Consumer Behavior Critical Review

Consumer Behavior Critical Review Order Description Introduction • The length of an introduction is usually one paragraph for a journal article review and two or three paragraphs for a longer book review. Include a few opening sentences that announce the author(s) and the title, and briefly explain the topic of the text. Present the aim of the text and summarise the main finding or key argument. Conclude the introduction with a brief statement of your evaluation of the text. This can be a positive or negative evaluation or, as is usually the case, a mixed response. Summary • Present a summary of the key points along with a limited number of examples. You can also briefly explain the author’s purpose/intentions throughout the text and you may briefly describe how the text is organised. The summary should only make up about a third of the critical review. Conclusion • This is usually a very short paragraph. • Restate your overall opinion of the text . • Briefly present recommendations. • If necessary some further qualification or explanation of your judgement can be included. This can help your critique sound fair and reasonable. References • If you have used other sources in you review you should also include a list of references at the end of the review. Critique The critique should be a balanced discussion and evaluation of the strengths, weakness and notable features of the text. You can choose how to sequence your critique. Here are some examples to get you started: • Most important to least important conclusions you make about the text. • If your critique is more positive than negative, then present the negative points first and the positive last. • If your critique is more negative than positive, then present the positive points first and the negative last. • You could begin by stating what is good about the idea and then concede and explain how it is limited in some way. Conclusion • This is usually a very short paragraph. • Restate your overall opinion of the text. • Briefly present recommendations. • If necessary some further qualification or explanation of your judgement can be included. This can help your critique sound fair and reasonable. References • If you have used other sources in you review you should also include a list of references at the end of the review Question 1.What is the author's aim? 2. What relationship does it bear to other works in the field of Consumer Behaviour? 3. What approach was used for the research? (eg; quantitative or qualitative, analysis/review of theory or current practice, comparative, case study, personal reflection etc...) 4. Are the results valid and reliable? 5. What kinds of evidence does the text rely on? 6. What conclusions are drawn? 7. Are these conclusions justified? Suggested Structure Index page • Summary/Abstract • Introduction • Analysis of the journal article– your analysis must be supported with evidence (citations, quotations and referencing) • Conclusions • Appendix – optional • Reference List – minimum of 10 sources (books, journals, websites etc.) If I want you to like me, should I be like you or unlike you? The effect of prior positive interaction with the group on conformity and distinctiveness in consumer decision making ABSTRACT The extant research points to conflicting results regarding social influence in consumer decision making. On the one hand, there is empirical evidence that suggests that people conform to other members of their groups. On the other hand, several studies demonstrated the opposite pattern, namely, that individuals seek distinctiveness from others in the group. The goal of the present research is to reconcile these contradictory findings. To this end, I propose that whether a person will conform to or seek distinctiveness fromothers in a particular consumption situation is contingent on the absence or presence of one’s prior positive interaction with the group. I also suggest that this effect will occur in a public context, that is, when an individual’s choice is visible to other group members. The results of experiment supported these propositions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Suppose Alice wants to start figure skating and goes to watch a training session conducted by a local skate club before making the final decision. She likes what she sees, and on the next day, she goes to the sport store to buy a pair of figure skates. In the store, Alice sees a few brands of white skates that look pretty much the same, and she recalls that all people she saw on the ice the day before were wearing white skates. There is also one brand that stands apart from the others. It seems like its skates were designed after rollerblades. They are blue, with white and black stripes, and Alice does not remember anyone in such skates. Which skates will Alice choose if she, personally, likes white and striped skates equally and neither were recommended to her by her prospective peers? On the basis of two different streams of research, which investigated conformity and distinctiveness in consumer decision making, one could predict different outcomes. On the one hand, there is empirical evidence that suggests that people tend to follow consumption choices of other members in their group. For example, several researchers used survey design with self-reported measures of conformity and found that individuals acknowledged that sometimes they emulated consumption decisions of other people and even more so in the case of conspicuous products (Park and Lessig, 1977; Bearden and Etzel, 1982; Childers and Rao, 1992). Drawing on the classic Asch’s study (1956), Venkatesan (1966) complemented this stream of research by using experimental method with a behavioral measure of conformity and showing that people not only admit influence of other people but, in fact, act differently in the presence of others. Specifically, he presented participants with three identical men’s suits and asked them to choose the best suit individually or in the presence of three confederates who uniformly pointed to the target suit. Consistent with the notion of conformity, participants followed the responses of confederates and selected the target suit more often in the group than in the individual condition. On the other hand, there is a more recent stream of research that demonstrated the opposite pattern, namely, that people admitted the desire for and actually engaged in distinctiveness seeking in the presence of other members of their group. For example, Tepper Tian et al. (2001) found that consumers agreed that sometimes they bought products or brands that made them stand out of their group. In another study, Ariely and Levav (2000) examined the sequential choices of people in a small group setting and showed that every next person in the group tried to select something different from what other individuals before him or her had chosen. Along similar lines, Simonson and Nowlis (2000) demonstrated that individuals with a high need for uniqueness were more likely to make unconventional decisions when they were asked to explain them to other people. In still another study, Ratner and Kahn (2002) found that when individual behavior was subject to public scrutiny, people chose more varied items because they believed that such decisions would “express to others that they are creative and interesting people who enjoy many different things” (p. 246). Overall, previous research showed that people conformed in some consumption situations and sought distinctiveness in others. The goal of the present study is to reconcile these contradictory results by finding a moderator that can account for both streams of research. To this end, I start by reviewing the theoretical approaches to conformity. Next, I introduce optimal distinctiveness theory (ODT) (Brewer 1991) and propose to extend it in several ways. On the basis of these extensions, I argue that whether a person will conform to or seek distinctiveness from others in a particular consumption situation is contingent on the absence or presence of one’s prior positive interaction with the group. I also suggest that this effect will occur in a public context, that is, when an individual’s choice is visible to other group members. In the *Correspondence to: Veronika Papyrina, Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Business, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA. E-mail: papyrina@sfsu.edu Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, J. Consumer Behav. 