Margaret G Meloy
Biographic Data
| ID | 109859 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Margaret G Meloy |
| GIVEN NAMES | Margaret G |
| FAMILY NAME | Meloy |
| SIGNATURE | MELOY M G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 8 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 6 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Rating an Experience Makes People Notice How It Is Changing
Repeated measurement is common in both marketing research and practice. For example, experimenters often ask participants to evaluate multiple similar products, and service providers regularly check in to see how customers are doing. Such practices rest on the assumption that collecting more data simply reveals consumers’ experiences and preferences as they evolve over time. We find that repeated measurement also shapes them. Specifically, repeat…
Defining and Understanding Vintage
Trendsetters and cutting-edge brands constantly seek new styles and fresh designs that set them apart from previous trends. However, in recent decades, these early adopters and innovators have also increasingly turned to selected pieces from the past, a market phenomenon often referred to as “vintage.” But what are vintage products exactly? This research develops a unified framework for understanding vintage consumption using a multimethod approa…
To Profit or to Assist? How the Interplay Between Product Recommendations and Relative Prices Impacts Consumers’ Inferences and Choice
This article explores the interplay between company-based product recommendation and the product’s relative price. Eight studies demonstrate that consumers are sensitive to the relative price of the recommended option and are more likely to follow the recommendation as its relative price in the choice set decreases. We show that this occurs because consumers use the relative price of the recommended option as a cue for the company’s underlying mo…
When Goods Were Odds
Much of the uncertainty people face is eventually resolved (e.g., a person entered in a raffle eventually learns what prize they have received). How do people evaluate goods (e.g., a prize of a $50 gift card) resulting from uncertain promotions (e.g., raffles)? Seven experiments (total N = 12,128) provide evidence for an uncertainty spillover effect: People prefer goods originating from uncertain prospects compared to those that were always known…
The Robin Hood Effect in Transgressions Against Firms
Consumer transgressions against firms involve moral violations in which consumers take advantage of loopholes in companies’ return and satisfaction-guaranteed policies or the lack of strict enforcement against password sharing, piracy, shoplifting, wardrobing, coupon stacking, promotion abuse, and fraud. Drawing on the timeless tale of Robin Hood, the legendary outlaw who stands up against injustice, the authors demonstrate that consumers use a R…
Beauty as a Goal
People frequently perceive a trade-off between health and taste, leading to poor dietary choices. This research identifies a novel pathway to healthier eating: seeking beauty in food. Across seven preregistered field and lab studies, pursuing beautiful food systematically increased healthy choices without diminishing perceived taste. This effect arises because beauty is positively associated with both health and taste, effectively creating health…
Improving Our Scientific Understanding of Consumer Behavior
“The Journal of Consumer Research is an anomaly in the ‘house of intellect’. Its primary objective is to serve as an interdisciplinary communication vehicle for theory, empirical research and methodology of the study of consumer behavior. ... It is our objective to be the first journal in which professionals sharing an interest in consumer behavior across disciplines send their material. ... JCR is intended to be a medium for interdisciplinary ex…
Disorder and Downsizing
The consequences of overconsumption and the recent popularity of simple living point to consumer interest in reducing belongings. They also raise an interesting question-what is a useful approach to downsizing and decluttering? We investigate how dis/order (messy vs. tidy items) affects downsizing and find, across nine focal studies, that (a) consumers retain fewer items when choosing from a disordered set because (b) order facilitates the compar…
Preference Refinement after a Budget Contraction
How does coping with a resource loss of time, space, or money change a consumer? In the current work, we argue that resource losses that give rise to budget contractions require a coping strategy that not only influences choice in the moment but also changes underlying consumer preferences. We show that the preference restructuring that occurs when coping with a budget loss also leads to stabilization of preferences. Specifically, a consumer who …
Attention by design
Goal Reversion in Consumer Choice
How do consumers manage goal conflicts before making a choice? This question was studied by examining emerging preferences in choices involving two products that were means to conflicting goals. These preference patterns revealed that an initially active goal, which had been set aside to reconcile a goal conflict, exerted greater than expected influence on the remainder of the choice process. This influence was manifest in a tendency for consumer…
Leader-Driven Primacy
