The now-popular “cash diet” hails that paying in cash is more painful psychologically than via dematerialized money (e.g., credit cards), which in turn helps citizens save more. Paradoxically, we show cash can sometimes backfire (compared to dematerialized money) and cause consumers to save...

We examine how and why consumers engage in retributional acts directed towards brands that are perceived as harmful. Consumers are shown to lie, cheat, and steal as they attribute lower moral worth to harmful brands and this effect is shown to persist in the absence of any attributable brand...

When it comes to trading time for money (or vice versa), people tend to be impatient and myopic. Often dramatically so. For illustration, half of people would rather collect $15 now than $30 in three months. This willingness to forego 50% of the reward to skip a 3-month wait corresponds to an...

Research studies on brand transgression (BT), service failure and recovery (SFR), and product-harm crisis (PHC) appear to have a common focus, yet the three streams developed surprisingly independently and with limited reference to one another. This situation is unfortunate because all three...

Drawing from psychological ownership and linguistics theories, we show that compared to a non-possessive brand name, a possessive brand name leads to more favorable brand evaluations and purchase intentions, which is mediated by greater attributions of identity-relevant brand attributes and...

We find compared to dyadic brand relationships, where the brand relationship is an ends rather than a means of propping up an interpersonal relationship, triadic brand relationships that implicate a third party protect against emotional and behavioral cheating by virtue of reinforcing...

We demonstrate that brand relationships affect perceptions of a brand’s closeness to the self, resulting in mindset congruency effects when matched with an appropriate construal level. Brand relationships that are closer (distal) to the self yield improved evaluations when brand information is...