11: 467–476 (2012) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/cb.1396 next section, I elaborate on these propositions and develop the hypotheses. Following that, I describe the design and present the results of an experiment that tested the interaction effect of prior positive interaction with the group and visibility of one’s consumption decision to others on conformity and distinctiveness. I conclude with a brief discussion of how theoretical framework proposed in the present research may account for some conflicting findings on conformity and distinctiveness in consumer behavior reported in the previous studies. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Conformity The extant literature suggests three major motives for conformity and three corresponding types of social influence. These motives and processes have been thoroughly discussed elsewhere (for a recent review, see Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004); therefore, I will only highlight major points relevant to the present research. The first motive for conformity, which underlies informational influence, is the desire to hold an accurate view of reality. This type of influence occurs when people are uncertain about the right course of action. On such occasions, individuals turn to others because they genuinely believe that what others are doing is correct, and hence, judgments formed under informational influence are maintained regardless of whether others can or cannot observe one’s behavior (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955). The second motive for conformity derives from the desire to be socially accepted and forms the basis for normative influence. The theory of normative influence argues that individuals conform because they believe that similarity breeds liking, and that agreeing with others will help them fit in the group and avoid rejection. Consistent with this idea, in a classic line-judgment task, Asch (1956) observed that a considerable proportion of participants matched their responses with the estimates of a group of confederates despite the fact that opinions expressed by the latter were blatantly incorrect. Interestingly, most of the individuals who publically agreed with the confederates later stated that the “group choice” did not look “correct” to them. Thus, it appears that normative (rather than informational) pressures were largely responsible for the social influence observed in this study. Presumably, individuals view conformity as the shortest way to gain social acceptance because they believe that other people compare them to themselves when reaching social judgments and that other people are more likely to approve of behavior in which they engage themselves. All other things being equal, people tend to like similar others more than dissimilar others (Byrne, 1971; Palmer and Kalin, 1985; Carli et al., 1991; Hogg et al., 1993), and because they expect that others will treat them by the same principle, they view matching their responses with responses of others as a more efficient way of earning social approval than emphasizing their differences from them. Deutsch and Gerard (1955), who distinguished between informational and normative influence, defined the latter as “influence to conform to the positive expectations of another” (p. 629). These expectations, or norms, are essentially the default behavioral responses of the group. They prescribe that, in any particular situation, a person should do what a typical member of the group would do in a similar situation. Those individuals who conform to the normative prescriptions merit inclusion in the group, and those who do not follow them merit exclusion from the group. In other words, the concept of normative influence suggests that if an individual wants to get along with others, she or he has to go along with them. Interestingly, in another early study that employed the Asch’s line judgment task (Frager, 1970), the conformity rate among participants from an Eastern country (i.e., Japan) was lower compared with the levels usually observed in samples from Western societies. At the first glance, these findings might appear at odds with a widely accepted notion that emphasis on group harmony is stronger in collectivist rather than in individualist cultures (Hofstede, 1980; Singelis, 1994); however, they are consistent with the observations made by Triandis et al. (1988). In the latter work, researchers investigated ingroup influence across the range of social situations and concluded that the hypothesis that collectivists always conform more should be rejected. More specifically, they argued that the concept of collectivism needed refinement and suggested that conformity as a tool of gaining acceptance by others might, in fact, be more important for individualists. In subsequent paper, Triandis (1989) elaborated on this idea by proposing that to better understand patterns of conformity in different societies, it is necessary to consider not only the subordination between personal and group goals, which lies at the core of distinction between individualism and collectivism, but also the extent of cultural complexity. Cultural complexity is determined by the number of social interconnections. In Western societies, the level of complexity is usually high in the sense that people are involved in numerous relationships and often find themselves in situations when they have to choose which groups to enter, leave, or even to form. As a result, individualists are likely to develop better skills in getting along with others, which include, among other things, understanding the wisdom that “similarity breeds liking” and mastering the technique of conformity as a means of gaining social acceptance. In this respect, Triandis et al. (1988) argued that complex cultures make people more sociable because they have to “work hard to get into and remain in their ingroups” (p. 333). Alternatively, in collectivist countries, there is less pressure to learn how to cultivate new relationships because individuals usually belong to fewer ingroups, and membership in them is often predetermined (i.e., castes are still an important part of Indian culture even though the constitution has banned them). In support of these differences, Wheeler et al. (1989) observed that compared with collectivists, individualists were considerably more likely to interact with outgroup members and concluded that, in general, they seemed to be more effective in meeting strangers and communicating with outsiders. The present research has been conducted in the context ofWestern culture. On the basis of the aforementioned ideas, I expect that when individuals are not confident in their acceptance by others because the group is yet to be formed, they will be more likely to exhibit conformity by emulating consumption decisions of prospective group members. 468 V. Papyrina Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. 