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Factors Affecting Impulse Buying Behavior of Consumers

In recent years, the study of consumer behavior has been marked by significant changes, mainly in decision-making process and consequently in the influences of purchase intention (Stankevich, 2017 ).

The markets are different and characterized by an increased competition, as well a constant innovation in products and services available and a greater number of companies in the same market. In this scenario it is essential to know the consumer well (Varadarajan, 2020 ). It is through the analysis of the factors that have a direct impact on consumer behavior that it is possible to innovate and meet their expectations. This research is essential for marketers to be able to improve their campaigns and reach the target audience more effectively (Ding et al., 2020 ).

Consumer behavior refers to the activities directly involved in obtaining products /services, so it includes the decision-making processes that precede and succeed these actions. Thus, it appears that the advertising message can cause a certain psychological influence that motivates individuals to desire and, consequently, buy a certain product/service (Wertenbroch et al., 2020 ).

Studies developed by Meena ( 2018 ) show that from a young age one begins to have a preference for one product/service over another, as we are confronted with various commercial stimuli that shape our choices. The sales promotion has become one of the most powerful tools to change the perception of buyers and has a significant impact on their purchase decision (Khan et al., 2019 ). Advertising has a great capacity to influence and persuade, and even the most innocuous, can cause changes in behavior that affect the consumer's purchase intention. Falebita et al. ( 2020 ) consider this influence predominantly positive, as shown by about 84.0% of the total number of articles reviewed in the study developed by these authors.

Kumar et al. ( 2020 ) add that psychological factors have a strong implication in the purchase decision, as we easily find people who, after having purchased a product/ service, wonder about the reason why they did it. It is essential to understand the mental triggers behind the purchase decision process, which is why consumer psychology is related to marketing strategies (Ding et al., 2020 ). It is not uncommon for the two areas to use the same models to explain consumer behavior and the reasons that trigger impulse purchases. Consumers are attracted by advertising and the messages it conveys, which is reflected in their behavior and purchase intentions (Varadarajan, 2020 ).

Impulse buying has been studied from several perspectives, namely: (i) rational processes; (ii) emotional resources; (iii) the cognitive currents arising from the theory of social judgment; (iv) persuasive communication; (v) and the effects of advertising on consumer behavior (Malter et al., 2020 ).

The causes of impulsive behavior are triggered by an irresistible force to buy and an inability to evaluate its consequences. Despite being aware of the negative effects of buying, there is an enormous desire to immediately satisfy your most pressing needs (Meena, 2018 ).

The importance of impulse buying in consumer behavior has been studied since the 1940's, since it represents between 40.0 and 80.0% of all purchases. This type of purchase obeys non-rational reasons that are characterized by the sudden appearance and the (in) satisfaction between the act of buying and the results obtained (Reisch and Zhao, 2017 ). Aragoncillo and Orús ( 2018 ) also refer that a considerable percentage of sales comes from purchases that are not planned and do not correspond to the intended products before entering the store.

According to Burton et al. ( 2018 ), impulse purchases occur when there is a sudden and strong emotional desire, which arises from a reactive behavior that is characterized by low cognitive control. This tendency to buy spontaneously and without reflection can be explained by the immediate gratification it provides to the buyer (Pradhan et al., 2018 ).

Impulsive shopping in addition to having an emotional content can be triggered by several factors, including: the store environment, life satisfaction, self-esteem, and the emotional state of the consumer at that time (Gogoi and Shillong, 2020 ). We believe that impulse purchases can be stimulated by an unexpected need, by a visual stimulus, a promotional campaign and/or by the decrease of the cognitive capacity to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of that purchase.

The buying experience increasingly depends on the interaction between the person and the point of sale environment, but it is not just the atmosphere that stimulates the impulsive behavior of the consumer. The sensory and psychological factors associated with the type of products, the knowledge about them and brand loyalty, often end up overlapping the importance attributed to the physical environment (Platania et al., 2016 ).

The impulse buying causes an emotional lack of control generated by the conflict between the immediate reward and the negative consequences that the purchase can originate, which can trigger compulsive behaviors that can become chronic and pathological (Pandya and Pandya, 2020 ).

Sohn and Ko ( 2021 ), argue that although all impulse purchases can be considered as unplanned, not all unplanned purchases can be considered impulsive. Unplanned purchases can occur, simply because the consumer needs to purchase a product, but for whatever reason has not been placed on the shopping list in advance. This suggests that unplanned purchases are not necessarily accompanied by the urgent desire that generally characterizes impulse purchases.

The impulse purchases arise from sensory experiences (e.g., store atmosphere, product layout), so purchases made in physical stores tend to be more impulsive than purchases made online. This type of shopping results from the stimulation of the five senses and the internet does not have this capacity, so that online shopping can be less encouraging of impulse purchases than shopping in physical stores (Moreira et al., 2017 ).

Researches developed by Aragoncillo and Orús ( 2018 ) reveal that 40.0% of consumers spend more money than planned, in physical stores compared to 25.0% in online purchases. This situation can be explained by the fact that consumers must wait for the product to be delivered when they buy online and this time interval may make impulse purchases unfeasible.

Following the logic of Platania et al. ( 2017 ) we consider that impulse buying takes socially accepted behavior to the extreme, which makes it difficult to distinguish between normal consumption and pathological consumption. As such, we believe that compulsive buying behavior does not depend only on a single variable, but rather on a combination of sociodemographic, emotional, sensory, genetic, psychological, social, and cultural factors. Personality traits also have an important role in impulse buying. Impulsive buyers have low levels of self-esteem, high levels of anxiety, depression and negative mood and a strong tendency to develop obsessive-compulsive disorders. However, it appears that the degree of uncertainty derived from the pandemic that hit the world and the consequent economic crisis, seems to have changed people's behavior toward a more planned and informed consumption (Sheth, 2020 ).

