Browsing by Subject "Consumer psychology"
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Item Dealing with conflicts in consumer-brand relationships : a focus on emotional intelligence(2011-08) Ahn, Hongmin; Drumwright, Minette E.; Sung, Yongjun; Choi, Sejung M.; Raghunathan, Rajagopal; Williams, Jerome D.Conflicts can occur in a variety of brand-relationship contexts, whether pertaining to poor service or product failure or to companies’ violations in regard to moral or legal issues. Though addressing relationship conflicts has become a pervasive issue in brand-relationship research, little is known about factors influencing consumer responses to conflicts. The goal of this research was to address this issue by exploring how consumers utilize their emotional intelligence in coping with problems when conflicts arise. For this purpose, two experiments were performed in this study. The first experiment showed that consumer emotional intelligence (CEI) was critical in predicting coping responses. When encountering conflicts in relationships, consumers who were highly capable in CEI were more likely to direct their emotions positively and productively, and they were less likely to exit the relationships than were those low in CEI. The second experiment further investigated a moderator and mediator of the association identified in the first study. The study demonstrated that the type of conflict moderated the effect of CEI on coping behaviors; the CEI effect on intention to exit the relationship was more pronounced when a conflict had directly caused problems for individual consumers (vs. to society as a whole). The results further demonstrated that consumers’ appraisals of a company’s intention in regard to conflicts mediated the association between CEI and coping responses. Specifically, low-CEI consumers were more likely to attribute negative intentions to the company; therefore, they were more likely to exit the relationship than were high-CEI consumers. This research demonstrated that CEI is an important construct in explaining why some consumers react destructively to relationship conflicts whereas others do not. Findings of this research provide a greater understanding of the role of individual differences in the maintenance and dissolution of brand relationships.Item The influence of adult attachment style and advertising appeals on consumer brand attachment and measures of advertising effectiveness(2015-12) Flowers, Jason Jerome; Atkinson, Lucinda; Ballard, Dawna; Cicchirillo, Vincent; Stout, Patricia; Thomas, KevinThe relationship consumers form with products and brands is well researched. Products provide consumers with a way to create a sense of stability, comfort and expression and can serve as an actual or psychological extension of the consumer. The theoretical idea that consumers form relationships with brands that often mimic interpersonal relationships is the foundational assumption this dissertation operates under. The common thread that ties various transitions of branding scholarship together is the notion of attachment. In the domain of consumer behavior, current research that examines attachment fails to address the impact advertising plays in the effective communication of brand messages. The purpose of this research is to further examine the role advertising plays in the formation of consumer emotional brand attachment. But specifically, this research examines how various types of advertising appeals and adult attachment interact to influence advertising effectiveness. Two studies were conducted. Study 1 examined the impact of adult attachment and one advertising appeal on participants’ emotional attachment to a brand that was perceived to have a sincere personality. Also, participants were asked to rate the effectiveness of the ad by reporting their attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand and purchase intention. Study 2 further examined the anxiety dimension of attachment by looking at the affects of secure and preoccupied attachment styles and two advertising appeals. The study sought to understand how participants with varying levels of anxiety coupled with seeing two advertising appeals would report their emotional brand attachment and their perception of the advertisement shown. Overall, this research seeks to bring attention to the importance of the role attachment and advertising play in fulfilling consumers’ needs. Consumers with different attachment styles often have different consumption goals that need to be taken into account when trying to craft effective strategic communications that help build strong consumer brand relationships.