11: 467–476 (2012) DOI: 10.1002/cb At the same time, however, it is important to note that cultural complexity not only relates to the number of social interconnections but also influences the nature of self-ingroup relationships. More specifically, Triandis (1989) proposed that as societies become more complex, they can also become more individualistic because as the number of social relationships increases, the importance of any particular ingroup and one’s loyalty to it are likely to diminish. The rationale for this argument is that when people are involved in the extensive network of relationships, they rely on support from any single group to a less extent and hence are more likely to give priorities to their personal rather than to the group goals. Compared with collectivist countries, Western societies allow more freedom to act outside of the collective and if a person comes to realize that one’s goals are incompatible with the needs of others, the cultural norms of individualism would support the decision to deviate from the group and “do what’s best for the self”. Thus, self-ingroup relationships in Western societies are not only more voluntary but also more superficial. Individualists make “friends” easily, but at the same time, they have a stronger propensity to remain independent and emotionally detached from their groups. Because individualist cultures emphasize self-reliance and self-actualization, people expect that autonomy will be valued by others and, therefore, tend to act in ways that project those qualities. Notwithstanding the argument made earlier that anticipation of the interaction with prospective group members will serve as a motivator for conformity, I expect that once individuals have confidence in their group status through positive experience of communicating with others, they will be more likely to seek distinctiveness in their consumption decisions. This proposition will be discussed next from the perspective of the belongingness hypothesis (Baumeister and Leary, 1995) and the ODT (Brewer, 1991); however, before I proceed to the next section, a few words about the third type of conformity, namely, the referent informational influence, are in order. The referent informational influence is driven by the desire to establish a common identity with the group. It was proposed by Turner (1991) in his self-categorization theory, which suggests that individuals categorize themselves and others into groups using the principle of similarity. Among other consequences, self-categorization leads to conformity because when individuals classify themselves as members of a certain group, they adopt attitudes of this group as their own and start to behave as a typical group member. Turner (1991) termed this process identification with the group and proposed that individuals will conform to those with whom they would like to associate. Similar to the concept of normative influence, self-categorization theory maintains that individuals will be more likely to conform in public because the presence of other members will increase the salience of common identity with the group. These informational, normative, and referent informational influences in social psychology are similar to the informational, utilitarian, and value-expressive group influences identified by Park and Lessig (1977) in the realm of consumer behavior. Researchers in both social psychology (Cialdini and Goldstein, 2004) and consumer behavior (Childers and Rao, 1992) seem to agree that it is often difficult to disentangle the aforementioned three processes empirically because any particular act of conformity may be performed in the service of more than one motive. However, they also uphold the view that these types of social influence are conceptually distinct. In the present research, I attempt to hold the informational component of social influence constant by providing participants in all conditions with the same amount of information about product attributes. My focus is primarily on one’s desire to have acceptance by and to establish a common identity with the group. On the basis of the preceding discussion, I expect that both normative and referent informational influences will operate in a public setting, that is, when an individual believes that other group members are or will become aware of one’s behavior. The need to belong and the need to be unique The concepts of normative (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955) and referent informational influences (Turner, 1991) do not explicitly explain why people want to be accepted by or to establish a common identity with the group in the first place. Other researchers, however, argued that these outcomes of social interactions are valuable not so much in their own right but rather as a means of satisfying a deeper need for inclusion in social relationships. Baumeister and Leary (1995), for example, proposed an integrative belongingness hypothesis that states that a wide variety of interpersonal behaviors, including conformity, is ultimately rooted in the need to belong with other people. In their view, this need is fundamental in the sense that it is characteristic of all human beings and does not derive from any other motive. To evaluate the belongingness hypothesis, Baumeister and Leary (1995) reviewed ample empirical evidence that suggests that individuals have a pervasive drive to develop positive interpersonal relationships and that it takes them very little time to form social bonds with other people. Among this evidence, for example, was the study by Sherif et al. (1988) that showed that when previously unacquainted participants were randomly assigned to newly created groups, identification with the group ensued rapidly. Another example was the research based on the so-called minimal group paradigm. The robust finding in this stream of research is that people exhibit ingroup favoritism even when they are categorized in groups based on some trivial criterion (Tajfel et al., 1971) or by lottery (Locksley et al., 1980). It is striking that these results were obtained when groups had no history of prior interaction, no face-to-face communication during the experiment, and no future. A more recent example from the area of consumer behavior, which would have been relevant to the review conducted by Baumeister and Leary (1995), is the study by Briley and Wyer (2002). In this research, the mere anticipation of performing an anagram task with other participants induced in individuals a group mindset and caused them to make consumption decisions that minimized the risk of negative outcomes for their group. Taken together, these findings corroborate the idea that the need to belong is an innate human motive and that individuals are remarkably quick in developing attachments to their groups. Conformity and uniqueness in consumer choices 469 Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. 