Author Contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct and intellectual contribution to the work, and approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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APA Handbook of Consumer Psychology

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  • Table of contents
  • Contributor bios
  • Book details

The  APA Handbook of Consumer Psychology  presents a comprehensive survey of the field, including its historical background and critical sources of information in both core and emerging literature.

This 33-chapter handbook is designed as a library reference that captures up-to-date content on consumer psychology, with insights offered by an outstanding roster of contributors. Broad coverage areas include perspectives on consumer psychology, consumer characteristics and contexts, use of psychology to communicate with consumers, consumer cognitions and affect, and use of psychology to carry out business functions. Chapters pinpoint practical issues; probe unresolved and controversial topics in a balanced manner; and present future theoretical, research, and practice trends.

The handbook provides a starting point for an examination of consumer psychology and ways to move the knowledge forward in this meaningful and vital area of human behavior.

Editorial Board About the Editors Contributors A Note from the Publisher Introduction

Part I. Perspectives on Consumer Psychology

  • Chapter 1. Consumer Psychology: Evolving Goals and Research Orientations Joel B. Cohen and William L. Wilkie
  • Chapter 2. The Activation and Use of Declarative and Procedural Knowledge Robert S. Wyer, Jr.
  • Chapter 3. Consumer Psychology Knowledge Gordon R. Foxall
  • Chapter 4. Structural Equation Models in Consumer Research: Exploring Intuitions and Deeper Meanings of SEMs Richard P. Bagozzi
  • Chapter 5. Understanding the Changing Role and Functions of Marketing Kevin Lane Keller

Part II. Consumers Have Demographic and Psychographic Characteristics

  • Chapter 6. Poverty and Consumer Psychology Ronald Paul Hill
  • Chapter 7. Children as Consumers: A Review of Fifty Years of Research in Marketing Deborah Roedder John and Lan Nguyen Chaplin
  • Chapter 8. Gender Research in Marketing, Consumer Behavior, Advertising, and Beyond: Past, Present, and Future Linda Tuncay Zayer and Kathrynn Pounders
  • Chapter 9. A Structural Versus Dynamic View of Personality in Consumer Behavior Suresh Ramanathan
  • Chapter 10. Consumer Values Eda Gurel-Atay
  • Chapter 11. Lifestyle and Sports: Emulation Marketing Pierre Valette-Florence, Tony Meenaghan, and Lynn R. Kahle

Part III. Consumers Live in a Social Psychological World

  • Chapter 12. Cultural Influences on Consumer Psychology Carlos J. Torelli and Sharon Shavitt
  • Chapter 13. Attitude Change and Persuasion: Classic, Metacognitive, and Advocacy Perspectives Zakary L. Tormala and Derek D. Rucker
  • Chapter 14. Social Relationships and Consumer Behavior Kelley Wight, Peggy J. Liu, James R. Bettman, and Gavan J. Fitzsimons
  • Chapter 15. Sustainability: Understanding Consumer Behavior in a Circular Economy Marius Claudy and Mark Peterson
  • Chapter 16. Marketing Ethics, Ethical Consumers, and Ethical Lapses Ann-Marie Kennedy and Sommer Kapitan
  • Chapter 17. Time Ashwani Monga, Ozum Zor, and Rafay A. Siddiqui
  • Chapter 18. Psychological Aspects of Economic Expectations Richard Curtin

Part IV. Businesses Use Psychology to Communicate With Consumers

  • Chapter 19. Language and Consumer Psychology Ruth Pogacar, Alican Mecit, Fei Gao, L. J. Shrum, and Tina M. Lowrey
  • Chapter 20. The Consumer Psychology of Traditional Media Esther Thorson
  • Chapter 21. Social Media: From Classic Psychological Theories to New Opportunities Cait Lamberton and Ashlee Humphreys
  • Chapter 22. Celebrity Endorsements Eda Gurel-Atay

Part V. Consumers Process Cognitions and Affect

  • Chapter 23. Omission Neglect and Consumer Judgment and Inference Based on Limited Evidence Frank R. Kardes, Steven S. Posavac, and Donald R. Gaffney
  • Chapter 24. Three Mechanisms of Mind-Body Influence: Feelings, Concepts, and Procedures Spike W. S. Lee and Lorenzo Cecutti
  • Chapter 25. The Interplay of Affect and Cognition: A Review of How Feelings Guide Consumer Behavior Rashmi Adaval and Maria Galli
  • Chapter 26. Consumer Involvement and Engagement: From Involvement’s Elaboration Likelihood to Engagement’s Investment Propensity Linda D. Hollebeek and Rajendra K. Srivastava
  • Chapter 27. Neural Basis of Consumer Decision Making and Neuroforecasting Alexander Genevsky and Carolyn Yoon
  • Chapter 28. Consuming for Happiness Siok Kuan Tambyah and Soo Jiuan Tan

Part VI. Businesses Use Psychology to Carry Out Functions

  • Chapter 29. Omnichannel Retailing: A Consumer Perspective Peter C. Verhoef, Koert van Ittersum, P. K. Kannan, and Jeff Inman
  • Chapter 30. Pricing Kent B. Monroe
  • Chapter 31. The Brand Property Strength Framework: Integrating Theory and Research on Brand Consumer Psychology Joseph R. Priester, Monique A. Fleming, Leigh Anne Novak Donovan, and Chaumanix Dutton
  • Chapter 32. Innovation and Product Development Doug Hall
  • Chapter 33. Human Factors Research and User-Centered Design Robert W. Proctor, Leon Zeng, and Kim-Phuong L. Vu

Editor-in-chief

Lynn R. Kahle, PhD,  has always believed that consuming food contributes to happiness and sustaining health. He received his PhD in social psychology from the University of Nebraska (corn-fed beef) and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research (Frankenmuth chicken).

