Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

submittedVersion

Publication Date

8-2018

Abstract

The authors propose that increased attention that consumers pay to themselves promotes relative reliance on affective feelings in making decisions. This hypothesis was tested in a variety of consumption domains and decision tasks, including real-life, consequential charitable donations. Consistent support from five experiments with more than 1,770 participants shows that (a) valuations of the decision outcome increase when consumers with high (low) self-focus adopt a feeling-based (reason-based) strategy. The hypothesized effect of self-focus on relative reliance on feelings in decision making is (b) moderated by self-construal. Further, greater attention to the self (c) increases evaluations of products that are affectively superior but (d) decreases evaluations of products that are affectively inferior, and (e) exerts little influence on evaluations of products that are less affective in nature (i.e., utilitarian products). Finally, self-focused attention (f) amplifies a decision bias typically attributed to feeling-based judgments, known as scope-insensitivity bias, in a hypothetical laboratory study and in a real-life, consequential charitable donation. Theoretical and marketing implications are discussed.

Keywords

affect, feeling, judgment, self, self-focus

Discipline

Marketing | Sales and Merchandising

Research Areas

Marketing

Publication

Journal of Marketing Research

Volume

55

Issue

4

First Page

586

Last Page

599

ISSN

0022-2437

Identifier

10.1509/jmr.15.0080

Publisher

American Marketing Association

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.15.0080

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