11: 467–476 (2012) DOI: 10.1002/cb At the same time, however, the need to belong does not operate for all people at all times. In fact, Baumeister and Leary (1995) argued that individuals need only a certain amount of social inclusion, and once this need is satiated, the motivation to seek further belongingness diminishes. A similar idea was proposed by Brewer (1991) in her ODT. In particular, she agrees that the need to belong is a universal human drive, but she also takes this notion a step further and suggests that another fundamental motive, which is equally strong, is the need to see oneself as a unique individual. According to the ODT, these two needs do not complement but rather compete with each other in such a way that fulfilling the need to belong activates and redirects efforts at satisfying the need to be unique and vice versa. One of the main predictions of ODT is that the need for social inclusion will prompt people to emphasize their similarities to the group, whereas the need for uniqueness will motivate them to focus on their differences from others. Several researchers (Pickett and Brewer, 2001; Pickett et al., 2002) tested this prediction and found that depending on whether the need to belong or the need to be unique was activated, individuals responded by more or less self-stereotyping, that is, by rating oneself as a more or less typical group member, respectively. Extending these ideas into the consumer behavior domain, I suggest that the tension between these needs can be resolved not only on the cognitive level by shifts in self-stereotyping but also on the behavioral level through individual consumption decisions. This proposition draws on a notion that individuals use material possessions to create desirable self-identities as well as make inferences about identities of other people based on what others own and actively use, including ordinary everyday products (Solomon, 1983; Dittmar, 1992; Kleine et al., 1993). Dittmar (1992), for example, suggested that material possessions, as symbols of one’s identity, may have self-expressive or categorical meaning for an individual. The product has a self-expressive meaning when a person uses it to convey a unique image of the self, and the product has a categorical meaning when a person uses it to display one’s affiliation with certain groups. This distinction is analytical rather than absolute in the sense that any product can have either or both meanings. As will be discussed later, I expect that in the present research, individuals will choose a brand that signifies conformity to others or a brand that allows them to stand out of the group, depending on the identity concerns that will be salient at a particular moment. Further, Brewer (1991) conceptually defined belongingness to the group as perceived similarity to other group members. Taking ODT a step further, I suggest that another way how people may acquire the sense of social inclusion and how it can be conceptualized is through actual interaction with the group, provided that this experience has a positive connotation for an individual. This issue is discussed next. Prior positive interaction with the group As was mentioned earlier, the extant literature in social psychology suggests that individuals are quick in forming social bonds with other people (Baumeister and Leary, 1995). A related aspect of this phenomenon is that, all other things being equal, individuals expect a positive rather than a negative interaction with other people. From the conceptual point of view, this idea dates back to the analysis of the rules of conversation conducted by Goffman (1955) more than a half century ago. In this analysis, he proposed that communications are guided by an interaction ritual that prescribes an individual to withhold any information that could imply something negative about another person because even minimal criticism could make everyone feel uncomfortable and disrupt the relationships. Rather, individuals in social interactions are expected to acknowledge each other’s identities by engaging in “cooperative facework” or at least to display an ambivalent reaction towards other people that will not disconfirm their self-definitions. From the empirical point of view, there is ample evidence that supports this so-called positivity bias in perceived and actual social interactions. For example, McNeel and Messick (1970) found that participants assumed that two people were having a positive interaction even before they were given any information about their conversation. In a study of actual relationships, Wilder and Thompson (1980) demonstrated that individuals tended to form favorable attitudes toward whomever they spent time with, even if they previously disliked those people. Similarly, Alimaras (1967) found an asymmetry in participants’ ratings of liked and disliked acquaintances. Whereas ratings of liked acquaintances were overwhelmingly positive, ratings of disliked acquaintances included both negative and positive traits. The author interpreted these results as evidence of a general reluctance to ascribe negative characteristics to others in interpersonal relationships. Of course, in the real-life setting, the content of social interactions varies widely, and the aforementioned findings do not imply that the relationship of an individual with the group will always evolve smoothly. Rather, the theoretical point is that individuals by default anticipate a positive interaction with other people and will approach them in the accepting manner unless they perceive a reason to do otherwise. In the present research, positive interaction is conceptualized as a feeling of being accepted and regarded positively by the group. Empirically, the valence of interaction is measured rather than manipulated in this study, as will be discussed further. Overall, on the basis of the preceding arguments, I suggest that when individuals do not have an experience of positive interaction with the group, they will be more likely to follow other group members in their consumption decisions. On such occasions, the need for inclusion is not yet satisfied and people will be motivated to gain acceptance by and to establish a common identity with the group by emulating consumption choices of other members. As was mentioned earlier, both normative and referent informational influences are more likely to operate in public, that is, when the consumption decision of an individual can be observed by others. Thus, I hypothesize the following: H1: When a person does not have an experience of positive interaction with a group, one will be more likely to conform to other members when one’s consumption decisions are public 470 V. Papyrina Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. 11: 467–476 (2012) DOI: 10.1002/cb H2: There will be no relationship between the absence of experience of positive interaction with a group and conformity when one’s consumption decisions are private Alternatively, I expect that after individuals experience positive interaction with the group, they will be more likely to seek distinctiveness from other members if they believe that others are or will become aware of their behavior. The rationale for this proposition is that uniqueness represents an intrinsic human motivation as was proposed by Brewer (1991) and also constitutes one of the core values in Western societies and a desirable image to claim (Schlenker, 1980; Kim and Markus, 1999). In this respect, Hornsey and Jetten (2004) noticed an interesting paradox that researchers of group processes often suggest that individuals are malleable to conformity, whereas Western ideology and the arts are replete with appeals to stay true to the self and endorse the ideas of being autonomous and responsible for one’s own fate. Indeed, American movies and literature often depict a person who yields to social pressure as weak and subservient and portray an individual who resists group influence as powerful and worthy of respect. Because Western culture encourages and rewards the expression of individuality, it should be important for a person that one’s distinctiveness be recognized socially. Thus, I propose that after individuals experience positive interaction with the group, they will be more likely to feel included in it, and therefore, the need to be different will take precedence over the need to belong. Accordingly, when the behavior of an individual is visible to other members, one will be motivated to create a distinct identity within the group and will be more likely to make