He is emeritus professor of marketing and recipient of the 2014 Thomas Stewart Distinguished Professorship at the University of Oregon Lundquist College of Business (Dungeness crab, fresh strawberries). For many years he chaired the department of marketing there (Voodoo donuts, pinot wine). He served as founding director of the Warsaw Sports Marketing Center (craft beer, hazelnuts). He has also taught at Hanyang University in Seoul (kimchi), Pace University in New York (pizza), Griffith University in Australia (bbq’d prawns), Copenhagen Business School in Denmark (smørrebrød), and Singapore Management University (chili crab). He has enjoyed a study abroad program in Vienna, Austria (wienerschnitzel) and won a Fulbright scholarship to work in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (samlor korko).

He previously served as president of the Society for Consumer Psychology. He represented consumer psychology for two terms on the APA Council of Representatives and chaired the APA Membership Board. He advocated for human rights as the president of the City of Eugene Human Rights Presidents’ Council. Meetings of these groups often involved a tuna sandwich lunch.

He was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Marketing Association Consumer Behavior SIG and the Distinguished Career Contributions to the Scientific Understanding of Sports Business from the American Marketing Association Sports SIG. He received the Stotlar Award for Education from the Sport Marketing Association. Champagne is nice on occasion.

Dr. Kahle helped develop the List of Values and has subsequently conducted research on values and lifestyles. His work has been published in such places as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , Journal of Consumer Psychology , Journal of Consumer Research , and Journal of Marketing . He has also studied consumption in relation to religion, to sport, and to sustainability. His 15 books include Marketplace Lifestyles in an Age of Social Media with Pierre Valette-Florence and Consumer Social Values , edited with Eda Gurel-Atay.

And for dessert he sometimes likes tiramisu, because it deliciously combines diverse layers into a substantial collection of integrated tastes.

Associate editors

Tina M. Lowrey, PhD, (University of Illinois) is professor of marketing at HEC Paris. Her research interests include children’s consumer behavior, materialism, the application of psycholinguistic theory to marketing communications, and gift-giving and ritualistic consumption. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Journal of Consumer Research , Journal of Consumer Psychology , Journal of Marketing , Journal of the Association for Consumer Research , International Journal of Research in Marketing , and Journal of Advertising .

She is currently serving on the JCR Policy Board, and is on the editorial review boards of the Journal of Consumer Psychology , International Journal of Research in Marketing , and Journal of Advertising . She edited Brick & Mortar Shopping in the 21st Century and Psycholinguistic Phenomena in Marketing Communications (both Erlbaum). She coedited The Routledge Companion to Consumer Behavior (with Mike Solomon).

She has chapters in Contemporary Consumption Rituals: A Research Anthology (which she coedited with Cele Otnes); Handbook of Research on Identity Theory in Marketing ; The Psychology of Entertainment Media: Blurring the Lines Between Entertainment and Persuasion ; The Sage Handbook of Persuasion: Developments in Theory and Practice ; Handbook of Media Effects ; Go Figure: New Directions in Advertising Rhetoric ; Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods in Marketing ; Marketing Communication: Emerging Trends and Developments ; Gender Issues and Consumer Behavior ; Gift Giving: A Research Anthology ; and New Developments and Approaches in Consumer Behavior Research , among others.

She has served as ACR treasurer, cochaired the first-ever virtual ACR conference in 2020 (which was supposed to be in Paris), has cochaired three European and Latin American ACR conferences, and solo-chaired an SCP boutique conference and an APA Division 23 conference.

She received a BBA in finance from the University of Houston, an MS in advertising from the University of Illinois, and her PhD in communication and social psychology from the University of Illinois. She has taught at Rider University (New Jersey), the University of Texas at San Antonio, and is currently at HEC Paris (serving as PhD coordinator at the latter two institutions). She has visited at ESCP Paris, NYU, Tulane, University of Sydney, and Wharton.

She currently teaches two doctoral seminars at HEC: research methods to PhD students in all business disciplines, and consumer behavior to primarily marketing students. And, yes, she agrees with Lynn that champagne is always good, and has not yet found any cuisine that isn’t wonderful!

Joel Huber, PhD, is the Alan D. Schwartz Professor Emeritus at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton and his MBA and PhD in 1974 from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to Fuqua, he has taught at the business schools at Penn, Columbia, and Purdue University. He was associate dean for the Daytime program at Fuqua from 1995–1999.

He is on the review boards for numerous journals and has been an associate editor for Journal of Consumer Research , Journal of Consumer Psychology , Marketing Science , and International Journal of Research in Marketing . From 2006–2009 he served as editor-in-chief for the Journal of Marketing Research , and from 2014–2020 was the inaugural editor-in-chief for the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research .

His research interest focuses on predicting and understanding market choice, with a continuing focus on ways to measure preference through choice-based conjoint analysis. He has worked for many years with Sawtooth Software and others to help develop new ways to determine the best ways to measure consumers’ product desires and beliefs.

A series of grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency led to studies of the value of cleaner lakes and streams and healthier drinking water. That work later evolved into a number of studies with W. Kip Viscusi and Jason Bell exploring household recycling behavior from a large national sample of households between 2005 and 2015. Research with Martin Meissner and others has used eye tracking to reveal the way people process complex repeated choice tasks.

His published papers are available on his website .

