize wind power profit in the day-ahead market. To this end, the wind power producer can either use real time balancing market or DR to cope with the energy submitted in the day-ahead market and the delivered energy. To determine the day-ahead and balancing market prices, a probabilistic two-step market clearing optimization is solved considering uncertainties of wind power and behavior of electricity customers. The results show that as risk aversion behavior increases, more incentive payment is needed to convince the customer to reduce his/her demand. The numerical results demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed DR model in improving the wind generation profit in the day-ahead market.

Greek Consumers’ Behaviour Towards Fast-Food Consumption

Fast food has become a very popular nutritional habit for consumers and a billion dollars market for businesses across the world. As in most countries, in Greece there are thousands of fast food businesses that aim at satisfying the growing demand for fast food. However, there is lack of research about the behaviour of Greek consumers regarding fast food consumption. On this context, the goal of this research was to investigatethe frequency of consumption in Greece, the most popular types of fast food, the criteria with which consumers make consumption decisions and the environmental, economical, ethical, cultural and psychological factors that influence their buying behaviours. The results of the research show wide popularity of fast food consumption among Greek consumers and a clear trend towards healthy, tasty, easily accessible and not necessarily low-cost fast food.

The effect of peer observation on consumption choices: evidence from a lab-in-field experiment

ABSTRACTWe investigate the impact of peer observation on consumption decisions using a lab-in-field experiment. Respondents make consumption decisions either alone or under peer observation. We find evidence for peer effects. We are able to study these further by looking into the mechanism and performing detailed heterogeneity analysis. Concerning the mechanisms, we find evidence for an information channel. Further, we show that the consumption choice is influenced by how many people made the same decision previously, but not by who those people are, hence finding evidence of a psychological channel. Respondents with higher cognitive ability are less susceptible to peer effects, while people living in small villages are more susceptible.