This paper examines how consumers integrate other people's opinions to evaluate an unknown product or service. The use of these ratings has mushroomed with the prevalence of online ratings by consumers in domains ranging from restaurants to movies. However, their credibility or diagnosticity is...

In the intervening years since publication of the chapter Affect and Consumer Behavior (Cohen & Areni, 1991) in the Handbook of Consumer Behavior (Kassarjian & Robertson, 1991), research in consumer behavior dealing with affect has exploded, making it one of the field's central research topics....

How can the hedonistic assumption (i.e., people's willingness to pursue pleasure and avoid pain) be reconciled with people choosing to expose themselves to experiences known to elicit negative feelings? We assess how (1) the intensity of the negative feelings, (2) positive feelings in the...