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, consumer psychology for food choices: a systematic review and research directions.

European Journal of Marketing

ISSN : 0309-0566

Article publication date: 20 January 2023

Issue publication date: 23 November 2023

Consumer food behavior has received considerable attention from marketers, researchers and regulators. With the rising obesity epidemic worldwide, the existing literature and previous reviews provide a limited understanding of consumers’ unhealthy food choices. To address this gap, this study aims to investigate consumer psychology for food choices in terms of mental processes and behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

This systematic literature review analyzed 84 research papers accessed from the Web of Science database and selected high-quality marketing journals. A detailed analysis identified themes arranged in an organizing framework. Gaps, limitations, convergence and ambivalent findings were noted to derive future research directions.

Major themes in the literature include food marketers’ actions (food stimuli and context), environmental influence (micro and macro) and consumer psychology and personal factors, leading to food choice related decisions. The antecedents and consequences of food choice healthiness are summarized. Several studies converged on the benefits of health motivations and goals, food literacy and customizing meals bottom-up on food choice healthiness.

Research limitations/implications

This review helps researchers gain state-of-the-art understanding on consumer psychology for food choices. It presents ambivalent and converging findings, gaps and limitations of extant research to inform researchers about issues that need to be addressed in the literature. This review presents future research questions to guide research on critical issues. This literature review contributes to marketing domain literature on consumer’s food well-being and overall well-being.

Practical implications

This review offers actionable insights for food marketers, policymakers and nongovernmental organizations to drive consumer demand for healthier foods, focusing on food labeling, food environment, message framing and raising consumer awareness.

Originality/value

This review offers current understanding of consumer psychology for food choices focusing on healthiness, an aspect lacking in previous literature reviews.

  • Healthy eating
  • Consumer psychology
  • Food marketing
  • Unhealthy food choices
  • Eating behavior
  • Food consumption

Khan, A.W. and Pandey, J. (2023), "Consumer psychology for food choices: a systematic review and research directions", European Journal of Marketing , Vol. 57 No. 9, pp. 2353-2381. https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-07-2021-0566

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Issue Cover

Article Contents

Introduction, the pleasure and/or pain of brands, brand attachment and loyalty, consumer relevance and distinctiveness in branding, consumer communications about brands, managerial considerations in branding, other future research directions, conclusions.

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Consumer Research Insights on Brands and Branding: A JCR Curation

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Kevin Lane Keller, Consumer Research Insights on Brands and Branding: A JCR Curation, Journal of Consumer Research , Volume 46, Issue 5, February 2020, Pages 995–1001, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucz058

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Brands are a fact of everyday life and an omnipresent reality for consumers. Understanding how consumers respond to brands—what they think and feel and how they act toward them—is a critical aspect of consumer research. Consumer research in branding is expansive in nature and has investigated a wide range of topics in terms of how different kinds of consumers respond to different types of brands and branding activities in various contexts ( Schmitt 2012 ).

Researchers have explored how consumer responses to brands vary by factors such as knowledge, experience, gender, attitudes, and cultural background. They have studied the effects of brands that vary by product or industry type, personality or other image factors, country of origin, and more. They have explored branding as applied to products or services, people, countries and other geographical locations, and the like. Different forms of marketing activity relating to various aspects of the classic marketing mix (the “4 Ps”: product, price, place, and promotion) have been assessed, and the contexts studied have included a host of situations or settings.

The pleasure and/or pain of brands

Brand attachment and loyalty

Consumer relevance and distinctiveness in branding

Consumer communications about brands

Managerial branding considerations

Despite the relatively short time period involved, these five themes exhibit some of the diversity in subject matter characteristic of branding research. Some of these themes tap into broader interests in consumer research that also can be found in research streams outside of branding. Others capture phenomena wholly unique to the branding area. All themes reflect conceptual rigor and practical relevance. For each theme, we provide some background and highlight the findings of two recent JCR articles, one of which we describe in more detail in the form of its abstract and discussion of its future research implications. We conclude with commentary on other future research directions for brands and branding.

In theory, brands can play many different roles for consumers. In a basic sense, brands can make consumer lives simpler, easier, or more rewarding. Moreover, brands can take on rich meaning and allow consumers to signal to others, or themselves, who they are or who they would like to be and what they value. Yet not all consumers ascribe to the positive qualities of brands, and some consumers actively dislike brands and branding in general. Understanding the basic forces—positive and negative—associated with brands is an enduring consumer research priority.

Recent JCR Research

Reimann, Nuñez, and Castaño (2017) show the remarkable power of brands to insulate consumers from physical pain. Brands allow consumers to cope with pain by offering them a reassuring sense of social connectedness. On the other hand, Brick et al. (2018) show the yin-yang of brands in one of the most important aspects of consumers’ lives: their relationship with close others. They find that brands can also be a source of conflict, as summarized in their abstract below.

Brick et al., “Coke vs. Pepsi: Brand Compatibility, Relationship Power, and Life Satisfaction”   (2018) Individuals often evaluate, purchase, and consume brands in the presence of others, including close others. Yet relatively little is known about the role brand preferences play in relationships. In the present research, the authors explore how the novel concept of brand compatibility, defined as the extent to which individuals have similar brand preferences (e.g., both partners prefer the same brand of soda), influences life satisfaction. The authors propose that when brand compatibility is high, life satisfaction will also be high. Conversely, because low brand compatibility may be a source of conflict for the relationship, the authors propose that it will be associated with reduced life satisfaction. Importantly, the authors predict that the effects of brand compatibility on conflict and life satisfaction will depend upon relationship power. Across multiple studies and methodologies, including experimental designs (studies 2, 3, 5) and dyadic data from real-life couples (studies 1, 4, 6), the authors test and find support for their hypotheses. By exploring how a potentially unique form of compatibility influences life satisfaction, including identifying a key moderator and an underlying mechanism, the current research contributes to the literatures on branding, close relationships, consumer well-being, and relationship power.