consumption choices that will allow the self to stand out of the group. More formally, H3: When a person has an experience of positive interaction with a group, one will be more likely to seek distinctiveness from other members when one’s consumption decisions are public H4: There will be no relationship between the experience of positive interaction with a group and distinctiveness seeking when one’s consumption decisions are private EXPERIMENT Method Design The goal of the experiment was to test the interaction effect of prior positive interaction with the group and visibility of individual consumption decisions to others on conformity and distinctiveness hypothesized in H1 through H4. This study employed a two (absence or presence of prior positive interaction with the group) by two (private versus public consumption decision) between-subjects experimental design. Procedures and measures To minimize possible suspicion about the goals of the experiment, the research was presented to participants as consisting of three ostensibly unrelated studies that, in actuality, were three stages of the same study. At the first stage, which was introduced as a study of personality characteristics, participants were asked to answer questions pertaining to individual differences in self-monitoring (Snyder and Gangestad, 1986) and anxiousness (Leary, 1983), which were included in the analysis as potential covariates and to provide demographic information. At the second stage, participants first read a brief note about a possible national system of electronic health records. Following that, participants in the prior interaction with the group condition discussed possible advantages and disadvantages of this system in groups of 4–5 people. The purpose of the discussion was to create a history of group interaction that was not confounded with the subsequent task used to measure the dependent variable. To minimize procedural differences, participants in the no prior interaction with the group condition were asked to think aloud about the same topic individually. To foster group identification, participants in the prior interaction with a group condition were asked to make up a name for their group and to pick up and wear tags of different colors during the discussion. To prevent possible confrontation among group members, the experimenter emphasized that their goal was not to reach a consensual position on the issue but rather to generate as many pros and cons of the system as possible and encouraged participants to express their opinions freely as they would have done in a conversation with their friends. Participants had up to 15minutes to perform this task. To facilitate an informal atmosphere, the experimenter left the room during the discussion. After the discussion, participants were seated in separate rooms, and from this point forward, they performed all tasks individually. In the next phase, participants completed scales assessing the valence of their interaction with the group and identification with the group. The valence of interaction with the group was measured by asking participants to indicate on two seven-point scales the extent to which they felt that they were rejected/accepted and regarded negatively/positively by other group members during the discussion. The measure of group identification was adapted from Ellemers et al. (1999; Table 1). At the third stage, participants were told that a major electronics manufacturer, who decided to remain anonymous to avoid possible associations with its brand name, was interested in how its model of MP3 video player compared with that of its competitor. Under this guise, participants were asked to compare two models of MP3 video players Table 1. Identification with the group Construct Items Identification with the group 1. During the discussion, I identified with other group members 2. During the discussion, I felt the sense of belonging with the group 3. I disliked being a member of this group (reverse-coded) 4. In many respects, other group members were similar to me Conformity and uniqueness in consumer choices 471 Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. 11: 467–476 (2012) DOI: 10.1002/cb and choose the one that they preferred. They were told that to prevent unnecessary paper usage and to avoid having multiple forms, all members of their group would indicate their choices on the same preference form. The experimenter also said that she would randomly determine the order of completing this form, and that those participants who would not be the first would have to wait for a few minutes. In actuality, every participant received a form with bogus preferences that ostensibly were made by all other group members that created an impression that everyone was the last person in the group to complete the preference form. Bogus choices were handwritten by the experimenter using different pen colors and marks and connoted the unanimous preference for one brand over another. That is, every participant saw on the preference form that all members of the group ostensibly chose the same brand over another and then indicated one’s own preference on the next blank line of the form. In the private consumption decision condition, participants were assured that their choices of MP3 video player would remain anonymous even though they would use the same preference form with other group members. In the public consumption decision condition, participants were led to believe that after they indicated their preference, they would reveal it to and discuss it with other group members. The dependent variable of interest was whether participants would conform to others by choosing the same model of MP3 video player or differentiate themselves by choosing another brand. After participants made a choice of MP3 video player, they were asked to indicate the strength of their preference for this model over another one on a seven-point scale ranging from “1 = very weakly prefer” to “7 = very strongly prefer”. Participants answered this question after the preference form was collected by the experimenter, in a separate questionnaire, which also contained the manipulation check of public versus private consumption decision and the suspicion probe. On the basis of the latter measure, one person was excluded from the sample because he suspected that unanimous choices of one model of MP3 video player over another were bogus, and the data from other six individuals were eliminated from the analysis because they guessed the hypotheses. Pretest The pretest was conducted to ensure that two brands of MP3 video players were equally preferable. Nineteen students from the same population as participants in the main study rated the importance of several attributes of MP3 video players and indicated their preference by dividing 100 points between the two models. Results of the pretest showed that two brands of MP3 video players were perceived as compensatory. Approximately half of the participants chose brand A whereas the other half chose brand B, and there was no difference (p>0.76) between the average number of points allocated to brand A (M= 48.0) and brand B (M= 52.0). The skewness and kurtosis of the distributions of preference points for brand A (0.37 and 0.57) and brand B (0.37 and 0.57) indicate that they tended to cluster around their respective means, which lend further evidence that these two models of MP3 video players were equally preferable. Pretest ratings of attribute importance and characteristics of MP3 video players are presented in Table 2. Sample Participants in this research were students from a major North American University, who were recruited by posting flyers on campus. Each person received two movie