Leader-driven primacy uses initial product information to install a targeted brand as the early leader in a choice between two brands. Biased evaluation of subsequent attributes builds support for the targeted brand, causing the choice itself to be biased. Study 1 finds evidence of this effect in choices between two equally attractive brands. Study 2 extends the finding to a situation where one brand is inferior and to conditions where participan…
Mood-Driven Distortion of Product Information
During the consumer choice process, predecisional distortion is the biased evaluation of new product information to support a tentatively preferred brand. An experiment revealed that creating a good mood by the unexpected gift of a bag of candy doubled the magnitude of this bias. Furthermore, information that seemed to preserve the good mood but disconfirmed the tentative preference (by being positive about the trailing brand) had greater impact …
The Distortion of Information during Decisions
During a decision might a preexisting preference lead to the distortion of new information in favor of the preferred alternative? An experiment that furnished one alternative with a prior preference found such predecisional distortion. It was also found that in the absence of any initial preference, a developing preference for one alternative led to the distortion of new information so as to favor that leading alternative. The distortion from bot…
Leader-Driven Primacy
Leader-driven primacy uses initial product information to install a targeted brand as the early leader in a choice between two brands. Biased evaluation of subsequent attributes builds support for the targeted brand, causing the choice itself to be biased. Study 1 finds evidence of this effect in choices between two equally attractive brands. Study 2 extends the finding to a situation where one brand is inferior and to conditions where participan…
Disorder and Downsizing
The consequences of overconsumption and the recent popularity of simple living point to consumer interest in reducing belongings. They also raise an interesting question-what is a useful approach to downsizing and decluttering? We investigate how dis/order (messy vs. tidy items) affects downsizing and find, across nine focal studies, that (a) consumers retain fewer items when choosing from a disordered set because (b) order facilitates the compar…
Mood-Driven Distortion of Product Information
During the consumer choice process, predecisional distortion is the biased evaluation of new product information to support a tentatively preferred brand. An experiment revealed that creating a good mood by the unexpected gift of a bag of candy doubled the magnitude of this bias. Furthermore, information that seemed to preserve the good mood but disconfirmed the tentative preference (by being positive about the trailing brand) had greater impact …
Preference Refinement after a Budget Contraction
How does coping with a resource loss of time, space, or money change a consumer? In the current work, we argue that resource losses that give rise to budget contractions require a coping strategy that not only influences choice in the moment but also changes underlying consumer preferences. We show that the preference restructuring that occurs when coping with a budget loss also leads to stabilization of preferences. Specifically, a consumer who …
Goal Reversion in Consumer Choice
How do consumers manage goal conflicts before making a choice? This question was studied by examining emerging preferences in choices involving two products that were means to conflicting goals. These preference patterns revealed that an initially active goal, which had been set aside to reconcile a goal conflict, exerted greater than expected influence on the remainder of the choice process. This influence was manifest in a tendency for consumer…
Improving Our Scientific Understanding of Consumer Behavior
“The Journal of Consumer Research is an anomaly in the ‘house of intellect’. Its primary objective is to serve as an interdisciplinary communication vehicle for theory, empirical research and methodology of the study of consumer behavior. ... It is our objective to be the first journal in which professionals sharing an interest in consumer behavior across disciplines send their material. ... JCR is intended to be a medium for interdisciplinary ex…
The Distortion of Information during Decisions
During a decision might a preexisting preference lead to the distortion of new information in favor of the preferred alternative? An experiment that furnished one alternative with a prior preference found such predecisional distortion. It was also found that in the absence of any initial preference, a developing preference for one alternative led to the distortion of new information so as to favor that leading alternative. The distortion from bot…
Mood-Driven Distortion of Product Information
During the consumer choice process, predecisional distortion is the biased evaluation of new product information to support a tentatively preferred brand. An experiment revealed that creating a good mood by the unexpected gift of a bag of candy doubled the magnitude of this bias. Furthermore, information that seemed to preserve the good mood but disconfirmed the tentative preference (by being positive about the trailing brand) had greater impact …
Leader-Driven Primacy
Leader-driven primacy uses initial product information to install a targeted brand as the early leader in a choice between two brands. Biased evaluation of subsequent attributes builds support for the targeted brand, causing the choice itself to be biased. Study 1 finds evidence of this effect in choices between two equally attractive brands. Study 2 extends the finding to a situation where one brand is inferior and to conditions where participan…