Several aspects of this research are noteworthy. One crucial consideration, building on past research and worthy of further study, is how brands are embedded in consumer lives and part of their identities in profound ways. Additionally, this research reinforces one of the most central considerations in branding—compatibility, or “fit”—which manifests in different ways with many different branding phenomena (e.g., brand extensions, leveraged secondary associations from cause marketing or sponsorship). Finally, another valuable insight suggested by this research is the polarization that can occur with brands; that is, the same brand can elicit decidedly different responses from different people. Greater attention to the downside of brands and branding and their more detrimental effects with certain consumers is needed.

Not all brands have the same importance to consumers, and understanding why some brands take on special meaning has much theoretical and managerial importance. In a practical sense, in today’s intensely competitive marketplace, firms are going to greater and greater lengths to try to forge strong bonds with consumers and build mutually beneficial relationships. Understanding consumer-brand relationships has been a fertile research topic for years now as the complexity of those relationships continues to spawn intriguing and productive new research directions.

Khamitov, Wang, and Thomson (2019) offer a comprehensive meta-analysis of factors affecting when and how different types of brand relationships increase loyalty. The authors find that various brand, loyalty, time, and consumer characteristics all can affect brand relationship elasticity. They specifically reinforce the power of the intangible and emotional qualities of brands. Huang, Huang, and Wyer (2018) home in on a very specific consideration—how consumers connect with brands in crowded social settings, as summarized in their abstract.

Huang et al., “The Influence of Social Crowding on Brand Attachment”   (2018) Feeling crowded in a shopping environment can decrease consumers’ evaluations of a product or service and lower customer satisfaction. However, the present research suggests that a crowded environment can sometimes have a positive impact on consumer behavior. Although feeling crowded motivates consumers to avoid interacting with others, it leads them to become more attached to brands as an alternative way of maintaining their basic need for belongingness. The effect does not occur (a) when the crowding environment is composed of familiar people (and, therefore, is not considered aversive); (b) when individuals have an interdependent self-construal (and consequently, high tolerance for crowdedness); (c) when people are accompanied by friends in the crowded environment; (d) when the social function of the brands is made salient; (e) when people have never used the brand before; or (f) when the brand is referred to as a general product rather than a specific brand.

Understanding situational and contextual influences on consumer behavior with respect to brands offers much practical value to marketing managers who must make many different types of decisions based on assumptions about how consumers will behave in particular places or at particular times. Identifying boundary conditions in these and other ways is important to provide a more nuanced depiction of how consumers actually think, feel, and act toward brands under certain circumstances or in specific settings. Finally, more generally, this research underscores the contingent nature of consumer processing of brands and the need to thoroughly investigate moderator variables that can impact the direction and strength of branding effects in meaningful ways.

Distinctiveness is at the core of branding and a key element in virtually any definition of brands. Branding success is all about differentiation and offering consumers unique value. Unique value requires relevance, too; accordingly, another core branding concept is brand relevance and how meaningful a brand is to consumers. Ensuring that brands are relevant and differentiated, however, is a challenging managerial priority in today’s fluid and fast-changing marketplace. Consumers are also seeking relevance and differentiation and consequently demanding personalized, customized brand offerings that suit their individual preferences and distinguish them from others. In part because of these new dynamics, many important consumer research opportunities are emerging in how consumers and brands fit into their respective landscapes.

Torelli et al. (2017) show how consumer feelings of cultural distinctiveness in foreign locations can lead to consumer preferences for more culturally aligned brands, even if those brands may be deficient in other ways. In a desire to connect with home and not feel as distinctive, consumers broaden how they actually think of “home.” By expanding their in-group boundaries in that way, they exhibit preferences to include culturally related brands that are merely similar in geographic proximity or sociohistorical or cultural roots. Puzakova and Aggarwal (2018) show how a consumer desire for distinctiveness can actually result in less preference for an anthropomorphized brand, as summarized in their abstract.

Puzakova and Aggarwal, “Brands as Rivals: Consumer Pursuit of Distinctiveness and the Role of Brand Anthropomorphism”   (2018) Although past research has shown that anthropomorphism enhances consumers’ attraction to a brand when social-connectedness or effectance motives are active, the current research demonstrates that anthropomorphizing a brand becomes a detrimental marketing strategy when consumers’ distinctiveness motives are salient. Four studies show that anthropomorphizing a brand positioned to be distinctive diminishes consumers’ sense of agency in identity expression. As a result, when distinctiveness goals are salient, consumers are less likely to evaluate anthropomorphized (vs. nonanthropomorphized) brands favorably and are less likely to choose them to express distinctiveness. This negative effect of brand anthropomorphism, however, is contingent on the brand’s positioning strategy—brand-as-supporter (supporting consumers’ desires to be different) versus brand-as-agent (communicating unique brand features instead of focusing on consumers’ needs) versus brand-as-controller (limiting consumers’ freedom in expressing distinctiveness). Our results demonstrate that an anthropomorphized brand-as-supporter enhances consumers’ sense of agency in identity expression, compared to both an anthropomorphized brand-as-agent and an anthropomorphized brand-as-controller. In turn, enhancing or thwarting consumers’ sense of agency in expressing their differences from others drives the differential impact of anthropomorphizing a brand positioned to be distinctive.