tickets for participation in the study. To be included in the sample for hypotheses tests, participants had to satisfy two criteria. First, recall that theoretical reasoning for hypotheses H1 through H4 builds on the assumption of a positive interaction of an individual with the group. In this study, the valence of interaction was operationalized as an individual’s perception of whether other members of the group rejected/accepted the self and regarded the self negatively/positively. Accordingly, to meet the aforementioned assumption, only those participants who scored above the midpoint on both measures were included in the analysis. This resulted in the elimination of 14 per cent of respondents from the original sample. Second, a person’s perception of whether the self was accepted by others captures only one facet of interpersonal dynamics, namely, the perceived reaction of the group to an individual. The converse aspect of social interactions, Table 2. Importance of attributes and description of mp3 video players Attribute Importance: mean (SD) Brand A Brand B Internal memory 5.9 (1.2) 20GB 30GB Expansion memory format 4.7 (1.7) None None Audio quality 6.5 (0.6) Excellenta Very gooda Video and picture quality 6.0 (1.1) Gooda Gooda Audio playback time 5.5 (1.0) 12 hours 15 hours Video playback time 5.3 (1.0) 5 hours 4 hours Display dimensions (WH in cm) 4.4 (1.5) 4.33.6 7.65.8 Overall dimensions (WHD in cm) 5.2 (1.2) 10.76.11.8 12.57.42.3 Weight (in grams) 5.7 (1.2) 160 240 Built-in microphone 3.1 (1.8) Yes Yes Quality of recording via microphone 3.1 (1.9) Very gooda Faira Quality of recording via line input 3.7 (1.8) Excellenta Excellenta Capability to view video or images on TV 4.9 (1.6) Yes Yes FM radio 2.9 (2.1) No Yes Batteries 4.2 (1.9) Non-removable, rechargeable Removable, rechargeable aRated by experts on a five-point scale: excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor. 472 V. Papyrina Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. 11: 467–476 (2012) DOI: 10.1002/cb which was termed by Turner (1991) identification with the group, is the disposition of an individual toward the group. Identification expresses the degree to which a person is attracted to, or psychologically involved with, the group and thinks of oneself as a member of the group. The attitude of the group toward an individual and the attitude of an individual toward the group will not necessarily be in synch. It is possible that a person will not wish to be a member of the group and will reject the group even when one feels that one is being accepted by others. On such occasions, when identification with the group is low, an individual may engage in behavior that differentiates oneself from other group members to distance oneself from the group. In the context of the present study, this suggests that two different motives may lead to the same behavior. More specifically, there is a possibility that the choice of a brand that signifies distinctiveness from others may be driven by the desire to dissociate oneself from the group rather than by the desire to create a unique identity within the group. To rule out this alternative explanation of the distinctiveness seeking, only those individuals who scored at or above the midpoint on all scales that measured identification with the group were included in the analyses. This reduced the sample by another 9 per cent. The final sample comprised 31 males and 33 females in the age range of 18 to 24 years old. Results Manipulation check To assess effectiveness of the manipulation of public versus private consumption decision, participants were asked to indicate on a seven-point Likert scale the extent to which they believed that other group members would become aware of their choice of MP3 video player. The ANOVA revealed a significant effect of visibility manipulation (F(1, 60) = 319.31, p<0.0001). As expected, respondents in the public condition (Mpublic = 5.73) were more likely to expect that others would know what brand of MP3 video player they preferred than respondents in the private condition (Mpublic=1.35). No other effects on this measure were observed. Covariates Gender (p>0.50), importance of the group opinion for an individual (p>0.65), and anxiousness (p>0.65) did not covary significantly with the dependent variable. Individual differences in self-monitoring (Wald = 3.34, p<0.07) was a marginally significant covariate with the choice of MP3 video player, indicating that higher self-monitors were slightly more likely to seek distinctiveness from than to conform to their groups. Hypotheses tests The log-linear test revealed a significant interaction effect of prior interaction with the group and visibility of individual consumption decisions on the choice of MP3 video player (w2 = 3.94, p<0.05). As predicted, the test of proportions was significant in the public condition (w2 = 5.11, p<0.05). In line with H1, when participants did not have a history of prior interaction with the group but expected to meet the group and thought that other members would know about their choices of MP3 video player, 69 per cent of respondents chose the brand that was ostensibly preferred by everyone else in the group, and only 31 per cent of respondents chose a different brand. The pattern of results was reversed in the subcondition of prior interaction with the group, which was consistent with H3. After individuals had a positive experience of interaction with the group and believed that other members would subsequently observe their consumption decisions, only 29 per cent of participants conformed to the preferences of other group members, whereas 71 per cent of participants made a choice in favor of the brand that allowed them to differentiate the self from others. As expected, the test of proportions showed no difference in preferences between the two models in the private condition (p>0.85). When participants believed that others would not become aware of their consumption decisions, the pattern of results was similar to that obtained in the pretest. Regardless of whether individuals did or did not interact with their groups before making a choice of MP3 video player, preferences between the two models split up approximately in halves. In the subcondition of no prior interaction with the group, 44 per cent of respondents chose the brand that was supposedly preferred by all other group members, and 56 per cent of participants chose another brand, which was consistent with H2. Similarly, in the subcondition of prior interaction with the group, the proportions were 47 per cent and 53 per cent, respectively, which was in line with H4. The results are depicted in Figure 1. Finally, as was mentioned in the description of study procedures, after participants chose a model of MP3 video player, they were asked how strongly they preferred it over another one. It is noteworthy that there were no differences (p>0.39) in the strength of preference for the brand that signified conformity (M= 4.37, SD = 1.67) and the brand that expressed distinctiveness (M= 4.70, SD = 1.47). Both means were close to the midpoint of the scale pointing to the relatively moderate degrees of preference for both brands. 100 % 0 % Public Private Conformity Distinctiveness Prior Interaction Prior Interaction No Interaction No Interaction Figure 1. Experiment 1: Effect of prior positive interaction with the group. Conformity and uniqueness in consumer choices 473 Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. 