Goal Reversion in Consumer Choice
How do consumers manage goal conflicts before making a choice? This question was studied by examining emerging preferences in choices involving two products that were means to conflicting goals. These preference patterns revealed that an initially active goal, which had been set aside to reconcile a goal conflict, exerted greater than expected influence on the remainder of the choice process. This influence was manifest in a tendency for consumer…
Attention by design
Preference Refinement after a Budget Contraction
How does coping with a resource loss of time, space, or money change a consumer? In the current work, we argue that resource losses that give rise to budget contractions require a coping strategy that not only influences choice in the moment but also changes underlying consumer preferences. We show that the preference restructuring that occurs when coping with a budget loss also leads to stabilization of preferences. Specifically, a consumer who …
Disorder and Downsizing
The consequences of overconsumption and the recent popularity of simple living point to consumer interest in reducing belongings. They also raise an interesting question-what is a useful approach to downsizing and decluttering? We investigate how dis/order (messy vs. tidy items) affects downsizing and find, across nine focal studies, that (a) consumers retain fewer items when choosing from a disordered set because (b) order facilitates the compar…
The Robin Hood Effect in Transgressions Against Firms
Consumer transgressions against firms involve moral violations in which consumers take advantage of loopholes in companies’ return and satisfaction-guaranteed policies or the lack of strict enforcement against password sharing, piracy, shoplifting, wardrobing, coupon stacking, promotion abuse, and fraud. Drawing on the timeless tale of Robin Hood, the legendary outlaw who stands up against injustice, the authors demonstrate that consumers use a R…
Beauty as a Goal
People frequently perceive a trade-off between health and taste, leading to poor dietary choices. This research identifies a novel pathway to healthier eating: seeking beauty in food. Across seven preregistered field and lab studies, pursuing beautiful food systematically increased healthy choices without diminishing perceived taste. This effect arises because beauty is positively associated with both health and taste, effectively creating health…
Improving Our Scientific Understanding of Consumer Behavior
“The Journal of Consumer Research is an anomaly in the ‘house of intellect’. Its primary objective is to serve as an interdisciplinary communication vehicle for theory, empirical research and methodology of the study of consumer behavior. ... It is our objective to be the first journal in which professionals sharing an interest in consumer behavior across disciplines send their material. ... JCR is intended to be a medium for interdisciplinary ex…
Rating an Experience Makes People Notice How It Is Changing
Repeated measurement is common in both marketing research and practice. For example, experimenters often ask participants to evaluate multiple similar products, and service providers regularly check in to see how customers are doing. Such practices rest on the assumption that collecting more data simply reveals consumers’ experiences and preferences as they evolve over time. We find that repeated measurement also shapes them. Specifically, repeat…
Defining and Understanding Vintage
Trendsetters and cutting-edge brands constantly seek new styles and fresh designs that set them apart from previous trends. However, in recent decades, these early adopters and innovators have also increasingly turned to selected pieces from the past, a market phenomenon often referred to as “vintage.” But what are vintage products exactly? This research develops a unified framework for understanding vintage consumption using a multimethod approa…
To Profit or to Assist? How the Interplay Between Product Recommendations and Relative Prices Impacts Consumers’ Inferences and Choice
This article explores the interplay between company-based product recommendation and the product’s relative price. Eight studies demonstrate that consumers are sensitive to the relative price of the recommended option and are more likely to follow the recommendation as its relative price in the choice set decreases. We show that this occurs because consumers use the relative price of the recommended option as a cue for the company’s underlying mo…
When Goods Were Odds
Much of the uncertainty people face is eventually resolved (e.g., a person entered in a raffle eventually learns what prize they have received). How do people evaluate goods (e.g., a prize of a $50 gift card) resulting from uncertain promotions (e.g., raffles)? Seven experiments (total N = 12,128) provide evidence for an uncertainty spillover effect: People prefer goods originating from uncertain prospects compared to those that were always known…
Psychology (8 works) · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification (6 works) · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics (6 works) · Business (5 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Product (mathematics) (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Mathematics (4 works) · Preference (4 works) · Set (abstract data type) (4 works)