Two aspects of this research are especially noteworthy in terms of future research. Given how many marketers are trying to bring their brands to life—literally and figuratively—in today’s digital world, anthropomorphism is likely to continue to be an important consumer research topic. In particular, AI and robotic advances in service settings and elsewhere will raise a number of similar issues in terms of how consumers interact with more human-like marketing devices. These are complex phenomena that will require new theoretical development as well as the careful adaption of concepts from consumer psychology originally developed with humans. Secondly, understanding how consumers and brands are—or want to be—distinctive is a fundamental element of branding that can yield interesting insights with a variety of branding phenomena.

Communications are the lifeblood of any brand. In a “paid-earned-owned-shared” media world, consumer-to-consumer communications are taking on increased importance. Different communication channels have different properties, however, that require careful analysis and planning. Understanding what, when, where, how, and why consumers decide to share information or opinions about brands is a research priority that will likely continue to drive research activity for many years to come.

Through an extensive text mining study of social media, Villarroel Ordenes et al. (2019) use speech act theory to identify distinct elements—rhetorical styles such as alliteration and repetition, cross-message compositions, and certain visual images—that lead to greater consumer sharing of messages posted by brands. They reinforce the power of informational and emotional content in online brand messages and find some important distinctions in message sharing across Facebook and Twitter social media platforms. Moving to also include the offline world, Shen and Sengupta (2018) found that when consumers communicate about brands to others by speaking versus writing, they develop deeper self-brand connections, as summarized in this abstract.

Shen and Sengupta, “Word of Mouth versus Word of Mouse: Speaking about a Brand Connects You to It More than Writing Does”   (2018) This research merges insights from the communications literature with that on the self-brand connection to examine a novel question: how does speaking versus writing about a liked brand influence the communicator’s own later reactions to that brand? Our conceptualization argues that because oral communication involves a greater focus on social interaction with the communication recipient than does written communication, oral communicators are more likely to express self-related thoughts than are writers, thereby increasing their self-brand connection (SBC). We also assess the implications of this conceptualization, including the identification of theoretically derived boundary conditions for the speech/writing difference, and the downstream effects of heightened SBC. Results from five studies provide support for our predictions, informing both the basic literature on communications, and the body of work on consumer word of mouth.

Word of mouth has been a critical aspect of marketing since the origin of commerce. In today’s digital world, word of mouth can take many different forms (structured vs. unstructured, public vs. private, and so on). Understanding the full consumer psychology implications of reviews, in particular, is a top research priority given their increasingly important role in consumer decision-making. Contrasting oral and written speech, as in the referenced article, will have important implications for social media usage and marketing communications more generally. Lastly, the crucial mediating role of self-brand connections reinforces the need to consider the relevance of brands and when and how they are drawn into consumers’ identities and lives.

There is a managerial side to branding that can benefit from principles and insights gleaned from more practically minded consumer research. Managers make numerous decisions on a daily basis related to building, measuring, managing, and protecting their brands with significant short- and long-term consequences. A thorough understanding of applicable consumer behavior theory is extremely valuable to guide that decision-making. The research opportunities here are vast, as a wide gap still exists in many areas between academic research and industry practice.

Studying the James Bond film franchise, Preece, Kerrigan, and O'Reilly (2019) take an evolutionary approach to study brand longevity. Applying assemblage theory, they show how brands can optimally balance continuity and change at different levels over time. van Horen and Pieters (2017) show how copycat brands—that is, those that imitate brand elements of another brand—meet with more success when the imitated product is in a product category distinct from that of the imitated brand, as summarized in their abstract.

van Horen and   Pieters, “Redefining Home: How Cultural Distinctiveness Affects the Malleability of In-Group Boundaries and Brand Preferences”   (2017) Copycat brands imitate the trade dress of other brands, such as their brand name, logo, and packaging design. Copycats typically operate in the core product category of the imitated brand under the assumption that such “in-category imitation” is most effective. In contrast, four experiments demonstrate the benefits of “out-of-category imitation” for copycats, and the harmful effect on the imitated brand. Copycats are evaluated more positively in a related category, because consumers appraise the similarity between copycat and imitated brand more positively than in the core category, independent of the perceived similarity itself. This is due to a reduced salience of norms regarding imitation in the related category. Moreover, the results show a damaging backlash effect of out-of-category imitation on the general evaluation of the imitated brand and on its key perceived product attributes. The findings replicate across student, MTurk [Amazon Mechanical Turk], and representative consumer samples; multiple product categories; and forms of brand imitation. This research demonstrates that out-of-category brand imitation helps copycat brands and hurts national leading brands much more than has so far been considered, which has managerial and public policy implications.

Research on trade dress goes to the very heart of brands and branding: the brand elements themselves. Because of how they shape awareness and image with consumers, brand elements are often invaluable assets to brand marketers. A deeper understanding of their intrinsic properties, as well as their interface with various marketing activities, would be very helpful for managers. More generally, adopting a legal perspective to branding research, as with this article, should be encouraged given its increasingly significant role in managerial decision-making. In a related sense, given that most brands span multiple categories, ensuring that a broader multicategory perspective is recognized in branding research is also essential.

The five themes reviewed above each suggested a number of important future research directions. Nevertheless, an abundance of other research opportunities also exist in other areas with brands and branding, five of which are highlighted here (for further discussion, see Keller 2016 ; Keller et al. 2020 ).

Brand Emotions and Feelings

What are the most important types of brand feelings and emotions? What is a useful taxonomy of brand feelings and emotions?

What are the most effective ways for marketers to elicit brand feelings and emotions? How do different marketing activities create brand feelings and emotions?

Can affective information be shared by consumers as effectively as more cognitive information? What is the role of word of mouth and social media for spreading feelings and emotional qualities of brands across consumers?