11: 467–476 (2012) DOI: 10.1002/cb CONCLUSION To reiterate, the goal of the present research was to reconcile contradictory findings that were reported in previous studies that people conformed in some consumption situations (e.g., Venkatesan, 1966) and sought distinctiveness in others (e.g., Ariely and Levav, 2000; Ratner and Kahn, 2002). To this end, I proposed that whether an individual would conform to or differentiate oneself from others in a particular consumption situation depends on the presence or absence of one’s prior positive interaction with the group. I also suggested that this effect would occur in a public context, that is, when a person would believe that other group members would observe one’s choice. Theoretical arguments for the aforementioned relationships built on the idea that people are driven by two fundamental motives—the desire to belong with others and the desire to be unique. The main proposition, which was based on the ODT (Brewer, 1991), was that these two motives compete with each other in such a way that satisfaction of the former activates the latter and vice versa. Extending this theory in several ways, I suggested that when individuals did not have a history of prior positive relationships with the group, they would be more likely to conform. The reasoning behind this proposition was that in these cases, the need to belong was not yet satisfied, and individuals would be motivated to create the sense of common identity with the group and to gain its approval by choosing the same brands or products as other group members. And alternatively, I expected that after experiencing a positive interaction with the group, individuals would be more likely to seek distinctiveness from others in the group because in this situation, the need to be unique would take precedence over the need to belong. As predicted, the results of experiment yielded support for the interaction effect of prior positive interaction with the group and visibility of one’s consumption decision to others on conformity and distinctiveness. Specifically, I found that when individuals believed that their consumption choices would be visible to others, yet they did not have a history of positive relationships with the group, they were more likely to match their choices with the preferences of other group members. Presumably, in this situation, individuals were motivated to get approval, or at least to avoid rejection, by the group they were about to meet and reasoned that the best way to get along with others was to go along with them. Consistent with expectations, the pattern of results was reversed after participants experienced a positive interaction with the group. In this case, individuals were more likely to make a choice that allowed them to stand out in the group. The rationale for this behavior offered in the present study was that even a brief interaction with previously unacquainted people was sufficient to make individuals feel accepted and appreciated and evoked in them the desire to present oneself in a unique way. It is also interesting to note that during the discussion, the majority of individuals not only felt that others reacted positively to them but also identified with their groups to a relatively high degree. Partially, this might be because of the fact that all participants came from the same student population and might have had a lot in common. At the same time, these observations are consistent with the idea suggested in social psychological research that, all other things being equal, individuals anticipate pleasant rather than unpleasant interactions with other people and are quick in forming attachments to their groups (for a review, see Baumeister and Leary, 1995; for empirical evidence for the positive bias in social interactions, see Rosenbaum, 1986). It appears that in the present study, most individuals indeed approached and were approached by others in the accepting manner and that this positive experience encouraged them to create a distinct image of the self within the group. In the private context, no support was found for the relationship between prior positive interaction with the group and either conformity or distinctiveness. These findings were consistent with expectations and with previous research that showed that individuals tended to conform to (e.g., Venkatesan, 1966) and seek distinctiveness from others (e.g., Ratner and Kahn, 2002) only when they believed that others were aware of their behavior. To summarize, theoretical framework proposed in the present research accounts for some conflicting results on conformity and distinctiveness in consumer decision making reported in previous studies. Specifically, careful examination of the experimental designs used in prior research reveals that in those experiments that found empirical evidence for conformity (e.g., Venkatesan, 1966), authors employed confederates who were unknown to study participants. It is possible that the situation in which participants had no history of prior positive interaction with the group aroused the need for inclusion and, accordingly, motivated participants to conform to the responses of confederates. And conversely, in those studies that demonstrated that people sought distinctiveness from others, experimental groups often included either students who had probably interacted on a somewhat regular basis before the experiment (Ariely and Levav, 2000, Study 3; Ratner and Kahn, 2002) or other individuals who apparently had known each other relatively well (Ariely and Levav, 2000, Studies 1 and 2). In these cases, it seems plausible to suggest that the need to belong had already been fulfilled before the experiment, which might have brought into play the need to be unique and motivated participants to differentiate the self from other group members. In conclusion, it is important to acknowledge several limitations of the present research that merit further investigation. As discussed earlier, the hypotheses developed in this study build on the assumption of a positive interaction with the group and, accordingly, the sample comprised only those individuals who reported above average level of identification with and perceived acceptance by other members. An alternative to screening out participants would be to include the valence of group interaction in the test and examine its moderation effect. In this research, the number of students who had relatively unfavorable experience with their groups was insufficient for such analysis; however, instead of measuring the valence of group interaction, future studies may manipulate it, for example, by using confederates or providing participants with bogus feedback as to whether 474 V. Papyrina Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. 11: 467–476 (2012) DOI: 10.1002/cb they were regarded positively or negatively by others. Another venue for future research might be to investigate whether conformity and distinctiveness are contingent on individual differences such as self-monitoring, anxiousness, gender, and age. In addition, it would be interesting to consider the role of context-specific factors such as group composition and nature of the relationships. Clearly, in this study, groups formed in the laboratory were temporary and superficial, and it is unlikely that their impact would continue beyond the experimental task. Thus, it is unclear whether the same pattern of outcomes would be observed in more stable groups that have more power to reward and punish their members over long periods of time, and hence might be considerably more significant for the individuals. In sum, the present research represents the first attempt, and more efforts are needed to examine the interplay between conformity and distinctiveness. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to thank June Cotte, Robert Fisher, and Kyle B.Murray for their helpful comments and suggestions on the earlier versions of this manuscript. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES Veronika Papyrina is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the College of Business at San Francisco State University. She got her PhD at the Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario. Her research interests include social influence in consumer behavior, cognitive responses to advertising, and persuasion. REFERENCES Alimaras PE. 1967. Ambivalence in Situations of Negative Interpersonal Attitudes. Journal of Psychology 65: 9–13. Ariely D, Levav J. 2000. Sequential Choice in Group Settings: Taking the Road Less Traveled and Less Enjoyed. Journal of Consumer Research 27(December): 279–290. Asch SE. 1956. Studies of Independence and Conformity: A Minority of One Against a Unanimous Majority. Psychological Monographs 70(9, Whole No. 416). Baumeister RF, Leary MR. 1995. The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation. Psychological Bulletin 117(3): 497–529. Bearden WO, Etzel MJ. 1982. Preference Group Influence on Product and Brand Purchase Decisions. Journal of Consumer Research 9(September): 183–194. Brewer MB. 1991. The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 17(October): 475–482. Briley DA, Wyer RS, Jr. 2002. The Effect of Group Membership Salience on the Avoidance of Negative Outcomes: Implications for Social and Consumer Decisions. Journal of Consumer Research 29(3): 400–415. Byrne D. 1971. The Attraction Paradigm. Academic Press: New York. Carli LL, Ganley R, Pierce-Otay A. 1991. Similarity and Satisfaction in Roommate Relationships. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 17:419–426. Childers TL, Rao AR. 1992. The Influence of Familial and Peerbased Reference Groups on Consumer Decisions. Journal of Consumer Research 19(September): 198–211. Cialdini RB, Goldstein NJ. 2004. Social Influence: Compliance and Conformity. Annual Review of Psychology 55: 591–621. Deutsch M, Gerard HB. 1955. A Study of Normative and Informational Social Influences Upon Individual Judgment. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 51: 629–636. Dittmar H. 1992. The Social Psychology of Material Possessions: to Have is to Be. St. Martin’s Press: New York, N.Y. Ellemers N, Kortekaas P, Ouwerkerk JW. 1999. Self-Categorization, Commitment to the Group, and Group Self-Esteem as Related but Distinct Aspects of Social Identity. European Journal of Social Psychology 29(March-May): 371–389. Frager R. 1970. Conformity and Anticonformity in Japan. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 15(3): 203–210. Goffman E. 1955. On Face-Work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements in Social Interaction. Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 18: 213–231. Hofstede G. 1980. Culture’s Consequences. Sage: Beverly Hills, CA. Hogg MA, Cooper-Shaw L, Holzworth DW. 1993. Group Prorotypicality and Depersonalized Attraction in Small Interactive Groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 19: 452–465. Hornsey MJ, Jetten J. 2004. The Individual Within the Group: Balancing the Need to Belong With the Need to Be Different. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 8(3): 248–264. Kim H. Markus HR. 1999. Deviance or Uniqueness, Harmony or Conformity? A Cultural Analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77(4): 758–800. Kleine RE, III, Kleine SS, Kernan JB. 1993. Mundane Consumption and the Self: A Social-Identity Perspective. Journal of Consumer Psychology 2(3): 209–235. Leary MR. 1983. Social Anxiousness: The Construct and Its Measurement. Journal of Personality Assessment 47: 66–75. Locksley A, Ortiz V, Hepburn C. 1980. Social Categorization and Discriminatory Behavior: Extinguishing the Minimal Intergroup Discrimination Effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 39(5): 773–783. McNeel SP, Messick DM. 1970. A Bayesian Analysis of Subjective Probabilities of Interpersonal Relationships. Acta Psychologia 34: 311–321. Palmer DL, Kalin R. 1985. Dogmatic Responses to Belief Dissimilarity in the “Bogus Stranger” Paradigm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48: 171–179. Park CW, Lessig VP. 1977. Students and Housewives: Differences in Susceptibility to Reference Group Influence. Journal of Consumer Research 4(September): 102–110. Pickett CL, Brewer MB. 2001. Assimilation and Differentiation Needs as Motivational Determinants of Perceived In-group and Out-group Homogeneity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 37: 341–348. Pickett CL, Bonner BL, Coleman JM. 2002. Motivated Self- Stereotyping: Heightened Assimilation and Differentiation Needs Result in Increased Levels of Positive and Negative Self-Stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 82(4): 543–562. Ratner RK, Kahn BE. 2002. The Impact of Private versus Public Consumption on Variety-Seeking Behavior. Journal of Consumer Research 29(September): 246–257. Rosenbaum ME. 1986. The Repulsion Hypothesis: On the Nondevelopment of Relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51(6): 1156–1166. Schlenker BR. 1980. Impression Management: the Self-Concept, Social Identity, and Interpersonal Relations. Brooks/Cole: Monterey, CA. Sherif M, Harvey OH, White BJ, Hood WR, Sherif CW. 1988. The Robbers Cave Experiment: Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation. Wesleyan University Press: Middletown, CT. Simonson I, Nowlis SM. 2000. The Role of Explanation and Need for Uniqueness in Consumer Decision Making: Unconventional Conformity and uniqueness in consumer choices 475 Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. 11: 467–476 (2012) DOI: 10.1002/cb Choices Based on Reasons. Journal of Consumer Research 27 (June): 49–68. Singelis T. 1994. The Measurement of Independent and Interdependent Self-Construals. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 20(5): 580–591. Snyder M, Gangestad SW. 1986. On the Nature of Self-Monitoring: Matters of Assessment, Matters of Validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51: 125–139. Solomon MR. 1983. The Role of Products as Social Stimuli: A Symbolic Interactionism Perspective. Journal of Consumer Research 10(December): 319–328. Tajfel H, Flament C, Billig MG, Bundy RP. 1971. Social Categorization and Intergroup Behaviour. European Journal of Social Psychology 1: 149–177. Tepper Tian K, Bearden WO, Hunter GL. 2001. Consumers’ Need for Uniqueness: Scale Development and Validation. Journal of Consumer Research 28(June): 50–66. Triandis HC. 1989. The Self and Social Behavior in Differing Cultural Contexts. Psychological Review 96(3): 506–520. Triandis HC, Bontempo R, Villareal MJ. 1988. Individualism and Collectivism: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Self-Ingroup Relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 54(2): 323–338. Turner JC. 1991. Social Influence. Open University Press: Milton Keynes. Venkatesan M. 1966. Experimental Study of Consumer Behavior Conformity and Independence. Journal of Marketing Research III(November): 384–387. Wheeler L, Reis HT, Bond MH. 1989. Collectivism-Individualism in Everyday Social Life: The Middle Kingdom and the Melting Pot. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57(1): 79–86. Wilder DA, Thompson JE. 1980. Intergroup Contact with Independent Manipulation of In-group and Out-group Interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38: 589–603. 476 V. Papyrina Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Consumer Behav. 11: 467–476 (2012) DOI: 10.1002/cb Copyright of Journal of Consumer Behaviour is the property of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. PLACE THIS ORDER OR A SIMILAR ORDER WITH US TODAY AND GET AN AMAZING DISCOUNT :)

IS IT YOUR FIRST TIME HERE? WELCOME

USE COUPON "11OFF" AND GET 11% OFF YOUR ORDERS