How easily can feelings and emotions be linked to a brand? In what ways are they stored and later activated?

In what ways do feelings and emotions affect consumer decision-making? When can positive brand feelings overcome product deficiencies? When can negative feelings undermine product advantages?

Brand Intangibles

As noted above, successful branding is about differentiation. Increasingly, brand intangibles are playing a bigger role in creating, or at least strengthening, differentiation. Brand intangibles are those associations to a brand that are not directly related to the product or service and its function and performance. In a broad sense, the increased emphasis on brand intangibles reflects the fact that consumers have become more interested in learning about the people and companies behind products and brands, posing questions such as: Who are they? What values do they hold? What do they stand for? How do they make the product or service?

How do consumers form opinions about authenticity ( Newman and Dhar 2014 ; Spiggle, Nguyen, and Caravella 2012 )? How important is it for a brand to be seen as authentic or genuine?

How does history or heritage define a brand ( Paharia et al. 2011 )? In what ways can it help or hurt? How flexible are consumers in updating their perceptions and beliefs about brands? What is the proper balance of continuity and change for brands over time?

How do consumers view political stances by brands ( Horst 2018 )? How do they respond to brands taking positions on important political issues that support or contradict the positions they hold?

What are consumer expectations for corporate social responsibility for brands ( Bhattacharya and Sen 2003 ; Chernev and Blair 2015 ; Kotler and Lee 2005 ; Torelli, Monga, and Kaikati 2012 )? What are the accepted standards for sustainability, community involvement, and social impact? How do consumers make those judgments? How do they influence brand attitudes and behavior?

Given the subjective nature of brand intangibles, how do marketers reconcile the potentially varying or even contradictory opinions held by different consumers about any particular brand intangible? How much consensus can reasonably be expected?

Brand Positioning

One well-established strategic tool for branding is the concept of positioning —how consumers think or feel about a brand versus a defined set of competitor brands ( Keller, Sternthal, and Tybout 2002 ). Although historically significant, some marketers have questioned the value of traditional positioning in developing modern marketing strategies. One fundamental question is the role of consumers in setting strategies for brands. Some marketing pundits proclaim that “customers are now in charge of marketing,” maintaining that consumers now set the strategic directions of brands. Such statements, however, presume that consumers are empowered, enlightened, and engaged with respect to brands and branding. In other words, consumers have the motivation (engagement), ability (enlightenment), and opportunity (empowerment) to actually impact brand strategies.

In what ways do consumers think they can influence brand strategy? How much input do consumers think they should have about what a brand does?

How much do consumers know about brands and branding? How deep and broad is consumer brand knowledge? How do they define the “rules of the game” for branding?

How actively invested are consumers with a brand’s fortunes? How much do consumers care about how other consumers view a brand or how it is performing in the marketplace as a whole?

How much do consumers want to engage with brands and in what ways? What is a useful taxonomy of brand engagement?

Developing a more complete understanding of the consumer-brand terrain along these lines will be invaluable in understanding how different types of relationships are formed between consumers and brands ( Fournier 1998 ).

Brand Purpose, Storytelling, and Narratives

How well do these alternative brand strategy concepts tap into our understanding of consumer behavior? What assumptions do they make about consumer behavior? When are they most valid or useful? Are they ever unhelpful or even counterproductive?

What types of brand purposes are most meaningful to consumers? How should brand purposes be crafted internally and expressed externally? How should brand purpose relate or be aligned with other aspects of the brand positioning and strategy? For example, how closely tied should brand purposes be to the products or services for the brand?

What makes brand stories or narratives compelling ( Escalas 2004 )? Are there any disadvantages to their use? Can brand stories or narratives distract marketers or consumers from a focus on potentially more important product or service performance considerations?

Brand Measurement

Lastly, for both academics and managers to fully understand the effects of brands and branding, there needs to be a deep, rich understanding of how consumers think, feel, and act toward brands. Although one common industry research technique has been consumer surveys, as consumers have become more difficult to contact and less willing to participate, the viability of surveys has diminished in recent years. Yet marketers today arguably need to stay closer than ever to consumers, underscoring the need to develop new methods and evolve existing ones to gain critical insights into consumers and brands.

Fortunately, as much as any area, branding research has benefited from a full range of quantitative and qualitative methods that go beyond surveys and other traditional data collection methods (e.g., focus groups). For example, researchers are continuing to refine neural techniques (Chang, Boksem, and Smidts 2018; Yoon et al. 2006 ) and ethnographic methods ( Belk 2006 ; Chang Coupland 2005 ). One particularly promising tack involves digital methods and measures that can be used at the individual or market level to monitor online behavior ( Berger et al. 2020 ; Moe and Schweidel 2014 ; Yadav and Pavlou 2014 ). Although full of potential, the methodological properties of these digital approaches need to be validated carefully, and boundaries need to be established as to their comparative advantages and disadvantages.

More broadly, for all traditional or emerging research methods, strengths and weaknesses must be identified and contrasted in terms of their effectiveness and efficiency in gaining consumer and brand insights. In many ways, brand-building can be thought of in terms of painting a picture of a brand in consumers’ minds and hearts. Extending that metaphor, it is important that marketers skillfully combine a full range of research methods to be able to appreciate the colors, vividness, and texture of the mental images and structures they are creating.

Perhaps not surprisingly, research on branding mirrors many of the broad themes found in consumer research more generally. Consumer researchers of all kinds are interested in achieving a better understanding of consumer motivations and desires and how consumers choose to interact with the world around them, especially in digital terms. Researchers studying branding have certainly homed in on these and other topics and also have focused on more managerial considerations, all of which help marketers achieve a deeper understanding of consumers to help them build, measure, manage, and protect brand equity.

The reality is that brands and consumers are inextricably linked. Brands exist for consumers, and consumers generally value brands. Yet, in today’s data-rich world, both brands and consumers can be too easily reduced to online and offline statistical footprints. It is incumbent upon consumer researchers to breathe life into branding to ensure that consumer psychology as applied to branding is undeniable in its importance and essential to marketers everywhere.

This curation was invited by editors J. Jeffrey Inman, Margaret C. Campbell, Amna Kirmani, and Linda L. Price .

The author thanks the editors for the opportunity to write this research curation and for their helpful feedback.

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  • Brand Management

Luxury Experience and Consumer Behavior: A Literature Review

  • Marketing Intelligence & Planning 41(2):199-213
  • 41(2):199-213

Damini Goyal Gupta at Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA)

  • Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA)

Hyunju Shin at Kennesaw State University

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Varsha Jain at Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA)

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    Consumer Psychology Review is a journal providing systematic, integrative, & thought-provoking reviews in classic & contemporary import in consumer psychology. Abstract More than 15 years ago, Van Boven and Gilovich (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 2003, 1193) presented evidence that experiential purchases make people happier ...

  10. Factors Affecting Impulse Buying Behavior of Consumers

    It is essential to understand the mental triggers behind the purchase decision process, which is why consumer psychology is related to marketing strategies ... Explaining the consumer decision-making process: critical literature review. J. Int. Bus. Res. Market. 2, 7-14. 10.18775/jibrm.1849-8558.2015.26.3001 [Google Scholar]

  11. The relationship of consumer psychology and consumer experience to

    2.5. Consumer psychology (CP) consumer psychology can be defined as: 'the utilization of distinctly psychological concepts and meth-ods to understand (explain and predict) the dynamics underlying, influencing, and determining con-sumer behaviour' (Jacoby, 1976). From a psychological point of view, cP has two areas of focus: consumer

  12. Full article: The relationship of consumer psychology and consumer

    Consumer psychology, consumer experience, consumer satisfaction, and organizational performance constitute domains that exert a direct or indirect influence on a company's operational efficacy. ... The chosen methodology, a systematic literature review, specifically a structured approach, is deemed optimal for its comprehensive coverage of ...

  13. 38682 PDFs

    Feb 2006. Barbara Loken. This chapter reviews research on consumer psychology with emphasis on the topics of categorization, inferences, affect, and persuasion. The chapter reviews theory-based ...

  14. [PDF] Consumer Behaviour: a Literature Review ...

    In order to develop a framework for the study consumer behaviour it is helpful to begin by considering the evolution of the field of consumer research and the different paradigms of thought that have influenced the discipline. As described in this article, a set of dimensions can be identified in the literature, which can be used to characterize and differentiate, the various perspectives on ...

  15. APA Handbook of Consumer Psychology

    The APA Handbook of Consumer Psychology presents a comprehensive survey of the field, including its historical background and critical sources of information in both core and emerging literature. This 33-chapter handbook is designed as a library reference that captures up-to-date content on consumer psychology, with insights offered by an outstanding roster of contributors.

  16. Consumer Psychology Review: Vol 7, No 1

    Consumer Psychology Review is a journal providing systematic, integrative, & thought-provoking reviews in classic & contemporary import in consumer psychology. Consumer Psychology Review: Vol 7, No 1

  17. AI in marketing, consumer research and psychology: A systematic

    Our study is distinctively different compared to past literature reviews and makes the following contributions. First, our article is the first to focus on AI in the interrelated fields of marketing, consumer research and psychology, and provides an integrated view of these three streams of literature.

  18. Consumer psychology for food choices: a systematic review and research

    This review helps researchers gain state-of-the-art understanding on consumer psychology for food choices. It presents ambivalent and converging findings, gaps and limitations of extant research to inform researchers about issues that need to be addressed in the literature. This review presents future research questions to guide research on ...

  19. Consumer Research Insights on Brands and Branding: A JCR Curation

    Understanding the full consumer psychology implications of reviews, in particular, is a top research priority given their increasingly important role in consumer decision-making. Contrasting oral and written speech, as in the referenced article, will have important implications for social media usage and marketing communications more generally.

  20. Luxury Experience and Consumer Behavior: A Literature Review

    This study contributes to the literature on luxury experience and consumerbehaviorintwoways. First, this is the first attempt to use an SLR to pro vide a holistic picture of the luxury experience ...

  21. A contemporary review of three types of social influence in consumer

    Consumer Psychology Review is a journal providing systematic, integrative, & thought-provoking reviews in classic & contemporary import in consumer psychology. Abstract This review synthesizes the social presence literature that has been conducted in consumer psychology over the past decade.

  22. PDF The Psychology of Consumer Behaviour: Understanding How ...

    This research paper explores the psychology of consumer behavior and how it affects decision-making in marketing. The literature review discusses the cognitive biases, emotions, social and cultural factors, and consumer psychology principles that influence customer behavior. The research is designed to test the hypothesis that consumer behavior ...

  23. Influencer Marketing and Consumer Behaviour: A Systematic Literature Review

    A systematic literature review provides a comprehensive overview of the whole literature studied. From this knowledge, a systematic literature review has been undertaken from the period of 2016 to 2021 based on 65 articles from the ABDC journal to fetch relevant research themes, methodology, theories, variables, antecedents and consequences and ...

  24. Impact of Packaging Design on Consumer Purchasing Decisions

    The complex world of package design and its influence on customer behavior is the subject of this master's thesis. The purpose of this study is to decipher the complex relationship between the visual appeal, practicality, and consumer psychology of packaging by drawing on a review of relevant literature, survey data, and real-world examples.